Wildcat Ferry *************************************************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm Transcribed by Nancy Crain Submitted by Scott Fitzgerald - scottfitzgerald@tyler.net East Texas Genealogical Society, President 28 November 2005 *************************************************************************** Originally published in The Tracings, Volume 3, No. 2, Fall 1984, Pages 79- 80 by the Anderson County Genealogical Society, copyright assigned to the East Texas Genealogical Society. WILDCAT FERRY Located On the Trinity River, some two miles north of the present steel and concrete bridge on U.S. Highway 287 between Palestine and Corsicana, Wildcat Bluff served as a steamboat landing for the old flat-bottomed sternwheelers which plied the Trinity from its mouth at Anahuac, on the Gulf of Mexico, to as far north as the area that is now Dallas. The advent of the railroads brought the demise of the steamboat traffic on the river, but the site at Wildcat Bluff was to serve the public as a ferry operation for almost a century. Mr. Richard Barton, a spry, alert and intelligent nonagenarian who now lives with his daughter, Mrs. Elva Thornton, in Athens, is, by seniority, the best informed living on-site witness to the goings-on at Wildcat Ferry during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the best rememberer of stories told to him by the older members of the community at that time. We were privileged to tape his contribution to this bit of Anderson County oral history shortly after his ninety-sixth birthday. Without his contribution very little history of the ferry exists. Official records relating to Wildcat Ferry are very sparse. Mr. Donaly E. Brice, of the Texas State Archives, has this to say about such records: "Your letter of October 27 to the Texas Historical Commission has been referred to us at the Archives Division of the Texas State Library. We have checked a number of sources and indexes and did not find any information concerning the wildcat Ferry on the Trinity River. Although ferries were required to be chartered by laws through the Texas State Legislature, we were unable to locate any reference to this particular ferry in the Laws of Texas. This we cannot explain unless the ferry operated without a charter." Although Wildcat Ferry may have been "illegal" under the Laws of the state of Texas, the Commissioners Court of the County of Anderson authorized its continued operation. Minutes of the February 1860 term of the Commissioners Court (5,405) state: "Ordered by the Court that the County Clerk issue to E. R. Whatley a license to keep a Public Ferry across the Trinity River at Wildcat bluff for the term of 12 months from this day, February 23rd, 1860, upon him giving bond for $1.000 conditioned as law directs and his paying to the County Treasurer $10 as a license tax therefore and he charge the same rates of ferriage as heretofore." The prior ferriage rates referred to in this license were: 12-1/2 cents per wheel for each wagon; 20 cents for man and horse; 5 cents for a footman; $1.25 for 4 oxen and a wagon; 75 cents for 3 horse wagon; 75 cents for 2 horse wagon; 20 cents for an ox yoke and 5 cents each for other stock. We did not find when the first or last of such yearly licenses were issued. The activity at Wildcat Bluff warranted public roads to accommodate the traffic utilizing its facilities. This is evidenced by an order issued by the Henderson County court in 1853 that a road be built from Athens to the ferry site. In like manner, the record shows continued action by the Anderson County Commissioners Court during the 1850's appointing overseers to supervise the maintenance of the road from Kickapoo, in the far northeastern corner of Anderson County, to Wildcat Bluff in its far northwestern location. Apparently this was the same road that passed through the old town of Fosterville in the central part of the county. We consulted our favorite freebee source of bygone geographical information, The U.S. Board of Geographic Names, who furnished us a page from Colton's Atlas of 1872 showing the town of Wildcat located on a horse-shoe bend of the Trinity River, in northwest Anderson County. They also reminded us that a community named Wildcat still exists in the southern part of Henderson County, near the town of Crossroads. Mr. Barton fondly related his early memories of Wildcat Bluff and its environs as he remembered it in his early youth. This was long past the days of steamboat landings and the heaviest traffic of settlers migrating West; however, he recalled conversations in which his father and other old settlers discussed times when as many as fifty wagons might be lined up at Wildcat waiting for the flood waters to recede so that they could continue their westward journey. In the 1880's and 1890's, he recalled that the town of Wildcat consisted of a house where the ferry-keeper and his family lived and entertained passers- by; a blacksmith shop equipped to maintain and repair their well worn wagons; a saloon to accommodate the thirsty wayfarer; a cotton-buyer for the local planters and a sizable cemetery for those who succumbed to the arduous journey West. He recalled that one of the last burials in the old cemetery was that of a young woman traveler who died during child birth. She and her still-born child were buried in a common grave. Mr. Barton recited tales of tragedy and humor relating to Wildcat. He also explained the man-powered operation of the ferry: how a long cable was stretched from one side of the trinity to the other; how iron rings circling that cable were attached to the ferry barge to guide it across and withstand the force of the river's flow and how the men pulled or poled the boat across the river, exerting muscular strength in proportion to the force of the current. Prospective passengers approaching Wildcat from the western side of the river were provided a communication system in the form of a large metal plow sweep hanging from a sturdy tree. The customer beat upon this makeshift alarm until he aroused the attention of the ferryman on the other side. Incidentally, Mr. Barton stated that the various men who operated Wildcat Ferry, such as Messrs. Addison, Cherry, Wright, Al Rampy, Ware, Rendon and Fred Johnson, were not the owners of the ferry. They were employees of absentee owners who were usually Palestine businessmen. Found among Miss Kate Hunter's papers is a nostalgic article from the Dallas Morning News dated, Sunday, March 10, 1935, bidding a forthcoming farewell to Wildcat Ferry and announcing the soon-to-be replacement of its services by the steel ridge which now spans the Trinity River on U.S. Highway 287. The article states very little regarding the history of the ferry, per se, but does include pictures of the new bridge and the old ferry. Mr. Barton tells us that the land on which Wildcat was situated is now owned by an out-of-state heir and is posted and leased by an oil company. He said that the last time he visited the site there was no evidence that the ferry, town or cemetery ever existed. Submitted by Ray W. Read