TX BIOS:  Mrs. Ollie Sisco
   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
   
   [White Pioneer?] FOLKLORE
   
   Mrs. Ada Davis, P. W.
   
   McLennan County, Texas.
   
   District No. 8 [S.700?] 240
   
   No. of words 1000
   
   File No. 240
   
   Page No. 1 Reference
   
   Mrs. Ollie Sisco, Waco, McLennan County, Texas.
   
   Charles Marion Yowell was born in Missouri, August 8, 1858. At the
   close of the Civil War, his father went to Mexico City with a
   construction company to lay the first street car tracks in Mexico
   City, the cars were drawn by mules. On the way to Mexico City they
   were twelve days out of sight of land. The mules were unloaded at Vera
   Cruz, and Mr. Yowell remembers how the mules were swung on cranes, or
   something of that type, while they were being unloaded. The trip was
   made overland from Vera Cruz to Mexico City. While in Mexico City,
   they lived in a large stone structure, The Cathedral, that faced on
   the main plaza or what is now known as the Zocalo. Often times they
   played on the steps of the National Building, or the capitol. They
   also played around the "House of Tiles", which was built in the
   sixteenth century, by the son of the old Count of the Valley of
   Wrizoba who said, "My son, will never build a house of tiles!" Fifty
   thousand blue and white tiles cover the building, which are valued at
   five dollars each. Today there can be no market value placed on the
   building, because the government has ordered that the building be
   preserved as an architectural monument. Today it is occupied by
   Sanborns, and is the most famous meeting place in Mexico for tourists.
   On one occassion, while the boys were at play, a cannon ball was shot
   through a brick wall near them. This was when Napoleon's soldiers and
   the Spanish were having their skirmishes. At this time, Maximilian,
   the Archduke of Austria was made Emperor and he reigned from 1864 to
   1867.
   
     NOTE: C. - 12. Tex.
     
   00022Mr. Yowell remembers the gold carriage in which Maximilian rode
   on special occasions. C. M. Yowell vividly remembers the elaborate
   costumes worn by the nobles during Maximilian's reign, and the
   magnificent balls which were given by the Emperor. They gathered
   oranges, lemons, limes and fruit growing wild; often they caught a
   small fish from a nearby stream and roasted them in a shuck.
   
   Mr. Yowell remembers very well the peculiar sensation he had from
   trying to run on the ground during an earthquake. Many times the
   dishes were shaken out of the safe but he doesn't remember any
   buildings falling. He remembers the famous aqueduct with nine-hundred
   and four arches built by the Aztecs and the [rbol] de Mortezuma, also,
   the famous cypress tree, now measuring forty-five feet in
   circumference and close to two hundred feet high, which stands in the
   park at the foot of Chapultepec, meaning the "Hill of the
   Grass-hopper." Maximilian spent his summers in Chapultepec Castle.
   Many of Empress Charlotta's personal belongings and furnishings for
   her room are still there. The wonderful aqueduct built by Cortez was
   in use at the time that Yowell lived in Mexico. Mr. Yowell also played
   under the Noche Triste Tree, under which Cortez sat and wept when his
   army had been shattered by the Aztecs on the causeway. This tree in
   presumably five hundred years old and has a protection railing,
   hammered from [menacles], chains, and implements of torture that came
   from the quarters of the Inquisition in Mexico City.
   
   Mr. Yowell was very apt in picking up the Spanish language and was
   soon engaged as an interpreter, on market days, in the sale of
   vegetagles, fruits, and other products. 00033In January, 1868, a few
   families started for Texas. They drove six mules to each wagon. They
   were paid forty dollars to bring the corpse of a soldier some distance
   out of the city and to bury it in order to keep the body from
   mutilation. Soldiers accompanied them on horseback.
   
   The journey back to Texas took three months. They crossed the border
   at Laredo on a ferry (or maybe forded it--he can't remember). They
   arrived at Waco, April, 1868, and took up their residence in the log
   cabin on the east bank of the Brazos where the Washington Street
   bridge now stands. As a coincidence, he was county commissioner (1901)
   when they had the Washington Street bridge built and also the court
   house on Washington Street, which is in use now. In April, 1858, they
   spent the first night in the little log house. Yowell's grandfather
   got a job on the ferry, which crossed the river between Washington
   bridge and the Interurban bridge. A road wound around, out of Rat Row
   (now Bridge Street). There were trees along the river on the west
   side, the east bank was covered with timber. His ferry charges were:
   wagon and team, twenty-five cents, or if heavily loaded, he some times
   charged fifty cents; foot passengers, five cents; horse, ten cents. If
   they didn't want to take the horse across, he took them in a skiff for
   five cents each way; there were usually three or four passengers at a
   crossing. One of Mr. Yowell's favorite passengers was Miss Kellum, who
   later married Ed Rotan, later president of the First National Bank in
   Waco. She was a teacher and lived in East Waco. Several people used
   their own skiffs to go to school. Among these were Judge and John
   Sleeper, B. H. Hatcher and Cal Shelton. Cal had to wash his mouth
   00044with a big white and red cob in front of school because he called
   the teacher a liar. Later in '71 or '72 Yowell moved up on the hill in
   East Waco to about the end of Elm Street. Miss Mary Beatty was Mr.
   Yowell's teacher at that time. She "took him through the "Blue Back"
   Speller twelve times, and McGuffey's Second Reader thirteen times.
   Miss Mary Beatty's niece, Miss Adene Beatty teaches in East Waco
   schools now, (1937).
   
   In 1869, the suspension bridge was started; Yowell's father and a
   negro moved the first shovel of dirt for the bridge. His father kept
   the toll bridge about a year. Mr. Oglesby, Mr. Westbrooks, and Mr.
   Cassiday assisted.
   
   Dr. W. G. [Trices?'] mother visited Yowell's grandmother; (Simon
   [Trice?]) they lived between Second and Third on Franklin Street. They
   lived in piers on the west side of the bridge about a year. They [DEL:
   the :DEL] then moved up at Sally Mann place. The H. and T. C. Railroad
   built in 1872.
   
   From there they moved to Sally Mann's farm on the east side, down the
   river and lived there for three years; this farm joined the Clinton
   farm. Crockett Vaughn owned the land at that time.
   
   C. M. Yowell bought a place seven miles east of Waco on William's
   Creek, three miles east of Tehuacana. It consisted of eleven leagues
   and cost seven dollars an acre. There were little huts of squatters on
   it, and all kinds of game. You could see ten to twelve deer near the
   yard most any time, also wild turkeys. C. M. Yowell lived in the hut
   two years; then he bought lumber in Waco and built a real
   Colonial-style home that stood till 1937, when a crazy negro set it
   afire; he worked horses and mules and raised cotton and corn. He
   [ginned?] at Waco. His grandfather died April, 1886. They moved on the
   farm joining, December 1887. They 00055got their mail at Waco. This
   farm joined his father's place.

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