“About 12:15 o’clock this morning the main building of the Belford Lumber Company was discovered on fire, and in a very short time the entire yard was a roaring, seething furnace, approach to which was difficult on account of the fierce heat.”

That’s the Williamson County Sun of Thursday, March 11, 1909, and the “this morning” is literal. The fire broke out a little after midnight, and the paper went to press the same day with the story still warm. “The losses cannot be accurately determined at this writing,” the reporter admitted, and then gave his best guess anyway.

Block 36

The Belford Lumber Company’s yard spread over three city blocks just northwest of the courthouse square, between the square and the railroad. Its heart, and the block that burned, was the one bounded by Merchant Street on the north, San Gabriel Street on the south, Forest on the west and Rock on the east. Merchant is 6th Street today and San Gabriel is 7th. On the plat it was Block 36, and that’s what the paper called it. The warehouses across San Gabriel to the south were Belford’s too, and the yard kept growing in that direction for the next 50 years.

What stood on Block 36 16 months before the fire is drawn on the Sanborn insurance map of November 1905. A long lumber shed ran across the north side of the block. The planing mill and carpenter shop, with their boiler, sat on the Forest Street side. Along Rock Street were more sheds, a building marked “Buggies & Carriages,” another marked “Paints & Oils” and “Sash & Doors,” and at the corner of San Gabriel the company office. A railroad spur curved into the block from the south, so cars could be unloaded inside the yard. In the middle of it all the surveyors drew a small “Camp Ho.” inside a “Camp Yard (Private),” which I take to be a place where people hauling in from the country could put up for the night. Two of them were asleep in it when the fire started.

The neighbors mattered that night, so it’s worth knowing who they were. West across Forest Street was the City Ice and Bottling Works. North across Merchant was a grist mill, the old Roberts mill as the paper called it. South across San Gabriel were warehouses, some of them Belford’s. East across Rock Street stood the Commercial Hotel, a big two-story frame building on the way to the depot, where the drummers, the traveling salesmen who came in by train with their sample trunks, stayed.

The man whose name was on the yard had been in Georgetown since 1884. Charles Sanford Belford was born in Newark, Ohio, in 1857, and the Belford Lumber Company was chartered in February 1892 as the successor to Belford & Harrel, who had bought out George Irvine’s planing mill. By 1909 it had a capital stock of $80,000 and a contracting business that had built the Methodist church, the Masonic Temple, Mood Hall and the two wings of the Annex at Southwestern, along with “a dozen or more residences” in the past year alone. If you live in an older house in Georgetown, there’s a fair chance Belford’s men built it. The yard on Block 36 was where all of that lumber came from, and it had already blown up once. On June 25, 1897, one of the boilers “bursted” and “with a terrific noise shot up 200 feet into the air,” landing a hundred feet from where it started. A workman was found nearby, unconscious, with a broken leg.

The fight

The firemen got there and saw at once that the yard was gone. The Sun says they realized “the futility of their efforts to save the lumber yard” and turned to the property around it, “principally to the Commercial hotel, a large two-story frame structure, which was afire in several places.” They held the hotel. The paper gave them a stellar line: “A gamer fight was never put up by a body of firemen and the town rings with their praise.”

Everything else around the block was saved by whoever happened to be standing there. The ice factory on the west, which Belford also owned, caught fire several times and was held by “Ernest Ischy and others,” with the firemen helping toward the end. The grist mill on the north was “scorched and actually afire for a short time” and was saved by Louis Contat, who lived just behind it, and Jeff Logan, who “spliced together garden hose and kept a stream of water playing on it.” People in the houses nearby “covered the roofs with wet blankets and bed spreads and used their garden hose vigorously.” Across the railroad track the roof of the Black Methodist church caught from the sparks, and Black volunteers put it out with only slight damage. The paper named Esau Beard and “the Nook’s cook” as conspicuous among those who worked to save property that night, and added that there were others whose names it never got. (The Nook was a soda fountain and ice cream parlor on the south side of the square.)

A good part of Georgetown turned out to watch. The fire “was witnessed by a large proportion of the city’s population, who rushed to the scene,” and for a while it looked as if the whole north side of town would go. What saved it, beyond the firemen and the garden hoses, was the weather. “Fortunately there was little wind, what there was being from the east and blowing the flames away from the dwellings nearby.”

What burned

Block 36 “was completely destroyed.” The main building went, and with it “a large stock of buggies and other vehicles” stored on its second floor. The planing mill “down the hill, with its valuable machinery,” burned too, and it was the one part of the plant the company hadn’t insured. The cottage at the northeast corner of the block, the old Charlie Davis place, owned by Mrs. C. B. Beck and occupied by her son Will Davis, “went up in flames with nearly all its contents.”

Then there were the people who happened to have their things in the yard that night. A charcoal burner and his wife were asleep in the camp house, and they lost their wagon and its load of coal. Two big wagons loaded with clothing and dry goods belonging to Ratliff, Day & Co. of Briggs were standing in the yard. One was pulled out by hand. The other burned, and Mr. Ratliff put his loss at $3,500. John and Will McGlamery lost their tool chests, $100 apiece. The teams, the paper noted, were all gotten out.

The Sun put the total at about $30,000. The company carried $23,000 of insurance on its plant, about 85 per cent of its value, and nothing on the planing mill. The paper called the fire “one of the most destructive that ever visited Georgetown.”

The morning after

One of the best stories from the fire is the smallest, and the Sun tucked it into a follow-up a week later under the heading “Echoes of the Fire.” The charcoal burner who lost his wagon “got another next morning from the stricken company, which gave him his own time in which to pay for it.” He hadn’t quite finished paying for the first wagon. The load of coal that burned with it was going to make the last payment.

The company’s own thanks went to the fire department. At the department’s quarterly meeting the next Monday night, the chief reported that the Belford Lumber Co., the City Ice and Bottling Works, and Mrs. M. E. Hemphill had sent checks for $150, $100 and $35 “thus showing their appreciation of the work done at the fire last Wednesday morning.” One of the two sisters who ran the Commercial Hotel was a Hemphill, so the $35 may have come from the family whose hotel had been burning in several places a few hours earlier. The firemen saved a separate vote of thanks for something else. Mrs. Hemphill, Mrs. E. Makemson and the hotel had sent out hot coffee and cake, which was “served the exhausted men in the midst of their labors.”

Somewhere between the hose lines and the burning sheds, somebody was handing out coffee and cake to the firemen.

Before the ashes were cooled

“As soon as the insurance question is settled,” the Sun reported on March 18, “the Belford Lumber Company will clear away the debris left by the fire and commence rebuilding their plant.” Belford didn’t wait that long. When the paper published its Booster Edition that October, the fire got one sentence that said everything you needed to know about Charles Belford: “On March 11th of this year the lumber yard was burned, but with characteristic energy President Belford had its debris cleaned off and the work of reconstruction begun almost before the ashes were cooled; and even prior to this he was shipping in lumber and announcing to the public resumption of business.”

The company didn’t stop building houses, either. Two weeks before the fire, Belford’s men had started hauling foundation stone for the mayor’s new house on Brushy Street. The account book for that job survives, and it runs straight through March without a pause: 20 loads of stone on March 6, more on the 13th, hauling on the 20th, sand and the first mason’s labor on the 23rd. On April 1 the Sun noted that “the foundation stones of Mr. M. F. Smith’s residence are being laid.” The yard was ashes and the crews were pouring footings a few blocks south.

The Sanborn surveyors came back in February 1910, eleven months after the fire, and drew the new yard. New lumber sheds ran across the north side again. The office was back on its corner at San Gabriel. The buggies were back upstairs, where the map says “Buggies 2nd,” over the harness room. The northeast corner, where the Beck cottage had stood, was empty. The one real change was the planing mill, which Belford didn’t rebuild on Block 36. He moved it across the street to a block of its own, southwest of the yard, where the map notes “No Fire Apps. No Lights,” the surveyor's shorthand for a building with no fire apparatus of its own and no lighting, so no one worked there after dark.

The fires kept coming

A lumber yard that also sells grain is going to burn more than once, and this one did.

On a Friday night in April 1914, the yard’s night watchman was making his rounds about 8:30 when he found fire in the back of a storeroom on the south side of San Gabriel Street. It had started “in a pile of ear corn in the husk and was probably caused by rats.” The firemen had it out in a few minutes, and the loss was about $100. So now there was a watchman; the 1905 Sanborn, pictured above, had noted under the planing mill that the yard had none.

The next one was worse. About 11:00 on the night of December 2, 1915, the company’s grain, sash, and door warehouse south of 7th Street, “filled with oats and corn, doors and sashes,” went up and “made a terrific fire.” The firemen held it to that one building, in freezing weather, with “the splashing water at a freezing temperature,” and the paper said “the boys never flinched.” The loss was about $6,000, covered by insurance. The Sun gave part of the credit to something that hadn’t existed in 1909: “the present management of the water works deserve credit for having such fine pressure. In the old days there would have been much greater destruction.” Six years earlier the old days had meant spliced garden hoses and wet bedspreads.

A corn warehouse across the street from the main building burned at noon on December 29, 1927. A warehouse full of hay belonging to the Georgetown Grain Company, in a building leased from Belford, burned on a Sunday night in January 1940.

The last big one came in the early hours of Wednesday, May 23, 1962, when a Belford warehouse on 7th Street burned to the ground. This time there was a photograph. The Sun ran it on the front page under the headline “Belford Warehouse Burns,” a wall of flame and smoke with the firemen in silhouette along the bottom. The fire “cast an orange glow on low flying clouds, the glow visible for miles from Georgetown.” Volunteer firemen kept the flames “from leaping across the street into the old ice plant,” and the paper conceded that if they’d crossed, “all the Belford plant and other buildings on the whole block might well have been consumed.” Fifty-three years after Ernest Ischy and his neighbors held the ice factory, the volunteers were holding an ice plant across the street from the Belford yard.

The block the city almost bought

Less than a year after that fire, the City of Georgetown tried to buy the yard.

Rawleigh Elliott had been elected mayor in April 1962 on a write-in campaign, and his administration, as a former editor of the Sun later put it, “took its mandate to ‘Get Georgetown Going’ and rode that mandate hard.”

One of the things he wanted to get going was a new city hall, and he had his eye on the Belford property, two and a half blocks of it, one block west of the courthouse. On Monday night, April 8, 1963, the council voted 4 to 1 to let him negotiate with the Belford Lumber Company for the land, with a municipal center, a fire station and parking in mind. Councilman Edward L. Evans, who made the motion, said it “would be ideal either for a municipal center, a downtown parking lot, a city park or a number of other things.”

The one vote against came from Edgar P. Miles, and his reason was blunt: “I’m not against a new city hall. I just hate to see it located in a part of town that has been dead for 50 years.” He didn't mean the lumber yard, which had been still selling lumber recently. He meant the street it sat on. The blocks between the square and the tracks had been the town's front door when visitors arrived by train, and they had likely been fading since the automobile made the depot a place most people drove past. By 1963 the yard was the last of the old businesses still working there, and its owners were ready to sell. The Commercial Hotel had burned in 1930, 21 years after the firemen saved it. The Austin reporter who covered the vote called the neighborhood "run down," and ten years later Hamilton Wright would list the hotel, the depot, the ice factory and the Belford office among the landmarks that were gone.

Fred Belford, the founder’s son and the company’s president, agreed to sell for $22,500. Then the deal came apart. It turned out the company didn’t own all the land it had offered. The Georgetown Railroad Company owned “a good size portion” of the ground the council thought it was buying, and the resolution on the minutes didn’t describe the property or say who was authorized to sign. By the time the council met again on April 29, a group of businessmen had organized against the site, and the Austin paper’s reporter heard the objections in the room: a “run down” neighborhood, an area that needed “a lot of urban renewal,” and, from an insurance man named Sam Brady, “throwing money down a rat hole.” Two councilmen, Kennie Wilcox and A. W. Hoyt, changed their votes, and the purchase failed 3 to 2. The city attorney tendered his resignation the next day.

The Sun’s editor, Don Scarbrough, wrote that week that he’d “wager a cup of coffee that the Belford property, rejected this week at $25,000, can’t be bought for twice that sum five years from now.” Ten years later, Elliott said his “biggest disappointment” as mayor was that the city never bought the Belford property. By 1976 Scarbrough figured the bare land at $150,000 to $200,000.

A. W. Hoyt, one of the two who had switched, called the paper to defend the vote. “We now have a good city hall, a fire station and several hundred thousand dollars on the tax roll that we would not have had if the city had bought it,” he said. “Private enterprise bought the property, cleaned it up, built buildings and added to the tax roll.” Scarbrough agreed that it had worked out, named the buyers as “Jim Rehler and cohorts,” and then pointed out that the city hall and fire station it had built instead were already too small.

Today the ground the city passed up for a city hall and a parking lot is mostly parking, with the Sheriff’s Office across 6th Street to the north and the public library across 8th to the south. The county and the city got there in the end, on the neighboring blocks.

Gone

Hamilton Wright grew up in Georgetown in the 1890s, delivering Western Union telegrams from the depot at the foot of that street. I introduced you to him in A Well Known Citizen of Georgetown. Many of the telegrams went to guests at the Commercial Hotel, “some to Belford’s and others to the ice plant.” He remembered “lumber being unloaded by hand from rail cars and wagons loading lumber and carpenters hammering or sawing in the Belford yards,” and his schoolmate Fred Belford helping out at the office.

In February 1973, writing for the Sun at 87, he took stock of what was left on that one street between the square and the tracks. “Gone are the once famous favorite Commercial Hotel, the Belford Lumber Co office, the I&GN Railway Depot, and the original ice-factory between them.” The tracks themselves, he added, were “now torn up and junked.” The hotel, the office, the depot and the ice plant had all fit “in the space of two or three normal blocks,” and he blamed their disappearance on “fire, modernization and other accidents of change.”

On the night of March 11, 1909, the town turned out at midnight and fought for that street. The hotel and the ice plant came through, and Belford had his yard back before the ashes cooled. What the fire couldn’t take, time did. The hotel burned in 1930, and the office, the depot and the ice plant went the slower way Wright described, by modernization and the other accidents of change. Nobody rang a bell for those; the town let them go.

Sources

The Williamson County Sun

“Belford Lumber Yard Burned,” 11 March 1909, p. 3.

“Fire Department Meeting,” 18 March 1909, p. 4.

“Echoes of the Fire,” 18 March 1909, p. 8.

T. C. Gahagan, “Fire Department’s Thanks,” 18 March 1909, p. 10.

Local item on the foundation of M. F. Smith’s residence, 1 April 1909, p. 5.

“Belford Lumber Co.,” Booster Edition, 7 October 1909.

“The Commercial Hotel: Georgetown’s Leading Hotel for 22 Years,” 19 March 1914, p. 17.

“Slight Fire Friday Night,” 16 April 1914, p. 5.

“Costly Fire Occurred Last Thursday Night,” 9 December 1915, p. 2.

“Belford Warehouse Fire,” 30 December 1927, p. 3.

“Pioneer Citizen and Builder Died Monday,” 22 February 1929, p. 1.

“Warehouse Destroyed By Fire Here Sunday,” 2 February 1940, p. 1.

“Belford Warehouse Burns” (photograph and caption), 24 May 1962, p. 1.

“Council Authorizes Purchase Of Land,” 11 April 1963, pp. 1–2.

“McClain Explains His Position In City Controversy,” 16 May 1963, p. 10.

Hamilton Wright, “Familiar Georgetown landmarks disappearing,” 1 February 1973, p. 16.

John W. Cardwell, “Elliott’s administration ‘turned Georgetown around,’” 28 June 1973, sec. 3, p. 5.

Don Scarbrough, “The Passing Glance,” 23 September 1976, p. 1.

Don Scarbrough, “The Passing Glance,” Sunday Sun, 10 October 1976, p. 1.

Other newspapers

“Department Doings,” Austin Daily Statesman, 5 February 1892, p. 3.

“Terrific Explosion,” Austin Daily Statesman, 27 June 1897, p. 1.

“The Nook,” Austin Daily Statesman, 13 August 1899, pp. 12 and 4.

“Blaze Destroys Georgetown Hotel,” Austin American-Statesman, 23 April 1930, p. 2.

“George Irvine, Aged Pioneer of Georgetown, Dies,” The Austin American, 20 July 1936, p. 1.

“Georgetown Municipal Center Snags,” The Austin American, 17 April 1963, p. 19.

Wray Weddell Jr., “Council Split Over Center,” The Austin American, 30 April 1963, pp. 1 and 5.

“Belford’s Last Rites Held Today,” Austin American-Statesman, 28 August 1968, p. 23.

Maps and aerial photographs

Sanborn Map Company, Georgetown, Williamson Co., Texas, November 1905, sheets 2 and 3; February 1910, sheet 2. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Aerial photographs of Georgetown, 1937, 1958 and 1974. Historic Aerials, NETR Online.

Other sources

Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: Takachue Pouetsu, A Williamson County, Texas, History (Georgetown: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973), p. 318.

Belford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places Inventory–Nomination Form, 1986.

Dan K. Utley, ed., Sentimental Journey: A Guide to Preserving the Architectural Heritage of Georgetown, Texas (Georgetown: Georgetown Heritage Society, 1988), p. 48 (C. S. Belford portrait and sketch).

Belford Lumber Company account book, M. F. Smith residence, 24 February–22 December 1909. Photocopy in private hands.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

You’ve already met Fred Millholin. He’s the Sun man who pulled Nanna Smithwick Donaldson’s “Requiescat” back into print for New Year’s 1974, in A Texas Daughter in Georgetown, and the one who explained Georgetown’s “Whattizit” on the front page in May 1975, in The Curiosity at 8th and Ash. If you read the sources on The Town That Called Itself a City, he’s there too, with a 1973 column on the public schools.

For decades he wrote a column for the Williamson County Sun called “Yesteryears.” By 1960 the Austin American could say that everyone in the Sun’s circulation area knew him as Mr. Fred, and that old-timers who’d moved away addressed their letters and their news to him.

It turns out Fred lived through a good deal of what I’ve been writing about here, and he often wrote about it in the paper. This is the first of what will likely be a series of his recollections, and it starts where he started: 8 years old, running messages for the telephone company.

One thing before we start: what follows is how Fred remembered it, mostly in columns he wrote in his seventies, about 70 years after the fact. The Sun’s own pages from the time give a firmer timeline, and where the two disagree I’ll mention it. That’s not a knock on Fred. Things blur together over 70 years, dates slide, two companies become one. It happens to everybody’s memory, and it will happen again in this series. Where the paper is sure, I’ll trust the paper. Where only Fred was in the room, we have Fred.

The family

Fred Whipple Millholin was born April 3, 1896, at Hutto. His mother, Blanche Cashe, had come to Texas from Virginia in 1891 to visit an uncle and stayed to teach. In December 1893 she married James M. Millholin at the home of her cousin, Mrs. R. H. Montgomery, in Georgetown, with Rev. M. C. Hutton officiating. James had been a Georgetown photographer for several years by then (the Sun had announced his Art Photo Company, with a partner, in 1890) and had lately moved to Hutto. The couple took the morning train home.

The family came back to Georgetown in 1902, when Fred was 6, and stayed six years. A photograph from those years, printed in the Sun in 1977, shows them at the house on the corner of Tenth and Timber: Mrs. Montgomery, the three older children, their mother, and the babysitter. The 1900 and 1910 censuses both list the father as a photographer. By 1910 there were four children: Les, Fred, Rowena and Foster.

Eight years old and on the payroll

Here’s Fred, in August 1972:

It was away back in the early twentieth century when Ye Yesteryears editor was a mere broth of a lad of eight just entering the business world as an humble messenger boy for the Southwestern Telephone Company…

That’s about 1904. Two months later, in October, he came back to the subject because readers had written in to ask what on earth a telephone company needed with a messenger boy. Fair question.

The company he worked for was a long-distance line only. It had an office and two pay booths, one in the old courthouse and one in the Commercial Hotel on West 7th Street, and that was the extent of it. If somebody in Taylor or Austin wanted to talk to you, they called the office, and the office sent the boy. His job was “to summon citizens to the telephone office or to one of the booths when they were called by out-of-towners.” For this he was paid $10 a month, which “seemed quite a neat sum to an eight year old messenger.”

The office was the southwest upstairs room of the old First National Bank building on the northwest corner of the square. By the time Fred wrote about it, that building was gone. The bank tore it down in 1964 and built a new one on the same corner. Fred remembered his neighbors up there: a lawyer, Judge George W. Glasscock, a real estate firm, Judge Cooper Sansom, and his uncle, R. H. “Hal” Montgomery, a civil engineer who surveyed railroad rights-of-way in Texas and Mexico. The uncle once came home from Mexico with enough silver dollars to have a Georgetown silversmith named Eubank make them into a full set of flatware. The King’s Daughters had a meeting room on the same floor, and the messenger boy was a member of their Children’s Circle, so he was upstairs on meeting day whether anybody called or not.

The chief operator was Miss Sallie Stubblefield, with her sister Amy as relief. The Stubblefields were an old Georgetown family, four unmarried sisters and a bachelor brother in one of the town’s oldest cottages at the northeast corner of Brushy and 6th. Miss Sallie was Fred’s boss, and the other boys in town knew it. His brother Les put it this way in a letter to the Sun in 1972:

All the kids called Fred ‘Sallie’ which irked him no end and kept him in a dither most of the time.

Fred wrote that the first local exchange in Georgetown was set up by a Mr. Sweet and his son “in the very early 1900’s.” That’s the first place his memory and the paper part ways. The Sun was running the subscriber list of a Georgetown exchange in 1885, and I wrote about it in The Town Rules for the Phone. What Fred may have been remembering is a later company that took the business over. The Sanborn map of November 1905 shows a telephone office with an exchange upstairs on East 8th Street, off the square’s southeast corner near where 600 Degrees Pizza stands today, so during Fred’s messenger years the town had a local exchange on one side of the square and the long-distance office on the other. His $10 a month came from the one that reached out of town.

His brother at the depot

Les Millholin was a little more than a year older, and around 1906 he had the other messenger job in town: Western Union, at the I&GN depot, under agent J. D. Jenkins. The boys who’d had it before him included Edwin Battke, Sam Brady and Charlie Forgy. You met Charlie a couple of weeks back; he’s the 8-year-old who lost four front teeth to a horse on the school grounds in 1897, grown now into a depot job. The perks were worth having. “I liked my job,” Les wrote, “as we all got passes when Gentry Bros. Circus came to town.”

For a sense of the pay, Hamilton Wright had held the depot job a few years earlier, in 1902, at $8 a month plus 15 cents for every telegram he delivered outside the free zone. Fred’s $10 for walking people to the phone was the better deal.

What two messenger boys got out of it wasn’t the money. Les again:

As messenger boys, Fred and I knew almost everybody in Georgetown and vicinity; all the business and professional men, cattle barons, the sick, the poor, the good, the bad and the inbetween, also most of the faculty of SW University and many of her residents.

Among the good, he counted Senator Joseph W. Bailey. Among the bad, “Cole Younger, notorious outlaw, cousin of Jessie James. He had done his time and I hope reformed.”

Among the bad

Les put Cole Younger in 1906, and Clara Scarbrough, who heard from both brothers for Land of Good Water, wrote that the Younger carnival came through “for several years around the turn of the century.” The Sun has one visit, and the date. In June 1907 the Fire Department signed a contract with “the Original Cole Younger & Nichols Theatre-Amusement Co.” for a Mid-Summer Street Fair and Carnival, July 8 to 13, for the benefit of the department. The paper assured readers the company was “moral, refined, and high class.”

The ad in the July 4 issue promised one solid week of fun: six free acts, a uniformed band, a balloon ascension every afternoon by Miss Lucy Mae, a high dive from an 80-foot ladder by Dare-Devil Colton, and a high-diving dog. On Wednesday, July 10, Col. Younger would give a free matinee to his comrades, the ex-Confederate veterans. The Sun checked in on July 11 and found nine shows, all crowded, and “Cole Younger—the undoubted original Cole” making “a fine impression by his affable manners and intelligent conversation.”

Fred was 11 that week and Les about 12. Les remembered it in a letter to the Sun in 1970: “Fred and I knew him personally… we contacted him often when he was in Georgetown with Cole Younger and Nichols Carnivals.” He went on to manage the VA’s supply depot in Chicago, and in that same letter he listed the people his “long public career” had let him know: admirals, generals (“one 5 star”), governors, senators, congressmen, “one Maharaja, and one notorious outlaw, namely Cole Younger.” You can picture a boy from the telephone office walking into the carnival with a note for the man who’d ridden with Quantrill and robbed banks with the James brothers, done 25 years in a Minnesota prison for it, and was now shaking hands with Georgetown’s old soldiers.

The cars come in

Fred’s August 1972 column, the one with the “broth of a lad” line, was about the arrival of the automobile, and he placed his messenger years right at the switch from “hay burning” to gasoline. He remembered the ordinance that made drivers pull to the edge of the street and stop until a team passed, and drivers who kept yelling “whoa” at the car. Best of all, he remembered what happened when a new car parked on the square: “the merchants would hurriedly leave their places of business and run out to view them from the front, back, top and underneath.” That’s a boy’s eye view from a boy that was standing right there as it happened.

His mother’s school

The Austin American profile of Fred in 1960 says he quit school at 8 to take the messenger job and went back at 11, “after his mother opened a private school.”

Fred wrote about the school in 1975. Blanche Millholin held her school in a frame building on West 10th Street. Some of her pupils rode in on horseback: Bryant Hall, Bond and Philip Sneed, Garland Fowler, Derrell Cody, and Ed and Duncan Cooper. She coached high school students in Latin, Spanish and mathematics, and she’d won a gold medal for Latin as a girl in Virginia. Tuition was $1.50 a month. Fred knew the figure because John N. Ellyson Jr. found his parents’ receipt, written in her hand, going through old family papers. One afternoon after dismissal the horseback pupils decided to race up 10th Street, and at Brushy one of them ran “smack dab” into the phaeton of Mrs. F. T. Roche, wife of the man who was then editing the Sun. She got off with scratches. The parents paid for the buggy.

The same column has the two brothers in a livery rig with their aunt, a red-haired woman who “was not afraid of the old boogerman himself.” The horse bolted in front of Coffee’s stable on Brushy. Men ran out to catch it, and she waved them off, reached for the whip, and laid it on. Fred and Les hung on “for dear life” all the way down Brushy Street to the bottom of Jail Hill, where she brought the horse under control and drove it back “as docile as a lamb.”

After the telephone office

The family left Georgetown for Weir in 1908, and the telephone went with them. That year Blanche went to work for the Walburg-Weir Telephone Company, a branch of the Georgetown exchange. In 1910 she moved to the Weir Telephone Union, and the census taker that April wrote her down as “Operator, Telephone.” She ran the Weir switchboard for the next 25 years, until 1935, when the company was turned over to her outright. Her obituary says it was “in consideration of her past services.” A 1966 Sun story on Weir put it more plainly: “they gave it to her in payment of back wages.”

Fred, at 14, was a hired farm hand. By 21 he was a country schoolteacher, and he gave the $10 a month its ending himself: the messenger’s pay seemed a neat sum “until he, a number of years later, pulled down the munificent sum of $40 per month for teaching his first term of six months in one of the Williamson County schools.” Then came the Navy, but that’s another story.

