Walter Timms- Dallas Morning News Article, Johnson County, TX =============================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, material may be freely used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material, AND permission is obtained from the contributor of the file. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for non-commercial purposes, MUST obtain the written consent of the contributor, OR the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. =============================================================================== Submitted by Virginia M. Finley Article from the Dallas Morning News, Section 4, Features & Book Reviews, Sunday, October 30, 1932. The author, Frances Abernathy, (niece of Walter & Ada Timms) was a resident of Cleburne, Johnson Co, TX. and wrote articles for the Dallas Morning News. Walter Timms, Texas Pioneer by Frances Dickson Abernathy 1932 It was with a mingled sense of keen pleasure and regret of passing years that Walter Timms again visited the old rock mill that was once known all the country around as Barnard's Mill, and to which seventy years before he had come with loads of wheat and corn from Bosque County to be ground into winter's supply of flour and meal. He had been a boy in the teens then, and life had been all promise and full of the joyous anticipation of youth. Strangely like the great old mill before which he stood again, this man had been little affected by the kaleidoscope world around him save in the unavoidable adjustments to the changing demands of newer conditions. However, here was this old flour mill converted into a cotton gin - only its massive old rock walls, that were as straight and splendid as in those days, the same as when the boy, Walter Timms, had come to it with the great loads of wheat and corn and traded with Charlie Barnard himself. An even greater change in his own life had converted the daring, undaunted cowman of one period into the quiet, retiring jeweler of another period; yet--as unchanged as the old rock walls--there had always been the spirit of the pioneer, and the love ofthe open that had drawn him back to the farm. Would the grand old mill ever, in likewise be used again for a mill instead of a gin? But where was all the water of the Paluxey that turned the old mill wheel? Like the driving fire that had once surged through his own veins, the water had also slackened its course. And what changes the seventy years had brought in the surroundings! Instead Barnard's Mill the town or resort that had grown up about the old mill was now called Glen Rose. Could it be possible that here in this wild--formerly Indian country--such a quaint little town and so many splendidly equipped tourist parks had come into existence? Walter Timms hadn't been in Texas many years when he began coming to Barnard's Mill. Born in Moreton, Gloucestershire, England, September 12, 1847, he had come with an aunt to America, at the age of thirteen, on the sailing vessel, the W. B. Travis, the voyage from Liverpool to the port of Galveston taking nine weeks. Somehow in more recent years the memory of that voyage had become very vivid again. When the ship was two weeks out of Liverpool, young Walter Timms, a favorite with the sailors, fell and broke his leg while playing on the deck one day with some of the men. The Captain, a typical, hardened old seaman of his day, had the little boy placed on a pallet on the dining room floor, holes cut through the floor and the pallet so that his body could be securely strapped down in an immovable position that could not be wrenched by any lurching of the ship, and a very cruel stretcher made and attached to the broken leg. The little chap lay in his torturous position for seven weeks. At first his loneliness and misery was lessened some by the smiles and friendly greetings of the sailors who would come every once in a while to the large glass window near the little sufferer's pallet. One day the hard old Captain happened to pass and see the sailors at the window, talking through the glass to the little boy. Immediately the Captain ordered the window boarded up. When the ship reached the Galveston harbor, the Captain came and bade the boy good-bye, and told him that he would send a doctor to him, these being his first civil words to the child. The Captain then got into a small boat and was rowed ashore. As soon as he was gone, young Walter's sailor friends came to him and petted him and told him with tears rolling down their cheeks how eager they were to do anything in the world that they could do for him. Walter begged them to cut the ropes and take him up on deck. At first they feared to do this, but at last at his persistent pleadings