A PIONEER MOTHER'S EXPERIENCE

A PIONEER MOTHER'S EXPERIENCE

I was born October 21, 1849 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, daughter of Peyton and Mary Cox. My father died in 1850 and in 1851 mother married Mr. Albert Heaton from Washington, Maine. He was a kind and just step-father. He took mother and her two children to Pattersonville, La., where he had a good home.

Then we moved to Franklin, La., mother and father going overland in the buggy, while the old negro nurse and we children, with the household goods and my old cat went on steamboat. We settled near the bayou and father established a cooper shop and wharf where boats came and loaded with his product of barrels, casks, etc. He had nine men working in his shop, when a terrific scourge of yellow fever swept over Louisiana and when the fever abated there was only one man left out of the nine. Whole families died. Mother and father both had the fever, though somehow we children escaped. My father never went into his shop again because he imagined he could see and hear his men working as he had seen them last. He sold the cooperage and engaged in the hotel business, though at one time he was judge of St. Mary parish. He had heard so much about the "great state of Texas" that he finally decided to cast his lot in this land of promise, so in 1856, in com-

-pany with two friends, Messrs. Cooper and Smith, he set out on horseback for the Lone Star State. Cooper and Smith located at Austin, but father went on to Hays county, where he bought land in the new town of Cannonville, owned and sponsored by Mr. Rufus Cannon and later run against San Marcos for the county seat. Father wrote glowing letters to Mother, telling of the wonderland he had found, of the trees, flowers, knee high grass and abundance of crystal clear water. There was a gushing spring at the corner of the lot he planned to build our house on and he urged Mother to pack up and come as soon as possible. On June 27, 1856, Mother's twenty-seventh birthday, she started to Texas, via New Orleans with her four children, Charles, the eldest aged nine years, myself seven, and two half brothers, Albert and William Heaton, aged four and two years respectively. I will never forget the sea voyage on the "Charles Morgan" from New Orleans to Galveston with its sea-sickness and seemingly never-ending smell of tar and rope. The overland journey to Austin was made by stage coach and there we stopped with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, who lived in a double loghouse on Congress Ave.

Father came to Austin a day or two after we arrived and we were overjoyed to see him. The next day Father hitched up the oxen, "Lion" and "Berry," to a big covered wagon and we left our kind Louisiana friends for a wilderness and strangers. We children enjoyed each step of the journey, as we would get out of the wagon, gather flowers, shells and all kinds of pretty rocks, wondering the while if we would ever reach "Cannonville." If I remember rightly there was only one house that could be seen from the road in the two days that it took to make the twenty-five miles, as the oxen never went faster than a walk. Cannonville was situated about three miles south of where the village of Dripping Springs now stands. We lived three months with the Cannon family before our house was finished. We carried water

from Onion Creek, a mile distant. We had many hardships. The crops were almost failures and to make our troubles worse, our good friend, Mr. Cannon, died.

There were only three houses ever built in Cannonville. Mr. Newton Jackson of Austin, built one, a Mr. Schropshire one, and Father the other one. Then Mrs. Cannon refused to give deeds to the land her husband sold. The election for county seat was held and "Cannonville” lost and "Cannonville" died a natural death. Mrs. Cannon, her children and an old negro "Mammy" moved to Bastrop and we moved into their home on account of its having a good well of water. A post office was established and Father was appointed postmaster of "Cannonville." The mail, which was carried on horseback, came from Austin and it was a great day when it arrived, as people came for miles for the occasion. Meantime Father tried farming but a late frost came, followed by grasshoppers and a disastrous drouth which it seemed would put an end to everything. But the people were undaunted. The men hitched their oxen to the great lumbering ox-wagons and set out for Port Lavaca or Indianola to purchase supplies. People are grumbling about today's high prices, but who among them has seen flour sell for $25.00 a barrel, corn meal at $3.00 a bushel and everything else in proportion? I never knew flour being cheaper than $16 or $18 a barrel until after I was grown.

We had no church or school and the mothers taught their children. The most popular school books of those days were the "Blue Back Speller" "McGuffey's Reader," "Ray's Arithmetic" and "Webster's School Dictionary." A popular punishment for misconduct during our lesson hours was to have us memorize an entire page of the dictionary. Father read a chapter from the New Testament each night and Mother heard our prayers. Mother had a beautiful voice and often sang hymns to us. We were a happy family indeed.

Reverend Johnson of Blanco City was circuit-rider for our district. He came each fourth Sunday to preach to our neighborhood and held meetings in some neighbor's house. Everyone within a radius of ten miles attended and if too far to walk, Father hitched "Lion" and "Berry" to the ox-wagon and took us in style. Occasionally Rev. Johnson would bring with him his wife and little daughter, Mary Kate, whose name was the same as my own. We were great friends as long as she lived.

Our nearest neighbors were families named Wallace, Moss, Perry, and Dr. J. M. Pound, who was our family physician for thirty years. Mother belonged to the Good Samaritans and the Episcopal church, though later she united with the Christian church. Father was a Royal Arch Mason and, though he did not belong to any church, he was a just man. The Ten Commandments were his creed.

In 1860 we moved from Cannonville to Jacob's Well, on Cypress Creek, where Father contracted to take care of a herd of cattle owned by John Meeks and sons of Webberville, but knowing nothing about handling stock he gave it up and moved to the Blanco River, about twelve miles from San Marcos, where he farmed, made shingles and shoes. A neighbor, Mr. W. A. Leath, had a tanyard and made very good leather. We still had no schools so Father built a cypress-slab school house, where Mother taught her own and the neighbors' children. In 1861 and 1862, I attended a boarding school in San Marcos, which was then only a small village. My teacher was Prof. T. L. Lyons.

