Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

This is the grave of Fred D. Chilton in the Boot Hill Cemetery in Tascosa, Texas, as it appeared in 1937. Fred was killed in a gunfight on March 21, 1886. The gunfight at Tascosa is little-known today, but at the time it was more famous than the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, having similar causes and involving more fatalities than the shootout at Tombstone, Arizona. What happened is this:
As I mentioned, the Big Fight at the Jenkins Saloon was an incident that took place in the Old West town on March 21, 1886. The gunfight was between members of two Texas Panhandle ranch factions: the LS Ranch's Home Rangers and a group of small ranchers and cattle rustlers known as "The System".
In the spring of 1884, Pat Garrett came to the Texas Panhandle as newly appointed captain of the Texas Ranger Division. He was tasked by the Texas State government and by the big ranchers of the Canadian River with organizing a company of Texas Rangers to put a stop to the rampant rustling and re-branding of cattle in the area. He set up his headquarters at the LS Ranch and petitioned the government for official papers so that he could go to work. In the following months, he and his men, known locally as the 'LS Rangers' were successful in policing the area and preventing the same kind of feud that resulted in New Mexico's Lincoln County War just eight years earlier.
In the spring of 1885, the rangers were disbanded and Garrett returned to New Mexico. The rest of Garrett's men continued to work for the LS Ranch as rangers, but since they were no longer officially Texas Rangers, their hard-drinking and arrogant ways began to stir local resentment. Ex- Texas Ranger Ed King was particularly troublesome, as he was known to be especially arrogant, quarrelsome when drunk and quick to draw his gun at any excuse. In Tascosa, the rangers became known as 'barroom gladiators'.
The final straw came when Sally Emory, who worked at the Jenkins Saloon, dumped her boyfriend, bartender Lamar Albert (Lem) Woodruff (who the rangers suspected to be a System man), and took up with Ed King. In the days preceding the fight, a drunken Ed King would taunt Woodruff, calling him 'Pretty Lem' and endeavoring to humiliate him.
On the evening of 20 March 1886, Ed King, his friend John Gottlieb Lang, and two other LS ranch hands, Frank Valley and Fred Chilton, rode into Tascosa to participate in a local dance. In the early hours of the 21st, the four men left the dance and headed into town, where Ed King was hoping to meet Sally Emory. Valley and Chilton entered the Equity Bar while Lang tied up the group's horses. Meanwhile, Ed King and Sally met outside the Jenkins Saloon at the corner of Spring and Main Streets. There, King was hailed by someone in the shadow of the saloon. Stepping up onto the porch, King was shot in the face. Lem Woodruff rushed out and shot King in the neck. King died immediately. Sally Emory ran away down Spring Street.
Seeing his friend shot down, John Lang rushed down Main Street to the Equity Bar. Finding his friends there, he demanded extra weapons from the bartender. The three remaining LS ranch hands rushed out towards the Jenkins Saloon. They went around the back, just as Lem Woodruff, Louis Bousman, Charley and Tom Emory (now known to be aliases used by Fehdor Charles Arnim and William Oscar Arnim), John Gough (AKA the Catfish Kid) and others were exiting from the back door of the saloon. Gunfire erupted immediately. Woodruff and Charley Emory were shot first. Frank Valley ran towards the door of an adobe shack behind the saloon from which gunfire was erupting and was shot in the head as he opened the door. Chilton shot Jesse Sheets, a local restaurant owner, in the face, and he fell dead. Chilton was then shot in the chest by someone shooting from a woodpile outside the saloon. Dying, he handed his gun to Lang.
John Lang found himself alone and being fired at in a crossfire from the saloon and from gunmen shooting from behind the woodpile. He retreated up Spring Street, firing as he went, while bullets tore into the ground and through the air around him. His fight ended as he turned a corner and was joined by friends from the Equity Bar. The men made their way back to the western part of Main Street. Soon afterwards, Sherriff Jim East and his deputy arrived on the scene. Lang offered his services as a deputy and the men went back towards the Jenkins Saloon. When they got there, the Catfish Kid ran from the woodpile and was shot at. He fell, groaning and choking. But it was a ruse: as soon as he was unnoticed, he ran off, unhurt.
The fight had left John Lang with a bullet through his coat, but without a scratch. His three friends were not so lucky. They lay dead or dying where they had been shot, as did Jesse Sheets. Lem Woodruff survived, even though he had been badly wounded in the abdomen. Charley Emory also survived.
Murder charges were filed against Woodruff, Bousman, Emory, Lang and the Catfish Kid. The first trial ended in a hung jury. In the second, all the men were acquitted. The Catfish Kid died in prison in 1890 after killing an unarmed man in another incident in Tascosa. Charley Emory died in 1897. Lem Woodruff moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he died in 1902. Tom Emory died in 1914. Louis Bousman died in Oklahoma in January 1942.
According to the Lang family, John Lang went on to become Amarillo Town Sheriff for a short time before rejoining his family in Oregon. In 1897 he took part in the Klondike Gold Rush. In 1898 he joined the Oregon Volunteers and served in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. After the war, he returned to Oregon. A long-time Democrat, Lang represented his district in the Oregon state legislature. He also served as mayor of Haines, Oregon. From the 1900s until the 1930s, he tried his hand as a gold prospector. He died in April 1942.
Source: The Traces of Texas Facebook Page