Thanksgiving week, 1921

If you read The Park Between the Rivers, you were at the wedding of Sebe Goodlett and Frances Sharpe on Sunday, November 27, 1921. Fred Millholin married Almeda Queen four days earlier, on Wednesday, November 23, at the home of Rev. M. C. Hutton, the same minister who had married his parents nearly 28 years before. The county clerk issued Fred and Almeda license number 313. Sebe and Frances, three days later, got 323.

The San Antonio Light covered Georgetown’s Thanksgiving under the headline “Many Weddings Held” and got the whole week into one paragraph: the high school principal, a stockman named Frank Belford, Fred and Almeda, and Sebe and Frances. It’s one of the many times I’m reminded what a small town this was. Two couples I’ve been writing about turn out to have been married in the same week, and reported in the same paragraph.

More to come

Fred had about 60 years of Georgetown ahead of him in 1921: the Sun, “Yesteryears,” the readers who wrote to Mr. Fred, and a backyard cellar that made the headline of a 1960 Austin American profile piece. Those are other tales. For now, picture an 8-year-old who, as his brother said, knew almost everyone in town, climbing down the stairs over the bank with a message for somebody who had received an important long-distance call.

Sources

The Williamson County Sun

“The Telephone Exchange” [Georgetown’s first directory], 12 March 1885, p. 2.

[Local item, F. S. Minier and J. M. Millholin, the Art Photo Company], 11 December 1890, p. 2.

[Wedding notice, Jas. M. Millholin and Blanch V. Cashe], 21 December 1893, p. 2.

“Kicked By A Horse,” 16 September 1897, p. 1.

“Big Mid-Summer Carnival,” 13 June 1907, p. 1.

“Street Fair and Carnival” [advertisement, Cole Younger-Nichols Theatre Amusement Co.], 4 July 1907, p. 4.

“The Carnival,” 11 July 1907, p. 1.

“Mrs. B. Millholin Dies Monday of Brief Illness,” 19 July 1940, p. 1.

“First National Starts Move Saturday Noon,” 3 September 1964, p. 3.

“Weir, Once a Thriving Town With Two Telephones In Every Home, is Beginning To Grow Again,” 28 April 1966, p. 6.

Les Millholin, letter to the editor, “Our readers write,” 12 February 1970, p. 2.

Les Millholin, letter to the editor, “Our readers write,” 20 January 1972, p. 15.

Hamilton Wright, “Was fired for tampering with telegraph keys and sounder,” 3 February 1972, p. 11.

Fred Millholin, “Fred Millholin’s Yesteryears: Wheels Start To Spin When Cars Come In,” 24 August 1972, p. 2.

Fred Millholin, “Saga of the telephone—particularly in Georgetown,” 26 October 1972, p. 2.

Fred Millholin, “Fred Millholin recalls turn-of-the-century here,” 21 August 1975, sec. 2, p. 3.

[Photograph and caption, the Millholin family at Tenth and Timber], 19 May 1977, p. 33.

Other printed sources

“Georgetown Girl Weds Dallas Man,” The Austin American, 26 November 1921, p. 8.

“Many Weddings Held,” San Antonio Light, 28 November 1921, p. 2.

Vera Allan, “Cellar Digger Finds Solitude,” The Austin American, 18 July 1960, pp. 1 and 3.

Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: Takachue Pouetsu, A Williamson County, Texas, History (Georgetown: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973), pp. 300, 317–318, 465.

County and federal records

Marriage license no. 313, Fred W. Millholin and Almeda Glenn Queen, issued and solemnized at Georgetown 23 November 1921, returned 25 November 1921. Williamson County Clerk.

Marriage license no. 323, Sebe Goodlett and Frances Rachel Sharpe, issued 26 November 1921, solemnized 27 November 1921. Williamson County Clerk.

1900 U.S. census, Williamson County, Texas, Justice Precinct 8, enumeration district 140, sheets 3B–4A, dwelling 68, James M. Millhollin household.

1910 U.S. census, Williamson County, Texas, Justice Precinct 1, enumeration district 116, sheets 9A–9B, dwelling 168, James M. Millholin household.

World War I draft registration card, Fred Whipple Millholin, Williamson County, 5 June 1917.

Maps

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Georgetown, Tex., November 1905, sheet 3, block 52. Original at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Photographs

First National Bank advertisement, “The Old, and the New” [photograph, “The 1st First National Bank Staff”], Williamson County Sun, 16 September 1965, p. 16.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

In the third week of November 1923, anybody in downtown Georgetown after dark could look up and see a man standing on the rim of the city standpipe. He was “one hundred and ten feet above the street,” by the Williamson County Sun’s count, “with one foot hanging off,” and he had an electric light in his hand.

He was a dummy.

The Sun spelled it “dummie,” and it was dressed as Harold Lloyd, standing over a sign stretched around the rim of the big tank. Lloyd’s new comedy, Safety Last, is the one where he dangles from a clock face high above a city street. It was the feature picture that week at the Monarch Theatre, and the Monarch’s manager had found the best spot in town where the ad could do something like what the movie did.

The paper gave the best line to a small boy looking up from the street: “The fellow who put that there has Harold Lloyd skinned when it comes to looking down from high things.” The Sun agreed with him. “We think so, too; he’s skinned at least 110 feet.”

The Monarch manager’s name was Sebe Goodlett.

If you read The Theatre Without a Roof, you’ve met Sebe’s family. His father, Dave Goodlett, opened Georgetown’s first moving picture show in 1907 and ran it for years in a fenced lot on the Square called the Airdome. You’ve met the standpipe, too, if you went looking for the bonus points in the Main Street photo. (If you’ve never heard of the standpipe, see Liz Weaver’s post about it from earlier this year.) Sebe himself got two sentences in my earlier piece. He and his mother kept the Monarch running after Dave died, and in 1928 they sold it.

This week’s tea is the rest of Sebe’s story. He lost a foot to a train at 17, sold picture shows through a megaphone, and built at least part of a pleasure resort on the ground between the two forks of the San Gabriel. When I pulled the newspaper story that announced his park, there was more on the page than a park.

Born Into the Business

Sebe Scott Goodlett was born in Georgetown on April 6, 1895, the older of Dave and Alice Goodlett’s two sons. His brother Patsy arrived two years later. (Patsy isn’t Pat. Pat Goodlett, the fire chief from the Airdome story, was their uncle.)

By the 1910 census the whole household was in the picture business. Dave was a “Showman, Moving pictures.” Alice was listed as “Bookkeeper, Moving Picture show,” working on her own account, which is more than most census takers recorded for a wife. Sebe was 15.

(How do you pronounce Sebe? Sources vary. My best guess is SEE-bee, but I don’t know for sure. I do know it wasn’t a nickname; his birth certificate named him Sebe Scott.)

On the evening of March 13, 1913, Sebe and a friend were walking down the International & Great Northern track when the passenger train came through. They stepped off, one on either side, to let it pass. When it was gone, the friend found Sebe with his left foot “badly mangled.” He was driven to a sanitarium in Temple, and on April 10 the Sun reported that the amputation had been done the week before and that he “continues to do well and will soon be able to come home.”

He was 17. Four years later, when he registered for the draft, he gave his occupation as “Moving Picture Operator” and his employer as “Dave Goodlett.” The registrar added two words at the bottom of the card: “Lost foot.”

It didn’t keep him off a stage. In February 1918 the Southwestern YWCA put on a farce called “A Womanless Wedding,” with “many of our chief citizens” in gowns and hats, and the Sun’s review made a point of saying “the impersonations by Sebe Goodlett” were “fine.”

When the census taker came back in January 1920, Dave was still “Showman” and Alice was “Cashier, Picture Show.” Sebe, 24, was “Manager.” Two months later, on March 8, Dave collapsed in Hodges Bros. drug store. The Sun wrote that “his son, Sebe, was called, arriving at his side a few minutes before the end.”

Sebe was already managing the Monarch when his father died, and he went on managing it, with Alice and Patsy alongside him. He had his father’s habit of giving the show away. In April 1920 he hosted Southwestern’s baseball team after they beat the University of Texas, and the student paper noted he’d “been quite generous in giving free tickets to the college athletes.” The same week the dummy went up on the standpipe, he gave the football team and its coaches a turkey supper for 30. By 1924 the Megaphone said he had “always been a friend of the school.”

People who were children then remembered Sebe’s megaphone. Sixty years later Ruth Carlson told an interviewer that on Saturday nights “you could hear Mr. Goodlett standing up on the stairway outside the theater hollering, ‘Now showing . . .’ and he’d tell what was on with his big megaphone.” That stairway is still on the side of the building. It’s the one that climbs the wall at Kilwin’s.

On Sunday, November 27, 1921, at Jim Shaw’s house, Sebe married Frances Rachel Sharpe, a freshman at Southwestern. It was her 19th birthday. Frances was born in Liberty Hill, and after her mother died in 1914 she and her younger sister Inez came to Georgetown to live with their uncle and aunt, John and Annie Sharpe. If you read The Elephants on the Square, you met Annie briefly. She was the young woman with the camera. (These aren’t the Sharpes of The Farm Southeast of Town. As far as I know, the two families weren’t related.)

The minister was Horace W. Busby of the Church of Christ.

Six days after the wedding, the Austin Statesman reported that Sebe was “arranging details for the erection of a $10,000 residence on South Main street.”

That’s who had a dummy on the standpipe in November 1923: a 28-year-old theater manager, two years married, who liked a crowd and knew how to get one. Less than seven weeks later he made the Austin paper.

The Equal of Any in Texas

The Austin American, January 8, 1924, page 3:

Tourist Park and Pleasure Resort For Georgetown

“Georgetown is to have a tourist park and general pleasure resort which, according to plans now being worked out, will be the equal of any in Texas, in the matters of convenience and attractiveness. The enterprise is being inaugurated by a private individual, Sebe Goodlett, whose plans have the hearty endorsement of the chamber of commerce.”

He’d bought 25 acres a mile from the courthouse, “lying between the north and south branches of the San Gabriel river” and fronting the highway. He planned small cottages, a cafe, a filling station, a dam across the river to make a lake for bathing and boating, and a scenic driveway along both forks. The article ends with the whole town in his corner: “The chamber of commerce, Lions club and all Georgetown are behind him in the enterprise with every possible help, but the financing of the scheme Mr. Goodlett claims as his exclusive privilege.”

Under the main headline there’s a second, smaller one. It says INDIAN SITE TO BE USED.

The explanation comes in the fourth paragraph:

“The property to be used for the park is the old Lesueuer property lying between the two bridges, and includes the hillside where numerous Indian skulls, bones and arrow heads were recently unearthed when workmen were excavating for soil to build approaches to the new bridge over the North San Gabriel.”

The next paragraph, under the subhead “Former Indian Village,” says the location “was formerly the site of an Indian village” and passes along a legend of gold and altar jewels buried nearby. Then the article goes back to the tourist park.

That’s all it says. Workmen digging fill for a bridge approach had turned up human remains. The hillside they came out of was part of the ground Sebe had just bought. The paper mentioned it between the bathing beach and the buried treasure and kept going.

I’ll come back to the hillside. The paper didn’t, and neither did the town, for a long time.

Work started right away. By February 1 the Sun reported “a large number of men at work on the grounds.” Driveways were going in, “boulders are being broken up and rocks are being hauled filling ravines,” trees were trimmed and the underbrush cut, and tables and camp stoves were being set out for picnickers. A pump was being installed on a platform over the river to lift spring water to the top of the bluff. That same week Sebe bought the neighboring Will Williams place, “thus completing occupancy of the whole tract.”

In April the Megaphone laid out everything he had in mind. Besides the driveway and the swimming pool, the park would have “a skating rink, an aviation landing field, huts for the use of tourists, and a nine-hole golf links.” He proposed to dam the South San Gabriel into a lake running from the Blue Hole to the west bridge and put motor boats on it. The pool, the paper said, would probably open the following Saturday, April 12. It would all “furnish clean amusement for the people of Georgetown and the University students.”

Pure Spring Water

The pool is the part we know got built. On August 22, 1924, the Sun ran a front-page ad with a photograph of it, crowded with swimmers, a diving tower at one end:

“JOIN THE CROWD—KEEP COOL. GOODLETT PARK Swimming Pool. Enjoy yourself with the healthiest and best exercise ever in the purest of pure spring water. Pool drained and scrubbed four times weekly. Absolutely no river water used at any time (nothing but Spring water.)”

Adults swam for a quarter, children under 14 for a dime, and a bathing suit rented for 15 cents. As far as I know, that ad is the only photograph of the pool that survives.

In the same issue, a grocer named C. M. Harris announced that he’d moved his store and filling station “from North Town to Goodlett Park between the rivers,” and signed himself “The Park Grocer.” When the Sanborn insurance mappers drew the park in October of 1925, they lettered a “CONC SWIMMING POOL,” a bath house beside it, and an auto repair shop out on the highway frontage. I haven’t found the golf links or the motor boats anywhere but in the plans.

You’ve driven past the spot. A later Sun article places the pool “between the North and the South San Gabriel Rivers just west of the bridges on Highway 81.” Highway 81 is Austin Avenue now. The park was on your left as you head north out of downtown, after the first bridge and before the second. Hat Creek Burger Company sits on the site today.

The Chief Point of Interest

On Monday, December 1, 1924, the history classes of Taylor High School set out with their teacher, Miss Martha Emmons, on a 115-mile tour of historic places in Williamson County. The Sun printed their write-up in January. Here’s their stop in Georgetown:

“From Liberty Hill the hilarious group drove to Georgetown. The chief point of interest here was the site of an ancient Indian village, now the swimming pool. It was not known definitely where this village had stood until the summer of 1924, when excavations were made for the pool, and Indian relics were unearthed.”

The students had the season a little off, since the pool was dug that winter and spring. The rest is the first I’d seen of it. The January article only mentioned the bridge crew. This one says digging the pool turned things up too.

Earlier that same day, at the site of Kenney’s Fort near Round Rock, the class had been “allowed to bring away bits of China and pottery, and some arrowheads, as souvenirs of this interesting place.”

The following May, Miss Emmons read a paper to the Texas Folk-Lore Society in Austin about buried-treasure stories in Williamson County. “Just out from Georgetown near the site of the old Indian village,” she told them, “is another fabled source of wealth.”

In 16 months the hillside had turned up in a real estate announcement, a school field trip and a folklore paper. None of them mentions what became of the people who were buried there.

The Cottage Between the Rivers

The winter after the pool opened was a hard one for the Goodletts. On December 30, 1924, Frances gave birth to a stillborn daughter in an Austin hospital. The baby was buried in Georgetown the same day. Nine days later the Sun reported that Frances had been “seriously ill for several days” in Austin, that her condition was grave, “and little if any hope is held out for her recovery.”

She did recover. At the end of May the paper had a happier line: “Mr. and Mrs. Sebe Goodlett have moved to the Goodlett Park cottage between the rivers.”

Two months after that, the water quit. The Bartlett Tribune of July 24, 1925, under a Georgetown dateline: “The big swimming pool in the Goodlet park has been closed to the public on account of the lack of water.” It was a drought summer. “The San Gabriel river bed is perfectly dry except for occasional water holes and they are also fast disappearing.”

The park was still good for a crowd that fall. In September, Universal planned an all-day party at the Monarch for 50 Central Texas picture exhibitors, and the program called for “a chicken barbecue” at noon at Goodlett Park. After 1925, though, I lose the park in the Sun. I haven’t found a closing notice or a sale. It just stops being mentioned.

The World’s Best Salesman

In June 1928, Sebe and Alice sold the Monarch to O. A. Engelbrecht, who ran the Palace. Patsy had worked in the theater with his brother right up to the sale.

The 1930 census found Sebe and Frances boarding in a house on Rieger Avenue in Dallas. He was a motion picture salesman and she was a stenographer. By 1935 they were in Denver, where the 1940 census has him as a traveling salesman for a film distributing company. His 1942 draft card names the company: National Screen Service.

Those were years of losses. In June 1940 Patsy died of a heart attack in Edwards Market in Georgetown. He was 43, and he went the way their father had 20 years earlier, suddenly, in a Georgetown store.

In December 1941, Frances was taken ill in the car on the way home to Georgetown for Christmas. She spent a couple of days in the hospital here, “but by sheer will-power got up a day or two before Christmas.” After the holidays there was a specialist in St. Louis and months in a Denver hospital. When her doctor was drafted that summer, she was moved to a hospital in Raton, New Mexico, and she died there on September 2, 1942. She was 39. Alice had been at her side “for four months or more.” They brought her home to Georgetown to bury her.

Sebe was back in Georgetown, spending Christmas of 1945 with his mother, when word came from New York that he’d taken first prize in every department of National Screen Service’s sales organization. His 50 co-workers in the Denver office wired their congratulations to “the world’s best salesman.”

National Screen Service was the company that supplied theaters with their trailers and posters. Dave Goodlett brought Georgetown its first picture show. His son spent the last part of his life selling theaters their coming attractions.

Sebe died in Denver at midnight on Thursday, October 14, 1948. He was 53. The funeral was at the Church of Christ in Georgetown the next Wednesday, with the building “filled to overflowing.” Horace Busby, who’d married Sebe and Frances 27 years before, came from Fort Worth to preach it. He told the congregation how often, holding meetings in Dallas or Fort Worth or Denver, he’d been cheered when Sebe walked into the church or turned up at his hotel room.

They buried him in the Odd Fellows Cemetery “by the side of his wife, two little babies, his father, and his brother.” I’ve found the record of one of those babies. I’m still looking for the other.

The Same Spring

Not quite nine months after the funeral, on July 7, 1949, the Sun announced that Georgetown would have a swimming pool again. Two local men had nearly finished putting the Riverside pool in shape:

“This is the pool, located between the North and the South San Gabriel Rivers just west of the bridges on Highway 81, that was built by Sebe Goodlett in 1925, and used only a few seasons.”

(It was 1924, but the paper was close.) The pool held 293,000 gallons and was “in remarkably good shape with only a few cracks in the walls.” Pipes had been laid “to the same spring used before.”

The concrete Sebe poured in 1924 was still there, and so was the spring.

The Hillside

That leaves the part of the story the 1924 paper spent one paragraph on.

Who were the people on that hillside, what was done with them, and did anybody record anything? Here’s what I’ve found so far.

The first writer I’ve found who took it seriously is Clara Scarbrough, in her 1973 county history, Land of Good Water. The title is a translation. It’s the English for Takachue Pouetsu, which Scarbrough gives as the Tonkawa name for this country. In her chapter on the county’s Native people she lists the known burial sites in Williamson County, and one of them is “the area between North and South San Gabriel rivers west of Highway 81 at Georgetown, where excavation for a swimming pool revealed the site.” She adds another, “possibly a continuation of the one near the pool, at the site of the Highway 81 bridge—also uncovered during construction.”

A footnote further on is blunter. “A large Indian burial ground was found at Georgetown between the North and South San Gabriels in the 1920s and 1930s during excavation for a swimming pool and for a bridge.” She had found “no judgment by reputable scientists as to the identity of the tribe,” and she declined to guess. I’m following her lead on that. Her last word on it: “That a burial ground was discovered is certain.”

She also explains, in general terms, why so little is known about places like this one. Burial grounds in the county were usually uncovered by construction crews, who had work to finish. Others were picked over by relic hunters. “Information has been lost in this way.” In the same footnote she describes a “pseudo-scientist” who “gathered enormous amounts of Indian artifacts from the county, departed the state with them and sold them as souvenirs.” She doesn’t name him, and she doesn’t say he took anything from this hillside.

After Scarbrough, the record goes mostly quiet again. When the Sun published a timeline for the county’s 175th anniversary in 2023, it opened with the Tonkawa, “whose ancestors camped by the river for approximately 10,000 years.” Its entries for the mid-1920s don’t mention the park, the pool, or what was found there.

Scarbrough tried once more. In 1975, when a hike and bike trail was being planned along the South San Gabriel, she gave the planners a list of historic sites that might be labeled along the way. The first one on her list was the “Old Indian Village and burial site just west of Old Highway 81.”

I haven’t found any record of what became of the remains the bridge workers dug up in the winter of 1923, or of whatever the pool excavation uncovered a few months later. If your family has a story about Goodlett Park, the pool, or what came out of that ground, I’d like to hear it. Leave a comment or send me a note.

Helen Cordes hasn’t let it stay quiet. The history walk on her site starts at the Blue Hole and has you look across the river at this spot, and she tells her readers what Scarbrough found. In 2023 and 2024 she led walks along the San Gabriel with Ben and Lisa Nava, Lipan Apache residents of Georgetown. “The problem is, people think they have all died out, but that’s not correct,” she told the Sunday Sun. “They’re here and are proud to share their history and culture.”

The people whose ancestors lived along this river aren’t only in the past tense, and their story is a much longer one than Sebe Goodlett’s. Helen has written it up in Georgetown’s First Peoples. I’ll let her tell it.

There’s one chapter she doesn’t get into. In 1976 the county was asked to name its new lake for the Tonkawa. You know that same lake as Lake Georgetown, but that’s a story for another day.

Sources

The Williamson County Sun

[Local item, Sebe Goodlett’s amputation at the Temple sanitarium], 10 April 1913, p. 3.

“A Screaming Farce,” 7 February 1918, p. 1.

“David J. Goodlett,” 12 March 1920, p. 5.

“Banquet for Football Team,” 23 November 1923, p. 4.

“Safety Last,” 23 November 1923, p. 7.

“Park Getting Rapidly in Shape,” 1 February 1924, p. 3.

Goodlett Park Swimming Pool, “Join the Crowd, Keep Cool” [advertisement with photograph], 22 August 1924, p. 1.

C. M. Harris, “To the Public” [advertisement], 22 August 1924, p. 8.

[Local item, Mrs. Sebe Goodlett seriously ill at a hospital in Austin], 9 January 1925, p. 8.

“Writing a History of Williamson County,” 23 January 1925, p. 3.

[Local item, “Mr. and Mrs. Sebe Goodlett have moved to the Goodlett Park cottage”], 29 May 1925, p. 3.

“Folk-Lore in Williamson County,” 24 July 1925, p. 5.

“Universal Plans Party for Exhibitors,” 18 September 1925, p. 5.

“Englebrecht Buys Monarch Picture Theatre,” 8 June 1928, p. 1.

“Patsy Goodlett Is Victim of Heart Attack,” 7 June 1940, p. 1.

“Mrs. Sebe Goodlett Passes Away at Raton, N.M., Wednesday,” 4 September 1942, p. 8.

“Funeral Services for Mrs. Sebe Goodlett,” 11 September 1942, p. 5.

“Sebe Goodlett Wins Award of His Organization,” 1 February 1946, p. 1.

“Final Funeral Rites Held For Sebe Goodlett At Church of Christ,” 22 October 1948, p. 7.

“Georgetown To Have Swimming Pool Soon,” 7 July 1949, p. 1.

Beulah Gilbreath, “Park to preserve beauty,” 29 May 1975, p. 11.

“A Georgetown and Williamson County timeline,” 8 March 2023, pp. 1, 9 and 11.

Katherine Anthony, “Local Native American history explored during March 24 walk,” The Sunday Sun, 17 March 2024, p. 5.

Other newspapers

“Foot Is Crushed by Train,” Austin American-Statesman, March 1913, p. 6 (Georgetown dateline of 14 March).

“Monarch Theatre stands treat to baseball boys,” SU Megaphone (Southwestern University, Georgetown), 27 April 1920, p. 2.

“Goodlett-Sharpe,” SU Megaphone, 29 November 1921, p. 2.

“Much Building Activity at Georgetown,” Austin American-Statesman, 3 December 1921, p. 2.

“Tourist Park and Pleasure Resort For Georgetown,” The Austin American, 8 January 1924, p. 3.

“Stag,” “New Park Nearing Completion,” SU Megaphone, 8 April 1924, p. 1.

“Seniors Matinee at the Monarch Theatre,” SU Megaphone, 3 June 1924, p. 1.

“Goodlet Park Swimming Pool Closed,” The Bartlett Tribune (Bartlett, Texas), 24 July 1925.

County and state records

Delayed certificate of birth, Sebe Scott Goodlett, born 6 April 1895, filed 15 April 1942. Williamson County Court.

Marriage license no. 323, Sebe Goodlett and Frances Rachel Sharpe, issued 26 November 1921, solemnized 27 November 1921 by Horace W. Busby. Williamson County Clerk.

Standard certificate of death no. 40549, Infant Goodlett, Travis County, 30 December 1924. Texas State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.

Census and draft records

1910 U.S. census, Williamson County, Texas, Georgetown, enumeration district 117, sheet 17A, David J. Goodlett household.

1920 U.S. census, Williamson County, Texas, Georgetown, enumeration district 152, sheet 2A, Dave J. Goodlett household.

1930 U.S. census, Dallas County, Texas, Dallas, enumeration district 57-43, sheet 12B, Sebe S. and Frances R. Goodlett.

1940 U.S. census, Denver County, Colorado, Denver, enumeration district 16-201A, sheet 6B, Sebe and Frances Goodlett.

World War I draft registration card, Sebe Scott Goodlett, Williamson County, Texas, 5 June 1917.

World War II draft registration card (fourth registration), Sebe Scott Goodlett, Denver, Colorado, 1942.

Books

Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: Takachue Pouetsu, A Williamson County, Texas, History (Georgetown, Texas: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973), pp. 25 and 46.

Martha Mitten Allen, ed., Georgetown’s Yesteryears: A Special Place (Georgetown, Texas: The Georgetown Heritage Society, 1987), p. 31 (Ruth S. Carlson).

Online

Liz Weaver, post on the Georgetown standpipe, Facebook group, 2026, https://www.facebook.com/groups/3222582281327505/posts/4155759928009731/.

Helen Cordes, “Georgetown’s First Peoples,” Hidden HerStories and MoreStories, https://www.hiddenherstories.com/blog/first-peoples. Consulted 2 October 2026.

Maps

Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas, October 1925, sheets 1 (index map) and 5. Digital image, Sanborn map collection, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Photographs

Safety Last! (Hal Roach Studios, 1923), still of Harold Lloyd on the clock, Wikimedia Commons.

Stone studio portraits of Sebe and Frances Goodlett, undated, The Portal to Texas History (texashistory.unt.edu, metapth426898), crediting The Williamson Museum, accession 2006-015-325.

“Cars on street in Georgetown,” photograph by R. Stone, 1927, The Portal to Texas History, crediting The Williamson Museum.

“Stand Pipe and Fire Department,” Georgetown, Texas, undated printed view, photographer and publisher unknown. The banner and figure were added with Google Gemini in October 2026 from the description in the Williamson County Sun of 23 November 1923. It is not a photograph of the stunt.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

“What would you like this morning, Mrs. Wright?”

That’s how Hamilton Wright opened a column in the Williamson County Sun on February 4, 1971. He was 85, a retired Abilene newspaperman who’d grown up here, and he was remembering a morning in Georgetown in the late 1890s when a man tapped at the kitchen door to ask what the house needed for the day.

Wright had come to Georgetown in 1896, at 11, with his father, his older brother Jim, and a young stepmother from Oregon whom the boys had compromised on calling “Marie.” From 1898 they lived in a little house in the 200 block of Main, “a street then without numbers or name.” He said it was still standing when he drove past in 1977.

The man at the door was a grocery solicitor. In the 1890s, Wright explained, Georgetown grocers “dispatched men to homes to solicit. The solicitor made a round of homes, returned to the store, filled the orders, and made deliveries.” Within a couple of hours a horse-drawn wagon pulled up and the goods came in by the back door, checked against a list.

This solicitor didn’t carry a pad. He couldn’t have used one.

