Robertson County - TXGenWeb

These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format by other organizations or individuals. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material must obtain the written consent of Mrs. Carson's descendants or contact Jane Keppler, Robertson County TXGenWeb coordinator.

Volunteer Jo Ella Snider-Parker (SPJPVine@aol.com) purchased a copy of this thesis from Texas A&M's Cushing Library & beautifully re-typed this work. Mrs. Carson's niece, Janis Hunt, has been contacted to obtain the needed copyright permission.

CHAPTER IV: SOCIAL HISTORY

Elements Of Population Schools & Churches Health Newspapers Disasters

Elements of Population

Comparatively wealthy planters from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, who had brought along their slaves, were numbered along with the Irish immigrants and their families from the frontiers of Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky who followed Sterling C. Robertson into this part of the country soon after the creation of Robertson County.[92] One of the visitors to this region wrote: "Emigration has been immense during the last year, consisting of highly valuable class of citizens, who not only possess the means of developing the resources of the soil but whose moral worth is happily calculated to make a favorable impression on society."[93]

With the increasing importance of cotton raising, more slaves were imported, and by 1858, there were almost as many Negro residents as white. The outcome was that during the Reconstruction Days there were political difficulties as well as economic. In 1869, 1,169 Negro voters registered in Robertson County, while only 714 white men registered. To keep order, police stations were set up in Franklin, Calvert and Owensville. After the end of the Davis regime and the end of Reconstruction, most of the Negroes returned to the plantations as tenant farmers. In the meantime, a number of foreigners had come in and set up a system of smaller farms worked by the owners.[94]

By 1887, of the 23,021 residents, 600 were Germans, 465 Poles, and 11,088 Negroes. They had come with the railroads.[95]

For many years Benchley continued to be predominantly Irish. Mexican immigrants who came about 1871 concentrated largely at Hammond.[96] In the latter 1870’s most of the Poles established themselves in the town of Bremond on the northern boundary of the county.[97] New Baden was colonized by German immigrants, settled by the Texas Land and Immigration Company, in 1881. Many of social customs and other characteristics of their respective fatherland have been retained by the residents in these communities.[98]

Schools & Churches

The county commissioners, in one of the early acts, set aside land for the establishment of a public school, to be called Franklin Academy.[99] This move followed the Act of the Texas Congress which set apart for each county three leagues of land from the public domain “for the purpose of establishing a primary school or an academy.”[100] During the next year an extra league of land was added to each county’s school land apportionment by an Act of Congress.[101] The value of the land was very low and the plan failed because of its inability to provide sufficient funds. In the records of the county there is no further mention of the Franklin Academy, or of school districts, or teachers. Probably, the first educators of the county were circuit-riding preachers who led the old “field schools.”[102] As late as 1850 it was remarked: a very large majority of the rising generation of middle Texas are entirely destitute of school instruction... in many of our counties, common schools cannot be found. In many neighborhoods the Sabbath school is the only means of instruction afforded.[103]

Robert Crawford, a Methodist from South Carolina who had fought at San Jacinto, was one of the first ministers in Robertson County. The “old Ireland Church” a log structure, built by the Irish settlers of Benchley, who were Presbyterians, was probably the first house of worship in the county. The first pastor of this church was named Fullenwider, and of him it is said: The minister did not only preach but worked wheresoever he was needed, helping to clear the land, work the crops, nursing the sick, and burying the dead. He was a widely known Indian fighter, and once had to whip a man before he could convert him.[104]

The second church built in this community, and possible in the county, was erected to be used as a schoolhouse, and was called Red Top. In this building teachers “tutored a child as long as he cared to attend school as grades were unknown at that time.”[105]

Chief Justice A. L. Brigance was ordered by the commissioners, in 1856 to deed two county lots in Owensville “for school purpose,” and description of the county published in 1858, mentions a “female academy” which was then under construction.[106]

Within a few years after the Civil War there were seven or eight schools in various parts of the county. There were also four churches, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Christian. On May 21, 1867, the Quarterly Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, on the Owensville circuit, requested a donation of two lots in Owensville. The request was granted and the settlers now owned land on which they could erect a church and parsonage. The Hearne Station Baptist Church was organized on April 18, 1869. During the 1870’s a number of churches came into being. The commissioners court records mention the White Rock Church, May 27, 1873;[107] the Freedman’s Church, March 1871;[108] Chappel Hill and Mount Vernon Churches, July, 1874;[109] Elm Church, 1876;[110] Hickory Grove Church, 1877.[111] At this time there were four churches in Calvert.

