History of Coke County, TX Contributed by Jo Collier 7 September 2003 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/tx/txfiles.htm ********************************************************************* COKE COUNTY By Ulmer Bird Copied at the West Texas Collection, September 2, 2003, Josephine Bird Collection, Box 23 One hundred years ago there were no towns in what is now Coke County and except for what community there was around old Fort Chadbourne, no cowmunities. If we throw in the fort, built in 1852 and the community that was around it then, and later west of there, then Fort Chadbourne commun­ity was the first. West of there sixteen miles, Sanco was the second. In 1878 Jim Weathers with his family moved in with an ox wagon from south in Texas, and set up the first sheep ranch on the open ranges on land that now belongs to Raymond McCutchen. In 1879, J.J. Austin, who had been in the San Angelo country since back in the sixties, settled a place northwest of the Weathers place, at the southwest edge of the Sanco mountain country, the place now owned by Lila Cope Austin, whose first husband, the late Ish­om Austin was a son of Grandpa Austin. Lila is the daughter of the late Wylie Byrd, who as a boy of 9 came with his father, Jim Byrd, and settled a few miles south and a bit east of the Austin place. They came from Gonzales County in South Texas. North of Sanco, in 1886, George Columbus (Lum) Laswell had brought his family to some good farming land on Gobbler Creek, four miles northeast of Sanco, coming from Iredell in Bosque County. Sam Lewis, whose descendants, a number of them, have lived or live now in Robert Lee, was one of their neighbors, and Bud Ulmer before long had land west of Horse Mountain. The Campbells came in there later. In 1887 Miller Bird drove his wagon with his family down Gobbler, coming from Hawilton County, and with him a friend, father of Lum Laswell, and spent the night at the Laswell place. The elder Laswell had brought his wagon along as a friend to the Birds, helping him to move west. Now I have undertaken this sketch at the request of Mrs. Bryan Yar­brough. It is incomplete, for I do not have the information to name and mention all those of the eighties who came to the Sanco country or to tell their story, and it may call for apology to those not mentioned. I never star­ted out to be a historian- have done some newspaper writing featuring interesting old timers and their stories, and still hope to get my writings shaped up, not as a history, but as something that might supplement the work of the historians, who are due much credit for a lot of hard work that they can never hope to be financially remunerated for, at all adequately. I have gladly yielded the privelege and the hard work of writing a history of Coke County to others and have encouraged them to do it. If I have the time and the energy and the money left, I might publish a supplement to the work of historians, both as to the pre-history background and some life stories, but have no plans to write a history as such. It would be a good thing, and I hope the work of Mrs. Jewel C. Pritchet and Mrs. Bryan Yarhorough will create enough interest that others will work at preserving the stories of their families and their times, and that somewhere will be provided a place to keep such archives, so that none of these shall be forgotten. So in 1987 at north-western Coke County, 16 miles west of Fort Chadbourne, had one pioneer big community one room building for school- room and public meetings such as Sunday school and church services, elections, "literary society" meetings, and soon had a store run by Grandpa Scarborough, and a blacksmith shop of S.S. (Sinc) Craddock, July 10, 1888 the post office was opened in the home of Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Durham, who had been here a year before the Birds moved in. Mr. Durham was the first postmaster, then he took the post office at Hayrick and Miller Bird was postmaster a month, then Lucratius C. Bullion for a year, then Mrs. Durham was appointed and served 17 years. The site was one mile east of the road crossing on Yellow Wolf Creek. >From the earliest days of the settlement, there were summer revival meetings on Yellow Wolf Creek, and after 20 years at the original site, the village moved to the present site on the Creek, just north of the big spring. l.A. Bird surveyed the townsite from his land, in 1987. Wesley Meek had built a gin sometime between 1905 and 1907, and also built a home the typical box and strip house of those days. The gin has long gone, but the house is still standing, owned now and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. J.M. Price, Jr, In 1907 or a short time before a lumber school house was built just north of the present brick building. Land was deeded in 1905 by Miller Bird from land then actually occupied by L. Smith Bird, for a church building owned by the Methodist Church, but used for all church services, at the site of the brush arbor camp meetings of the past. The store had first been located where the road now turns left to go over the hill not far from where the road to the cemetery turns right. This was first the property of William (Grandpa) Scarborough, and he later sold it to Miller Bird, and moved to the new Sanco village. In the first years, Frank Tubb operated the store, I think probably leasing or renting it from Scarborough. During the year 1907 or very soon