But this particular solicitor, a wizard at his task, was illiterate. His memory was simply amazing. He was as accurate as any normal solicitor who had written the items on a pad.

Young Wright stood in the kitchen and heard him repeat his stepmother’s order back to her, “the brand, the quantity, the price amount,” item by item, from memory. When the wagon came, the order was “precisely” what she’d asked for, “no item missing, none damaged, the exact poundage called for, and the very trade brand in the lot.” Wright never got over it. “How he did it will always be a mystery to me! What he lacked in letters he made up in memory.”

He remembered the man himself as “a genial, pleasant, rotund man, hailing you with a merry ‘Good morning!’” who was “always on the job” and “honest as the day was long.” He called him Mr. Forgy.

That’s all he had. No first name, no employer, no street. Wright closed with a line he probably didn’t think twice about: “Just what became of Mr. Forgy, we do not know!” Then, in a jump-to-page-four ending with a period and an exclamation point side by side: “We need more Forgies.!”

Three men who take orders

I’m not sure if anyone today remembers that this job existed, but Georgetown’s grocers left instructions.

In August 1898, H. Y. Allen ran an ad headed “Attention Please!” He had “three men who take orders every morning,” and if they hadn’t called on you and you wanted his trade, he’d send one. His delivery wagons left the store twice a day, at 9:30 in the morning and 6:30 in the evening. Then came the complaint that tells you the system was working almost too well: “We cannot afford to make 3 or 4 deliveries to the same house during the day.” Between rounds he wouldn’t deliver less than a dollar’s worth. “Think of what you want for the day while the solicitor is at your house.”

Allen wasn’t alone. Wright said “few other grocer solicitors could compete with Mr. Forgy,” which means there were others to compete with. At the New Year of 1900, Allen moved his store to the east side of the square, and the Sun reported that side “will now be known as ‘grocery row,’ there being three in a line.”

What the solicitors were carrying in their heads is on the page, too. Allen’s ad of November 1, 1900 offered California canned goods at 15 cents a can, three cans of tomatoes for a quarter, baking powder at 20 cents a pound in your choice of Perfect, Hughes or Kitchen Queen, Jonah flour at a dollar a sack, bacon at a dime a pound, and Chase & Sanborn coffee. Wright remembered the Saturday special, 21 pounds of sugar for a dollar. Those are the brands and poundages a man had to recite back at the kitchen door and again at the counter.

The telephone would eventually put the solicitor out of work. In December 1884 a letter in the Sun pitching a telephone exchange said the phone was “almost indispensable to the busy housewife, who can, by this means, order in five minutes, without any trouble, anything she needs, as groceries or marketing of any kind.” (I wrote about that letter in The Town Rules for the Phone.) In the 1890s, though, most Georgetown kitchens still didn’t have a phone. They had a man who came to the door.

Just what became of Mr. Forgy

Wright wondered what became of him, so I went looking for Mr. Forgy, expecting a quick answer. Wright wrote more than 100 columns for the Sun in the 1970s, and I archived all of them. Mr. Forgy appears only the one time. I search “Forgy” from 1880-1920; no results. I reviewed grocer’s ads from the 1890s. No Forgy. I pulled every man in Georgetown the 1900 census marked as unable to read or write, 40 of them, and went down the list. No Forgy, and nothing that sounded like Forgy.

I started to wonder whether Wright, a young boy at the time, had misheard the name.

The first crack came from a 1937 death certificate. I’d found a Charlie Forgy in the Sun in the 1920s. A Charles C. Forgy, 47, highway foreman, was killed when his niece lost control of their car on Highway 81 south of Belton. Residence: Georgetown. Buried in Georgetown the next day. Father, John Forgy. Charles was born in December 1889, far too young to be Wright’s grocery solicitor, but a Forgy family with Georgetown roots existed, and it had a father.

Then I found his stone. In the Odd Fellows Cemetery, Division C, a flat granite marker reads JOHN V. FORGY, with two dates, 1863 and 1898. A man born in 1863 was 35 in 1898, the right age to be rotund and genial in a boy’s memory, and he was dead the same year the Wrights moved to Main. Beside him, under a matching stone, lay Fannie Forgy Turner, who turned out to be Charles’s mother. I had the family. I still didn’t have a single line about John in the years Wright was talking about.

The second crack was the spelling. When I found John and Fannie’s 1882 marriage license, the county clerk had written the name twice, and both times he wrote Foggy. The Austin Statesman wrote Foggy in 1890. The Sun called him Foggy every time it mentioned him while he was alive. The family later spelled it Forgy, and so did Wright, and so did the stones. The paper, in his lifetime, never did. Once I searched for John Foggy, he came out of hiding.

A girl and a boy

John V. Forgy was born in Alabama in 1863. As a young man he drove stagecoaches “in various parts of the State.” On April 27, 1882, at a house in Round Rock, he married Fannie F. Charles, who was 14 or 15. By the summer of 1885 he was in Georgetown, 22 years old, “running an independent delivery wagon,” and that September the Sun noticed him “driving around in a bright, new wagon” built to carry “large freight or small packages.” He was a delivery man from his first month in town. By 1888 the paper was on joking terms with him: “A little son was born to Mr. and Mrs. John Foggy last Sunday morning. John says he is alright now, he has a girl and a boy.” In December 1889 the paper announced that “a prospective democratic voter” had arrived. That was how they announced the birth of Charlie.

In September 1890, a Jersey bull belonging to the Baptist pastor got Col. William Fleager down and was, in the Statesman’s words, “using him rough,” when “Mrs. John Foggy, wife of a near neighbor, went to his rescue, driving the bull away with rocks.” The colonel was badly hurt. Fannie, as far as the paper says, was fine.

John hauled for a living. In November 1891 he advertised “first class McAllister Screed Lump Coal” at $7 a ton, apply to John Foggy.

He worked for McDougle & Booty, whose ads invited you to “look at our show windows and make selection of fancy groceries. Prompt delivery.” In July 1897 the town chose a janitor for the public school building from ten applicants, and John Foggy was elected unanimously on the first ballot at $30 a month. That September, 8-year-old Charlie was playing on the school grounds “of which his father is janitor” when a grazing horse kicked him in the face and knocked out four front teeth. In November John resigned the janitorship.

After that the paper goes quiet on him for more than a year. That year is 1898, when the Wrights were living in the 200 block of Main and a rotund, cheerful man was coming to their kitchen door.

The stone said 1898

The stone said 1898, so that’s where I looked for the end of him. All twelve months of that year’s Sun are online. I searched it under Forgy and Foggy and Fogy, Forgey and Forgie, Porgy and Vorgy, Odd Fellows and funeral, and Fannie by herself. Nothing. I was ready to write this piece ending at the headstone, with what became of him still a mystery, which is where Wright had left it.

Then I searched for “janitor,” and the Sun handed me what I was searching for in their April 6, 1899 issue.

John Foggy Dead.

“Mr. John Foggy, a well known citizen of Georgetown, who had been ill several months with Bright’s disease, was found dead in his bed Saturday morning. The funeral occurred from the residence that afternoon and the interment was in the Odd Fellows cemetery, Rev. M. C. Hutton officiating at both places. The deceased, when well, was a very industrious man and liked by everybody. He came to Texas from Alabama, and spent several years driving stages in various parts of the State. He was married in this county and he resided in Georgetown ten or twelve years, during which he had worked for McDougle & Booty, by whom he was highly esteemed, had run a dray line, and for a term had been the public school janitor. So long as he was able to work his busy hands found something to do. His education was limited, but his marvelous memory almost supplied the want. He never forgot anything. A wife and two children survive him.”

He died on Saturday, April 1, 1899, at 35. The stone is a year off. It was cut decades later by people who were also five years off on Fannie’s birth, and nobody had reason to check.

Read the obituary again next to Wright. “His education was limited, but his marvelous memory almost supplied the want.” A man writing 72 years later, from a boyhood kitchen reminiscence: “What he lacked in letters he made up in memory.” Neither writer could have read the other. One knew him as a neighbor and the other as a boy, and they described the same man.

The last year fits too. Wright was 13 when John Foggy came to the door. Somewhere in the autumn of 1898 the man got sick and the rounds stopped, and a boy on Main Street never learned why. “Just what became of Mr. Forgy, we do not know!”

Orange Street

Fourteen months later, on June 13, 1900, the census taker came down Orange Street, which is 10th Street now, and found Fannie Foggy, 32, widow, dressmaker. She owned her house free of mortgage. She’d borne four children and buried two. Annie, 16, was apprenticed to a milliner. Charlie, 10, was in school. The families on either side were widows with daughters, sewing for a living.

Fannie married again, a man named Turner. In 1924 she was running the Farmers Lunch Room on North Brushy Street, meals 35 cents, board $5 a week, and signed the ad “Mrs. Fannie Foggy Turner.” She died in 1945 and was buried in Odd Fellows beside John, under a matching stone that reads FANNIE FORGY TURNER. She’d kept his name in the middle of hers for 46 years.

Charlie grew up here, married a Georgetown girl in 1912, and was brought home from Belton to be buried in December 1937. His obituary called him “a native of Georgetown.” He’s in the same plot as his parents, Division C, number 24, and so are his widow and his daughter Dorothy, both buried under the Forgy name. In the next plot over lies J. E. Cooper, who edited the Sun in 1885 and ran the item about a young man’s bright new delivery wagon.

Hamilton Wright never knew any of this. He carried a grocery solicitor’s name for 72 years without knowing what happened to him, and then he wrote it down. That’s the only reason anyone has to know John Foggy’s name today.

Wright ended his column, “We need more Forgies.” He was right. We need more Wrights, too. Somebody in Georgetown right now knows a Forgy that nobody has written down.

Sources

The Williamson County Sun

Hamilton Wright, “Grocery solicitor important Georgetown job in 1890s,” 4 February 1971, pp. 1 and 4.

Hamilton Wright, “Nostalgic beautiful recollection of hard but wonderful days in Georgetown,” 28 January 1971, p. 11.

Hamilton Wright, “Georgetown man boasted he had telephoned Little Rock,” The Sunday Sun, 29 May 1977, p. 12.

Hamilton Wright, “Trip to city park brings back memories,” The Sunday Sun, 11 December 1977, p. 4.

“Will We Have a Telephone Exchange?” (Communicated), 4 December 1884, p. 4.

“54 Years Ago” [reprinting the issue of 20 August 1885: “John Foggy is running an independent delivery wagon”], 18 August 1939, p. 1.

[Local item, John Foggy’s “bright, new wagon”], 3 September 1885, p. 3.

[Local item, “A little son was born to Mr. and Mrs. John Foggy”], 28 June 1888, p. 3.

[Local item, “A prospective democratic voter was born to Mr. and Mrs. John Foggy”], 19 December 1889, p. 4.

“Coal! Coal!” [advertisement, John Foggy], 12 November 1891, p. 4.

McDougle & Booty, reader advertisements [”fancy groceries. Prompt delivery”], 18 October 1894, p. 5.

[Proceedings, John Foggy elected janitor of the public school building], 15 July 1897, p. 1.

“Kicked By A Horse,” 16 September 1897, p. 1.

[Proceedings, John Foggy’s resignation as janitor accepted], 11 November 1897, p. 1.

H. Y. Allen, “Attention Please!” [advertisement], 4 August 1898, p. 5.

“John Foggy Dead,” 6 April 1899, p. 8.

“Changing Around,” 4 January 1900, p. 1.

H. Y. Allen, “If You Can Do Better Don’t Take Them” [advertisement], 1 November 1900, p. 8.

“Licensed to Wed,” 31 October 1912, p. 2.

The Farmers Lunch Room [advertisement, Mrs. Fannie Foggy Turner], 8 August 1924, p. 5.

Other printed sources

“Georgetown Topics,” Austin Daily Statesman, 6 September 1890, p. 1.

“Llano Man Dies As Niece Loses Control of Car,” The Austin American, 11 December 1937, p. 1.

“Llano Man Killed In Accident,” The Llano News (Llano, Texas), 16 December 1937, p. 1.

County and state records

Marriage license no. 495, John Foggy and Fannie F. Charles, issued at Georgetown 27 April 1882, solemnized at Round Rock the same day, returned 29 April 1882. Williamson County Clerk.

Standard certificate of death no. 58220, Chas. C. Forgy, Bell County, 10 December 1937. Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.

Standard certificate of death no. 18380, Mrs. Fannie Turner, Williamson County, 5 April 1945. Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.

1900 U.S. census, Williamson County, Texas, Precinct 1, Georgetown, enumeration district 123, sheet 18A, dwelling 343, family 348, Fannie Foggy household.

Cemetery records

Odd Fellows Cemetery, Georgetown, online plot map, Division C, plot 24: John V. Forgy, Fannie Forgy Turner, Charles C. Forgy, Mabel Forgy Prichard, Dorothy Forgy Trammel. Consulted 26 September 2026.

Find a Grave, memorials 8293694 (John V. Forgy) and 8293704 (Fannie Forgy Turner), Odd Fellows Cemetery, Georgetown.

Photographs

The Forgy stones, Odd Fellows Cemetery, Division C, plot 24, by John Christeson, Find a Grave.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

If you’ve been around for red poppy season, you probably know Edwards Park even if you’ve never noticed its name. It’s the green block at 704 Ash Street, between 7th and 8th, with the swings and the wood chips and, in a good spring, a field of red poppies in bloom. A neighbor on East 7th wrote to the Sun in 2023 that the park had been “a neighborhood legend to local portrait studios.” When the Sunday Sun wants to tell Georgetown that poppy season has started, it runs photos from this park.

Have you ever noticed the round stone on display at the corner?

It stands near the Ash Street corner on a squat masonry pedestal, a dark gray sphere about two and a half feet across, gone orange in patches with lichen. There’s no sign on it, no plaque nearby, nothing to say what it is or why it’s there.

I photographed it in February this year, on a walk with my dogs, with no idea what I was looking at. It seemed like the sort of thing that should have an explanation attached. I thought I might look into it one day, then I forgot all about it.

The cave rock

Earlier this week, I noticed the stone in Donna Scarbrough Josey’s Images of America: Georgetown, on page 119, in a photograph by Sarah Raach.

The caption calls it “the 30-inch, spherical rock displayed at the corner of Eighth and Elm,” says it’s been “a Georgetown curiosity since 1930,” that it came out of a Rockdale coal mine 100 feet down, that W. W. Edwards bought it and had L. P. Imhoff drill into it, and that it broke. “Cemented back together, there is still no consensus about its origin.” The caption adds that some people call it the “cave rock.”

(The corner is 8th and Ash, not 8th and Elm. Elm is the far side of the block.)

A curiosity since 1930, with no agreement about where it came from, with a name I’d never heard anywhere? That was enough to send me to the newspapers.

The gift

On May 6, 1930, W. W. Edwards signed a deed conveying to the City of Georgetown the east half of Lots 1 through 4 in Block 29 of Glasscock’s Addition. The consideration was $10 and Edwards had conditions: the City had to call it Edwards Park, and the land was to be used exclusively as a public park. If it ever stopped being one, the land would go back to Edwards and his heirs. The council named it Edwards Park on May 12.

Edwards was a grocer who’d come to Georgetown in 1907, put up buildings that became known as the Edwards Block on West 8th in 1924, and retired in 1930. He was 59, though the Sun would later remember him as “a rather elderly Georgetown man.” He was born in Milam County.

He also gave the town a large spherical rock.

Is it cement, or is it not?

The Sun ran the story on May 16, 1930, and Southwestern’s student paper reprinted it four days later, which is lucky, because the 1930 Sun is missing from the digital archive.

The stone had been found in one of the coal mines at Rockdale, in Milam County, resting on top of a vein of coal, 100 feet down under rock and dirt. It was round “as any baseball,” stood 30 inches high and weighed about 2,500 pounds. Edwards heard about it, bought it, and had it trucked to Georgetown.

Wanting to know what it was, he had a hole drilled into it at L. P. Imhoff’s machine shop at the foot of Jail Hill. The stone turned out to be as hard as marble, and partway through the drilling it broke into three pieces.

That’s when the speculation started.

The inside was dark gray and looked, in the Sun’s words, like “a very fine cement.” People whose opinion was “presumed to be good in such matters” examined it and said it was natural, not made by man. The doubters had one stubborn piece of evidence:

“However, a few laymen are interested to know, if it was not made, why were pieces of wood found inside?”

There was wood in it. Imhoff kept one of the fragments and took a piece of wood out of it himself, a splinter with a hole running through, the hole filled with the same material as the stone. The Austin American, which sent its own report to Austin that same day, measured the piece at roughly three quarters of an inch wide and six inches long, and had the workmen concluding from it that the stone had been formed from something pliable.

The Austin paper’s story disagrees with the Sun on several details. It puts the stone 90 feet down instead of 100, says Edwards had it drilled at his home rather than at Imhoff’s shop, calls it hard as granite instead of marble, and has “geologists” declaring it a natural stone “worn round by its meanderings over the earth.” Two reporters worked the same rock story in the same week and came away with different notes, which is how we can tell the Austin story isn’t a reprint of the Sun’s.

Nobody resolved it. The Sun let the speculation run all the way to the Temple of Solomon, wondering whether some ancient builder without access to brass or good clay might have cast his ornamental spheres out of cement instead, and then gave up honestly:

“And so it goes the whole gamut of speculation, yet the question remains, ‘What is it?’”

The three pieces were cemented back together. The City poured a foundation, and a receptacle for a flagstaff was set into the top of the stone, so that the thing could serve, as the paper put it, “as a curiosity and a bearer of the Stars and Stripes on this playground dedicated to the childhood of this community.”

The hole is still there in the top of the stone. I stood over it yesterday and looked down into it, almost 100 years later.

The seams are still there too, a line running around the sphere below its middle with another dropping into it from the crown. You can see exactly where it came apart.

Whattizit

Georgetown kept talking about it. The Sun, looking back at that spring, called it “the mysterious rock,” and said the story of it “stirred the minds of a number of people.” Their own stories started coming in at the paper’s office. Mrs. O. T. Cate of North Georgetown, then in her 74th year, remembered a round rock dug out of a well at Hopewell near Liberty Hill more than 50 years earlier, broken open to reveal a live black snake the size of a pencil. A Round Rock man had found a live green frog in solid rock while digging bridge footings. Another man had found one at a bridge over the San Saba.

The city was working on the park that same summer. City Marshal C. J. Brady finished a set of new walks, noticed the possibilities of the little stream running through the ground, and put his men to work on a sunken garden.

Forty-five years later, something taken for a meteor crossed the sky over this part of Texas in a blinding light, and Mrs. Sam Harris thought of the rock in Edwards Park. She was Charles Brady’s daughter. The Sun sent Fred Millholin back to the 1930 clipping, and on May 29, 1975, the paper ran his retelling on the front page under the headline “Fred Millholin explains Georgetown’s ‘Whattizit’.” The photograph on page 14 is captioned METEORITE at EDWARDS PARK, which is not what the article says. Millholin wrote that many believed it a meteor and that “its origin has never been determined.”

A stone out of a coal mine had become a meteorite, at least in a caption. The article called the thing the Whattizit, and that name at least came from the town. The “cave rock” turns up once, in Josey’s book 35 years later, but not in anything else I’ve found in print.

What came later

The park got on with being a park. Marvin Edwards, one of W. W.’s sons, was building a new house in October 1931 on East 7th at the northwest corner of what the paper called the Edwards Park plat, so the family kept its corner of the block after handing the park half to the town. Children played baseball and football there until San Gabriel Park came along with real stadiums.

In 1944 the City bought the west half of two of the lots from Edwards’s daughter, Lela Mae Ischy, and leased that ground to the American Legion’s Abe Harrison Post 174 for 99 years. The Legion put up a hall, in use by the spring of 1946, and the Boy Scouts who met there used the park. In 1964 a neighbor asked to fence part of the park, W. C. “Wiggie” Shell objected at the council meeting, and the council answered by ordering a fence around the whole park instead. The Sun, reporting the dispute, reached back to the reverter clause in the 1930 deed. The Sun ran a feature a week later headlined “Edwards Park Is Oldest in Town,” which noted, in passing, that somebody had recently suggested putting up a sign with the park’s name on it.

By January 1972 the hall had sat empty four or five years. Kennie Wilcox came to the council on the Legion’s behalf and asked how the city would feel about simply being given the building. There was a $300 note outstanding on a new roof. It seemed a shame, he said, to let such a nice building deteriorate. The mayor said the city had been looking for somewhere to put a day care center, and that this building, on its grassy wooded lot near the center of population, would be ideal.

It became the Mary Bailey Child Development Center, named for the Georgetown teacher who ran the West Side Kindergarten. By 1977 the town was calling it the Head Start Building and planning picnic benches for the park around it. Mary Bailey is a story all on her own, and she’ll get her own piece here one day.

Still no sign for the relic

The park is still a park. The City’s sign reads: GEORGETOWN PARKS AND RECREATION, Edwards Park, 704 Ash Street. The condition in the deed is still being met almost a century later, and the name Edwards still sits on the corner where he wanted it.

The rock is still there too, with lichen on it and a hole in its top, and there’s still nothing anywhere on that block to tell you what you’re looking at. The 1964 suggestion was for a sign carrying the park's name, and that one did eventually get installed in limestone, across the grass from the stone that still carries no explanation.

It may be that nobody could ever agree on what a sign should say. The men called in to look at it in 1930 pronounced it natural, while the doubters kept pointing at the wood inside. A caption writer in 1975 settled the matter by calling it a meteorite, while the article accompanying it made no such claim. Josey’s book, 80 years after the drilling, still allows that there’s “no consensus about its origin.”

Rock? Meteorite? Ancient ornamental sphere? Whatever it is, Georgetown has kept it around for generations without anyone in charge feeling the need to explain it.

Sources

The Williamson County Sun

“Peculiar Rock Taken From Earth’s Depths: W. W. Edwards Purchased Curiosity and Drilled It to Ascertain Nature of Stone,” 16 May 1930. Read here in the Megaphone reprint below; 1930 is missing from the digital archive of the Sun.

“Georgetown Flower Show April 16th” [the American Legion Memorial Hall on East Eighth Street in use], 5 April 1946, p. 1.

“Retired Businessman Died Sunday: Rites for W. W. Edwards Were Held Tuesday at Family Residence,” 13 August 1948, p. 5.

[Council report, Wiggie Shell’s objection to fencing the children’s park next to the Legion Hall], 15 October 1964, p. 2.

“Did You Know? Edwards Park Is Oldest in Town,” 22 October 1964, p. 7, with photograph “Edwards Park -- Gift to the City.”

[Council report, Kennie Wilcox and the American Legion’s offer of its building], 13 January 1972, p. 9.

“Mrs. Mary Bailey, 84, prominent educator, buried here Tuesday,” 15 February 1973, p. 19.

Fred Millholin, “Fred Millholin explains Georgetown’s ‘Whattizit’,” 29 May 1975, p. 1, continued p. 14 with photograph captioned “METEORITE at EDWARDS PARK.”

Fred Millholin’s Yesteryears, “45 Years Ago” [the volunteer firemen’s barbecue at the new Edwards Park, and the rock stories coming in at the Sun office], 29 May 1975, p. 2.

Fred Millholin’s Yesteryears, “I Love Cool Shade and Lemonade,” 45 Years Ago [City Marshal C. J. Brady’s new walks and sunken garden], 19 June 1975, p. 2.

“City completed broad improvements during Mayor Crawford’s terms,” Georgetown Sunday Sun, 4 January 1976, pp. 1 and 12.

Yesteryears by Doris Clifford, “46 Years Ago” [Marvin Edwards building at the northwest corner of the Edwards Park plat, from the Sun of 9 October 1931], 6 October 1977, pp. 2 and 3.

“PEP talk” [Georgetown Beautification Project; landscaping for Edwards Park and the Head Start Building], 15 December 1977, p. 6.

Trent Jacobs, “Requiem for the Red Poppies in Edwards Park” [letter], 15 March 2023, p. 4.

Brigid Cooley, “Old Town walk explores red poppy history,” 26 April 2023, pp. 1 and 9.

“Poppy season begins,” photographs by Andy Sharp, The Sunday Sun, 23 March 2025, p. 1.

Other printed sources

“Peculiar Rock Taken From Earth’s Depths,” reprinted from the Williamson County Sun of 16 May 1930 in The Megaphone (Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas), 20 May 1930, p. 3.

“Georgetown Business Man Donates Unusual Stone to City for Mounting in Municipal Park,” The Austin American, 17 May 1930, p. 9, datelined Georgetown, 16 May.

“Centex Kindergarten Grows” [Mrs. Mary Bailey’s West Side Kindergarten], The Austin American, 25 March 1965, p. C15.

Donna Scarbrough Josey, Georgetown, Images of America series (Arcadia Publishing, 2010), p. 119; photograph by Sarah Raach, Williamson County Sun.

County and city records

Deed, W. W. Edwards to the City of Georgetown, 6 May 1930, recorded 9 May 1930. Williamson County Deed Records, instrument 1930-01170.

Deed, W. W. Edwards and wife Lucy to their daughter Lela May Ischy, 8 August 1934. Williamson County Deed Records, vol. 270, pp. 516-517.

Deed, Lela Mae Ischy and Philip Ischy to the City of Georgetown, 16 September 1944. Williamson County Deed Records, vol. 323, p. 507.

Resolution and 99-year lease, City of Georgetown to Abe Harrison Post No. 174, American Legion, 15 December 1944, vol. 324; replaced by resolution and corrected lease, 14 January 1946, vol. 332, pp. 283-284.

Georgetown City Council minutes, 12 October 1964, minute book pp. 396-397.

Maps

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas, surveyed October 1925, sheet 5, block 29.

Williamson County Appraisal District parcel map, block 29, consulted September 2026.

Photographs

Amanda Durdin, the rock at Edwards Park, 13 February 2026 and 18 September 2026.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

In April of 1889, Georgetown told the Austin Weekly Statesman it had “all the necessary adjuncts which go to make up the full list of a full-fledged metropolitan city.” A year later, almost to the day, on April 17, 1890, the Williamson County Sun ran this on page 2:

GEORGETOWN NOT A CITY. A TOWN ELECTION ORDERED.

Nothing had happened to the town. The stores were open and the mayor was still the mayor, more or less. What had happened was that somebody finally reviewed the paperwork.

I promised you this one back in August, at the end of the first Booster Shot post on Facebook, so here it is.

The Question

J. F. Taulbee had just been elected city attorney. By his own account the question “was being generally discussed” when he took office: was Georgetown legally a city at all? He went looking, and what he found went into an open letter to the voters dated April 12.

The Legislature had chartered the town of Georgetown on March 8, 1871. On July 7, 1879, the town council had voted to accept a state law that let a place trade its special charter for the general law governing cities, and from that night on Georgetown called itself a city: city council, city attorney, city secretary, four wards with an alderman each. The trouble was with that single word. The 1875 law was open to “any city” of 1,000 people or more. Georgetown’s charter said it was a town. Size had nothing to do with it. The law simply didn’t apply to towns, and the Legislature didn’t pass one that did until 1885.

Taulbee put it plainly: “we have an incorporated town without officers.”

The 1879 minute book, which the City Secretary's office has online in its public records, shows the moment it went wrong. The clerk headed the entry “The Town Council met,” then recorded a resolution passed “by the Mayor and board of Aldermen of the City of Georgetown.” They called it a city in the act of trying to become one. The certificate they sent to the courthouse that December was signed “with scrolls for seals,” because the city didn’t have a seal. One of the three aldermen voting yes that night was W. K. Makemson.

