88-Year-Old Sanco Pioneer Recalls Early Days of Area - 17 January 1951, Coke County, TX ***************************************************************** USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, 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. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ Submitted by Jo Collier - jomar@wcc.net 27 March 2001 ***************************************************************** The San Angelo Standard Times - 17 Janaury 1951 - San Angelo, Texas Reprinted The Observer, - 10 March 1980 - Robert Lee, TX Sanco, Jan. 16 (SC) - A. J. Adkins of Sanco, one of the earliest sheep men now living in the west, never saw or expects to see a harder winter than that of 1886. Then for two weeks, snow and ice covered the ground, herders barely survived and sheep died by the thousands. That was in the Colorado River Valley country north of San Angelo and in the hills to the north of Robert Leee, where Yellow Wolf Creek comes down from the Roscoe divide. Now passt his 88th birthday, "Uncle Jack" Adkins, as he is known to Coke County people, walked down Yellow Wolf Creek in 1882, with his brother, Tom, his uncle, J. J. Austin, and two neighbor boys from Ken- tucky. The five of them had started to this open range country from Paintsville, Ken., walking thirty miles from his home to the railway station, and riding the train to Sweetwater. They got off the train at Sweetwater, walked nine miles to Roscoe for supper with a ranchman. Sweetwater was a town of a few board houses, and he noticed one main store. Roscoe postoffice was in a box car on a siding. The young Kentuckian had heard through his uncle and others of opportunities for the young man in the new country. Mr. Austin had already been here for fifteen years. AFOOT The older man and the four youngsters struck out afoot from Roscoe after supper, and several miles to the southward lay down for the night on the soft, thick mesquite grass near springs at the head of Silver Creek. Early the next morning he went acros the ridge to the head of Yellow Wolf and down the valley. They walked all morning without seeing a human being and about noon came upon the place of Fred Schroeder, a thrifty Dutchman who had built a dugout in a high bank of the creek and established a hog ranch by turning loose some porkers in the unbounded vicinity. There the party enjoyed breakfast, cooked and served by the pioneer one of the fist ever to settle in that valley. AFTER THE MEAL The host satisfied both his feeling of hospitality and his Dutch thrift, when he treated his guests to wine and charged a dollar for the meal. After he arrived at the ranch of J. W. Withers, a few miles north of the present Robert Lee, Mr. Adkins took to a horse to ride after cattle and herd sheep. FOUND TRIMBLE With the Withers sheep he found Montgomery Trimble, now deceased, and J. J. S. Smith, who no lives at Robert Lee. The two had arrived in West Texas earlier the same year. Mr. Adkins and Mr. Smith are probably the two oldest living men in the San Angelo country to have herded sheep together at that early date. As Uncle Jack recalls those years he estimates that there were as many sheep then as now in this section but not so many owners. Flocks of sheep in those days numbered in the thousands. They were always herded, usually by one lone man on a horse with a Shepherd dog. There were no fences to contain them and wolves and other wild animals would destroy them if left alone. The country into which he came in 1882 had tall grass up to the saddle stirrups in the valleys - a kind of grama. Mesquite grass spread a heavy, thick carpet upward on the slopes, always remaining green about the roots to provide enough winter forage for the flocks. Here is the pioneer's accounty of how sheep were tended in 1882. Moving his sheep along as they grazed, Uncle Jack would pick out a suitable place for his permanent camp in the protection of a hill or a thicket, or both, and would dig a half dugout, covering with whatever shelter he had, and would there store his provisions. MOVE ON The next morning he would put enough "grup" in a sack for several days, tie the sack, his slicker and bedding on his saddle, and with his dog move the flock on its way. Toward nightfall he looked for a thicket where he could make a comfortable camp, especially if the weathr was cold. He pushed back the briars and the brush, and trod hem down to make a niche for his bed and campfire. After supper, he spread his California blanket - a very thick woolen affair made for the outdoor man in those days. Under it in the bitterest weather he slept as warm as a cat on a hearth. The next day he let the sheep move slowly on, circling them gradually back in the direction of his permanent camp, so that he would rech it before his "grub" was all gone. A rider or someone with a wagon from the ranch kept him supplied at the camp, so that the herder might be out for weeks. Scab was about the only disease that troubled the sheep, and they were dipped for that. No one bothered to haul out any feed, for the sheep found sustenance summer and winter on the open range, except in those rare times when snow covered the ground for days. For five years the cowmen and the sheep men had the country mostly to themselves. They