they cut the ropes. The child himself, dragged his helpless legs up the steps and on to the deck. There he was placed on a cot by the First Mate. When the doctor sent out by the old Captain arrived on the ship, he told the boy, with an almost brusque tenderness, that he knew what he had been through, but that he had the hard old Captain to thank for a strongly knitted bone. After going ashore at Galveston, Walter and his aunt came up the Bayou to Houston on a small barge. Young Walter lived for a year with an aunt and uncle in Bosque County not very far from Kimball. The boy was very lame until a strange incident made it possible for him to walk as straight as any one. He had been helped up on a horse to ride over to a neighbor's, Mr. Baker's--several miles through the woods--to get some mutton that Mr. Baker had just killed. As the boy rode along the trail through the woods, a sudden flurry of quail startled the mare, her plunge forward causing the inexperienced young rider to fall under her feet. In an attempt to become untangled from the frightened boy, the mare kicked him right in the broken leg, so that he fell over on the ground almost paralyzed with pain and the fright. But by and by the pain was gone; and when Walter tried to get up to attempt to mount the horse that was grazing near him, he suddenly discovered that he could walk on his leg and was so overcome with joy that he ran up and down the trail screaming, "I can walk!, I can walk!" Leading the horse, he walked on up to the Baker house to show his friends that he could walk as straight as other people. When Walter Timms was fourteen years old he went to work at fifteen dollars a month, driving for Mr. Jacob DeCordova, who owned great tracts of land and was agent for other large tracts, and who went about the country in his buggy looking after these lands. Young Timms stayed with Mr. DeCordova for several years, doing things for him that no one else could do. One of his jobs in the earlier days was riding horseback eighteen miles to Meridian to get Mr.DeCordova's mail. Another of his jobs brought him to Barnard's Mill to have wheat and corn ground into the winter's supply of flour and meal. Very soon Mr. DeCordova found that young Timms was "as true as steele, and as straight as a shingle", so that he trusted him more and more and put more and more responsibility upon the youth. When Mr. DeCordova died, it was Walter Timms who dressed him and laid the silver pieces on his eyes. Afterwards Walter Timms bought an interest in the ferry boat across the Brazos River at Kimball, where the cattlemen, driving cattle up the trail, crossed the river. Later he bought a wagon and four horses and did freighting for several years. During this time Mr. Timms life was among the real frontiersmen of the new west, and he experienced both the pleasures and the hardships of life. Sometimes he went up the trail with cattle and when he did it was he who was trusted to bring back the pay--in gold of course--for the cattle. For several years Mr. Timms was Deputy Constable of Bosque County, and to him was usually given the commission of going out for the most difficult characters. Once he was told to go out and bring in a certain criminal for whose safe delivery $500.00 was offered. Mr. Timms took three of his most trusted men and went to the out-of-the-way cabin where a relative of the man lived. "Now, boys, he's in that cabin. Two of you go in and get him while the other two of us wait outside; he'll be quick about giving us the slip if we aren't very careful. "At the instant that the men's knock sounded on the door, the faint flicker of the candle that had been seen in one room suddenly went out. In a moment, however, the door was opened by the man of the house with, "Who's there?". The men went in and searched the two room cabin and came out with the report that only the family were inside. "He's in there. You go back and look up the chimney," ordered Mr.Timms. In a few minutes the undesirable citizen was being pulled down by his legs from the rather close quarters of the old rock chimney. Then the time came when Walter Timms felt that he could realize one of his dreams. He bought some land and settled down to farm. He had a splendid crop planted and everything in ship-shape order when one night he was wakened by someone shouting his name. Grabbing his trusty gun, he went to the door to inquire what his visitor wished. It turned out to be a gentleman who had brought a great herd of fine cattle to carry up the trail and wanted Mr. Timms to go with him. When Mr. Southern--for that was the gentleman's name-- had inquired among cattlemen of the vicinity for a real man that could handle the cows correctly and that