Saturday’s Paperwork

Mayor E. A. Strickland and Taulbee went down to Austin on Friday, April 11, and talked it over with A. W. Terrell, Judge A. S. Walker “and others.” Everyone agreed. Not a city, only a town, and a town whose officers had all been elected under the wrong law.

Saturday’s paper trail, every piece of it dated April 12, is quite entertaining.

The 1871 charter had a clause for exactly this situation. Five citizens could call a town election on 5 days’ notice, but only “should said mayor and marshal fail or refuse” to call one themselves. Five citizens, W. K. Makemson first among them, with J. E. Cooper, Cooper Sansom, S. T. Atkin and H. C. Purl, duly asked the mayor and the marshal to order an election. Both men answered in the same 6 words: “I refuse to order said election.” Strickland signed as Acting Mayor. C. J. Brady signed as Acting Marshal. The five citizens then gave notice of an election for Friday the 18th.

The Sun explained the refusals as “uncertainty as to the right of the Mayor and Marshal to exercise the functions of their offices,” which was true. It’s also true that the charter only handed those five men their power after a refusal, and that the plan they were carrying out was Strickland’s own. I read the refusals as the mayor holding a door open.

Taulbee, meanwhile, signed his letter “City Attorney.” The same issue of the paper noted that the law for towns “makes no provision for the office of ... city attorney.” Makemson, who had voted Georgetown into a city 11 years earlier, was now the first name on the petition to undo it.

Tuesday Night

The citizens met at the courthouse on Tuesday, April 15. J. E. Cooper took the chair. Cooper had founded the Sun, so the newspaper covering the meeting belonged to the man who was running the meeting.

Two plans were on the table. Strickland’s was to elect town officers on Friday and then use the 1885 law to become a city, properly this time. T. B. Cochran’s was to keep the town charter and ask the next Legislature for a new one with bigger limits. Makemson thought Cochran’s law “would be unconstitutional” and backed the mayor, and R. H. Price sided with Makemson. “The meeting adjourned without reaching any conclusion.” The Sun then reached one: “the Sun thinks the latter course is the most advisable.”

By press time, a ticket had been agreed on for Friday. W. Y. Penn for mayor (the jeweler, “an elastic fountain Penn” in the 1889 article), C. J. Brady for marshal, and J. R. Roberts, J. L. Brittain, Fred R. Scott and W. Patrick for aldermen. Strickland wasn’t on it. “So far as the Sun is aware,” the paper said, “no other citizens intend to be candidates.”

The last line of the column: “Mr. George Irvine authorizes the Sun to state that he is a candidate for alderman.”

Friday

The election “passed very quietly.” Penn got 249 of 250 votes for mayor and Brady 248 for marshal.

The aldermen were another matter. George Irvine, the man from the last line, topped the poll with 192. J. W. Whittle, whose name hadn’t appeared anywhere the week before, took 161. Two of the agreed ticket’s four went home: Fred R. Scott with 69 votes and W. Patrick with 114.

Wednesday Night

The new town council held its first regular meeting on Wednesday, April 23, and worked through its own charter in order.

Section 6 said the council should elect one of its members treasurer and secretary at its first regular meeting. They elected Whittle, the surprise alderman. Then they adopted a corporate seal, “a five pointed star encircled by the words ‘Georgetown Texas.’” As far as the records show, it was the first seal the corporation had ever owned; the 1879 paperwork had made do with scrolls. The 1885 law required the town’s copy to be certified “under the corporate seal,” and the town made one the night it needed one.

Brittain moved and Irvine seconded that the town accept Title 17 of the Revised Statutes “in lieu of the existing charter of this town approved March 8, 1871, and that this town be hereafter known as the City of Georgetown.” Ayes and nays, unanimous. That was 5 days after the election, well inside the 30 days Taulbee had promised.

The minute book’s last lines for the Town of Georgetown, in Whittle’s hand: “No further business appearing the Council adjourned sine die.” Sine die is Latin for “without a day.” An ordinary meeting adjourns to the next one. A body that adjourns sine die is adjourning with no date to meet again, because it’s finished for good. That’s the phrase a legislature uses when a session ends, and Whittle underlined it. The town council had no reason to meet again, because the next time it met, it would be the city council.

Thursday, 2 p.m.

The 1885 law didn’t make the change take effect at the vote. It took effect “from and after the filing.” Georgetown became a city not at the council table but at the county clerk’s desk, when J. W. Hodges took the certified copy at 2:00 on Thursday afternoon, April 24, 1890. He recorded it the following Monday under the heading Town of Georgetown Changed to City of Georgetown, in volume 53 of the deed records, pages 56 to 58, in among everybody’s land.

On Friday the city council met. Mayor Penn appointed J. F. Taulbee city attorney, the office he had been signing under all along, and the council confirmed him unanimously. A city needed 5 aldermen where a town had 4, so an election was called for a fifth. On Monday the council passed a police ordinance and put the printing out to bid. The Gazette underbid the Sun. The paper whose founder had chaired the meeting, signed the petition, and endorsed the whole plan lost the contract to print it.

The Money

The reason anyone cared was money (because of course it was). In 1883 the “city” of Georgetown had issued $36,000 in bonds to build the waterworks, the “perfect system of water works” the 1889 article bragged about. A town charter gave no power to borrow like that. If Georgetown had never legally become a city, then legally it had never had the power to issue those bonds, and the people who’d bought them were holding paper signed by a government that hadn’t existed. That was the real problem behind the April 1890 headline. Whether the mayor was really the mayor could be fixed with an election, but the waterworks debt couldn’t.

The Legislature fixed that part in March 1891 with a general act declaring that towns which had “attempted” to become cities without the right to were cities after all, and that what they’d done in the meantime counted. There was one limit. Their past acts were only good as far as a proper city could have gone under the general law, and a proper city could only borrow what its tax base would support. Georgetown’s in 1883 wouldn’t support $36,000. City Attorney R. E. Brooks did the sums that October and told the council each bond was good “in the proportion of $21,518.15 to $36,000.00,” or about 60 cents on the dollar. The way out was the waterworks themselves. In June 1893 the Sun reported a telegram from the bondholders saying they’d be in town as soon as the papers were ready “to close the contract for transferring the water works to them.” The city that had bragged in 1889 about owning its “perfect system of water works” sold the system. The buyer, that October, was a New York investment house, W. N. Coler & Co., which promised to extend the mains and, as a bonus, put in electric lights. By the summer of 1894 the city was certifying under its seal that it owed nothing on the old bonds at all, the Attorney General had looked over the 1890 paperwork twice and pronounced Georgetown “legally Incorporated,” and the council was issuing $21,000 in new bonds for a public school. The Sun summed up the whole episode that December in one line: “with their sale the difficulties vanished.”

The Georgetown Public School building sat on University between Austin and Main (on the block where Dos Salsas is today) from 1894 until it was demolished in 1957, but I’ll save the rest of its story for another day.

Pick a Date

If you ask when Georgetown was incorporated, you have options.

September 26, 1866, when the Legislature first chartered a town of a few blocks between Glasscock’s addition and Rolling Street.

March 8, 1871, when it repealed that act and re-chartered the town a mile square, with the governor appointing the first officers.

July 7, 1879, when the town voted itself a city without a law to support it.

April 24, 1890, at 2 p.m., when it became one.

In 1935 the City Secretary certified on an official form that the City of Georgetown was “incorporated in 1871,” and I can’t technically say that was wrong.

The 1889 booster article, for what it’s worth, said Georgetown was “organized as a city in 1868; Esquire Page the first mayor.” I’ve found no record that supports that (which isn’t surprising, since the Sun doesn’t go back that far), but we could add it to the pile of dates.

The town that called itself a city for 11 years fixed it in 6 days, at a clerk’s desk, in the time it took to write the word 'Filed.' Then it got on with being a city, which it had been doing all along.

Sources

Newspapers

“GEORGETOWN. The Principal Points and Surroundings About a Live Texas Town,” Austin Weekly Statesman, 18 April 1889, p. 10; digital images, Newspapers.com.

All Sun items below are from The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas); digital images, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed July–September 2026). Untitled local items are described in brackets.

“Georgetown Not a City. A Town Election Ordered” [with City Attorney J. F. Taulbee’s address to the voters, the five citizens’ application, the mayor’s and marshal’s refusals and the election notice], 17 April 1890, p. 2.

“Citizen’s Meeting,” 17 April 1890, p. 2.

“The Election” [returns of the 18 April town election], 24 April 1890, p. 4.

“Proceedings of the Town Council” and “City Council,” 1 May 1890, p. 2.

“The City and the Waterworks” [City Attorney R. E. Brooks’s opinion to the council], 15 October 1891, p. 2.

[Local item, telegram from the holders of the water works bonds], 29 June 1893, p. 3.

[Local item, W. N. Coler & Co. of New York buy the waterworks from the city], 12 October 1893, p. 2.

“Thousands Invested in Georgetown,” 2 November 1893, p. 2.

“New Public School Building. Corner Stone Laid,” 13 December 1894, p. 3.

“Cornerstone Relocated” [photograph and caption; the old school “torn down a few months ago”], 30 May 1957, p. 4.

Fred Millholin, “Former SUN editor writes of public education in Georgetown,” 13 September 1973, sec. 2, p. 3.

City and county records

City records are from the City of Georgetown records archive, City Secretary’s historic documents (records.georgetowntexas.gov), with Laserfiche document numbers in parentheses.

Town Council minutes, 7 July 1879, minute book p. 9 (539912).

“Corporation of Georgetown Adoption of Title XVII. Revised Statutes,” the council’s certificate of its 7 July 1879 resolution, signed “with scrolls for seals” and filed with the county clerk 1 December 1879; certified copy of Williamson County record book p. 338 (459958).

Town Council minutes, 23 April 1890, minute record pp. 7–9 (677971).

“Town of Georgetown Changed to City of Georgetown,” certified copy of the town council’s resolution of 23 April 1890, filed 24 April 1890 at 2 p.m. and recorded 28 April 1890. Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records, vol. 53, pp. 56–58, instrument 24318; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown. The images in this post are from pp. 56 and 58, with the “Unofficial Document” watermark on the digital copy removed for legibility.

Bond transcript for the city’s 1893 waterworks bonds and 1894 public school building bonds, February to July 1894, including the Attorney General’s certificates of 21 February and 25 July 1894 and the “Statement of the Indebtedness of the City of Georgetown, Texas, on July 16th, 1894” (507514).

M. L. Cates, City Secretary, certificate of incorporation and tax rate, 25 June 1935 (469228).

Laws

“An Act to incorporate the town of Georgetown, in Williamson County,” ch. XX, Special Laws, 11th Legislature, approved 26 September 1866; reprinted in H. P. N. Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897 (Austin: Gammel Book Co., 1898), vol. 5.

“An Act to reincorporate and grant a new charter to the town of Georgetown ...,” ch. V, Special Laws, 12th Legislature, approved 8 March 1871, pp. 9–11; digital images, Legislative Reference Library of Texas (lrl.texas.gov).

“An Act regulating the incorporation of cities of one thousand inhabitants and over ...,” ch. C, General Laws, 14th Legislature, approved 15 March 1875; Gammel, The Laws of Texas, vol. 8.

Article 340b, Revised Civil Statutes (towns and villages of 1,000 or more may adopt the general law for cities), ch. 60, General Laws, 19th Legislature, approved 27 March 1885; Gammel, The Laws of Texas, vol. 9.

Article 340c, Revised Civil Statutes (validating earlier attempts to become cities), ch. 25, General Laws, 22nd Legislature, 1891; Gammel, The Laws of Texas, vol. 10.

Other printed sources

Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: A Williamson County, Texas, History (Georgetown, Texas: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973), p. 263.

Maps

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas. Georgetown, Tex., September 1900, sheet 4 (“Georgetown Public School,” on the block bounded by Brushy [now Austin Avenue], Main, Cedar [11th] and University Avenue). Originals at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Photographs

Williamson County Courthouse, 1878–1910, undated photograph. Williamson County, Texas, county history pages, “1870 to 1879, Part II” (wilcotx.gov/1641).

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

On the 28th of May, 1885, the Williamson County Sun introduced the town’s new telephone exchange, and then it gave a good bit of the front page to explaining how to actually use a telephone.

DIRECTIONS FOR USING TELEPHONES.

1. In calling up the Central Office, give one ring, then place the Phone to your ear immediately.

2. As soon as the operator speaks, say whom you wish to be connected. If the party is not engaged, the operator will say “all right;” if engaged will notify you.

3. If party does not answer within a reasonable time, hang the Phone on the hook and ring, remove Phone from hook at once, place it to the ear and await reply.

4. When through speaking, hang the Phone on the hook and give one short, quick ring for disconnection.

5. When called, remove the Phone from the hook, place it to the ear and ask, “What is it?”

6. The Phone should remain on the hook when not in use, otherwise calls cannot be made.

7. To hear distinctly, press the phone to the ear.

That last one is my favorite. Press the phone to the ear. Someone found it genuinely necessary to print that.

Then came the General Observations, such as:

“Always be polite to the operators and they will be polite to you.”

Georgetown had owned a telephone exchange for about three months when that ran. Getting one had taken a year and a half, one failed subscription drive, an anonymous letter that named names in print, and a great deal of nagging from the paper now doing the explaining.

Neither Will Be Established

The Sun had been at this since the summer before. In June 1884 it wrote that “the water works and the ice factory are soon to be in operation. Now let us have a telephone exchange and a cotton factory.” In July it tried again, in five words: “Georgetown must have a telephone exchange.” Two weeks later it called the exchange “the next convenience Georgetown must have.”

On a Thursday at the end of that July, a man from Austin set a telephone on a table in the office of the Slaton hotel, and Georgetown lined up to take turns talking into it. They talked to Round Rock. They talked to Austin, and Temple, and Belton. Archie Watson, who managed the Austin telephone exchange, had brought the instrument up himself and put it through over the Texas Telegraph-Telephone company’s wires, and the Sun reported, with some wonder, that “conversations were held by various persons here with persons in the other places named.”

Then Watson passed the hat. He wanted three hundred dollars toward running a line to town, and thirty people willing to rent an instrument if an exchange were ever built.

He got about a hundred and sixty dollars, and eleven potential subscribers.

The Sun printed the result on the 7th of August without any softening: “…the telephone company withdraws the proposition to establish a line and exchange on the terms named, and neither will be established.”

It seemed like a flat, final sentence. The Sun was disappointed in its town.

Nine More

By September the paper was back at it, and the situation had changed. Georgetown had telephone service. The Erie company had leased the frontier telegraph company’s lines, and there was a telephone office in town where you could go and make a call. What the town did not have was an exchange. The town could talk to Austin. It could not talk to itself.

The man who expected to run it, if it ever existed, was E. H. Bobo, and the Sun let him describe what he had in mind. The office would be centrally located, well furnished, attractive, “comfortably and conveniently arranged, so that ladies, gentlemen and children can all feel at home there, and enjoy visits to the office.”

On the 2nd of October the Sun gave the subject six words and a paragraph to itself: “Wake up on the telephone exchange.”

What finally moved it was a letter. On the 4th of December the paper ran a long unsigned piece headed “Will We Have a Telephone Exchange?” Whoever wrote it understood the problem:

“There are, however, some who think they will wait till their neighbors take a ‘phone before they will subscribe; that they do not need a ‘phone unless they are in use all over town... Now this is the very thing that keeps the company from establishing an exchange.”

Everybody wanted to be the second person in town with a telephone. Nobody wanted to be the first.

The letter did the arithmetic in public. The company had originally wanted 30 instruments; it would now settle for 25. Sixteen were spoken for. Nine more would do it. A business telephone cost $5 a month and a residence $4. It mentioned, in passing, that a telephone was “almost indispensable to the busy housewife,” who could order her groceries in five minutes instead of spending an hour sending for them. Then it got to the part I suspect actually worked, which was shame: “Our sister cities all have exchanges. Belton, Lampasas, Austin, and even Temple has over fifty ‘phones.”

Anyone wishing to subscribe could leave their name at Taylor’s Bank, or with H. R. Rives at the Slaton hotel.

Five weeks later, on the 8th of January 1885, the Sun printed one sentence: “The requisite number of subscriptions for a telephone exchange here have obtained.” By the end of the month the materials had arrived.

Up the Steps

On the 5th of February, this:

“The room next to Dr. Crawford’s office, over Booty’s store, has been leased as the office of the telephone exchange, which is soon to be in working order.”

Booty Bros. kept a store at the corner of Oak and Brushy streets, now the northwest corner of Eighth Street and Austin Avenue, a corner you have almost certainly walked past. It was two stories of stone: dry goods, hats, boots and shoes and notions on the ground floor, and upstairs the Odd Fellows’ hall and a row of rooms rented out by the room.

You didn’t get up there through the store. You went around the side and climbed up.

At the top of the stairs was the dentist.

Dr. B. C. Crawford had been in Georgetown for years by then, and when the Sun wrote him up the following October it placed him precisely: “an elegantly fitted up office in the second story of the Booty building, just at the head of the stairs.” The town business census that April counted seven physicians and exactly one dentist, so there is no ambiguity about which man this was. The paper also assured readers, warmly, that “the Doctor extracts teeth without pain.”

The telephone exchange was the next room along.

23 Names

On the 12th of March the Sun published the first Georgetown telephone directory. Here is the whole of it:

1. Dr. J. N. H. Huggins, residence

2. Slaton Hotel

3. Ellyson & Penn, livery stable

4. D. H. Snyder, residence

5. John Sparks, residence

6. W. L. Mann, drug store

7. Georgetown Ice Co.

8. T. S. Snyder, residence

9. Dr. J. E. Walker, residence

10. Sanders & Lesesne, drug store

11. Water Works office

12. L. R. Carpenter, depot

13. Rucker & Montgomery, store

14. Dr. W. P. Fleming, residence

15. J. T. Olive, court-house

16. Oliver Steele, store

17. Emzy Taylor, banker

18. Sun Office

19. Booty & McDougle, store

20. Pump house

21. S. T. Atkin, residence

22. Dr. H. N. Graves, residence

23. Rev. Jas. Mackey, residence

That is the entire network. Everyone in Georgetown who could be telephoned, in one column of newsprint.

Four doctors, both drug stores, the courthouse, the waterworks and its pump house, the ice company, the depot, the hotel, the livery stable, the banker, three stores, and the newspaper at number 18. The institutions of the town, its emergencies, and its money, and nine residences.

Do you see any familiar names?

That April the Sun counted the town’s businesses at a reader’s request, “for the information of friends in an older state.” Sixteen lawyers, three meat markets, a skating rink, a shooting gallery, two fire companies, and, tucked into the list, “telephone exchange and office, 1; telephone lines to other places, 3.” Three wires out of Georgetown, and one room they all came home to.

What It Cost to Talk

Back, then, to that front page of the 28th of May, because the directions weren’t the half of it.

The column priced the thing first. Five minutes to Temple was a quarter. Austin, Belton, Round Rock, Liberty Hill and Corn Hill were 35 cents. San Antonio was 60. Lockhart was 85, for reasons the column does not explain.

You could send telegrams from that room as well, over the Erie company’s lines, to some 50-odd places whose names are half the pleasure of the article: Babb’s Ranch, Copperas Cove, Gay Hill, Senterfeit, Yellow Prairie.

The General Observations ran on well past the line about politeness. Make your complaints to the manager, not the operators, and don’t chat with them, “as it may cause them to neglect their duty.” Abstain from the use of obscene language over the wires, “as it is strictly prohibited.”

Then this:

“Do not encourage non-subscribers, as they are not only a nuisance to the central office, but to all subscribers, as they consume the time of others.”

If the operator suspected a non-subscriber was using the telephone, they were authorized to demand his name, and if he refused to give it, he was refused the instrument.

Nine months earlier, that office was going to be somewhere ladies, gentlemen, and children could all feel at home and enjoy visiting. Now it had a doorman to keep out the riffraff.

Christmas Eve

On the 24th of December 1885 the Sun printed the whole thing again, revised, under the heading “Telephones and Rules.”

The list had grown to 25 numbers, and it had gotten more personal. Where March gave you “Slaton Hotel,” December gives you E. H. Slaton; the ice factory is J. L. Tindale; the Sun office is J. E. Cooper. A meat market had joined, and a second grocery, and another doctor. Rev. Mackey had dropped off. Numbers 25 to 28 were being held back for something new called a territorial line, which is to say the country folks were starting to join.

Rule number one was now “Call by number.” In May you told the operator a name. By Christmas the town had been numbered.

The manners were gone. No politeness rule. Nothing about obscene language, nothing about non-subscribers. Ten months in, the paper printed operating instructions and stopped teaching etiquette.

You could now reach 23 towns without repeating, roughly double what you could reach in May, and, by repeating at Waco, numbers of towns and cities north of there.

Two new rules had arrived instead of the manners: #8 “Do not use the phone during thunder storms” and #10 “Be patient, and remember you are using a very delicate instrument.”

The exchange didn’t stay in that room over Booty’s store, but that’s a story for another day.

Here’s the part I wasn’t sure I would be able to tell you. The building is still there.

It is 718 S. Austin Avenue, on the northwest corner of 8th, and it’s spent most of the last century in disguise.

In the spring of 1926 the firm of Stromberg-Hoffman put a new front on it, gray stucco laid straight over the native limestone. We know it’s the same building because they wrote about it in the Sun. A March 1926 article described the remodel, noting that business would go on as usual in the store “by reason of the fact that no building for occupancy in the interim is available.” The 1926 we see on the building today marks a remodel date, not a build date.

The windows along the Eighth Street side were filled in and plastered over sometime between the mid-1960s and 1976, and by 1984 the whole Austin Avenue front was a blank wall with a Gellman’s Department Store sign bolted to it.

Go through the Sanborn fire insurance maps corner by corner, 1885-1925, and the footprint never changes. The building never came down. They just kept putting new faces on it.

The room is still up there, or the memory of it. Second story, northwest corner of 8th and Austin. The stairs are gone and the dentist with them, but the floor where the whole of Georgetown’s ability to talk to itself was once kept, 23 subscribers and a switchboard, next door to a man who pulled teeth without pain, is just above the retail space that currently houses Prima Dora.

Sources

Newspapers

All Sun items below are from The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas); digital images, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed August 2026). Untitled local items are described in brackets.

[Local item, “Now let us have a telephone exchange”], 26 June 1884, p. 3.
[Local item, “Georgetown must have a telephone exchange”], 10 July 1884, p. 3.
[Local item, “the next convenience Georgetown must have”], 24 July 1884, p. 3.
[Local item, Archie Watson’s telephone at the Slaton hotel and the failed subscription], 7 August 1884, p. 3.
“A Telephone Exchange,” 11 September 1884, p. 4.
[Local item, “Wake up on the telephone exchange”], 2 October 1884, p. 3.
“Will We Have a Telephone Exchange?” (Communicated), 4 December 1884, p. 4.
[Local item, “The requisite number of subscriptions… have obtained”], 8 January 1885, p. 3.
[Local item, materials for the exchange received], 29 January 1885, p. 3.
[Local item, the room next to Dr. Crawford’s office leased], 5 February 1885, p. 3.
“The Telephone Exchange” [Georgetown’s first directory], 12 March 1885, p. 2.
“Georgetown’s Industries” [the business census], 16 April 1885, p. 3.
“Our Telephone Exchange” [rates, directions and General Observations], 28 May 1885, p. 1.
[Local item, Dr. B. C. Crawford in the second story of the Booty building], 22 October 1885, p. 3.
“Telephones and Rules” [the revised directory and ten rules], 24 December 1885, p. 1.
“Stromberg-Hoffman & Co. to Modernize Their Business Home,” 19 March 1926, p. 3.

Other printed sources

“Work now under way remodelling home of Stromberg-Hoffman & Co.,” The Megaphone (Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas), 6 April 1926, p. 1.

National Register of Historic Places inventory, Georgetown Commercial Historic District, 1977, item 33.

Maps

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas, block 41. Georgetown, Tex., August 1885, sheet 1 (the whole town on one sheet); Georgetown, Tex., July 1889, sheet 1 of 2. Footprint compared across the 1885, 1889, 1894, 1900, 1905, 1910, 1916 and 1925 sheets. Originals at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Photographs

Wilcox photograph, Austin Avenue looking north, c. 1900–1907. Williamson Museum WILLM 2006-015-366; The Portal to Texas History, metapth426926.
Atlee photograph, Austin Avenue looking north at Eighth Street, c. 1915–1925. Williamson Museum WM2010.020.014; The Portal to Texas History, metapth402884.
“Stromberg-Hoffman Building,” undated. Photograph courtesy of the Georgetown Heritage Society; City of Georgetown records archive, doc 391674 (records.georgetowntexas.gov). Creative Commons, attribution.
Texas Historical Commission photograph, 718 S. Austin Avenue as Gellman’s Department Store, undated, 1960s. The Portal to Texas History, metapth677307.
Texas Historical Commission color slide, Eighth Street elevation, 1 July 1976. The Portal to Texas History, metapth960227.
Texas Historical Commission color slide, Austin Avenue front, 1 August 1984. The Portal to Texas History, metapth972098.

Illustration

Interior of an 1885 telephone exchange office, generated with Google Gemini, September 2026. Not a photograph, and not a depiction of Georgetown’s exchange.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

Our town was not quite 50 years old and feeling very proud of itself.

The same article promised our mineral waters were second only to Carlsbad, Germany. It said our new chair factory could turn out 1,000 chairs a day. It described the Ladies’ Annex at Southwestern “sitting like a royal queen in the midst of her thirty acres of campus.” It counted seven church spires, three orderly saloons, and an ice factory keeping the whole city “cool and in a good humor.”

The entire article is nearly a full page in the Austin Weekly Statesman of April 18, 1889. I’ve referenced it before, but I want to share more of this historic snapshot of our little town.

What’s a Booster Shot?

I’m traveling this week, so I don’t have a Weekly Tea post for you. Hopefully I’ll be back in your inbox with one next weekend. But starting today, I’ll be posting Booster Shots on the Old Town Echoes Facebook page; these will be small doses of Georgetown’s booster press, each one a historic brag from a booster article that gives us a glimpse into the lives of our historic Georgetown neighbors.

Wait, the what press?

Booster journalism was its own genre in the 1880s. Papers ran glowing “special correspondence” about up-and-coming towns, written to catch the eye of investors, railroads, and restless families. They were part news, part chamber-of-commerce ad, part poetry. Our correspondent describes the San Gabriel’s forks as “the twin purling Gabriels, as they wind their poetic way” to the sea. He wasn’t being paid by the fact.

And therein lies the fun of it. A booster piece is typically two things: a description of what a town actually had, and a summary of what the town wanted others to believe about itself. In April 1889, Georgetown had both in abundance. The Texas Chautauqua had just accepted 200 acres and $10,000 to locate here, and the cornerstone of its first temple was laid that very week, with the Masonic Grand Lodge of Texas presiding. The town was literally dressed for company.

Familiar faces

Regular readers and local history buffs will spot old friends all through this article. John H. Leavell is here in his three-story building, “the first one to introduce lady clerks.” The law firm of Glasscock & Strickland appears in a list of lawyers reaching “out after hooks on fame’s ladder.” George Glasscock gets credit for donating the townsite. There’s a Chessher in the lawyer list. Other names familiar to those that pay attention to local history include F A Mood, George Irvine, Captain Emzy Taylor, M B Lockett, J. H. Hodges, W Y Penn, and J E Cooper, just to name a few.