thereafter the store and post office were moved to the new site. The store was diagonally across street from the present store, facing north. The blacksmith shop was just west of the present store building, facing south. Grandpa Scarborough's home was at the left of the road running west from the store, and across the street from him Cliff Creighton had a house where he lived in school months, now owned by Tom Harris. The present store building was built in 1916 by R.C. Cosby, who was then blacksmith and mechanic. Not long after he built it, drouth amounting to famine struck - 1916,1917, and 1918. The outlook financially then became too severe for him to start an automobile business as he planned, and he sold, I believe, to Ike Gartman and moved to New Mexico. In 1924, Mr. and Mrs. H. J. Gartman moved into the building, buying it then or soon afterward, and put in a store and got the post office opened after it had been closed for lack of a postmaster. He held the post office 24 years longer than anyone else ever did, and he and Mrs. Gartman kept store there those years. Ulmer Bird leased the building in 1953, bought it in 1960, and still owns it in 1980. The tabernacle was built in 1924, under the leadership of Rev. W. E. Hawkins, who brought meetings back to the site. I do not have the date of the building of the Baptist Church, but to the best of my recollection it was built 1911 or there-about. Sanco was the scene of villages, I am convinced, from the time man first began to live in villages, and poople were drinking from the old spring there before the pyramids of Egypt were built. That, I think, is provable, but that is another story. In the Meadow Mountain country west of Sanco lived the Bibles and the Breedloves and the Gosses and the Coles, who mere very much here in the founding days and the early years of the community. For awhile, before Robert Lee got going. Sanco had these parts, north of the river as far as the Snyder headquarters, later Sauls, where there was the first gin and corn mill. About the first time I remember climbing one of these Sanco mountains, I could see way down Yellow Wolf that old gin puffing away and hear it whistling for more cotton. Or was that the gin AT Sanco? Us historians can get mixed up sometimes on things like that. But both the gins were. . . each in its own time, and theirs was a challenging whistle when cotton farming was young and the young cotton farmer flourished on both sides of Yellow Wolf Creek. Cotton farming served its time and generation here, and the land mostly went back again to the ranching business, as drouth, boll weevils, hail, low prices caused the earlier comers, many of them, to sell out and leave, and/or their children to leave for better fields as the big plains ranches began to sell and divide up in big farms, or homestead land out in New Mexico beckoned. The marvel is that for one generation thrifty, determined, resourceful people made livings and raised families on 160, 320 acre farms, and one-two section ranches. At the end of the year it was organized, Coke County had a population of 2,959. (1890). In 1900 it had 3,430; 1919, 6,412 (the most it has ever had). In 1960, there was 3,589; 1977 estimate, 3,100, The main gains came right after the turn of the century, the main losses right after the terrible drouth of 1916-17-19. The two decades of the most settlers arriving were the 1980's and from 1900 to 1910. Coming soon after 1900 were the Carwiles, the Gartmans, the Prices, the Clevengers. It is not exactly easy to define the boundaries of Sanco in the early days, or now, for that matter. At first it was a sort of mother community for all of the present county north of the Colorado and west of Fort Chadbourne, but that soon changed as Edith, Robert Lee, and Silver came on. Yet there were many out on the borders, so to speak, claimed Sanco and Sanco claimed them. Whether inside our outside the school district or whatever boundaries country communities have, here are some in our Book of Remembrance: Allard,Anderson, Akens, Briscoe, Ballard, Baldwin, Batton, Baze, Bauman, Barren, Belcher, Benton, Bennett, Benningfield, Bilbo, Bird, Berryman, Biggs, Blair, Baker, Boatright, Barton, Breedlove, Black, Bullion, Byrnes, Bynum, Barton, Cain, Campbell, Carwile, Childress, Clark, Clepper, Cole, Craddock, Clevenger, Conner, Creighton, Cosby, Conrad, Devoll, Denton, Durham, Denman, Daffern, Derrick, Eubanks,Fletcher, Fikes, Foxier, Franks, Frizzell, Feneille, Collard, Gartman, Gipson, Green, Greathouse, Greer, Green, Goss, Gunnels, Gulley, Haesen, Hazel, Hastings, Harley, Jackson, Joiner, Killam, Kirkendall, Kimbell, Laswell, Latham, Landers, Lord, Lemis, Laughlin, Lasseter, Leeper, Lowrance, McCullough, McGallian, McKenzie, McKinley, McCutchen, McKinish, Montgomery, McDonald, Martin, Mittel, Manuel, Mauldin, Menielle, Meek, Miller, Millican, Morris, Moorehead, Murphy, Muston, Overall, Patterson, Pierce, Pentecost, Preslar, Prine, Reid, Pettit, Popplewell, Reed, Rodway, Ranson, Rawlings, Reid, Richards, Robinson, Roe, Savage, Scarborough, Smith, Seltz, Simmons, Stark, Teague, Tubb, Thomason, Tucker, Ulmer, Wink, Wyatt, Whiteside, Yates, Adkins, Austin. I am sure there were others. Many of these names taken from tombstones in the cemetery, and from memory and other notes, - any omissions are certainly unintentional. Permission granted by the Observer/Enterprise for Publication in the Coke County TXGenWeb Archives.COKE COUNTY