could be absolutely trusted, Walter Timms had been pointed out to him as the man he wanted. Mr. Southern had ridden many miles to find Mr. Timms. At first the young farmer refused to go, explaining that he had crops just ready to be harvested. Mr. Southern wanted just such a man as Walter Timms, so the pay offered was generous. Young Timms asked for a few moments to decide; he had a good negro on the place; he wished to speak to him. The negro promised to carry out his employer's directions and to harvest the crops for him, and the former cowman decided to go once more up the trail. As an intimate associate of Mr. Southern, a real gentleman, Mr. Timms had many interesting and pleasant experiences. Their trip took them up into the western part of Colorado and Nebraska. One early morning when Mr. Timms and Mr. southern, who bunked together and shared the care of the same division of the herd, rose up from their blankets and looked down a draw in the great expanse of the prairie, they saw three young buffaloes drinking at a spring. Immediately the two men were on their horses with six-shooters ready, and that day all cowmen feasted on young buffalo meat. There had been times, when Mr. Timms had first gone up the trail, that he had seen buffalo herds that were so thick that their movements looked as if the earth were moving. In 1871 Walter Timms was married to Miss Elzey Payne. They had one child; Lenna, now Mrs. Charles J. Stevenson, who has one son, Walter James Finley. After the death of his wife, Mrs. Elyza Timms, Mr.Timms took his little two year old daughter, Lenna, and went back to his father's home in England. When he reached his childhood home, his father could not believe at first that he was his son Walter who had left as a little boy, fourteen years before. While in England Mr. Timms learned the jewelers' trade and fine watch making. When he returned to Texas in August, 1878, he sold out his holding in Bosque County and moved in November, 1879, to Cleburne, and established there the firm Timms, Jeweler, which later became Timms and Company, the members of the firm being W. Timms, W. H. Wilson, J. H. Wilson, and J. A. Styron, Jr. When Mr. Timms attended the Episcopal Church, he glimpsed the brown eyes of a young lady in the choir that gave him another goal to attain beside the establishment of his jewelry business. Miss Ada H. Tracy had come to Cleburne, in 1877 with her brother and sister and brother-in-law, E. R. Tracy and Mr. & Mrs. W.E. Hill. For the two years previous to her marriage to Mr. Timms, Miss Tracy taught a private school. Having an unusually true and well-trained alto voice, she became a member of the choir of the Episcopal Church. Miss Tracy and Mr. Timms were married April 13, 1880, theirs being the first evening wedding in the old Episcopal church. Hattie Ellen, the only child of Walter and Ada Tracy Timms died in infancy. In June, 1900, Mr. Timms retired from the jewelry business and bought the Bostick farm northwest of Cleburne. Once more the life of the open was to be his--the life from which he could not get entirely away. A lover of fine horses, he began to breed good blooded stock. He has raised a number of colts that have been raced at the Dallas Fair and on other tracks. In about 1912 he sold to Mr. Waggoner, of Fort Worth, for $1,200.00, the mare and colt, Planetta and Clickmaker. Mr. and Mrs. Timms have lived for more than half a century in Cleburne at their home on north Anglin Street, and for over thirty years Mr. Timms has driven back and forth daily to his farm. Now at the age of eighty-five he still drives back and forth almost daily in a two-horse wagon and attends personally to the affairs of the farm. Frequently he is seen on horseback, riding usually at the present time a tall black horse. During the fifty-three years since his return from England and settlement in Cleburne, Mr. Timms has seldom got very far from his jewelry business in the earlier years, or in later years from the management of his farm and horses. There have been trips to Dallas with his horses or on other business, or occasional visits back to Bosque County. Thus it came about that seventy years passed before he went back to old Barnard's Mill. Yet varied indeed have been his experiences, and a bit of the frontier history of Texas is interwoven with his life. (Mrs. Frances D. Abernathy, writing from Cleburne, TX. does interviews as an avocation. Her vocation is teaching, and in between classes she keeps house for two children and herself. Frances D. Abernathy was a niece of Ada Tracy Timms, wife of Walter Timms. She wrote "Early History of Johnson County" which can be found in the Carnige Public Library in Cleburne, Johnson County, Texas.