That’s the other thing a booster piece turns out to be: a census of a whole town’s ambitions, frozen in one week of 1889. In this series you'll meet the chair factory man with his thousand chairs, the druggist with "a den of doctors above him," and the barber they called the immortal "Carl."

How to follow along

The Booster Shots will live on the Old Town Echoes Facebook page, so give it a follow if you haven’t. And if a friend sent you here, this newsletter is free and one click gets the Weekly Tea deep dives right to your inbox.

Source

"GEORGETOWN. The Principal Points and Surroundings About a Live Texas Town," Austin Weekly Statesman, 18 April 1889, p. 10; digital images, Newspapers.com.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

One night in May of 1910, the St. Cecelia Club put on a three-act comedy in Georgetown. There was a stage, fitted up for the occasion. There were curtains, newly hung. There was a special orchestra, reserved seats at 25 cents, and room, by the proprietor’s count, for about a thousand people.

There was no roof.

The play went up at the Airdome, an open-air theater on the north side of the courthouse square, where the audience sat behind a twelve-foot galvanized fence with the spring sky for a ceiling. The proprietor, a Georgetown man named Dave Goodlett, gave the use of the house for free.

Everyone knows the Georgetown Palace Theatre. It’s been Georgetown’s theater for a century, and its distinctive Art Deco marquee on Austin Avenue is hard to miss.

But the Palace didn’t open until 1926, and by then Georgetown had been putting itself in front of a stage, or a screen, or both, for forty years: in an opera house that ended up full of horses, in a school auditorium, behind canvas, behind a fence, and out under the open sky.

This week we’re raising a glass to the many theaters of Georgetown.

The Opera House

In October of 1884 the Georgetown Opera House Company organized itself, hired Whittle & Harrell to build, and put the entrance on Brushy Street (that’s the street you know as Austin Avenue; it didn’t get that name until 1934), at the south end of the same block where the Palace sits today.

It had two hundred opera chairs, scenery from Chicago, and work “pushed forward as rapidly as possible.” Not everyone celebrated. Before the walls were even up, a letter to the Sun signed “Fogy” quoted John Wesley on the subject of play-houses: they “sap the foundation of religion,” they are “peculiarly hurtful to a trading city,” and they draw “drinking and debauchery of every kind.”

The opera house opened anyway, and by the next spring it was already moonlighting as a skating rink; the Sun noted that few were disturbed by the noise of the skates. Then came more than a decade of traveling troupes, not all of them cozy. In December 1895 a “rollicking comedy” called Our Country Cousin played to a frigid temperature “in and out of the house.” And by then the hall was working odd jobs between bookings: when the Sanborn insurance mappers drew it in 1894, stage and scenery still in place, they noted it was “used temporarily for carriage paint’g.”

In September 1896 the paper reported, in one line, that “the old opera house has been turned into a livery stable.” The horses didn’t get it all at once; that December a company was booked back in with a comedy called A Yankee Drummer. But the next year the city council granted stable sheds on the opera house lot, and by 1900 Nowlin & Morse were advertising “The New Livery Stable in Old Opera House.”

By 1901 the Sun had seen enough. A February editorial titled “An Opera House Needed” counted more than a hundred Georgetown people riding special trains down to Austin to see plays and asked why their money couldn’t stay home. The Odd Fellows answered: a committee formed, “the money is in hand,” and by May the lodge had resolved to erect a three-story stone building with its entire second floor an auditorium. If an audience ever filled that second floor, nobody seems to have written it down where I could find it.

Moving Picture Show Arrives

March 21, 1907, in the Sun: “Dave Goodlett and Fred Bredthauer are getting ready to open up a moving picture show in the Eidman building and expect to run it all summer.”

The Eidman building was a two-story stone building on the corner of East 8th and Church. That corner is 600 Degrees Pizzeria now, across 8th from City Post. The stone building itself is long gone, but that’s the spot where Georgetown’s movies began.

Bredthauer tried everything once. He’d been a hardware clerk and a groceryman, he stood his father’s prize stallion at a livery stable, and after the movies he went into dairy farming. Dave Goodlett was the opposite kind of man. In 1903 he was carrying mail on a rural route out of Georgetown. In 1907 he found the moving picture business, and he never let go of it.

The first season set the pattern for everything after. On May 2, 1907, the partners ran a show at the public school auditorium as a benefit for the fire department. By July the show had moved outdoors to the north side of the square, advertising itself as the “largest canvass and coolest place in town.” In August a fire that started at a chili stand destroyed an 1853 stone law office next door and took the canvas side of the picture show with it; the partners’ loss came to about $40. They kept showing.

The Airdome

In April 1908 the show got its name. “A Race for a Million at the Airdome tonight,” said the Sun, and a week later: “Get the habit; visit the Airdome.” The canvas walls became a twelve-foot iron-clad board fence, admission held at a nickel and a dime, children under five free, and Goodlett’s ads made his philosophy a slogan: Children were “Welcome as the flowers in May. My motto: to please.”

In February 1910 the Sanborn insurance mappers came through and recorded it: “THE AIRDOME. No Roof. SEATS,” an open lot behind its fence with a barber shop next door.

The Sanborn mappers drew it in winter, standing empty, because in the cold months Goodlett carried the show indoors: one winter sharing quarters with the Buvette, a fine-candies-and-cigars parlor on the east side of the square, and the next in the Glasscock row opposite the post office.

I didn’t find a photograph of the Airdome, and it’s likely that none exist, so this is a recreation of what it might have looked like around 1910.

That same February map catches a rival. In December 1909 two men named Grayson and Sherman had opened a picture show of their own in the Glasscock block, its lights run off a dynamo driven by a six-horsepower gasoline engine. “With two good picture shows,” the Sun said, “Georgetown will not lack for amusements.” Grayson retired that April, and the paper reported that Goodlett had “the field to himself again.”

The Airdome itself kept growing. In October 1909 Goodlett enlarged it to treble its seating; a school benefit that November advertised a thousand seats.

Which brings us back to that May night in 1910, when the stage went in and the curtains went up and the St. Cecelia Club played a three-act comedy to the open sky. Whatever else the Airdome was, it had become the town’s theater.

And that same month, the ground went out from under it.

Moving Day

In February 1910, just before the mappers drew the Airdome, A. A. Booty sold its vacant lots to the Hon. Jno. M. Horger for $7,000. Horger, said the Sun, “will build thereon at an early date.”

Goodlett got one more season out of it. Then, on February 16, 1911, the paper ran two lines at the bottom of page five:

“Dave Goodlett has moved his Airdome pavilion from the north side of the square to the lot south of the Good Luck Store, entrance being afforded by the alley.”

He didn’t close it. He picked it up and carried it. The fence, the seats, the whole roofless house went across the square to the ground behind the Good Luck Store at the southeast corner, the old Dimmitt hotel building, and the way in was through the alley off Main.

The photo below is a southeast view of Main Street. The courthouse is just to the right off camera. You can see where 8th Street crosses Main; if you zoom in, you can just tell that that awning on the Old Dimmitt Building reads "Good Luck Store.” The Airdome’s second location was just on the other side of that building.

Five days before the notice ran that Goodlett was moving the Airdome, a rival called the Dixie was being installed next door to the Odd Fellows’ Temple. Goodlett bought it out in August.

One Corner

Here’s one of my favorite parts: by that fall Dave Goodlett had a second moving picture house at the same corner, indoors, called the Nusho. Say Nusho out loud… Hear what he did there?

The Nusho fronted the square. The Airdome sat on the ground behind it. And his November 1911 advertisement, which I had first read as a man running back and forth across the square, turns out to describe a single address:

“I will show at the ‘Nusho’ every afternoon from 3 till 5. Will show at both places at night, when the weather is so I can show in Airdome. Different program at each place... except when the weather is too bad to show in Airdome, then complete change of program at night at ‘Nusho’.”

A roofed house and a roofless one, back to back, with an alley between them and the programme decided by the sky. When the weather turned, he walked the audience indoors.

The prices never moved. In May 1913 he booked the five-reel From the Manger to the Cross, afternoon at the Nusho and night at the Airdome, and let the ad do the talking: “First time shown anywhere for 5c and 10c. A few days ago in Austin for 25c. I never advance admission price.”

The Town’s Hall

The Airdome was a business, but it doubled as something closer to a public institution. On the Fourth of July in 1908, flags flew from exactly four buildings in Georgetown: the post office, the courthouse, Wilcox’s photograph gallery, and Dave Goodlett’s Air Dome.

The fire department connection never faded, and no wonder: the chief of the Georgetown Fire Department was Dave’s own brother, P. J. Goodlett. At the firemen’s picnic of May 1913, when fifty-five merchants (the Sun among them) agreed to close all day, the parade marched “in charge of Chief Goodlett,” the benefit shows that night ran at both of Dave’s houses, and the queen’s float was driven up in front of the Nusho for the crowning of Miss Beulah Thompson. The Sun’s write-up ended on “a display of fireworks which lighted up the streams of water thrown from the hose.”

In the summer of 1912, the churches moved in. All season, the congregations of Georgetown held union services together at the Airdome on Sunday nights, in the roofless lot behind the store. Twenty-eight years earlier, Fogy had warned the town that a play-house would sap the foundation of religion; when the series closed in September, the preachers praised the large attendance and the good order maintained, and the collections had run three times the expenses, with the surplus going to the King’s Daughters.

The Monarch

In September 1913 Goodlett bought a building of his own at last: the two-story stone building at the southwest corner of the square, from Booty & Cody, for $12,500, with $1,500 down and the rest in notes. The family moved in upstairs, reached by an exterior stairway up the side wall. That building is still standing, and those stairs are still there: it’s the building that houses Kilwin’s Ice Cream today.

Dave Goodlett let the town choose the new name. The contest drew several hundred entries, and the winner, announced at the Airdome, was Miss Kate Elliott’s “Monarch.” Her prize was a year’s free ticket.

The Monarch was a theater in full: a week of live plays in January 1914, a Wurlitzer motion picture orchestra shipped up from Dallas in 1916, and by 1922 a pipe organ the Sun claimed made Georgetown the smallest town in the state to have one. It was the kind of place a town measures other places by. When Colonel Makemson wrote up the history of the Georgetown post office in 1916, he located one of its 1870s homes simply: “in the rear of what is now Goodlett’s picture show.”

Back at the southeast corner, the Good Luck Store didn’t move out. It failed in place. The Magee Co. went into trustees’ hands in the spring of 1916, sold off twenty thousand dollars of goods that May, and by that fall the name was gone from the square. In March 1917 C. B. Atkinson turned the store’s own room into a picture show and called it the Lyric, “southeast corner of square,” and for a few months Georgetown had two houses again. He sold it in October. In November the Sun buried it:

“The brief, bright and brilliant days of The Lyric are over… the beautiful room, cured of its dissipation and frivolity, will return to the sober paths of commerce proper.”

On March 8, 1920, Dave Goodlett died suddenly in Hodges Bros. drug store. He was 46. Every business house in town closed for his funeral, and the floral offering was one of the largest the town had ever seen, with moving picture men from around the state sending wreaths.

He died owing $10,500 on the theater. His widow, Alice, was no newcomer to the business; when the family ran the picture concession at the 1913 Old Settlers’ reunion, the association’s published accounting credited the time and labor of “himself, his wife and one son, free of charge.” She and their son Sebe kept the Monarch running, and in April 1921, thirteen months after his death, the county record closed the account: “Mrs. Alice Goodlett, surviving wife... has paid the said notes and all interest thereon.”

In 1928 she and Sebe sold the Monarch to O. A. Engelbrecht, who by then was running the Palace. He renamed it the Gem and operated both houses. At the end of 1934 the old theater became a Piggly Wiggly, and the Sun noted that the floor still sloped toward the rear, the way a theater floor does.

The Ground

The Palace arrived on Friday, February 26, 1926, built by F. E. Hodges just south of the City National Bank, and it opened to a full house with even its standing room taxed.

The Palace seems like the exception—the one theater that never became something else. But it did go dark in 1989. It’s a theater today because a group of Georgetown people wouldn’t let it go. That’s the real difference between the Palace and everything else in this story. Not that it was spared what happened to the others, but that when its turn came, the town came back for it. (And we’re still looking out for it today.)

Everything else got put to another use, and the Airdome’s first ground is the best example of it. Horger built, as he said he would; by the fall of 1912 there were buildings standing where the Airdome had been.

Among the tenants was the post office. The town’s mail was sorted on the spot where the moving picture show had been.

In 1928 the Busy Bee Cafe opened there, mirrors down the length of the dining room and marble at the counter. In 1936 that cafe building was made over into a new movie house, the Ritz, so the pictures came back to the Airdome’s dirt twenty-five years after they left it. Georgetown had a second picture house until three months before that. The Aztec opened on the east side of the square in March of 1935 and burned five days before Christmas. A rebuild was announced in January and cancelled three weeks later: with the house dark, its manager had lost his picture contracts. Nine months and six days, and then the Aztec's room became a dry goods store. The Ritz burned out inside in 1937, was rebuilt, and ran into the mid-1950s. And in 1960, Gold’s Department Store expanded next door, took the Ritz’s building inside itself, and bricked over its face, working the S of G-O-L-D-’S into the new brick.

The Ritz is still standing on the north side of the square today. Gold’s closed in 1996, and at some point the small building with the bricked-in front was turned back into a storefront of its own. The building that used to be the Ritz Theater is Red Bird Mercantile now, on the lot where the people of Georgetown once watched a comedy under the open sky.

Under The Sky

One more thing, for the road.

In August of 1950 the Sun announced a new theater two miles north of the courthouse, on the Dallas highway. It would hold two hundred and fifty cars, with a speaker for every one of them, a playground for the children, and bottle-warming facilities for the parents. It was called the Dusk Drive-In, and it opened that September on a Zane Grey western, with two shows a night, the first one starting at dusk.

In among the specifications, the paper mentioned one more amenity: lawn chairs, for those who’d rather sit out in the open than in their automobiles.

Forty years after Dave Goodlett carried his roofless house across the square, Georgetown was sitting outdoors under the sky again, watching a picture, at the whim of the weather.

Sources

The opera house, 1884 to 1901. “The Opera House,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 2 October 1884, p. 2 (the Georgetown Opera House Company organizes; Whittle & Harrell contracted; the house “built on the first corner south of Leavell & Seery’s store, and the entrance will be on Brushy street”; 200 opera chairs, scenery from Chicago); construction note, 9 October 1884, p. 3 (”pushed forward as rapidly as possible”); “Against the Opera House,” letter signed “Fogy,” 23 October 1884, p. 4; skating rink note, 16 April 1885, p. 3; “Our Country Cousin at the Opera House,” 5 December 1895, p. 3; livery stable note, 10 September 1896, p. 3; “Opera House” (A Yankee Drummer booked for 21 December), 17 December 1896, p. 1; city council stable sheds petition, 16 December 1897, p. 4; Nowlin & Morse, “The New Livery Stable in Old Opera House,” display advertisement, 27 December 1900, p. 2.

“An Opera House Needed,” The Williamson County Sun, 14 February 1901, p. 1; “Opera House In Sight,” 21 March 1901, p. 17; “Opera House in Sight” (the Odd Fellows resolve on a three-story stone building with an auditorium on the second floor), 30 May 1901, p. 8.

The first picture show, 1907 to 1908. Opening notice, The Williamson County Sun, 21 March 1907, p. 5 (”Dave Goodlett and Fred Bredthauer are getting ready to open up a moving picture show in the Eidman building”); fire department benefit at the public school auditorium, 2 May 1907, p. 5; “largest canvass and coolest place in town,” 18 July 1907, p. 5; “An Old Landmark Destroyed” (the chili stand fire and the 1853 stone law office), 15 August 1907, p. 1; Dave Goodlett’s rural mail route appointment, 24 December 1903, p. 10.

“A Race for a Million at the Airdome,” The Williamson County Sun, 9 April 1908, p. 5; “Get the habit; visit the Airdome,” 16 April 1908, p. 5; Fourth of July flags on four buildings, 9 July 1908, p. 5.

The Airdome on the north side, 1908 to 1911. Enlargement to treble its seating, The Williamson County Sun, 28 October 1909, p. 5; “Public School Benefit” (a thousand seats advertised), 4 November 1909, p. 1; Airdome price advertisement, “Welcome as the flowers in May. My motto: to please,” 2 December 1909, p. 5.

The fence and the enclosure: “Ellyson Finds Old Handbill,” The Williamson County Sun, 17 July 1958, p. 4, recalling the Airdome as “a roofless, floorless, galvanized, walled enclosure … first located on the north side of the square, operated by the late Dave Goodlett”; corroborated by the February 1910 Sanborn’s own lettering, “Ir. Cl. Bd. Fence 12’.”

The winter quarters: “Airdome Annex,” SU Megaphone (Southwestern University, Georgetown), 17 December 1909, p. 3 (”Dave Goodlett has moved into winter quarters with his picture show with the Buvette … East side square with the Buvette”); the Buvette identified by its own advertisement, “The Buvette / Fine Candies and Cigars / W. B. Overby, Proprietor,” SU Megaphone, 11 October 1907, p. 4; the following winter in the Glasscock row, SU Megaphone, 28 October 1910, p. 4.

The rival show: “New Moving Picture Show” (Grayson and Sherman in the Glasscock block, lights run off a six-horsepower gasoline engine), The Williamson County Sun, 2 December 1909, p. 8; A. S. Grayson’s retirement and Goodlett with “the field to himself again,” 7 April 1910, p. 5.

“Night Entertainment at Airdome” (the St. Cecelia Club; the stage fitted up, curtains hung, seating capacity about a thousand; the house given free), The Williamson County Sun, 5 May 1910, p. 1, as reprinted in the Sun Centennial edition, 19 May 1977, p. 36.

Moving day, 1910 to 1911. A. A. Booty sells the Airdome’s vacant lots to the Hon. Jno. M. Horger for $7,000, “will build thereon at an early date,” The Williamson County Sun, 10 February 1910, p. 5.

“New Theatre” (the Dixie installed by W. A. Newton next door to the Odd Fellows’ Temple), The Williamson County Sun, 11 February 1911, as quoted in the Sun Centennial edition, 19 May 1977, p. 46.

The removal notice, The Williamson County Sun, 16 February 1911, p. 5: “Dave Goodlett has moved his Airdome pavilion from the north side of the square to the lot south of the Good Luck Store, entrance being afforded by the alley.”

Goodlett purchases the Dixie, The Williamson County Sun, 17 August 1911, p. 7.

The southeast corner, 1911 to 1913. “Nusho News,” Goodlett’s advertisement, The Williamson County Sun, 9 November 1911, p. 5; city council popcorn platform item placing the Nusho at the southeast corner of the square, 14 March 1912, p. 6; From the Manger to the Cross advertisement, “I never advance admission price,” 1 May 1913, p. 5.

The Good Luck Store’s building identified as the old Dimmitt hotel: “Old Dimmitt Building,” Texas Historical Commission marker 13920, erected 1965; Woman’s Club room “in the Atkinson Building, the old Good Luck Store,” The Williamson County Sun, 4 April 1918, p. 3; Towns Automobile Co. advertisement, “The Atkinson Building, Southeast Corner Public Square,” 19 September 1919, p. 7; Don Scarbrough, “the passing glance,” 23 July 1964, p. 1 (”a Good Luck Store where the Georgetown Savings and Loan now resides”); “Two Open Air Theatres” recollection, Georgetown Sunday Sun, 21 August 1977, p. 3.

The Good Luck Store's failure and the Lyric: W. F. Magee Co. in trustees' hands, The Williamson County Sun, 9 March 1916; creditors' sale, "$20,000 worth of seasonable merchandise," 11 May 1916; the stock sold to J. A. Fox of Hereford "at the old stand," 14 September 1916; the Lyric Theatre's standing subhead, "Southeast corner of square," 5 April 1917; "Mr. C. B. Atkinson has sold the Lyric Theatre," 11 October 1917; "The brief, bright and brilliant days of The Lyric are over" and "Mr. Atkinson will put back his splendid store room into its original shape," 15 November 1917.

The town’s hall. “Open Air Services Discontinued” (the summer’s union services at the Airdome; attendance, good order, collections three times expenses, the surplus to the King’s Daughters), The Williamson County Sun, 12 September 1912, p. 10; firemen’s picnic closing agreement, 1 May 1913, p. 8; “Firemen’s Picnic Today,” 8 May 1913, p. 5; the picnic write-up (the parade “in charge of Chief Goodlett,” the queen’s float before the Nusho, Miss Beulah Thompson crowned), 15 May 1913, p. 6.

P. J. Goodlett as fire chief: “Goodlett Announces for City Marshal,” The Williamson County Sun, 21 November 1924, p. 9; “Fire Chief P. J. Goodlett Passes to Rest,” 1 June 1928, p. 5; the brothers’ relationship, “D. J. Goodlett Is Dead,” The Austin American, 10 March 1920, p. 3.

The Monarch and the Goodletts. Deed, A. A. Booty and C. C. Cody to Dave Goodlett, 4 September 1913, west half of Lot 1, Block 51, Williamson County Deed Records, Vol. 189, p. 274 (recorded 1919); extension of vendor’s lien, 6 September 1919, Vol. 189, p. 276; release of vendor’s lien to Mrs. Alice Goodlett, 27 April 1921.

“Miss Kate Elliott Names the Monarch,” The Williamson County Sun, 18 September 1913, p. 8; Angell’s Comedians at the Monarch, 15 January 1914, p. 5; the Wurlitzer motion picture orchestra, 24 February 1916, p. 1; the pipe organ, 1922, as reprinted in the Sun‘s “46 Years Ago” column, 23 May 1968, p. 2; Col. W. K. Makemson, history of the Georgetown post office, 13 January 1916, p. 2; Old Settlers Association finance statement crediting the labor of “himself, his wife and one son, free of charge,” 14 August 1913, p. 4.

“Georgetown Theater Proprietor Drops Dead,” Austin American-Statesman, 9 March 1920, p. 5; “D. J. Goodlett Is Dead,” The Austin American, 10 March 1920, p. 3; “David J. Goodlett” (the funeral, the floral offering, wreaths from moving picture men around the state), The Williamson County Sun, 12 March 1920, p. 5.

“Englebrecht Buys Monarch Picture Theatre,” The Williamson County Sun, 8 June 1928, p. 1; “Old Monarch Theatre Renovated,” 6 July 1928, p. 1; “Piggly Wiggly to Locate in Old Theatre Building” (the floor still sloping toward the rear), 28 December 1934, p. 1.

The Palace. Construction, “being erected south of the City National Bank by Mr. F. E. Hodges,” The Williamson County Sun, 20 November 1925, p. 8; “Palace Theatre Gives Opening Program Friday,” 26 February 1926, p. 1; “Palace Theatre Opens,” SU Megaphone, 2 March 1926, p. 1 (opened “last Friday night with its seating capacity filled and its standing room taxed”; the building “erected and owned by F. E. Hodges of Georgetown”); “New Palace Theatre Opened With Talkies,” 15 November 1929, p. 1.

The Palace as a movie house, its closing in late 1989, the founding of Georgetown Palace Theatre, Inc. in December 1990, the ninety-day reopening and the Palace Guard: “History,” Georgetown Palace Theatre, georgetownpalace.org. The 2026 flood damage and the community response: Community Impact, “Georgetown Palace Theatre to reopen May 29 after flood causes $500K in damages.”

The ground, and the Ritz. The Aztec: "New Theatre Opened Thursday Nite" (the new theatre in the Evans building, opened Thursday 14 March 1935 by C. J. Stephens of Temple, on It Happened One Night), SU Megaphone, 19 March 1935, p. 1; the Aztec under new management, L. B. Crow proprietor, SU Megaphone, 8 October 1935; the fire of Friday 20 December 1935, which "started in the projection room," The Williamson County Sun, 27 December 1935, as reprinted in the Sun's "20 Years Ago" column, 1955; the rebuild announced, A. S. Evans owner and Frank and Claude Lundsford contractors, 10 January 1936; the rebuild cancelled, "because of the fire, his contracts for pictures had been lost," 31 January 1936; Hoffman & Son's new store built "out of the old location formerly occupied by the Aztec Theatre," Evans Building, east side of the square, 20 March 1936, p. 1. Busy Bee Cafe formal opening, The Williamson County Sun, 11 May 1928, p. 4; “Engelbrecht To Open New Theatre Soon,” 17 January 1936, p. 5; “New Theatre To Show First On Tuesday,” 20 March 1936, p. 1; the 1937 fire, reported in the Sun‘s “20 Years Ago” column, 4 July 1957, p. 6, reprinting the Sun of Friday, 2 July 1937 (contractors at work on “the buildings damaged by fire recently, occupied by The Famous and Ritz Theater”), and in “Yesteryears / 20 Years Ago,” 29 August 1957, p. 8, reprinting 27 August 1937 (O. A. Engelbrecht announcing the Ritz “nearing completion”); insurance rate increase following the town’s costly fires, 3 March 1939, p. 1; Ritz and Palace advertisements, 17 November 1955, p. 3; Gold’s Department Store expansion items (the front of the Ritz building bricked solid, “with the ‘S’ of the panoramic ‘G-O-L-D-’S’ name built in with a different colored brick”), 25 February, 3 March, 19 May and 16 June 1960; “Enjoying Gold Burger Diner in our golden years” (Gold’s closing in 1996), The Sunday Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 23 February 2025, p. 5.

The Dusk Drive-In. “New Drive-In Theatre to Open September 7,” The Williamson County Sun, 24 August 1950, p. 13; “New Drive-In Theater To Open Saturday” (250 cars, a speaker for each, playground, bottle-warming facilities, and lawn chairs for those who would rather sit in the open), 14 September 1950, p. 1.

Maps. Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas: August 1885, sheet 1; 1894; November 1905; February 1910, sheet 3; May 1916, sheet 2; 1925, sheet 2. Digital images, Sanborn map collection, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Photographs. “[Main Street with buggies, Georgetown],” photograph, date unknown, The Portal to Texas History (texashistory.unt.edu, ark:/67531/metapth182577), crediting The Williamson Museum, accession WM_2005.060.172. “Georgetown Firemen on Firetruck,” photograph, date unknown, The Portal to Texas History, crediting The Williamson Museum. “Cars on street in Georgetown,” photograph by R. Stone, 1927, The Portal to Texas History, crediting The Williamson Museum. “First Monday Trade Days, Georgetown,” photograph, 1912, The Portal to Texas History, crediting The Williamson Museum. “U.S. Highway 81 in Georgetown,” photograph, 20 October 1940, The Portal to Texas History, crediting the Texas Department of Transportation. Gold’s Department Store, undated photograph, Preservation Georgetown. Seventh Street north of the courthouse, Google Street View, 2024.

The Airdome illustration is an AI reconstruction generated with Google Gemini in August 2026, composed from the February 1910 Sanborn map and contemporary newspaper descriptions. It is not a photograph, and no photograph of the Airdome is known to survive.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

In The Afterlife of 803 College, I gave Holland Sharpe one sentence.

She was John Leavell’s granddaughter. Her father shot her twice in the back in 1916 and then killed himself, and she lived. That was the whole of it, one line in a long list of the family’s dead, and then I moved on to the house’s story. But this story turns out to be more than a house. It’s a family story, about a family that shaped our town.

I wanted to know more about the Leavell granddaughter who survived, so here she is. I found so much more than I was expecting.

This story leaves town: El Paso, New York, San Antonio... But it starts here and it comes back home, and part of it is still standing a couple of miles southeast of town.

Grab a glass of something. This one will take a minute.

