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H I S T O R Y   O F   W H E E L O C K

By Melinda Hallmark. Re-printed in the Robertson County Historical Foundation's Annual Pilgrimage of Homes, Churches, & Library, May 5 & 6, 2001: A Spring Celebration of the History of Robertson County.

Wheelock is a Republic of Texas village situated on a rolling hill in the tall-grass Blackland Prairies.  In 1834, Colonel Eleazar Louis Ripley Wheelock located and surveyed his headright league with the El Camino Real as his southern boundary.  He erected a blockhouse log cabin for his family and surveyors two miles northeast of El Camino Real or King's Highway (now designated as OSR or Old San Antonio Road, the only Texas road identified by name and not number).

After the Republic of Texas was established, he called his settlement the "Village of Lamar" and set up the Texas University Company.  Acreage for both male and female institutions were set aside in the village.  But apparently President Sam Houston and Vice President Lamar did not get along, preventing the charter of the village until 1837 when then President Lamar took the plans for Texas University and moved the capital to Waterloo (present day Austin).  A classical academy was opened though, as evidenced by newspaper ads in Galveston.  By 1841, Wheelock boasted twenty businesses, including general stores, land and freight offices, and a cotton gin.  Freight and families were brought by wagon to Wheelock from Galveston.

Mrs. Ann Cavitt bought land adjacent to Wheelock for herself, seven sons, and nineteen slaves.  She built a log cabin that still stand today and has the distinction of being the oldest continually livable home in Texas.  She and her "family" lived in log cabins until she finished building the Cavitt House.  This pier and beam inn was built on native cedar posts about three feet in diameter and the fireplaces were from native iron rock.  Oral tradition credits the slaves with melting sand to make the glass window panes.  Ann married her deceased husband's nephew, Cavitt Armstrong.  Sam Houston, who often came to court sessions at the Robertson County seat, stayed with the family on visits and boarded several of his horses with Ann.  By 1846, the Armstrong Inn was the stagecoach stop on the El Camino Real.

Wheelock was the main stagecoach and mail route to central Texas from the port of Galveston, from where traffic went to the east and west.  The town again gained consideration as the capital of Texas (which was moved around frequently in the 1830s) but lost by one vote in 1839.

Wheelock was the Robertson County seat in 1850.  But, a new county seat was directed by the Texas Legislature in 1854.  The Hearne family donated land in 1867 to the advancing railroad to build [Hearne] halfway between Wheelock and the Brazos River.  Wheelock lost its prominence as a main thoroughfare and gradually declined after the war between the states as it citizens began moving away.