CHAPTER I.

Descriptive.

Everyone in some measure contributes to the making of history, but its perpetuity is for the historian; therefore lest the early events, and the men who made them, connected with the past of Hood county, shall all be forgotten, it is the design of the writer of these sketches to reclaim and endeavor to perpetuate some of the most interesting of them. It is to be regretted that some worthier pen had not long ago undertaken this duty. Just here I am overwhelmed with the responsibility of deciding when and where to begin, and lest I should incur the criticism of some Knickerbocker, I shall make no effort to search out the nebulous origin of the created matter from which my subject was evolved, but without any formal method, shall begin, continue and conclude as the subject matters may force recognition from my unpretentious pen.

A general description of the county may be appropriate, if not somewhat necessary to a proper understanding of the men and things which make its history:

Situated on the Brazos river in that favored part of Texas just north of the 32nd parallel of north latitude, where the Cross Timbers seem to struggle between mountain and valley for room; her surface is, therefore, well diversified with timber, prairie, rock-crested cliffs and silvery-winding streams; and long before the white man in his unremitting march toward the west, had found a resting place here, the Indian and the wild game, upon which he fed, basked on the banks of her limpid streams, rested from the summer suns beneath gloriously spreading Live Oaks, fed on the Mesquite beans and the nutritious native grasses, and sought shelter from the winter storms beneath the boulders of limestone, which tower up in massive cliffs to precipitate heights, lending shade to the picturesque landscape which nature seems to have laid out and planned as the most healthful and appropriate home of a race of men seeking a life of cultured happiness, amid which to build those institutions of learning which are the pride of the county.

With soils as varigated as the surface, and, consisting of the chocolate lands common to the Brazos valley, black waxy, black and light sandy lands, the fruits, grasses and farm crops are of that abundance and variety common to this climate. These diversified conditions seem to favorably invite men who rather prefer to escape from "the mad'ing crowds ignoble strife", to find peace and happiness in pastural and agricultural pursuits. And such seems to have been the character and the motive which actuated the most stable of those earliest settlers, who first planted their habitations here along the fertile valleys of the Brazos, the Paluxy, Kickapoo and other streams, and whilst they valiantly fought away the murderous and pilfering forays of the savages and planted their little vine and tree, perhaps little thought of the civilization, whose foundation they were building as an heritage to their posterity, more to be desired than gold or silver. It is of these scenes and these people I propose to write.

2000 HOOD COUNTY TEXAS HISTORICAL DOCUMENT TRANSCRIPTION TEAM