[Shakey Jake]

Well now, this is a first. I have posted photos of children with goat carts, pony carts, and even a chicken cart, but I have never posted a photo of kids with a deer cart. This is Hoyt Murphree and his sister Burnetta in Waco circa 1915. Tragically, their mother, Lena Beck Murphree, died in 1919 when she was asphyxiated at the family home at 416 Williams street. Per her obituary, she was attempting "to light a fire in the air-tight heater and inhaled the gas that had accumulated there and died from its effects."
Many Texans don't realize it but there was a livelihood to be made by itinerant photographers in the old days by knocking on doors and asking folks if they would like their children to be photographed in the cart. A photographer would walk a neighborhood in the morning, making the proposition, then come back a couple of hours later (after the kids had a chance to clean up and get in their best clothes) to take the photo.
This photo courtesy the T.B. Willis Photograph Collection via The Portal to Texas History . You can browse 2,700+ photos from that collection here: https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/co ... mage_photo

[Shakey Jake]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:
When Dallas millionaire O.L. Nelms built a honky tonk for Bob Wills and his band at 206 Corinth Street, he had 1700 silver dollars inlaid into the bar and built indoor stalls for horses. Wills himself occasionally rode his horse Punkin ---- who wore special rubber boots ---- onto the concrete floor. The honky tonk was called Bob Wills' Ranch House. It was renamed the Longhorn Ballroom in 1958, when Nelms sold it to business partner Dewey Grooms. Jack Ruby managed a portion of the ballroom as a separate venue from Grooms’ half of the place and often brought friends from the world of organized crime through the back door. One night after closing the club was broken into. Strangely, only Grooms’ safe had money stolen from it. (Image: )
Here's a photo of Bob Wills at what is still the Longhorn Ballroom. It comes courtesy the ballroom's website, which is located here:
https://www.longhornballroom.com/
If you click on the history link you'll see photos of some of the other famous folks who have played there. Really some great photos! I need to get up to Dallas and check this place out.

[Shakey Jake]

Here's another goodie that Traces of Texas just posted.
The Texas Quote of the Day is a reminder that old-time cowboys faced many different kinds of hazards:
"Well, I never froze on the trail, but I I did starve for water, and I don't mean maybe either. It was my first drive, too - that was what made it so hard on me. In the spring of 1869 we left Pick Duncan's ranch with a bunch of W Cross L's for the head of the Concho to go from there to the Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River. We left that good, clear Concho with one barrel of water, intending to refill at Hackberry water hole, mid-way on the plains.
Halting to answer the cook's 'come and git it' at noon, we went on until dusk, when we pitched camp (no where near that water hole) and when supper was finished, so was the water - fourteen men and not a drop, not to mention the stock, and three days to go.
We did not bed the cattle as planned but hit the trail all night and at nine o'clock next morning we stopped to rest an hour; then prodded 'em up and on toward that water hole. Finally when within a mile of it the boss said he would ride ahead and reconnoiter. He was back right now with 'It's so confounded dry you could bury a man in the cracks, they're so deep.' That settled it. We kept the herd hoofin' until three o'clock, halting for another hour, then trailing it straight through until the next day noon when we hit the canyon, twelve miles from Horsehead Crossing.
The cattle got wind of the water and pulled out plumb pert. It was half an hour by sun when we got there, and when we got to that river not one of the fourteen boys could speak above a whisper and several could not shut their mouths for swollen tongues. If any of you have ever been as thirsty as we were, you know just how good water just plain, brackish, alkali, Pecos River water can taste. It was so good we laid up three days drinkin' our fill and enjoyin' ourselves.
Water logged, full of good grub, rested and fresh as daisies, we started up the Pecos to the falls. There the horse wrangler, named Kuykendall, dismounted on herd and stood his gun by a bush. Remounting, he caught it by the barrel, the hammer caught in the brush, pulled back and blew his head off. We buried him and continued on to Hondo, thence to Denver where we delivered the cattle."
------ Charlie Harmon, an old Texas cowboy, quoted in an interview in February, 1930