The Railroad Agent

Alfred Lansing Sharpe came to Georgetown from Ravenna, Ohio, where he was born in November 1858, and by the middle of the 1880s he was the joint agent here for the International & Great Northern Railroad and the Wells Fargo Company. The Sun liked him. When he married in the fall of 1886 the paper called him “our very popular railroad station agent.”

The woman he married was Lucy R. Oakley. She came to Texas in 1885 at 20 years old and took a position teaching vocal music at Southwestern University. They married in San Antonio and came home to Georgetown that same evening. The Light ran it under “Welcomed Home,” and said she was highly esteemed “in the city where her lot is now cast,” and that it was at the University “that the happy ones met and loved.”

On November 11, 1889, in a rented room in Mrs. Emma Seery’s house on Brushy Street, Lucy had a son. They named him John Oakley Sharpe.

She bore another child who didn’t live. And then, on a Friday morning in February 1893, after a week or two of being dangerously ill and one day of seeming better, Lucy Sharpe died. She was 28. They buried her in the Odd Fellows Cemetery, and the Sun asked the town’s sympathy “to the bereaved husband and motherless little one.”

A Parlor Wedding

Two years later, in 1895, Alfred Sharpe married again, this time into the biggest fortune in Williamson County.

Kate Leavell was John H. Leavell’s daughter, and Sharpe by then was Leavell’s business partner; the store on the square carried both their names. They were married in the front room of the big house at the foot of Eighth Street, in front of a few relatives and intimate friends.

In September 1897 Kate had a daughter and named her Holland, which had been her own mother’s maiden name.

The Discovery

You know what happened next, if you’ve been reading along. On the morning of December 6, 1898, John Leavell went into his room before dawn and never came out.

I told you last time who found him. When Leavell hadn’t appeared at the store by a quarter to eleven, it was his son-in-law who got uneasy and walked home, went around the side of the house, and looked through the shutters of Leavell’s room.

Alfred Sharpe was 40 years old. Little Holland was 14 months old and living in that house.

The Farm

Here’s where the inheritance enters, and it’s not just money, it’s a place, and you can drive to it today.

In 1883 and 1884, John Leavell bought a combined 366 acres from F. M. Taylor and J. T. Chamberlain. It was referred to in family documents as the Taylor and Chamberlain farm. When his estate was partitioned in 1899, that land was set aside for his daughter Kate.

The Sharpes left Georgetown for El Paso around 1901. Alfred did well out there for a while; he kept a store, he ranched, and in November 1904 the El Paso Republicans, hunting for a candidate the young Democrats could live with, found him. He went to Austin and found himself the lone Republican in the Texas Legislature. The El Paso law and order league asked him to introduce their bill against gambling; he introduced it and it became law, and it was considered the death knell of open gambling in Texas. That record got Theodore Roosevelt’s attention, and in 1906 Roosevelt appointed Sharpe collector of customs at the port of El Paso, succeeding Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot Billy the Kid.

Kate died in El Paso in 1908, of tuberculosis, the same thing that had killed her mother a dozen years earlier. She was 36, and the family had been in El Paso seven years. She had made her will the previous October.

To her daughter, “my beloved daughter and only child, Holland Sharpe, who is at this date about ten years of age,” she left the furniture and the silver and the jewelry and her books, and then the farm: “my entire farm, situated in Williamson County, Texas, about two miles southeast of the town of Georgetown.” The executor was to hold it intact and sell no part of it. Holland was not to come into possession until she was 21.

To her stepson, Oakley, she left two sets of books her husband had given her, and something much larger: one half of the net income of her entire estate, set aside until he turned 22, for the completion of his education. That money sent Oakley Sharpe to Phillips Exeter, where he graduated with honors, and then to Yale.

And then, in the twelfth clause, Kate wrote out an instruction to her husband, as executor. The property was to be sold only as necessary, and never the farm, “my desire being to have the property prudently and securely managed, rather than hazarded in what may promise great gains.”

What He Lost

Alfred Sharpe was reappointed collector by Taft, resigned when Wilson came in, and then went east to Binghamton, New York, to work as building superintendent for his cousin.

The financial trouble had started years before, while he was still collector. By 1916 it had come to a head.

On February 8, 1916, Sharpe’s cousin, Willis Sharpe Kilmer, filed suit in El Paso to foreclose on the Sharpe house. The cousin who had given him work was also the man he owed.

I feel like there’s a lot more to that story, but the record remains silent on it for now. The papers that reported the suit didn’t say what the debt was for.

On February 27, Sharpe came down to El Paso to straighten out his affairs, and while he was there he went into federal district court and filed for bankruptcy. On March 23 he started home, and on the way to the railroad station he lost his pocketbook with his money and his ticket in it, and his friends made up a purse so he could get on the train. The pocketbook turned up the next day, and the money was sent on to him at Georgetown where he meant to stay a few days.

He was here. The former collector of the port of El Paso, freshly bankrupt, traveling on money his friends had scraped together, came home to Georgetown in March of 1916 to look after his interests, which is to say his dead wife’s farm.

A neighbor who saw him told the San Antonio Express afterward that he “seemed to be in good spirits.” Seven weeks later he shot his daughter.

Binghamton

Holland was 18, and she wanted out.

Under her mother’s will she couldn’t touch the farm or the money until she turned 21, and she wanted her father to resign the trusteeship and hand her mother’s property over to lawyers she had chosen in San Antonio. The Associated Press reported: “Miss Sharpe did not think her father liberal enough in his guardianship of her fortune.” They had been fighting about it for a while.

On the evening of Wednesday, April 19, 1916, it started again in the parlor. The Brooklyn Daily Times had the fullest account:

A quarrel in the parlor of the Sharpe home preceded the shooting. She urged her father to resign his trusteeship of the money Mrs. Sharpe had left her, so that a young San Antonio attorney could be appointed. Sharpe refused, and drove her from the room at the point of a revolver. She dashed upstairs. Just before reaching the top, a bullet struck her. It penetrated her left lung. The second penetrated her chest. The girl fell, and two more shots thudded into the wall over her prostrate body.

He was firing at her back while she ran, and when she went down he put two more into the wall above her. Then he went to another part of the house and shot himself through the heart. He was 57.

She was not expected to live. And from her hospital bed, that first day, she said two things:

“I am to blame. I hounded papa about money matters, until he couldn’t stand it.”

“I would rather have lost all the money in the world than have had this awful thing happen.”

She was 18 years old, with two bullet holes through her chest, and her first instinct was to take the blame.

In Los Angeles, her half-brother Oakley started across the continent for her bedside. Asked what was behind the quarrel, he told a reporter that he knew absolutely nothing about it.

That December, seven months after the funeral, the El Paso house was sold at the courthouse door to satisfy Kilmer’s judgment of $5,540.74. The defendants were Kate’s estate, both of Alfred Sharpe’s children, and his trustee in bankruptcy.

What Georgetown Read

The story ran everywhere. Middletown and Trenton and Altoona, Hutchinson and Fort Wayne, Santa Fe and Bakersfield and Reno and Des Moines. The El Paso papers put his photograph on the front page.

Here’s what the Williamson County Sun printed, on the front page, on Thursday, April 20:

A message to H. S. Sharpe this morning brought the sad intelligence of the death of his brother, A. L. Sharpe, by his own hand at his home in Binghamton, New York. His young daughter, Holland Sharpe, the message stated, was accidentally wounded. Mr. Sharpe formerly lived in Georgetown and has hosts of warm personal friends here who are sincerely grieved at his unfortunate death.

A week later, the Sun ran:

Friends of the family will be pleased to learn that late information from New York indicates that Miss Holland Sharpe, who is ill at Binghamton, is improving and physicians are very hopeful of her recovery.

Accidentally. Ill at Binghamton.

The day after the first item, a correspondent with a Georgetown dateline wired the San Antonio Express a fuller account. It ran under the headline “Former Texas Man Wounds Daughter; Then Shoots Self.”

Miss Holland Sharpe

On September 14 1918, the society page of the San Antonio Evening News ran a photograph. Holland was visiting her aunt. Then another in 1919.

A young woman in a riding habit and hat, sitting a horse at the top of a jump. The caption underneath, in that flowing hand-lettering those pages used, reads Miss Holland Sharpe. The column beside it says the general’s daughters, newly arrived at Camp Travis, had been welcomed into the equestrienne group, “which numbers among its members Misses Holland Sharpe and Gertrude Negley.”

She had gone to San Antonio to live with her aunt and uncle, Lula Leavell Gillette and George Gillette, the city attorney. By the summer of 1919, with two healed bullet tracks through her left lung and chest, she was taking horses over fences for the newspaper photographers.

The San Antonio society pages ran her portrait over and over in those years.

She rode in the first Army horse show at Camp Travis in October 1920. She was a bridesmaid in 1919 and 1921. In a 1922 photo, the description reads, “Miss Holland Sharpe is on an extended trip through California. Miss Sharpe will visit her brother in San Francisco.”

Six years after Oakley crossed the country to be at her side in Binghamton, she got on a train and went to see him.

Stealing Away

She turned 21 in 1918, the farm became hers outright, and she kept it.

In March 1925 she married Frost Woodhull, a San Antonio lawyer, University of Texas football captain, and grandson of the man who founded Frost Bank.

The Gillettes were giving the wedding, and by the middle of that month everything was arranged. Five o’clock Thursday afternoon, at their house, immediate family only. The announcement cards were engraved. Her uncle Charles Campbell and her cousin Hiel had come down from Temple for it. Her cousin Gray Gillette was on her way from Austin, where she was at the University, to serve as maid of honor.

They eloped on the Tuesday.

“Miss Holland Sharpe and Frost Woodhull,” the San Antonio Evening News reported, “surprised the smart set by stealing away and getting married Tuesday.” The paper described the bride as “quite an excellent golf player and equestrienne.”

At 18 she had asked to be given charge of her own money, and her father shot her in the back for it. At 27 she wasn’t asking anyone for permission.

Howard Street

I’m going to be brief here, because there isn’t a kind way to tell this part.

Frost Woodhull was County Judge of Bexar County for two terms. He’d been elected on a reform ticket, ran unopposed the second time, and refused a third because he had pledged to serve only two. He started the county’s bookmobile service. The project he was proudest of was the restoration of San Jose Mission, which he pushed through with federal money he went and got for the county himself. He taught flying at Kelly Field during the war. He was blind in one eye from a horse running him into a tree and was still a crack shot. He collected Texas folklore and wrote for the Texas Folklore Society’s quarterly, and he counted J. Frank Dobie a friend. He fished, he said, in nearly every trout stream in the United States.

On the morning of Tuesday, March 7, 1939, he shot himself in the bathroom of their house at 1510 Howard Street.

Holland found him. She had gotten up early and gone out to the grocery store.

Her photo was in the paper again.

She was 41. Their son John was three days short of nine years old.

The Williamson County Sun told Georgetown about it on March 10, in the social column, in a single sentence about which local couple had gone down to the funeral. It said only that former County Judge Frost Woodhull “died Tuesday morning.”

Fitting the Baby

What happened next surprised me. Heiress and wealthy widow that she was, Holland went to work.

She had been on the board of the Texas Children’s Home-Finding Society since at least 1936, three years before her husband died, back when the work was something a well-married woman did with her afternoons. The society’s office was in Room 202 of the Frost National Bank Building, which is to say her husband’s family’s building, and its president was a Frost.

After 1939 it stopped being an afternoon. She took a position in the city health nursing office. And in March 1941 the San Antonio Social Workers’ Bulletin carried this:

Mrs. Holland S. Woodhull, formerly in the city health nursing office, has been appointed superintendent of the Texas Children’s Home-Finding Society.

She was appointed to a vacancy, replacing a woman who had married and moved to North Dakota, and her name ran in a column alongside WPA field supervisors and juvenile probation officers and settlement house directors. In 1942 the papers call her the society’s executive-secretary. By the time she died they call her its president.

The society had been incorporated in 1923. It worked mostly across Southwest Texas, took in children committed by the district courts or surrendered by their parents, placed 75 children in a good year, and checked on every one of them for months afterward.

In August 1943 a reporter from the San Antonio Light spent a morning in Holland’s waiting room. There was a baby on a beaming father’s lap.

“You see,” said Mrs. Woodhull. “That’s what we’re after. We have to fit the baby into the house. It isn’t so much a matter of pleasing parents.”

That’s the only time, in a hundred and thirty years of records, that I’ve found Holland Sharpe’s voice.

This was a woman who had been the child forced to fit into a house, in El Paso, first with a stepmother who wasn't her mother when her father remarried, and a father who eventually tried to kill her over her inheritance. Later, she was the stepmother herself, fitting into Frost Woodhull's house alongside his daughter from his first wife. She knew what it meant to be on both sides of that equation. And when she finally had the power to make the rules, her professional philosophy was simple: the child comes first.

San Pedro Avenue

Here’s another thing I wish I didn’t have to write.

Holland Sharpe Woodhull died on Sunday, June 9, 1946, at her home on San Pedro Avenue, by her own hand. She was 48. Her cousin George Griswold Gillette couldn’t reach her by telephone, went over to the house, and broke a window to get in.

Her son John was 16.

Her obituary names two survivors. A son, John Woodhull. And a brother, Jack Oakley, of Oakland, California.

She had gone out to see him in 1922. He had come across the country for her in 1916. Sometime in the five years between those two journeys, John Oakley Sharpe stopped being a Sharpe. He spent the rest of his life in California as Jack Oakley, which is to say under his own dead mother’s name. He put down his father entirely, but 30 years on, he was still Holland’s brother.

What Was Left

So what did local merchant John Leavell leave?

He left a house that his children sold inside of five years, and it spent roughly the next century as somebody’s rental. I’ve told that story.

He left money to Kate that went into trust for Holland, and the trust was the thing that put a bankrupt man with a gun on a staircase in New York behind his own daughter.

And he left Kate the farm.

Holland kept the Taylor and Chamberlain place from 1918 until she died and never sold an acre of it. In 1940, she signed the easement that brought electric light out to the tenant house on it. It passed to her son, and John Frost Woodhull kept it another 47 years. He grew up to be an aviator and a Texas historian, exactly like the father he lost at eight; a newspaperman who went to Coahuila with him in 1961 wrote that John “has his father’s vast storehouse of Texana, which he is carefully indexing.” He flew his own plane over the border country looking for the ruts Santa Anna’s ox-carts left.

In 1973 he leased half an acre of Kate’s farm and the water underneath it to the Jonah Water Supply Corporation. In 1984 he sold seven acres to the family that had been farming it. In 1993 he put the rest into a partnership with his daughters, one of whom he had named for his mother.

And he came home. John Frost Woodhull moved to Georgetown, raised his children here, sold life insurance, and though life would take him out of Georgetown again, when he died in San Antonio in 2001 he was buried in Georgetown, in the Odd Fellows Cemetery, in the same ground as John and Lula Leavell and as Lucy Oakley Sharpe.

In January 2015 the family conveyed the farm into a development company, and it stopped being a farm. It’s the Saddle Creek subdivision now, out by Rockride Lane. You’ve probably passed by it dozens of times. When the surveyors drew the first plat in 2017, they marked three pecan trees, the biggest thirty inches through, and wrote beside them: trees to remain. Thirty-inch pecans are old. Those three were standing when Holland owned that field; they might have even been there when Leavell left the farm for Kate.

What I’ve Kept

There’s a shape here that wants to be a ghost story, or the story of a family curse. A story that started out to be one of resilience kept trying to become something else. So many of the members of this family died tragically, many by their own hand (and I didn’t even tell you about all of them). Make of that what you will. I can’t make sense of it.

What John Leavell left, as far as I can tell, was money that came to have strings attached and land that came with roots. The land is still out there growing pecans.

And Holland is the one who kept getting back up. Until she didn’t.

She was shot in the back at 18 and said it was her own fault. She rode jumpers again at 22. She eloped two days before her own wedding at 27 because she had decided she was done asking permission. She found her husband dead by his own hand at 41. And then she went and got a job placing other people’s children into other people’s houses, until she died by her own hand at 48.

The vital records and the newspapers will tell you what happened, but rarely do they help you sort out the why of it all.

If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7. Call or text 988.

Sources

The Georgetown years

“Married” [A. L. Sharpe and Lucy R. Oakley], The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 11 November 1886, p. 3; and the “54 Years Ago” reprint, 8 November 1940, p. 10.

“Welcomed Home” [Fred L. Sharpe and Miss Lucy Oakley], San Antonio Light, 11 November 1886, p. 1.

“Death of Mrs. A. L. Sharp,” The Democratic Press, 22 February 1893, p. 3, reprinting The Williamson County Sun, 16 February 1893.

Delayed Certificate of Birth, John Oakley Sharpe, born 11 November 1889, Georgetown; Williamson County, filed 6 February 1940; Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.

“Married at Georgetown” [A. L. Sharp and Miss Kate Leavell], Fort Worth Daily Gazette, 29 March 1895, p. 1.

“Death of Mrs. Leavell,” The Williamson County Sun, 21 November 1895; “John H. Leavell’s Death,” 8 December 1898, p. 1.

[Mrs. Kate Sharpe to make El Paso her home], The Williamson County Sun, 5 September 1901, p. 6.

“Texas Student Wins Prize,” The Williamson County Sun, 31 December 1908, p. 7; and “Collector Sharpe’s Son Makes Hit at Exeter,” El Paso Herald, 5 July 1911, p. 16.

The estate and the land

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records: F. M. Taylor to John H. Leavell, 20 February 1883, vol. 28, p. 459 (256.67 acres, William Addison league, A-21); J. T. Chamberlain et ux to John H. Leavell, 31 July 1884, vol. 35, p. 59 (110 acres, W. Stubblefield league).

Commissioners’ Report of Partition, estate of John H. Leavell, District Court Civil Minutes, vol. 11, p. 200, Williamson County, 1899.

Certificate of Death no. 22717, Kate L. Sharpe, City of El Paso, 28 March 1908.

Last Will and Testament and Codicil of Kate Leavell Sharpe, 12 October 1907 and 26 March 1908; probated El Paso County, cause no. 1135, 5 May 1908, Probate Minutes book 14, pp. 40, 45, 50; certified copies recorded Wharton County, 2 August 1909, and Williamson County, 2 July 1927.

Sheriff’s Sale notice, Willis S. Kilmer vs. Charles H. Leavell, administrator, Holland Sharpe and John Oakley Sharpe, and Charles B. Stevens, trustee in bankruptcy of the estate of Alfred L. Sharpe, bankrupt, 41st Judicial District Court, El Paso County; El Paso Times, 21 November 1916, p. 11.

Easement, Holland Sharpe Woodhull to Texas Power & Light Company, 25 June 1940, Williamson County Deed Records.

Oil, Gas and Mineral Lease, John F. and Louise M. Woodhull to H. H. Dent, Jr., 27 January 1967, Williamson County Deed Records, vol. 495, p. 214 (366.67 acres in two tracts).

Lease Agreement, John F. Woodhull to Jonah Water Supply Corporation, 29 January 1973, Williamson County Deed Records, vol. 584, p. 35.

Warranty deeds, John F. Woodhull to Timothy B. and Kimberly Ann Telander (4.00 acres) and to Bertil F. and Mary Louise Telander (3.00 acres), 20 November 1984, as recited in Exhibit A of the 1993 deed below.

Warranty Deed, John F. Woodhull to Woodhull Family Partners, 28 December 1993, Williamson County Official Records, vol. 2442, p. 243.

Conveyance, Woodhull Family Partners to Woodhull Ventures 2015 LP, 16 January 2015, Williamson County Official Public Records, doc. 2015003698.

Final Plat, Saddlecreek Phase 1A, 24 May 2017, doc. 2017046488, Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown (”trees to remain”).

Alfred Sharpe

Legislative Reference Library of Texas, member profile, Alfred Lansing Sharpe, House District 100 (El Paso County), 29th Legislature, 10 January to 22 December 1905.

“Former Collector Sharpe Here on Way to Ranch,” El Paso Herald, 1 March 1916, p. 6.

“In the ‘Good Old Days’ of Local Politics,” by J. D. Ponder, El Paso Herald, 17 May 1917, p. 6.

April 1916

“Alfred L. Sharpe Ends His Own Life” / “Wounds Daughter, Ends His Own Life,” El Paso Herald, 20 April 1916, pp. 1 and 13.

“Former Collector Sharpe Self Slain,” El Paso Times, 21 April 1916, p. 5.

“Kills Daughter and Himself,” The Brooklyn Daily Times, 20 April 1916, p. 4.

“Shoots Daughter and Kills Self” (Associated Press), Lexington Herald-Leader, 20 April 1916, p. 6.

“Former Texas Man Wounds Daughter; Then Shoots Self” (Georgetown, Los Angeles and Associated Press dispatches), San Antonio Express, 21 April 1916, p. 7.

“Father of L. A. Man Shoots Daughter,” Morning Tribune (Los Angeles), 21 April 1916, p. 13.

“Death of Mr. A. L. Sharpe,” The Williamson County Sun, 20 April 1916, p. 1.

“Miss Sharpe Improving,” The Williamson County Sun, 27 April 1916, p. 1.

Holland

“Today’s Pictures” [photograph captioned “Miss Holland Sharpe”], The News (San Antonio), 2 August 1919, p. 6.

Society portraits and horse-show items: The News (San Antonio), 14 September 1918, p. 6; San Antonio Light, 23 November 1919, p. 41; San Antonio Evening News, 9 October 1920, p. 3, and San Antonio Express, 10 October 1920, p. 15; San Antonio Light, 29 May 1921, p. 13; and “Miss Holland Sharpe” [California trip], San Antonio Light, 26 March 1922, p. 37.

[Wedding arrangements], San Antonio Light, 16 March 1925, p. 6; and “Miss Sharpe Becomes Mrs. Frost Woodhull,” The News (San Antonio), 19 March 1925, p. 8.

“75 Children Find New Homes Here,” San Antonio Express, 9 May 1936, p. 16.

[San Antonio Social Workers’ Bulletin items], The News (San Antonio), 4 March 1941, p. 22.

“Foundlings Quickly Find S. A. Parents,” San Antonio Light, 28 June 1942, p. 23.

“Many Seek Adoption Of Babies,” San Antonio Light, 22 August 1943, part two, p. 8.

“Widow of Ex-Judge Kills Self,” The News (San Antonio), 11 June 1946, p. 2; “Woman Found Shot to Death In Her Home,” San Antonio Express, 11 June 1946, p. 12; “Woodhull Funeral Set,” San Antonio Light, 11 June 1946, p. 18.

Last Will and Testament of Holland Sharpe Woodhull, 3 August 1943, and order of probate, Bexar County no. 59278, 23 July 1946; recorded Williamson County, vol. 868, pp. 741–748.

Frost and John Woodhull

“Frost Woodhull Takes Own Life,” San Antonio Light, 7 March 1939, pp. 1 and 4-A; “Frost Woodhull Kills Himself at His Home,” San Antonio Evening News, 7 March 1939, p. 1; “Woodhull Rites Set For Today,” San Antonio Express, 8 March 1939, p. 5.

[Frost Woodhull funeral note], The Williamson County Sun, 10 March 1939, p. 4.

“Woolford’s Tales: A Life in Records Only” and “A Town Limns Our Past,” by Sam Woolford, San Antonio Light, 12 November 1961, p. 74, and 19 November 1961, p. 80.

New York Life Insurance Company advertisement, John F. Woodhull, agent, The Williamson County Sun, 22 December 1977, p. 14.

John Frost Woodhull obituary, San Antonio Express-News, 20 April 2001.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

Those lines ran in The Williamson County Sun in the fall of 1927, two years after the Scopes trial. The woman who wrote it was 81 years old and living a few blocks off the Square. She signed her full name to it: Nanna Smithwick Donaldson.

She’d been in Georgetown twenty-two years by then. Six years later, at 88, she was still firing letters at the Sun about the President of the United States.

If you’ve read any early Texas history, you’ve probably come across her father. Noah Smithwick’s memoir, The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days, has never really gone out of print. J. Frank Dobie ranked it “best of all books dealing with life in early Texas.” What you may not know about Noah Smithwick is that he was blind when that book was written. Every word of it passed through the pen of that same daughter.

I first encountered Nanna in the deed books. One of the first things I do with an old house is trace its chain of title, and once I know the owners, I turn to traditional genealogy to help tell their stories. Nanna’s ownership was relatively brief, and she might have stayed as a minor footnote in that chain, but then Old Town neighbor Tom Cavness told me a story, I went looking for her in the papers, and out came a run of remarkable articles: a woman who fired off letters to the editor that would get a healthy comment section going even today.

She signed all three of her names on nearly everything she ever wrote, though the custom of her day would have folded her into a plain Mrs. N. S. Donaldson, the way her cousin and housemate, born Martha Jane Anderson, was known in the papers as Mrs. M. J. Suttles. Three names, and the woman attached to them seems like she was far more interesting company than her father’s famous book let on.

Born a Texan

Nancy “Nanna” Smithwick was born October 14, 1845, ten weeks ahead of statehood: born a citizen of the Republic of Texas, a distinction she shared with a shrinking club for the rest of her long life. We know her birth date because she stitched it herself. A cross-stitch sampler survives in family hands, worked in red thread below two rows of alphabet practice: “Nancy Smithwick Born Oct. 14, 1845. Married to A. M. Donaldson Nov. 26, 1872.”

Both newspapers that announced that wedding say the 29th, though I’m not inclined to argue with the woman holding the needle.

Her father was Noah Smithwick. He came to Texas in 1827, a nineteen-year-old blacksmith who then spent three decades standing wherever Texas history happened to be happening. He worked on the Gonzales cannon that fired the Revolution’s first shot. He rode as a Texas Ranger, first under Captain John Tumlinson and later out of Fort Colorado near Austin, and when the Alamo fell and panicked families fled east in the Runaway Scrape, he was in the rear guard, between the refugees and Santa Anna’s advancing army. He stayed until 1861, when his opposition to secession sent him west to California, done with Texas but never done remembering it.

Last weekend I stood in front of an exhibit case at the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, and there he was on the wall, quoted by name on the Runaway Scrape: “The Alamo had fallen and its brave defenders been put to the sword. Houston was in retreat, and families fleeing for their lives. Here was a situation to try men’s souls.”

Nanna’s mother, Thurza Blakey Smithwick, was a pioneer Texan in her own right. Thurza lost a brother at San Jacinto, seventeen-year-old Lemuel, and a second brother, Edward, in the Brushy Creek Indian fight of 1839. Nanna had Texas blood on both sides, and one side of it was spilled right here in Williamson County.

Gone West

Nanna went west young, almost certainly with the family in 1861, when she was fifteen. A Sacramento newspaper’s marriage column proves she was there by her twenties: in November 1872 she married A. M. Donaldson at Linn’s Valley in Kern County, close by where her father had first settled after leaving Texas.

We don’t know much about Archibald M. Donaldson; he was born in Livingston County, New York, October 5, 1823. By 1880 he was farming in Kern County, where the census caught the two of them keeping house, a New York man and his Texas-born wife. He died near Bakersfield, September 4, 1881. His death notice was brief and gives us hardly any details of his life.

Whether she grieved her husband, the record declines to say, but she never once mentions him in any of the decades of letters that I’ve found.

What we do know is that Nanna Smithwick Donaldson was widowed at thirty-five, and she spent the next fifty-five years as her own woman.

Her letters drop breadcrumbs across the California map from there: a church bazaar in Bakersfield in the early 1880s, in the very years her married life was ending there, then Santa Ana, where her brother Edward lived on North Sycamore Street and where she made her own home from around 1889. Add it up and you get what she later called “half an ordinary lifetime in the Golden State.”

