FOUNDING OF ROBERT LEE 74 YEARS AGO - Coke County, TX

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Submitted by Jo Collier - jomar@wcc.net
27 March 2001
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The Robert Lee Observer - 7 January 1965, Robert Lee, TX

	It was 74 years ago Wednesday of this week that Robert Lee was
estblished as the county seat of Coke County in an election Jan. 6,
1891.
	People of Hayrick immediately began moving houses here, having
been offered a free lot to each of them who would move houses here.
	Mrs. Eva Hayley, then Eva Vestal, was at Hayrick at that time 
and saw the houses going by, each drawn by a six horse team, with
women in the houses, making up beds, and doing the usual housework.
	Mrs. Hayley, who now lives in Robert Lee and is in her 85th
year, was a little girl then and sat by a picket fence watching the
houses go by as the town was moved.
	The houses were moved on skids about 18 feet long with front
wheels of wagons in front of the house, back wheels just behind it,
with six horses hooked to each wagon.
	Mrs. Hayley recalls that some of the houses were placed on the
wrong lots by mistake, in the hurry of moving, and had to be moved.
Mr. Vestal helped to skid them over.
	Logs would be placed under a house to be moved, and as it was
rolled over and over more logs, some would be taken from behind and
placed in front, so that the house was moved on the logs.
	The daughter of "Uncle Johnny" Vestal, Mrs. Hayley came to 
Abilene by ox wagon from Missouri in 1886.  He stayed there six
months, working in a blacksmith shop, then moved to a place on Indian
Creek, ran a shop there for awhile, then went to Hayrick and estab-
lished his shop there - one of the first, if not the first, businesses
to be established in Coke County.
	When the first county court house was burned at Hayrick in 1890,
she remembers seeing papers from the court house books scattered like
leaves all over town - recalls the children picking them up.
	The town of Hayrick was short on water, and Mr. Vestal wanted to
move it to Robert Lee where water could be had from the river.  He
persuaded a neighbor to go vote while he tended his sheep, a job Mr.
Vestal didn't particularly relish.  But after the nam came back from
voting, he apologized and said, "I am sorry, but I decided to vote for
it and stay here!"
	The first water for the new town was lifted from the river with
a pump and was very salty at times, so the water problem was not solved
for a long time.

Permission granted by Observer/Enterprise for publication in the
Coke County TXGenWeb Archives