were not too cordial toward each other, but had few harsh words, and no shooting in his part of the country. But some ranchmen had brought out barbed wire and posts to fence the range, most of which was still state land. The open range outfits who had livestock ranging from the Brazos to the Pecos resented this, and in at least one instance posts and wire were pulled and burned in a huge bonfire, the wire being so damaged it was unfit for use. Five years after his coming, in 1887, while riding down Boozier Creek, Jack Adkins met three wagons coming up from the east. He stopped to chat with the new- comers, not knowing then that before Christmas he would marry Molly Bird, who was riding in one of the wagons. SETTLERS COMING So the settlers were coming in. Up to 1878 the Yellow Wolf Valley had seen the smoke arising from the Indian campfires; now the woodsmoke was to come curling from dugouts and from boxed and stripped homes as permanent settlers came in - the Birds and the Bilbos and the Ulmers and the Durhams. Others soon followed. It was all done in a friendly way. Now and then a cow man or one of his hands would stop at some of the camps of earlier comers and advise them not to linger around. A few were frightened away, but none had been killed, and there was no real trouble as the country was cut into privately owned pastures or homesteads. A sheep shearer in the 80's was rated a skilled workman. He got five cents a head for all he could shear or more if he was good. When a man started to make the shearing season, he rolled his two pair of shears with an extra pair of socks into his slicker, got on his horse and hit the trail. The shearer got his bed as part of his hire, and he ate at the ranchman's table. Long lives the memory of the grub those ranchwomen set out for a shearing crew - the hungriest men who ever sat down to a woman's cooking. There are those round here who can still recall that Jack Adkins was some- thing of a chamtion shearer, with some pretty spirited rivalry around the shearing pen. He first learned the trade by necessity, when a flock under his care had to be sheared, then he needed the pay that a shearer earned. Came the day when he sharpened his shears, rolled them in his slicker, and rode up Gobbler Creek and over the ridge to the John R. Lewis ranch, not far from the present town of Blackwell. Mr Lewis, a cattleman, also had three or four thousand sheep. He and one helper were laboriously whacking away at the job of shearing them. The ranchman had just dismissed a crew because he thought they sheared too deeply, whacking off too much flesh with the wool. So he was facing along shearing season when Adkins rode up. "Want a job?" "Yes." "Can you shear sheep?" "No. But I can try." "Got your shears?" "Yes." "Well, get down and catch you a sheep. I'll show you how I want it done." LESSONS START The lessons started, Lewis went on with his shearing, watching the new hand out of the corner of his eye. When the sheep became uncomfortale or was handled awkwardly, he reached over and arranged the animal in better shearing position. As long as Adkins sheared sheep, and that was several years, he never missed a season shearing the John R. Lewis flock. He rounded up a crew consisting of himself, Ben bilbo, L. Smith Bird, Bud Ulmer, Pete Sowell, and Sam Lewis, most of whom are now dead. "Mr. Adkins today lives on one of the old homesteads in Yellow Wolf Valley, along the route he walked 68 years ago. He and Mrs. Adkins, who now is deceased, reared a family of nine children of whom three sons live nearby in the Sanco community - Ernest, Oral and Burley. John lives at LaJolla, Calif., and Jess at Snyder. The oldest daughter, Mrs. Rosa Akins, is deceased. Mrs. J. D. Knox lives at Turlock, Calif., Mrs. Wyatt Gunnels at Robert Lee, and Miss Ila Adkins at Robert Lee." The inset above concludes the story about the same man on the preceding page in his 88th year. The one on this [see obituary notes below] was published two years and two months later. Both are copied from yellowed newspapers and this one had a bit worn or torn off. But by reading both stories one can get a true and on-the-ground look at the country and those who came to make their homes here in the 1880's, looking back for a moment from this 1980. Both the stories I wrote personally, and the information in them I had from Uncle Jack in conversations with him. USB As you read, remember that you are reading as in 1951 for the first article 1953 for the second. ---Ulmer Bird March 10. 1980 [The story referred to as the second article written in 1953 is recapped below.] Obituary for A. J. Adkins - 15 March 1953 - Robert Lee, TX Copied from San Angelo, Tx., Standard-Times, Mon., March 16, 1953 PIONEER SHEEPMAN, A. J. ADKINS, DIES SANCO, March 15. - Andrew Jackson Adkins, who walked down this Yellow Wolf Creek county 71 years ago and decided to make it home, died at noon Sunday at his home here. He was 90. Funeral services will be held at 3 p.m. Monday in the Sanco Methodist Church. ..... [The remainder of the article contained the same information as written in the lengthy article printed above.] Permission granted by Observer/Enterprise and the San Angelo Standard-Times for publication in the Coke County TXGenWeb Archives