When the war between the states broke out, Mother had a hand loom and spinning wheel made, on which she spun and wove most of our clothing. I felt dressed up in my homespun dress and Father's home-made shoes. We knitted our stockings and gloves and braided our hats of wheat-straw or corn husks.

There was a little settlement below us on the Blanco

River called "Arkansaw" and three or four men from there were forced to go to war. One morning we were startled to see a detachment of soldiers drawn up before our house. The commander explained that they were hunting three men from "Arkansaw" who had deserted the army and asked Father to be on the lookout for them, naming a place where he might report in case they were seen in that locality. He asked if he might have some bread baked. Mother and I went to work in a hurry and soon had 100 biscuits done, to which we added all the butter we had on hand. The commander was delighted and insisted that we accept pay, but we refused. The soldiers marched away after repeating their request for Father to be on the lookout for "Jap" Brown, "Little John" Pierce and Harris, the deserters. These men were never found, though they were hunted from time to time throughout the war and we learned later that they had lived in caves a short distance from their homes. After the war they came out of hiding, though no one outside the little colony knew where they had been. A sister-in-law of Jap Brown told me of the many narrow escapes he had while in hiding. Apparently Mrs. Brown was a very industrious woman and the neighbors wondered how she wove more cloth, raised better crops and more hogs than anyone. When a soldier left for the front, Mrs. Brown invariably donated socks and gloves, did sewing or any other useful favor that she could do.

Father and Brother Charlie went to war, as did my “best friend and schoolmate," and I had an anxious time thinking of my loved ones, though they all came home safe and sound. Great was the rejoicing from then on and balls, picnics and many kinds of amusements took the place of our sad lonely hours. Many were the weddings that followed, for few indeed were the boys who had not left their girls behind them.

On July 24, 1865, I was married to Joseph S. Cruze

at my father's place on the Blanco River. Though I was not yet sixteen and my husband lacked three days of being twenty, we felt full grown and far from children. We had lived through many trials and tribulations, we felt that we had missed our childhood.

Father was a magistrate in our precinct for several years before and after the war, also was elected assessor several terms. Then he moved to San Marcos and was appointed postmaster, his health failed and he moved to Pearsall. In 1888 he came to visit us on our ranch where he took sick and died. We laid him to rest in the Leath graveyard on the Blanco River, beside his little daughter who died in infancy. Mother died in Dallas, January, 1897.

In the first years of our married life we had hard times. We moved to Bastrop county where Mr. Thomas McKinney had a saw-mill on the Colorado River and my husband contracted to haul the lumber to Austin. McKinney agreed to furnish ten wagons and teams, but he let him have only two. It was well, for the mill broke down, Mr. George Maverick, the mill foreman took sick, likewise my husband and I, with chills and fever, so we moved back to the mountains in Hays county. We had no home so we moved into a little vacant shanty that some one had built near a small spring that my husband had found when he was a little boy. The house had neither floor nor chimney and was chinked with mud which fell in on us when it rained. Mr. Cruze soon built a chimney and floored the house and we lived there for four years and were happy as larks.

He made several trips to Port Lavaca; likewise he had all the pleasure and hardships of cow hunts. I know I have baked a thousand biscuits for his trips. The time he spent on the trail seemed very long to me, as I stayed at home, took care of the babies and the place. He had the same experiences that most trail drivers had, swimming swollen streams, thunder and lightning, stampedes,

etc., but came out uninjured. He used a pack horse carry his bedding and provisions and sometimes he would pack the old horse so heavily that he would sit down and had to be helped up. Once when he had gone about two miles from home the pack turned under the old horse and he ran away, kicked the pack to pieces and scattered biscuits for a mile. Later he made a big “KYAX” as he called it, somewhat on the order of the old saddle bags, but very commodious, then he bought a real pack-saddle and had no more mishaps with his kitchen outfit.

In 1868, two cattlemen hired him to help round up a herd of cattle near the Perdinales River. He worked a month at two dollars a day and when the work was done, neither man would pay him. Mr. Cruze also made two trips to Kansas over the Chisholm Trail and of all the men he associated with on these trips and cow hunts, my half brother, Albert Heaton, of Del Rio, is the only man now living that we know of. On his last trip to Kansas his main helper was Adam Rector, a negro boy, who could ride and rope with the best. One morning he and Adam were leading the herd when suddenly he saw the negro wheel and come tearing by him shouting, "Indians! Indians!" and in spite of his yells, Adam kept going to the rear of the herd. He knew that it was poor time to run so he stood his ground. Soon the Indians came up to him looking very savage, and one of them made a grab for his quirt. Instantly he grabbed the Indian's, the strings slipped off each wrist and they had traded quirts. Then they began a guttural demand for beef. He motioned to the rear of the herd and they went on until they found the boss, who gave them a yearling.

Mr. Cruze drove his own cattle and made wages besides which was more money than we ever had before and wisely did not waste any of it. He bought two "Kansas" wagons, as they were called, complete with sheets, bows, etc., a Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine,

a set of moss agate jewelry, a side saddle, bridle, blanket, riding skirt and a fine pacing pony, which would go only as far as he liked, then turn around and go home in spite of me. He bought and established the "Cruze Ranch" where we lived for fifty years. In 1917 we sold it to our son, Joe S. Cruze, Jr., who has made it his home.

Our eldest son, Albert, lives in Houston, Will in Travis county and John in California, while two daughters, Margaret and Mrs. Addie Harlan and her son, Forrest live with us. Our youngest daughter, Mrs. Nell Curry, lives in Floresville. We have eight grandchildren, including twin baby girls, slightly more than a month old. We are well satisfied in our new home, Los Angeles Heights, San Antonio, and we are never so happy as when our children or some old friend comes to see us, for as ever the latch string hangs on the outside.