[Shakey Jake]

Happy Thanksgiving from Traces of Texas to all y'all beautiful, crazy Texans out there!
Cowboys lining up to eat in Spur, Texas, 1939. Photo by Russell Lee.

[Shakey Jake]

Traces of Texas
1h ·

The Texas quote of the day:
"I stayed all night with Jim Bowie. On the night before the fight was to take place I never saw a man sleep more soundly than he did."
----- an unidentified Texian "soldier" under Jim Bowie's command, regarding the night before the Battle of Concepcion, which took place on October 28, 1835. The quote is found in a clipping in the Daughter of the Republic of Texas' biographical file of Jim Bowie.
Shown here: A map of the site of the Battle of Concepcion as provided by the great folks at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission . The second image shows a current map of San Antonio. The San Antonio River's course has changed somewhat since 1835, but the battle site is about 500 yards north and west of Mission Concepcion, placing it just south of where I-10 crosses the San Antonio River. Think of how many people drive on I-10 over that spot every day without realizing what took place there less than 190 years ago. Well, surely none of those people are readers of Traces of Texas! (Image: )

[Shakey Jake]

I always like to see photos of folks having a good time, which is why I was glad when Traces of Texas reader Scotty Baccus kindly sent in this nifty photo. Says Scotty: "My Grandmother, Ilene Baccus, was born in 1907 and always told me she remembered the first model T to come to Abilene. She was living in Merkle (Noodle, specifically) by 1920. This is a photo of her at 19, with my grandfather, Carl. She is on the left, and he has his back to the car with infant in his lap. The baby is her son Coy, born in 1926, the year this photo was taken. He later served in WW II. Likely taken on the plains near Merkle, Texas."
Thank you, Scotty. What could be better than a picnic on a sunny day in Texas? Not much!

[MuddyWaters62]

I really enjoy your Tales of Texas reports. My paternal grandparents met each other in Burkbernet in the earl 20's. My grandmother and her mother ran a boarding house on the bluff overlooking the Red River. My grandfather was working in the oil fields during an oil boom. After a courtship, they married and worked in several different places in Texas. They settled in Gainesville in the late 30's. As it happens, I too was born in Gainesville.
Your reports have stirred up a lot of old memories. Thank you.

Muddy Waters69

[Shakey Jake]

I really enjoy your Tales of Texas reports. My paternal grandparents met each other in Burkbernet in the earl 20's. My grandmother and her mother ran a boarding house on the bluff overlooking the Red River. My grandfather was working in the oil fields during an oil boom. After a courtship, they married and worked in several different places in Texas. They settled in Gainesville in the late 30's. As it happens, I too was born in Gainesville.
Your reports have stirred up a lot of old memories. Thank you.

Muddy Waters69

Thanks Muddy but I can't take credit for this thread. I just copy and paste items of interest from the Facebook Traces of Texas. Some of the fellows here don't have a Facebook account and I post them here for their entertainment. There's a lot more posted there on a daily basis and encourage you to go to the Facebook page and give it a "Like" if you haven't already.

The Not-So-Arcane Texas Fact of the Day is some sad news on the historical preservation front: the Schroeder dance hall in Goliad is shutting down. Schroeder Hall, which features a 6,000 foot dance floor, is the second-oldest in Texas, getting its start in 1890. The venue has hosted a large roster of country music talent. Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, Ray Price, Faron Young, Mel Tillis, Wanda Jackson, Johnny Bush, Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Hank Thompson, Buck Owens, Johnny Rodriguez, Ernest Tubb, and many other artists have performed at Schroeder Hall. Roy Clark recalled playing there when he was a young musician starting out. At that time chicken wire surrounded the bandstand to protect the band from the result of any rowdy behavior. Polka bands, such as the Majeks, also have a long history at Schroeder Hall.
Sounds like I need to make a trip to Goliad soon!

[Shakey Jake]

Cowboys on the trail from Texas to Kansas circa 1880. The real deal.