The Book

Santa Ana is where the family story turns literary. Noah had moved there in 1879 with his son Edward. There is an accident of spelling in that: the old Texas Ranger who once stood between fleeing Texans and Santa Anna’s army lived out his last twenty years in a town called Santa Ana, one n short of the general, named for the saint and not the soldier. He had gone blind in old age, but his memory of early Texas was intact and vivid, and somebody needed to get it down on paper. That somebody was Nanna. Noah talked; she wrote, shaped, and arranged, and The Galveston Daily News began printing his recollections with her hand on every line.

In October 1899, Noah Smithwick died at age 91, and the book did not exist yet.

The manuscript was a stack of paper in Santa Ana, its author was gone, and everything that happened next happened because his daughter made it happen. In November 1900 The Austin American-Statesman noted that Mrs. Donaldson had returned to Texas for good, manuscript in hand: “She will remain in Austin until the book issues from the press.” She did, and it did. The Evolution of a State came off Gammel’s press in 1900 with a line on the title page that most memoirs never grant: “Compiled by his daughter, Nanna Smithwick Donaldson.”

Compiled is the title page’s word. Her own word, in the preface she signed “Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, Austin, Texas,” was humbler still: an “amanuensis,” the hand that takes down another’s words. And then she wrote: “whatsoever of merit the work may possess, belongs of right to the author, while the amanuensis accepts whatever of blame that may attach to the defects the reader may discover.” She opened her father’s book by giving away every ounce of the credit and keeping the blame for herself.

The author had been dead a year when it was born. The book exists because she wrote it down, gave shape to his words, carried it across the country, and stood over the press until it was real, and it became one of the classic firsthand accounts of early Texas.

Pecan Spring

By 1903, Nanna was writing from Florence. Her first cousin, Martha, whose mother was sister to Nanna’s mother, had an old homeplace out that way, a spring-fed grove of patriarchal pecan trees Nanna said was known in the early days as Pecan Spring. Martha had just been widowed for the second time, and Nanna, family record-keeper by proven talent, went to her.

We know all this because Nanna wrote it up, of course. In April 1904 The Austin Statesman ran her long feature on the old house, under a byline its readers would have taken at face value: “Written for the Statesman by Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, author of ‘The Evolution of a State.’” Author. In print, in her lifetime, in the capital’s paper.

The piece itself is a delight, an inventory of a family attic by a woman with a historian’s eye: Republic of Texas treasury notes, Civil War orders, the dark blue silk dress Martha wore to Sam Houston’s inaugural ball in 1859, when she danced in the capitol itself. And one item in the inventory was an old sampler, stitched in Kentucky more than a hundred years before by the cousins’ shared grandmother, fine enough that Nanna judged it proof of the family line. Her grandmother kept the family record in thread. So did Nanna, in 1872. The women of the family had always been its historians.

That same month, April 1904, Nanna also published a signed note in the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, weighing in on who really first said “Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat; the Alamo had none,” and correcting a general’s attribution on chronological grounds while she was at it.

In 1905 the cousins came in from the hills together. The Sun reported that September that Mrs. M. J. Suttles had bought “the Dick Morse place” in Georgetown, and the two women ran it as a household of two for a quarter century. The Sun’s locals column tracked them like the minor celebrities they were, and in April 1913 it settled any question of where Nanna belonged: “Mrs. Nana Smithwick Donaldson, who makes her home with Mrs. Martha Suttles, has gone to Idaho on a visit.”

Idaho. In 1913. At 67. When she summered in California in 1919, the Sun printed her travel letter from the Pacific. When she went again at 83, a Santa Ana paper marveled that “despite her eighty-three years,” she “travelled alone.” The woman moved through the world with ease, and the papers kept score.

Her Own Pen

Here’s the thing you learn reading thirty years of her clippings: Nanna never met a newspaper she wouldn’t write to, and she never needed her father’s book as an excuse.

In 1903 she was writing to The Atlanta Constitution, of all papers, from Florence, Texas, of all places, hunting the name of a Georgia man who once ran a private gold mint. In 1931 she wrote The San Antonio Express to put the design of the Gonzales “Come and Take It” flag on record; she’s credited with sketching the cannon and flag she knew from her father’s account.

The Sun got her local material too. “I Wonder,” the evolution essay this piece opened with, ran there in 1927; two years later came “The Enchanted Well,” a bylined reverie about seeing pictures in the weathered wall of an old stone building, with a poem recited from memory out of a McGuffey’s Reader she’d carried in her head for half a century.

And she wrote poems, with receipts reaching back to the 1890s. The Galveston Daily News, the same paper that had carried her father’s recollections, ran her work from Santa Ana. On San Jacinto Day 1893 she penned a poem called “The Lone Star,” eleven stanzas addressed to the Texas star on behalf of the “patriots, bent and gray” of her father’s generation; its closing stanza, about an old man whose “long, long race is almost run,” was surely written with the blind 85-year-old in her own house in mind. She had Texas blood on both sides of that poem, and you’ve met the other side already: her mother’s brothers, dead at San Jacinto and at Brushy Creek. And on New Year’s Eve 1896 the News printed a second poem of hers, a farewell to a dying year called “Requiescat.”

Mrs. Donaldson Has Reaction

Martha Suttles died in the home she shared with Nanna in February 1931, a few weeks short of 98, and her will left the homeplace to her cousin. So at 85, Nanna Smithwick Donaldson became the owner of the house she’d already called home for decades.

If you’re picturing a quiet dotage, you haven’t been paying attention.

In 1933, the year she turned 88, Nanna sent the Sun at least four letters to the editor. The New Deal was remaking the country, and she was having none of it. In May she sized up the special session of Congress, then busy handing President Roosevelt his New Deal, and offered a suggestion: “I would suggest that as a matter of economy, they pass an act giving him blanket authority and retire to private life.”

In June she took “a parting shot at the Washington circus,” and that one had a story behind it.

Rummaging among old trinkets, she’d found a gold coin dated 1843 and took it to a bank, straight into the teeth of the new gold recall. The cashier refused it. “Having spent half an ordinary lifetime in the Golden State where gold coin was a common medium of exchange, I felt fairly stunned to be told that the stamp of the United States of America was not sufficient authority for its acceptance by any bank.” She took it personally, and she said why: “Every drop of blood in my veins came down to me through patriotic ancestors, and it boiled with indignation to think of the principles for which they fought being thus traduced.” The ancestors weren’t a figure of speech. Her father worked on the Gonzales cannon; her mother’s brothers died at San Jacinto and at Brushy Creek.

Then she turned on Congress: “But the ring-master cracked his whip and the animals obediently performed.” Agree with her politics or don’t; the Sun’s readers surely did both. What strikes me is the voice: confident, funny, literate, stuffed with allusion, coming from an 88-year-old woman writing at a desk in Georgetown. In an era when the paper’s society column recorded women mostly as hostesses and honorees, Nanna Smithwick Donaldson claimed the letters column, the essay page, and a historical quarterly, and nobody seems to have thought it strange. And if they did, she likely didn’t care.

A Footnote

Around 1934 she went back to Santa Ana for good, to North Sycamore Street, her brother Ed’s street, where the Smithwick clan gathered for Christmas reunions. In 1936 she sold the house in Georgetown to a family that would keep it for sixty years. She died at home in California late on Saturday, January 23, 1937, at 91, and was buried in Fairhaven Cemetery, survived by four nieces. No children. No grandchildren. No one whose job it would be to keep her name alive.

That same year, 1937, a Dallas literary column praised a new facsimile of the book and described how the blacksmith, by then too old to write it himself, “entrusted the task and his facts to an amanuensis, evidently his daughter, Mrs. Nanna Smithwick Donaldson.” The word was hers, remember, lifted from her own self-effacing preface. Texas took her at that word, though for now it still printed her whole name beside it. Then, in 1983, a Corpus Christi columnist gave the book a full, glowing column, “for any Texana nut, this book is a must,” and in the single clause he spared for the person who made it, he called her Norma.

Norma. Four decades of bylines, and in the one place her name still turned up in print, somebody gave her a different one. The arc is easy to trace: author in 1904, an amanuensis in 1937 in the humbler word she’d picked out for herself, and by 1983 a stranger named Norma, and there was nobody left to write in and object.

The book was reprinted in 1935 and 1963, and the University of Texas Press keeps it in print to this day; you can still buy it, and her name is still inside, which means she was never really lost. Every Texas history buff who quotes Noah Smithwick has been quoting her all along.

Requiescat

She has no marker in Georgetown. But at Fairhaven, in Santa Ana, her family got the granite right: Nancy Smithwick Donaldson, 1845 to 1937, the whole name and the Republic birth year with it. The modern database that indexes her grave files her as plain “Nancy Donaldson.” Eighty-nine years on, the stone is still quietly correcting the record.

Her poems are still scattered through the old papers, waiting to be found. And Georgetown, to its credit, remembered her longer than the historians did. The Sun reprinted “Requiescat” for its readers around New Year’s 1930, while she was still living here, and when Fred Millholin needed a New Year’s piece for his Yesteryears history column in 1974, hers is the one he reached for, remembering her as “a well recognized and published Georgetown poetess.”

So let’s give her the last word, the one she wrote for a dying year:

Requiescat

Watched by the wan, cold moon, the dying year 
Exhales his parting breath on midnight air. 
The soft winds sigh, the sleeping forests stir 
And rustle all their leaves in whispered prayer.

Though oft he broke for us the bitter bread 
And mingled in our cup the drops of gall, 
Our shrinking feet through thorny pathways led, 
Yet the old year was something kind withal.

Then strew the sweet pale blossoms on his tomb, 
Nor yet withhold the tribute of a tear; 
E’en though the falling drop a smile illume, 
Bearing a welcome on the bright new year.

–Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, Santa Ana, Cal.

Sources

Newspapers

“A Private Mint” [Mrs. N. Smithwick Donaldson letter via The Atlanta Constitution], The Williamson County Sun, 8 October 1903, p. 3.

Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, “An Interesting Reliquary of Interest to Austinites” [bylined “Written for the Statesman by Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, author of ‘The Evolution of a State, or the Recollections of Old Texas Day’”; the Suttles homeplace in northwest Williamson County; the grandmother’s sampler], The Austin Statesman, 10 April 1904, p. 9.

[Mrs. M. J. Suttles buys the Dick Morse place; Mrs. Nannie Smithwick Donaldson moving from Florence], The Williamson County Sun, 21 September 1905, p. 5.

Locals items on the Suttles-Donaldson household: The Williamson County Sun, 28 May 1908, p. 5 (Corpus Christi and Galveston); 22 September 1910, p. 5 (return from California); 24 April 1913, p. 5 (”makes her home with Mrs. Martha Suttles”; Idaho); 11 July 1919, p. 5 (to Los Angeles and Santa Ana to summer with her brother, E. Smithwick); “Mrs. Nanna S. Donaldson Writes from Pacific,” 8 August 1919, p. 8.

“Tribute to Mrs. Suttles” [80th birthday at her home], The Williamson County Sun, 13 March 1913, p. 6; “96 Years Old,” 8 March 1929, p. 1; “20 Years Ago” [reprinting the 20 February 1931 death notice of Mrs. Martha Jane Suttles], 22 February 1951, p. 7.

“An Appreciated Visit” [Suttles, Donaldson, and Knowles cousins; Donaldson biography], The Williamson County Sun, 3 June 1927, p. 3.

“I Wonder” [essay by Nanna Smithwick Donaldson], The Williamson County Sun, 23 September 1927, p. 4; “The Enchanted Well,” 28 June 1929, p. 2.

Letters of Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, The Williamson County Sun: “Mrs. Donaldson Has Reaction on ‘New Deal,’” 5 May 1933, p. 4; “Mrs. Donaldson Takes ‘A Parting Shot at the Washington Circus,’” 16 June 1933, p. 5; “Plans Remind Old Citizen of Church Grab Bag Era,” 11 August 1933, p. 6; “A Looker-On,” 27 October 1933, p. 4.

“Texas’ First Flag of Cannon Design” [Donaldson letter on the Come and Take It flag], San Antonio Express, 29 April 1931, p. 8.

[Mrs. Nanna Smithwick Donaldson returned from California; guest of Mrs. N. G. Shelley; the book in press], Austin American-Statesman, 17 November 1900, p. 2.

Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, “The Alamo Monument,” Notes and Fragments, The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 7, no. 4 (April 1904): 328-329; quoted in The Waco Times Herald, 7 March 1909, p. 4.

“Marriages: At Linns Valley, November 29, A. M. McDonaldson [sic] to Nannie Smithwick,” The Sacramento Bee, 18 December 1872, p. 3.

“Married: At Linns Valley, Nov. 29th 1871 [sic; 1872], A. M. Donaldson to Miss Nannie Smithwick,” The Tulare County Times (Visalia, California), 14 December 1872, p. 2 (a second contemporary notice of the marriage, spelling the surname correctly; the printed year 1871 is an apparent misprint for 1872, and the day, November 29, agrees with the Bee against the sampler’s November 26).

“Noah Smithwick Dead,” The Tulare County Times (Visalia, California), 9 November 1899, p. 1: he “died at Santa Ana October 21st” “in his ninety-first year,” “belonged to the Texas Rangers, and was at one time a colonel of the militia,” and “was obliged to leave Texas by reason of his strong Union proclivities,” removing to Santa Ana in 1879 with his son Edward. The same notice gives the fullest word on his son-in-law: “A. H. [sic; A. M.] Donaldson, now deceased, at one time a supervisor of this county [Tulare], was married to Miss Nannie Smithwick, one of two daughters of deceased.” (The obituary’s California dates are garbled and are not relied on.)

“Mrs. Nanna Donaldson Is Complimented” [Christmas reunion, Santa Ana; “despite her eighty-three years, travelled alone”], The Register (Santa Ana, California), 27 December 1928, p. 10; “Nanna Donaldson Called by Death,” 25 January 1937, p. 3.

Nannie (Smithwick) Donaldson, “The Lone Star” [poem, dated Santa Ana, Cal., April 21, 1893], The Galveston Daily News, vol. 52, no. 73, 4 June 1893; and Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, “Requiescat” [poem, signed from Santa Ana, Cal.], The Galveston Daily News, vol. 55, no. 282, 31 December 1896; digital images, The Portal to Texas History.

“Fred Millholin’s Yesteryears: A New Year Is Drawing Near” [reprinting “Requiescat” in the “45 Years Ago” section, evidencing a Williamson County Sun reprint ca. New Year’s 1930, and identifying its author as a “well recognized and published Geogetown [sic] poetess” who resided with Mrs. Martha J. Suttles], The Williamson County Sun, 26 December 1974, p. 2.

“San Felipe as Young Blacksmith Knew It in 1828” [Hilton R. Greer on the Steck facsimile, crediting the amanuensis], The Dallas Journal, 14 July 1937, p. 10; “Descendents of Pioneer Texan,” Wichita Falls Times, 7 October 1936, p. 6; “Fort Colorado Replica About Finished,” The Austin American, 26 December 1966, p. 14; “Henry’s Journal: The Donkey Story,” Victoria Advocate, 13 March 1985, p. 2.

J. Frank Dobie, Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1943), “How the Early Settlers Lived”: “SMITHWICK, NOAH. The Evolution of a State, Austin, 1900. Reprinted by Steck, Austin, 1935. Best of all books dealing with life in early Texas. Bully reading.” (Text via Project Gutenberg ebook no. 314.)

Bill Walraven, “Texas in 1827: Land of Dried Venison and Mosquitoes” [full-column appreciation of The Evolution of a State; “his daughter, Norma Smithwick Donaldson”], Corpus Christi Caller-Times, 1 December 1983, p. 17.

Books, records, and other sources

Noah Smithwick, The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days, compiled by his daughter Nanna Smithwick Donaldson (Austin: Gammel Book Co., 1900), including her signed preface (”Nanna Smithwick Donaldson, Austin, Texas”: the “amanuensis” passage; publication urged “for preservation”; Noah’s “death occurring before the final revision was completed”) and her portrait plate (”Mrs. Nanna Smithwick Donaldson”); reprinted Austin: Steck Co., 1935; Austin: University of Texas Press editions in print.

Cross-stitch sampler of Nancy Smithwick, 1872 (recto), with provenance note (verso); family-held, digital images via Ancestry member tree.

Will and probate of Martha Jane Suttles, Williamson County (1931 devise to Nanna Smithwick Donaldson); death certificate, Texas no. 10684 (parents Robert Anderson and Sarah Blakey); deed, Nanna Smithwick Donaldson to Fred Millholin, Williamson County Deed Records, vol. 293, p. 510 (1936).

Bernard Buckner Blakey, A Blakey Book (Little Falls, Minnesota, 1977), p. 45 (the Blakey sisters: Sarah A. Blakey m. Robert Anderson; Thursa N. Blakey m. Noah Smithwick).

Gravestone of Nancy Smithwick Donaldson (1845-1937), Fairhaven Memorial Park, Santa Ana, California; photograph via Find a Grave, memorial no. 68043433 (where the same stone is indexed as “Nancy Donaldson”).

Gravestone of Archibald M. Donaldson (”Sacred to the memory of... born in Livingston Co., N.Y., Oct. 5, 1823, died near Bakersfield, Kern Co., Cal., Sept. 4, 1881”); Union Cemetery, Bakersfield, Kern County, California; photograph via Find a Grave, memorial no. 116739883.

1880 U.S. Federal Census, 5th District, Kern County, California (Supervisor’s District 4, Enumeration District 20, page 42, lines 18-19; enumerated June 26, 1880, John Henry Peters, enumerator), A. M. Donaldson household, dwelling 448 / family 473: “A. M. Donaldson,” age 53, farmer, born New York (father born Scotland, mother New York), head of house; wife “Nancy,” age 34, keeping house, born Texas (father born North Carolina, matching Noah Smithwick); two-person household; digital image via Ancestry (member tree identifies him as Archibald Melville Donaldson). The census age (53, implying birth ca. 1827) does not match the gravestone’s October 5, 1823; the gravestone date is used in the text.

“A. M. Donaldson, an old pioneer of Tulare County, and at the time of his death a resident of Kern County, has just died,” The Tulare County Times (Visalia, California), 17 September 1881, p. 2 (his entire death notice).

L. W. Kemp, “Blakey, Lemuel Stockton” [typescript biographical sketch, c. 1934-36], Kemp Sketches, pp. 271-275, San Jacinto Museum of History (sanjacinto-museum.org/KempSketches/SJV75.pdf): Lemuel S. Blakey killed at San Jacinto in Capt. Jesse Billingsley’s company; his brother Edward J. Blakey killed in the Brushy Creek fight, 1839; their sister Thursa m. Noah Smithwick; “Nannie who married Archibald M. Donaldson.”

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

This week’s tea is a quick cup, but it’s a sweet one, and there are elephants.

On a Friday morning in October of 1903, at 11am, Georgetown put down what it was doing and turned up at the Square. The Gentry Brothers’ famous trained animal show had come to town, and the parade was a free spectacle.

Weeks of Anticipation

The town had plenty of warning. On October 15, the Williamson County Sun announced that Gentry Brothers’ No. 1 show was on its way, the oldest and largest of all the Gentry shows, almost 350 trained animals riding in five railroad cars. The Sun did not undersell it:

“This is one amusement enterprise that will never lose its charm nor read its doom in the sombrous frowns of an indifferent public.”

The Gentrys, the paper went on, had “dogs, ponies, monkeys, elephants and camels galore who do everything except actually talk.”

A week later the show’s own advertising took over a column of page 8: two hundred performing horses, dogs and monkeys. Fifty monkey comedians. Three herds of performing elephants. A troupe of musical ponies, “only act of its kind in the world.” The Marvelous Yamida Japanese Troupe, “America’s highest salaried acrobats.” Don Juan, the Monkey Dare-Devil, who looped the loop. A monkey barber shop.

That same issue promised the little folks, “the main patrons of Gentry Bros. famous shows,” a miniature zoo of baby animals, plus an entirely new innovation: a drove of performing Siberian camels, “believed to be the only ones ever educated either in this or foreign lands.” The ad on the next page claimed the only trained camel ever seen was a baby camel and its mother. So was Georgetown getting two educated camels, or a whole drove of them? Depended on which page you read. Nobody seems to have minded.

What the Camera Caught

The parade rolled at eleven on the morning of the show, Friday, October 23, and the Sun advised that it “should not be missed by anyone.” We know what it looked like, because someone stood at the edge of the square with a camera. The gilded wagons came first, lettered GENTRY’S TRAINED ANIMAL SHOW and drawn by matched teams of little ponies.

Behind them came an open carriage with trained dogs riding the rooftop like they owned the place, and the procession strung itself down the block, crowds lining the storefronts.

Then the elephants, two of them, in embroidered blankets with their names worked into the cloth: Pinto, the big one, and Little, who wasn’t so little.

Look past the animals in these photographs. Rising behind the whole procession is the old fourth courthouse, with mansard roof and proud little tower, which the town would tear down within the decade. The photos hold two vanished things at once, a circus that passed in an afternoon and the building it passed in front of.

That someone with the camera was Annie Whittenberg, a young woman who had married a young Georgetown newspaperman named John Sharpe just that summer, a few months before the elephants came through. But theirs is a story for another day.

Who were Annie and John Sharpe? Do you know anything about the Sharpe family of Georgetown? Tell us about them in the comments!

Sources

The Gentry Brothers’ Show

“Gentry’s Animal Actors,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 15 October 1903, p. 7; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 18 July 2026).

“The Largest in The World,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 22 October 1903, p. 7; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 19 July 2026).

Gentry Bros. Famous Shows United, display advertisement, The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 22 October 1903, p. 8; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 18 July 2026).

The Parade Photographs

Gentry’s Trained Animal Show parade photographs (five views: show wagons, dog carriage, procession, and elephants “Pinto” and “Little”), Georgetown, Texas, 23 October 1903; John Sharpe Collection, The Williamson Museum, Georgetown, Texas; digital images, The Portal to Texas History (texashistory.unt.edu), items metapth182564, metapth182565, metapth182566, metapth182567, and metapth182568 (accessed 18 July 2026).

Annie Whittenberg, manuscript note on reverse of the elephants photograph (metapth182567): “These are pictures I took of parade, Dog and Pony Show, Georgetown Texas, in about 1902 or 1903. Miss Annie Whittenberg.” The parade date is fixed to 23 October 1903 by the Sun notices above; a search of the 1902 Sun found no earlier Gentry visit.

The Fourth Courthouse

Photograph of the fourth Williamson County Courthouse (1878–1910), photographer unknown; print in project research files.

Photograph of the fourth Williamson County Courthouse with note of its condemnation and the $100,000 bond for its successor, The Williamson County Sun Booster Edition, 7 October 1909, p. 20; digital image in project research files.

Preservation Georgetown, “Historic Williamson County Courthouse,” Walk This Way walking tour, preservationgeorgetown.org (accessed 18 July 2026), for the 1878 construction (Ruffini & Preston, architects; John Didelot, builder) and 1910 demolition.

Annie Whittenberg and John Sharpe

Tintype portrait of Annie Whittenberg, ca. 1880s, signed “Annie Whittenberg” on the paper frame; John Sharpe Collection, The Williamson Museum (WILLM 2006-015-265); digital image, The Portal to Texas History (texashistory.unt.edu), item metapth426944 (accessed 18 July 2026).

Wedding portrait of John M. Sharpe, Sr., Stone Photography, Georgetown, Texas, 7 July 1903; John Sharpe Collection, The Williamson Museum (WILLM 2006-015-354); digital image, The Portal to Texas History (texashistory.unt.edu), item metapth426899 (accessed 18 July 2026). Typed notes on the reverse record his 7 July 1903 marriage to Annie Emily Whittenberg and his arrival in Georgetown, ca. 1898, to work in his uncle R. E. Gates’s newspaper and print shop.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

Here I am again, taking 3 weeks to bring you my “weekly” piece. The big house has a long history, but I’m back with tea to spill. Last time, I said I would follow the deed and see what the records could tell us about the families who came after the Leavells. I did. I’ve read every deed this property has generated since 1880, about twenty-five of them, plus the liens, releases, affidavits, and one foreclosure file. This cup steeped a while, but it came out strong. Pour yourself something cold; we have a hundred and twenty years to cover.

Following the Deed

In August 2010, the Williamson County Sun ran a feature on the house at the corner of College and Eighth, the first in a series on notable historic renovations. The new owners, Todd and Kathy Cox, had bought the place out of foreclosure and were deep into restoring it. The article told the Leavell story in brief, and then came the line that started me down this whole road:

“Perhaps the memory of their father’s suicide was too painful, but for whatever reason, Mr. Leavell’s children sold the house and it has seen many owners since, though most didn’t stay for long.”

Most didn’t stay for long. Is that true? It’s the kind of claim that gets repeated until it hardens into fact, and the only way to test it is to follow the deed, owner by owner, from the Leavell estate to the present day. If you read enough deeds in sequence, with the newspapers filling in the faces, a shape starts to emerge. The shape of this house’s story surprised me. By the end of the trail I was keeping two lists: one of owners, and another one I didn’t expect to be keeping.

The Family Lets Go

When John H. Leavell died in December 1898, the house stayed with the family. The court set it aside as the family homestead, exempt from partition while the two youngest children, Gray and John Jr., were still minors. For a few years the block at the foot of Eighth Street remained in the family’s joint hands.

Between 1901 and 1902, Charles bought out his five siblings deed by deed, and the addresses on those deeds map the family’s scattering: Kate still in Williamson County, Lula in San Antonio, Blanche in Temple, Gray and Charles himself in El Paso. The consolidation turned out to have one purpose, and in September 1903 it happened: Charles and his wife Emma sold the homestead to H.E. Pye for $5,150. The property left the family after 23 years of Leavell ownership.

The house had not stood empty in the meantime. When Pye moved in, the Sun noted that Judge A.J. Booty had just vacated it. The grand house’s first stint as a rental had already begun within five years of its builder’s death.

A Railroad Agent and a Country Doctor

Harry E. Pye was the Katy Railroad’s new station agent, arrived from Temple in May 1903 with his wife Jennie, a childless couple who had married in a secret wedding in Cameron four years earlier. Four months after stepping off the train, Pye bought the finest house in the neighborhood. Four years after that, he sold it.

Pye sold the mansion to Dr. Bethel Nowlin in September 1907 for $5,500, and that December he bought a cottage from Dr. R.S. Hyer, the president of Southwestern University, for $2,000. The Pyes didn’t leave town; they downsized and stayed in Georgetown another twenty years. Selling the house may have just been a childless couple deciding they didn’t need eleven rooms.

Dr. Nowlin, a country physician from Jonah who had practiced in Williamson County since the 1880s, moved his family into the house and stayed fourteen years, the longest hold the house had seen since the Leavells themselves. His professional card in the Sun, running from February 1908, gave his office as “over Stone’s Drug Store” and his residence as “the Jno. H. Leavell Place.” The house was still Leavell’s as far as the town was concerned, even a decade after his death.

Nowlin raised four children there, and in 1922 he retired from medicine and did what retiring country doctors did: he sold the house in town and moved to his farm near Mankins Crossing. He sold to R.J. Stone for $5,500, the same price he had paid in 1907.

The fire-insurance maps add one more wrinkle: the 1916 Sanborn labels the house not “D” for dwelling but “Boarding,” as does the 1925 sheet. Even in its steadiest decades, under the doctor and then the photographer, the big house seems to have been taking in lodgers.