The Polish parish was organized at Bremond in 1876, by Father Mosiewicz, who, for a time, served the church from Marlin, in Falls County. Later the settlers felt the need of a full-time leader; so they subscribed money to bring Peter Litwora, a priest, from Poland.[112]

By 1880 there were three Protestant churches and a Roman Catholic Church for white residents in Hearne, and three churches for the Negroes. Englewood had one church building, shared by the Baptist and Methodist, and a good school. Hearne had two schools by the early 1880’s. A lot in the new county seat was given to the Methodist Episcopal Church on June 22, 1880. The Roman Catholics and leading Protestant denominations had organized churches and built houses of worship in the county by 1882, and regular religious services were being held by Jewish residents of Calvert.[113]

In the early eighties the State Free School Fund was apportioned to a scholastic population of 3,075 in Robertson County, and public schools were established for white and Negro children in proportion to their numbers. There were a number of private schools of primary grade, and at least one private high school.[114] The office of county school superintendent of public instruction was set up in 1892.[115]

Health

When the epidemic of yellow fever was raging through the South in the early 1870’s, Calvert was almost depopulated. Most of the settlers left when it was discovered that a traveling painter had died from the disease in a room in the Bailey Building. At this time most of the inhabitants believed the fever to be directly contagious, and the entire town was quarantined. Trains were not allowed to stop and the windows of all coaches were tightly closed until all cars had passed beyond the city limits. Between three and four hundred persons died from yellow fever, since there was no effective remedy or treatment for it.[116]

Soon after this scourge had passed, the development of several mineral springs led to the establishment of the new village of Wooten Wells, three miles west of Bremond, as a health resort. About the same time the waters of the Overall mineral wells at Franklin were being marketed.[117]

The first county physician, a man named McDonnell, was appointed by the county commissioners in 1871. It was his duty “to look after the sick paupers not otherwise provided for.”[118]

The river lands, for years were considered unhealthful, and along the rivers and creeks, in the summer and fall, malarial fever attacks were more or less frequent. These epidemics were not always severe, and in 1909, a survey of the county gave the following report: "Since the greater part has been put under cultivation, the sloughs have largely dried up, and this coupled with the securement of excellent artesian water, has improved the conditions until the bottom land is about as healthful as the upland."[119]

Newspapers

The Weekly Central Texas at Bremond and The Tribune at Calvert were established in 1870, and were the first newspapers in the county. Although both publications were short-lived, Robertson County has never been without a newspaper since that time. All present-day newspapers are weeklies.[120] They are the Bremond Press, the Calvert Tribune, the Franklin Texan, and the Hearne Democrat.

Disasters

Between 1870 and 1873, Calvert was several times almost destroyed by fire. The county commissioners, in July, 1873, declared that the furniture and stationery that has been destroyed by fire, must be replaced. And at the same time they voted to pay J. C. Parnell five dollars for his having guarded the county records in the last fire. The commissioners’ records for June l, 1871 to May 27, 1883, have not been found and it is presumed that they were burned in one of the fires, although it is no established fact. After the frame buildings in Calvert burned, most of them were replaced by brick structures.

In the early 1890’s almost an entire block of Bremond’s business section was destroyed by fire. Here, too, brick buildings have replaced the frame structures which burned.

Floods have brought heavy losses to the people of Robertson County, and the study of means of prevention has been a task of growing importance.[121] The Brazos, the largest river in Texas in 1899, overflowed its banks and brought to the people of the Brazos bottom losses which were almost inestimable.

In the mid-summer when the “flood of 99” did so much damage, there was a period of about ten hours, or from seven o’clock in the evening until five o’clock the next morning, that nine and five-eights inches of rain fell on the southern part of Robertson County. There was only one life lost, but scores of persons were rescued from the tops of trees, from house tops, gins and other places of safety. The waters of Big Brazos and Little Brazos met and covered the entire valley, with the exception of Mumford, which was located on high ground.

Numerous “near tragedies” occurred as the people attempted rescue work in make shift boats. In some instances large horse-troughs were used as row-boats.

For a period of thirty days there were no trains into Hearne. The tracks had been washed out and sections were scattered for miles down the river. The little H & B V was practically wiped out, and was never of much more service.

Not only the railroads suffered from the flood, but the uplands to the east of Hearne were filled with deep gorge-like streams and the dirt roads were rendered impassable when most of the bridges went along with the water of the Brazos.

There have been other floods on the Brazos, especially in the early 1900’s but there has never been as much damage to the county as in the “flood of 99”.