TX BIOS:  E. F. Forsgard, Waco, TX
   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
   Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
   
   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
   For more information about this text and this American Memory
   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   00011
   
   FOLKWAYS
   
   Wm. V. Ervin, P. W.
   
   McLennan County,
   
   District 8.
   
   No. of words, 1848. Life history
   
   File 240
   
   Page 1. Reference
   
   Consultant - E. F. Forsgard, 1122 North Fourth Street, Waco, Tex.
   
   "I was born in Waco in 1870. My father, S. J. Forsgard, came here in
   1852. He established a store not far from the river.
   
   "My father said that cattlemen driving herds to market and wishing to
   cross the river, which would take them a day or two, sometimes three,
   with a herd; would leave forty or fifty pounds of gold with him to be
   placed in his safe until they called for it, which would be when they
   had got their herd across and were ready to go on. When they would
   call for their gold, which was usually in saddlebaggs, they would not
   count it.
   
   "My father told me, too, about how cotton and money were sent to
   Houston before the Civil war. There would be probably fifteen or
   twenty bales of cotton to be freighted down there by ox-wagons. There
   was a little screw gin down the river where the cotton was ginned.
   When the cotton was ginned and baled it was wrapped in cowhides. The
   merchants at Waco would want to send money to Houston to pay bills
   they owed and to pay for more goods, so they would all go to the gin,
   each with his money in a buckskin bag, and they would put all the
   money in a bale of cotton and wrap the bale with a white and black
   cowhide or other oddly marked hide. Then they would write the cotton
   factor at Houston a description of the hide, and he would know which
   bale contained their money. The freighter who hauled the cotton would
   not know which bale the money was in.
   
   "When I got to be old enough boy to remember things Waco was still a
   pretty wild place. Killings were frequent, in fact it 00022didn't
   amount to much to shoot a man then, or to hang him for
   cattle-stealing. One day when I was ten or eleven years old myself and
   some other boys about my own age found a man hung to a tree down on
   the river not far from where the water filtration plant now stands. We
   didn't know who he was, but we supposed he was some fellow hung for
   cattle-stealing. There was quite a lot of cattle-stealing going on
   then. A bunch of outlaws had a rendezvous, or hideout, on Trading
   House Creek where there was a pretty dense thicket. The officers here
   didn't bother them, though, because the outlaws would do their
   stealing at some distance from here and dispose of it before they came
   back to their hideout, which was eight or ten miles from here; and so
   it would not have done the officers here any good to catch them as
   they could not have proved anything on them. To do that, they would
   have had to catch the outlaws with the goods on them. The outlaws
   would keep to their hideout here until things had quieted down.
   
   "My father was a member of the Ranger force, and one time he and about
   two hundred rangers were sent after a bunch of Indians that had made a
   raid at Comanche. They caught up with the Indians over about
   Brownwood, and killed some of them. They then killed a cow to get
   rawhide strips to tie rocks to the bodies of the Indians so they could
   sink them in the bayou over there so as not to leave any sign, for
   other Indians, I suppose.
   
   "Sometimes cowboys from over in Bosque county or somewhere else would
   drive in several head of cattle they had stolen and sell them to a
   butcher here in Waco for money enough to go on a spree. They would
   tell the butcher it was "jumping stock", and 00033was to be killed at
   once so it wouldn't be found.
   
   "The cowboys would come in with herds and stop here and get drunk and
   shoot and yell around some, but nobody paid any attention to them. If
   they shot out any show windows in the stores their boss man would go
   around to the merchants and ask them what the damage was and pay it.
   If the cowboys got to shooting too much, the storekeepers would put up
   heavy wooden shutters before the windows, and then the boys wouldn't
   see any glas to shoot at.
   
   "Lots of gambling went on. It was a regular business. There were
   several men who had saloons and gambling halls, usually the gambling
   places were in a room over the saloon. These men were square-shooters,
   they had their families here and they were treated like any other
   respected citizens of the town. If they caught any of their dealers or
   any player cheating or playing a crooked game, they would tell him
   that he had to get out, and would ask him where he wanted to go, and
   when he told them they would buy him a ticket there, put him on the
   stage and see that he left town. They wouldn't allow any toughs to
   stay in town or any cheap gamblers. If any came in, they would tell
   them to get out in twenty-four hours, and if he didn't, they ran him
   out.
   
   "Four or five or six of these big gamblers would sometimes get
   together in one of their places and play poker. Sometimes the game
   would run for as long as a week. If one of them wanted to leave the
   game for awhile to take a nap or go out in town, he'd count up the
   money he had, the banker would make a note of it, and the gambler
   would stack it to one side on the table, and it would be there when he
   came back, even if he was gone a day or two.
   
   "A lot of gambling would go on right on the square. The cowboys,
   00044gamblers and Mexicans would come into town and tie their horses
   to the hitchrack on the square, spread down a blanket, get out their
   cards and have a game right there among their horses.
   
   "I saw Sam Bass when he passed through Waco on his way to Round Rock
   to rob the bank there, and was killed there by rangers. He stopped at
   the old Ranch saloon on the square, There were two or three others
   with him. They stayed a day or two. They had some friends here they
   stopped to see. I don't remember just who their friends were. Bass
   figured to hold up a bank here, but I think the big gamblers told him
   to move on. We didn't know who he was when we saw him, but we looked
   his and his men's horses over pretty well. When we heard of what
   happened at Round Rock, we were able to connect up certain things,
   descriptions, and so on, and knew then that we had seen Sam Bass. He
   was about a medium-sized man; had sort of brownish gray eyes. He was
   not so much out of the ordinary looking, but he was a man that when
   you had seen him once, you would know him when you saw him again.
   
   "Myself and my son, Sam, were with the Winchester Repeating Arms
   Company for between seven and eight years as firearms demonstrating.
   We were expert shots with rifle, shotgun and pistol. I have won a good
   many trophies at national and international meets. I won one trophy by
   hitting twenty-five live birds in twenty-five shots. Over a year's
   time I have hit 2,077 shots out of 2,100.
   
   "My father said that in the early days if a man came into Waco with
   his family and was broke the people would see that he and his family
   had something to eat and a place to stay, and they asked no questions.
   They figured that if he was a good man, he 00055would prove himself,
   and that if he was a crook and a thief, they would find that out about
   him, too. If he was all right and it was necessary, they would build
   him a home and keep him and his family in supplies until he was in a
   position to take care of them.
   
   "My brother Sam, who was a small, boy, and some other boys were killed
   when a wall of the [Orand?] livery stable collapsed in 1876. It was a
   new brick wall, and the cement wasn't dry, and they were running and
   playing on top of it when it fell and crushed them.
   
   "I saw Judge Gerald and the Harris brothers have their gun battle,
   when the Harrises were killed; and I sat Brann, the iconoclast, when
   he shot and killed the man who had shot him. The man fell off the
   sidewalk into the gutter, and Brann kept shooting him. Brann was shot
   once through the left chest, and I don't believe he would have died,
   but the officers were so excited and afraid of more shooting that they
   took hold of him and ran with him all the way to the jail, and he lost
   so much blood that I think that was what killed him. I believe he
   would have lived if it hadn't been for that. He died about a week
   later.
   
   "There were some of those oldtimers that wouldn't back up for anybody.
   The officers were afraid to try to arrest them. If they had a warrant
   for one if them, they'd send him word that they had a warrant for him,
   and he'd send word back that he would be down to see them in about
   thirty minutes, and those fellows always kept their word to come in.
   It went too hard with their pride to submit to arrest. They wouldn't
   submit to anything without a fight, and I have seen them make even
   some of the nerviest officers crawfish and talk nice.

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