The Photographer’s House

Robert James “Bob” Stone was Southwestern University’s school photographer, “Uncle Bob” to decades of students, and the brother of T.B. Stone, the druggist whose store Dr. Nowlin had kept his office above. He bought the house in March 1922 and immediately began spending money on it. That October was when the city paved College Street. In July 1923, Stone and his wife Tula Lee signed a $3,000 mechanic’s lien to the Griffith Lumber Company “for certain improvements placed upon” the house. Three thousand dollars was more than half what he had paid for the whole property.

What did $3,000 build? The lien record names the debt but not the work, and the underlying contract is currently out of reach while the county’s mechanic’s lien volumes are being refurbished. Here’s what I keep turning over, though: the house in the 1886 photographs has no third-floor tower. The 1890 remodel is documented in the Sun, porches and a bay window and three rooms over the rear, no tower mentioned.

However… An undated photograph handed down in the Leavell family (said to be from 1882, though the 1886 views rule that out) shows the tower standing over a wrap-around porch behind a picket fence. While the 1886 photo shows a recently planted yard with what appear to be saplings and no tall foliage, the undated photo shows significant growth, indicating that about 15-25 years lapsed between the two photos. If you look closely, you can see a woman on the porch with children. Based on the fact that the photo was passed down through the Leavell family, who sold the house in 1903, my best guess on the date of the photo below is somewhere around 1900-1903. So, the tower was added sometime after 1886, most plausibly with the 1890 work or soon after it.

What Stone’s $3,000 built in 1923 is still an open question, but based on the photo below, the tower was likely already there when Leavell sold the house in 1903.

The Stones’ five years in the house were also marked by the kind of sorrow that this house seems to gather. Their youngest child, Robert James Jr., known as Sonny to the town, was a frail, bright boy the whole town seems to have loved. He died in October 1925 at age eleven after a long decline. The Sun‘s obituary says he died at home, and that the funeral was held at the home. The Stones had owned the Leavell house for three years by then. Among his pallbearers was a man named Eric Lundblad, whose name will reappear in this story shortly.

In 1926, Stone did something no owner had done before: he sold a piece of the block, a 65-by-85-foot corner, for $300. The full block John Leavell had assembled was beginning its long shrinkage down to the third of an acre the house sits on today. Then in April 1927, Stone sold the house itself; Frank A. Petterson traded him a farm of roughly ninety-nine acres for it, the exchange valued at $7,677.50.

Hard Times

Petterson had swapped his farm for the grandest house in town at what turned out to be the top of the market. Four years later the Depression had done its work. In June 1931 he sold the house to Eric Lundblad, the same Eric Lundblad who had carried Sonny Stone’s casket, for $2,175. Read that against the 1927 valuation: the house had lost nearly three-quarters of its value in four years.

Lundblad held it for eight weeks. In August 1931 he sold to Cled E. Wallace, a Church of Christ evangelist “widely known throughout the South and West,” for $2,000, taking a small loss for his trouble. Wallace put $130 down. The rest was financed at eight percent.

Wallace was betting on the house, and he backed the bet with work. Within days of buying it he hired a contractor, Hugh Bunton, to “remodel, repair, paint and paper the residence and build a two-story garage,” $1,981.33 worth, nearly as much as the house had cost him. Then came the hardest stretch. His note came due on New Year’s Day 1933 and he could not pay it; it was renewed rather than foreclosed. Then, on a cold, windy Sunday in January 1934, fire broke out in the attic, defective wiring the suspected cause, and gutted the house from the second-floor ceiling up through the roof. The damage was estimated at ten thousand dollars, only partly insured. The Sun reported that the furniture was mostly saved and that Wallace would rebuild it “just as it was.”

And then, against all odds of the decade, Wallace won. He paid off the remodel loan in March 1934 and paid his lender in full, and in December 1935 he sold the house for $6,500 cash, no foreclosure and no bank anywhere in sight, and moved to Oklahoma. The evangelist had bought the Leavell House at the bottom of the Depression with a $130 downpayment, navigated a remodel and a fire, and walked away four years later with a profit.

The Dillingham Place

The cash buyer was J.P. Dillingham, who came up from Travis County with his wife Othella and gave the house its longest family chapter since the Leavells themselves, nineteen years, outlasting even the Nowlins. By September 1936 they were advertising “furnished apartments, also furnished rooms” at the Dillingham place. A 1946 for-sale ad spells out what the mansion had become: an eleven-room house divided into three apartments, plus a small apartment over the two-story garage that Wallace had built in 1931. Four rental units, a new roof, fresh paint, offered at $20,000. It did not sell, and the Dillinghams stayed. Renters came and went around them, a roomer in the main house here, a railroad man there. This house has been somebody’s rental for far more of its life than the town tends to remember.

The Dillinghams’ adopted daughter, Beulah, was reported by the Sun in 1940 to be failing after an operation and “being cared for at the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Dillingham, 803 College Street.” She died there that December, age 42, and was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery. A death in the house, forty-two years almost to the week after John Leavell’s.

The Sun caught a gentle scene at the house in the fall of 1948: J.P.'s eighty-second birthday, "spent quietly at home" on College Street, a chicken dinner and a birthday cake Othella baked for the occasion. Six years later, in November 1954, he died in the house, 88 years old, after a long illness, the last man to own this house and live out his life in it. With his death the house began the strangest chapter of its story, which is the chapter where almost nothing happens at all.

The Empty Decades

Othella didn’t leave immediately; she was still advertising furnished bedrooms in the fall of 1955. But at some point in the years that followed, the widow moved away, eventually to Round Rock, and the big house at the foot of Eighth Street went quiet. In 1970 she deeded it to her kin, Rudie and Bennie Williams, for one dollar and “love and affection,” reserving a life estate; she died in 1975 at 95. The Williams brothers never intended to keep it. They had already signed an option, back in 1969, to sell it for $7,500 the moment they could.

An undated Sun column by Linda Scarbrough, written most likely in the late 70s, looks back at this stretch: “For most of the last 30 years, the old hulk has been empty and unused.” Empty, crumbling, an eyesore, she wrote, the words of a town watching its grandest Victorian rot at the end of one of its best streets. Thirty years is a columnist’s round number, and classified ads suggest the address was at least partly occupied into the mid-fifties and again by the mid-seventies. But the heart of it holds: for something like two decades, the grandest Victorian in Georgetown could not find anyone to want it.

I keep thinking about what those years mean for the 2010 article’s claim. “Most didn’t stay for long” is true, as far as it goes. But the deeds say something stranger and sadder. After J.P. Dillingham’s death, the record shows a widow holding on to a memory, kinfolk holding an option, speculators holding a position, a contractor holding a project, and a Navy family holding an investment. Not until 2003 would an owner again swear in the county records that this house was their family home. The problem wasn’t just that owners left, it was that for half a century, almost nobody seems to have claimed it as home.

The Speculators and the Contractor

What happened next happened fast, and the prices tell the story by themselves. December 1975: Bert and Linda Hall exercise that old option and buy the derelict house for $7,500. March 1976, three months later: the Halls sell to Ed Strayer for $21,250, financing him personally. Strayer puts on a roof, composition shingles and shiplap from the Wickes lumber yard, and in May 1977 sells to a Houston couple, the Allens, for $27,000. The old hulk had more than tripled in price in eighteen months without anyone doing much more than keeping the rain out. The preservation era had reached Georgetown, and speculators were paying attention.

The Allens held on for eighteen months and then, in the last days of 1978, sold to Joseph C. Murray, a building contractor then living in California, who would be connected to this house for the next twenty-seven years. Murray is likely the reason the house survived. He moved to Georgetown, and deed by deed you can watch his life braid into the place: a divorce in 1981, after which he kept the house; years of restoration work done with his own contractor’s hands; and then, in 1996, a sale that was not really a goodbye. He sold to Louis and Maria Rosa, a Navy family from Rockport, for a financed $116,800. The Rosas never lived there, and a 1998 affidavit in the county records names their tenant plainly: Mr. Joseph Murray. He had sold the house and stayed in it.

In 2003 Murray bought it back, this time with his second wife, Christine, and filed a homestead designation. When Joseph and Christine Murray swore in January 2003 that 803 College was their family home, they became the first owners since the Dillinghams to make that claim.

They stayed two more years, and in 2005 they sold at the top of another boom, and the house sailed straight into another American financial disaster.

The Crash and the Secret Library

The 2005 buyer paid around $265,500, nearly all of it borrowed from First Magnus Financial, one of the subprime lenders that would not survive 2007. By the summer of 2008 the foreclosure machinery was turning, and in February 2009 the house was sold on the courthouse steps to Fannie Mae for a credit bid of $300,696.79. The house John Leavell built, whose builder's unraveling began in the years of the Panic of 1893, whose price collapsed by three-quarters in the Depression, had now been foreclosed in the crash of 2008. The three great financial catastrophes of the house’s lifetime each left a mark on its deed trail. That could be attributed to the house’s peculiar bad luck or it could just be what it looks like when any house stands long enough.

Fannie Mae resold the foreclosure that May for roughly $212,000 to a company called Hometown Renovations, which turned out to be Todd Cox. He and his wife Kathy moved from Round Rock into a smaller house next door while they planned the work. What followed is the renovation Georgetown still talks about, and the source of the article that started this piece.

The Coxes restored the staircase, all six stone fireplaces, the wraparound porches, ninety percent of the original wood floors, seventy percent of the old glass. They also converted the third-floor attic into a secret library that opens when you push the right spot on a wall of bookshelves.

“You could write a book on this place,” Cox told the Sun in 2010. And then, the line that reads differently once you’ve walked the whole deed trail: “We may live in it for the rest of our lives.”

They listed it for sale the following year. The listing sat on the market for 671 days at $1,285,000 and expired. Listing records show the house had already failed to sell in 2004, and it would fail again in 2013. Even restored to glory, the house was hard to keep and hard to sell, too big, too grand, too much... Or was it something else? At this point in the story, one has to begin to wonder. The Coxes finally sold in 2015, to a trust. The trust sold in 2017 to a Pflugerville couple, who financed nearly $800,000 of it. The couple sold two years later.

A Company With Rentals in the Name

John Leavell built this house in 1880 as a family home, and for eighteen years it was exactly that. In the 128 years since his death it has been a rental under his own heirs (Judge Booty was their tenant), a boarding house under the Nowlins and the Stones, an apartment house under the Dillinghams, a room-by-room rental under the widow Othella, a rental under the Rosas, and today it belongs to a company with the word Rentals on its letterhead.

The current deed is dated September 2019. The buyer, and the owner of the Leavell House as I write this, is a company called Jupiter Rentals LLC.

The house isn’t sitting idle. Its occupant today is Alta Loma, a licensed Georgetown mental-health treatment program headquartered a block west on 8th Street, which operates the old mansion as a supportive-living residence it calls Casa Sana, “healthy house.” Residents live there under round-the-clock care, take their meals together seven days a week, and walk to the square for work and school. After everything you’ve just read, there’s something fitting in that: the house that kept boarders for half its life is boarding again, this time in the service of healing. The people who live and work in the house today deserve their privacy, and the owner is entitled to the same public-record-only treatment I have given every living person in this series.

The 2010 article said most owners didn’t stay for long. The deed trail says something more precise: in nearly a century and a half, the number of families who owned this house and simply lived in it as their home for more than a handful of years is three. The Leavells, the Nowlins, the Dillinghams. Even Joseph Murray, tied to the house longer than any of them, seems to have owned it for eighteen years without living in it, and lived in it as its owner for barely two. Everyone else, including the residents today, was only passing through.

What I Can’t Help Wondering

Faithful readers know I’m not above a good ghost story. I’m pretty sure I live with a ghost in my current residence. The story of the Leavell House isn’t a ghost story in the traditional sense, though; every fact in this piece has a deed, a newspaper, or a court record behind it. The “ghost story” here is only a suggestion in the spaces in between those records. Before I let the house go, I want to gather in one place something the records kept handing me, one clipping at a time: the deaths of the people who lived here.

Lula Leavell died of consumption in the house in 1895, at 41. John Leavell died in the house by his own hand in 1898, at 52; a seventh Leavell child had not survived childhood. Baby Blanche Leavell, Charles and Emma’s second daughter, born in all likelihood in the house in its last Leavell winter and carried west with the family at seven months old, died in El Paso in June 1903, at seventeen months; her mother had been called home by telegram from Temple to find her dying. Emma Place Leavell herself, who came to the house as Charles’s bride in 1899, was dead in El Paso by 1905, at 27, leaving two small daughters, and was buried beside her baby. Kate Leavell Sharpe, married in the parlor in 1895, died in El Paso in 1908, reportedly on her wedding anniversary, at the very hour of the ceremony. Her husband Alfred Sharpe, who was living in the house in 1898 and was the one who found John Leavell’s body, shot their daughter Holland over her Leavell inheritance in a Binghamton, New York house in 1916, then killed himself; Holland, mercifully, survived. Blanche Leavell Campbell, who grew up in the house and left it as a bride in 1895, died suddenly in Temple in 1920, at 46, after an emergency operation. Sonny Stone, the photographer’s boy, died at home in 1925, at 11, in the middle of his family’s ownership. Gray Leavell, who grew up in the house and stood as maid of honor at her sister’s parlor wedding, drank poison and stepped off a steamer into Galveston Bay in 1930, at 45, leaving a note that said it seemed best because of the economic depression, thirty-two years after her father reached the same conclusion at his desk. Roy Nowlin, raised in the house from the age of three, was found dead with his own gun in Baytown in 1932, at 26; the paper allowed that it might have been an accident. Beulah Dillingham, the adopted daughter, died in the house in 1940, at 42.

Four of those deaths happened under 803’s roof. The others belong to people who had lived within it and died young, or violently, or both, somewhere else.

And those are just the ones I found.

I’m a genealogist; I know that any family followed across ninety years accumulates its dead and that a big house passing through many hands collects more stories than most. That is the sober reading, and it could be the right one.

And still.

Add the rest of the ledger: a fire that ate the roof, a Depression that ate three-quarters of the house’s value, fifty years in which no owner would make it a real home, the town calling its finest Victorian an eyesore, a restorer’s marriage ending mid-restoration, a boom-time buyer lost to the bank, restorers who vowed to stay for life listing it within a year and finding no buyer in 671 days, and at the end of the trail a deed made out to a rental company.

So, what is it? I can’t help but wonder if the house holds something that wants it empty; something that finds whatever trouble an owner carries in: a note coming due, a marriage fraying, a mortgage sinking, and leans on it so heavily that leaving feels like the only option. A restless something, quietly convincing a century of owners that they’d really rather live somewhere else.

Or… Maybe the explanation is the ordinary one: big houses are expensive, and every generation has to decide whether a landmark is worth the upkeep.

Either way, the house is still there at the foot of Eighth Street, closing the view from the Square the way it has since 1880. It has outlasted everyone who ever tried to keep it, and it will outlast us too. Walk past it some evening around dusk, when the tower catches the last of the light, and decide for yourself.

Sources

The Chain of Title — Deed and Lien Records

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records: heirs of John H. Leavell to Charles H. Leavell, 1901–1902; Charles H. Leavell to H.E. Pye, 1 September 1903; H.E. Pye to Bethel Nowlin, 9 September 1907 (with 1908 release of vendor’s lien); Bethel Nowlin to R.J. Stone, 27 March 1922; R.J. Stone to Clifford Hausenfluck, 27 February 1926, vol. 227, p. 311; R.J. Stone to Frank A. Petterson, 16 April 1927, vol. 231, p. 623; Frank A. Petterson to Eric W. Lundblad, 13 June 1931; Eric W. Lundblad to Cled E. Wallace, 6 August 1931; Cled E. Wallace to J.P. Dillingham, 28 December 1935; Othella Dillingham to Rudie B. and Bennie L. Williams, 31 July 1970; Williams heirs to Bert and Linda Hall, 24 October 1975, vol. 623, p. 195; Hall to Ed Strayer, 5 March 1976, vol. 630, p. 121; Strayer to Randall C. and Grace Elizabeth Allen, 6 May 1977, vol. 669, p. 286; Allen to Joseph C. and Patricia S. Murray, 31 October 1978, vol. 742, p. 503; Patricia S. Murray to Joseph C. Murray, 18 December 1981, vol. 863, p. 431; Murray to Louis and Maria Victoria Rosa, 8 March 1996, doc. 9612104; Rosa to Joseph C. and Christine Murray, 17 December 2002, doc. 2003000597; Murray to William A. Bowen, 28 July 2005, doc. 2005064084; Substitute Trustee’s Deed to Federal National Mortgage Association, 3 February 2009, doc. 2009008367; Fannie Mae to Hometown Renovations, LLC, 29 May 2009, doc. 2009040764; Hometown Renovations, LLC to Todd S. and Kathy O. Cox, 2010, doc. 2010063223; Cox to Kelly Gerry 2012 Irrevocable Trust, 17 July 2015, doc. 2015061528; Gerry Trust to Anthony Don and Connie Deanne Bain, 27 February 2017, doc. 2017017691; Bain to Jupiter Rentals LLC, 12 September 2019, doc. 2019087609; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown.

Williamson County, Texas, Mechanic’s Lien Records: R.J. Stone and Tula Lee Stone to Griffith Lumber Company, $3,000, 11 July 1923 (released May 1924); Cled E. and Ola Wallace to Hugh Bunton, remodeling contract, 7 August 1931; Ed Strayer, Wickes Lumber materials lien, vol. 35, p. 759 (released April 1977); Rosa to J.C. Murray d/b/a Cam Jones Construction, 8 March 1996, doc. 9612105.

Rosa non-homestead and lease affidavit, 1998, doc. 9834132; Murray Voluntary Designation of Homestead, 2003, doc. 2003000600; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown.

Newspapers

Andrew McLemore, “New owners make their mark on College Street monument” (”Building on the Past”), The Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 22 August 2010, sec. B; copy in project research files.

[Improvements on Mr. John H. Leavell’s residence], The Williamson County Sun, 4 September 1890, p. 11.

“Katy railroad Agent H. E. Pye has bought Chas. A. Leavell’s residence property,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 3 September 1903, p. 5; and moving-in item naming Judge A.J. Booty, 10 September 1903, p. 1; digital images, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com).

“Mr. Harry E. Pye of Temple arrived this week...” [Pye’s arrival as Katy agent], Austin American-Statesman, 3 May 1903, p. 12; [Pye–Carothers marriage], Houston Post, 26 November 1899, p. 3.

“Mr. H. E. Pye sold his handsome residence property (the old John H. Leavell place)...to Dr. B. Nowlin,” The Williamson County Sun, 12 September 1907, p. 5; and Hyer cottage purchase, 5 December 1907, p. 10.

Dr. B. Nowlin professional card (”Residence the Jno. H. Leavell Place”), The Williamson County Sun, 6 February 1908, p. 5.

“Dr. B. Nowlin, Physician and Pioneer, Passes,” The Williamson County Sun, 30 August 1929, p. 8; “Mrs. Nowlin Died Saturday,” 2 July 1948, p. 7; “Mr. H. E. Pye Dead,” 1 November 1929, p. 2.

“Williamson County Physician Now ‘Doctoring’ Farm Lands,” The Austin American, 9 May 1926, p. 18.

“Funeral Held Thursday For R. J. Stone,” The Williamson County Sun, 6 August 1953, p. 1; Robert James “Sonny” Stone obituary, 16 October 1925, p. 5; “Mrs. R. J. Stone, Longtime Resident, Dies in Houston,” 15 February 1968, p. 4.

“Cled E. Wallace Home Damaged In Sunday Fire,” The Williamson County Sun, 12 January 1934, p. 1.

“Yesteryears” (reprinting the 1931 Lundblad purchase item), The Williamson County Sun, 28 July 1977, p. 2.

Dillingham-era rental and for-sale classifieds, The Williamson County Sun: 20 March and 11 September 1936; 18 September 1942; 4 July 1947; 6 September and 4 October 1946 (”11-room old style home, made into 3 apartments”); 6 October 1955.

Beulah Dillingham items, The Williamson County Sun, 29 November 1940, p. 3, and obituary, 13 December 1940, p. 5.

“J. P. Dillingham’s 82nd Birthday,” The Williamson County Sun, 1 October 1948, p. 6; “J. P. Dillingham Dies Here Early Monday,” 18 November 1954, p. 6; “Mrs. Dillingham dies in R. Rock” [Othella Dillingham obituary], 19 June 1975, p. 9.

Linda Scarbrough, “Pulling Hair,” The Williamson County Sun (Whirligig), undated, ca. 1976–1979; clipping courtesy of the Williamson Museum.

The Family Deaths

“Death of Mrs. Leavell,” The Williamson County Sun, 21 November 1895; “John H. Leavell’s Death,” 8 December 1898, p. 1 (see Part 1 for full citations).

“Mrs. Emma Leavell” [death notice], El Paso Times, 1 December 1905, p. 5.

[Kate (Leavell) Sharpe death coverage], The Williamson County Sun, 30 March and 2 April 1908.

“Wife of Temple Banker Dies After Operation” [Blanche Leavell Campbell], Austin American-Statesman, 9 April 1920, p. 6.

“Blanche Leavell” [infant death notice], El Paso Herald, 25 June 1903, p. 2; “Little Blanch Leavell,” The Williamson County Sun, 2 July 1903, p. 1.

“Kills Daughter and Himself,” The Brooklyn Daily Times, 20 April 1916, p. 4; “Shoots Daughter and Kills Self” (Associated Press), Lexington Herald-Leader, 20 April 1916, p. 6; “Shot His Daughter Then Killed Himself Did Alfred Sharpe,” The Victoria Advocate, 28 April 1916, p. 2; “Death of Mr. A. L. Sharpe,” The Williamson County Sun, 20 April 1916, p. 1. See also Dwight A. Sharpe, “Register Report for Alfred Lansing Sharpe” (family genealogy, 2013), dasharpe.com.

“A Pretty Wedding” [Gillette–Leavell marriage at the Leavell home], San Antonio Express, 24 December 1899, p. 12.

“El Pasoan Learns of Sister’s Death,” El Paso Evening Post, 7 November 1930, p. 1; “Woman Kills Self,” El Paso Evening Post, 8 November 1930, p. 1; “Woman Who Drowned May Be From S.A.,” The News, 7 November 1930, pp. 1, 6; “Former Charity Worker Drowns,” San Antonio Express, 8 November 1930, p. 22; “Georgetown Is Scene of Sea Death Funeral,” San Antonio Express, 10 November 1930, p. 3.

“Roy Nowlin Is Victim Of His Own Gun,” The Williamson County Sun, 2 September 1932, p. 1.

Robert James “Sonny” Stone obituary, The Williamson County Sun, 16 October 1925, p. 5; Beulah Dillingham obituary, 13 December 1940, p. 5 (also cited above).

Survey, Listing, and Property Records

Texas Historical Commission, Historic Sites Inventory Form, John Leavell House, Site No. 663 (1984), and survey photographs, ca. 1970s–1984; Georgetown Heritage Society house file, 803 College; National Register of Historic Places, Georgetown Multiple Resource Area (1986), ref. 86000979.

Photographs of Georgetown, 1886: view from the preparatory school, Southwestern University Distinctive Collections; bird’s-eye panorama, UNT Portal to Texas History.

Sanborn Map Company, fire insurance maps of Georgetown, Texas: 1916 sheet 6 and 1925 sheet 5 (803 S. College, “Boarding”).

Leavell family photograph of the house (undated, ca. 1900–1903), shared by a Leavell descendant; copy in project research files.

Williamson County property and MLS listing records, 803 S. College Street (listing 5504677 and prior listings, 2004–2019).

Alta Loma Transformational Services, “The Villa” program page, altaloma.com (accessed 3 July 2026); Williamson County and Cities Health District “Restaurant Report” (”Casa Sana,” 803 S. College), The Sunday Sun, 18 May 2025, p. 7.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

Yes, I know. It's called the Weekly Tea, and yet here we are, my first post in a month. Consider this the cup that took a while to steep. Two things kept me: this story is far bigger than I expected, and also a Preservation Georgetown project took up most of my available research hours. I'm not ready to spill that one yet, but soon. For now, pour yourself something warm, because this is an interesting one.

The city was shocked Tuesday morning.

That was how the Williamson County Sun began its account on December 8, 1898. John H. Leavell, one of Georgetown’s most prominent merchants, was dead by his own hand. He had risen early that morning, lit the lamp at his desk, opened a Bible and a Testament, and arranged his papers. On the table beside him lay a sealed letter, addressed to his children and sons-in-law, marked “private.”

He was 52 years old. He left behind six children, an aged father, two mercantile businesses, a fortune in land and promissory notes, and a house on College Street that still stands today.

The Leavell House was one of the first historic homes I researched when I moved to Georgetown in 2023. I wasn’t the Historian for Preservation Georgetown yet, just fascinated by the old homes. Everyone recognizes the huge Queen Anne on College, and the town definitely has opinions about the more recent renovations. When I dove into the research, one of the first things that caught my attention was a line in an article covering that renovation, a passing mention that subsequent owners never seemed to stay for long. That told me the house had a story, and it turned out to be a bigger one than I expected.

The House at the Foot of 8th Street

To find the start of the house’s story, we need to go back to the year it went up. In January 1880, a merchant named John Henry Leavell arrived in Georgetown with his household. He had come a long way to get there. Born in Newberry District, South Carolina, in 1846, he crossed into Texas as a boy of fourteen and grew up in Leon County, where he married Lula Holland in 1870. Six of their seven children lived. By the time the family reached Georgetown, the railroad had been in for three years and the town was on the rise.

That spring, Leavell paid C.A.D. Clamp $325 for a pair of bare lots at the foot of 8th Street, across College from the original grounds of Southwestern University, and built on them, of cypress, the house that still anchors the corner. Stand on the Square today and look east down 8th, and the house is there at the end of it, framed by the street and closing the view. It was not the house we know today. The earliest photographs of it, taken in 1886, show a tall two-story Victorian without the distinctive third-floor tower rising over the entry that we are familiar with today.

Do you see it? No? I didn’t see it at first either, but it’s there in the far back right corner.

The house can also be seen in the 1886 photo below, looking northeast from the roof of the preparatory school that stood where the GISD Hammerlun Center is today.

The house stood behind the picket fence nearly every Georgetown house kept against the animals that would wander the streets. The fuller life of the house, its architecture, and the families who came after the Leavells, will come later. For now it is enough to know that Leavell built big, and built to last, in his first year in town.

The Rise of a Merchant

John Leavell arrived in Georgetown at a moment when the town was transforming. The International-Great Northern Railroad had reached Georgetown in 1878, and by 1880 the population was approaching 3,000, the Square was filling up with limestone commercial buildings, and Southwestern University had recently opened. It was a place where an ambitious merchant could build something.

He did. By the spring of 1880, barely months after arriving, Leavell was already advertising in the Williamson County Sun: “Jno. H. Leavell, Wholesale and Retail Dealer in General Merchandise. Also, Regular Cash Buyer of Hides, Cotton, Wool, Ets.” That first ad ran in May 1880. By December, his advertisements had grown bolder and more playful, filling columns with itemized lists of goods and prices under the headline “GET OFF THE SIDE WALK!!! Into Jno. H. Leavell’s Store!!!! And Buy.”

He sold everything. Dried apples, cheese, oysters, soda crackers, soap, carpet, hardware, tobacco, candy for the children. His ads made it clear he was competing on price and personality both, closing with lines like: “Come in ‘Gently,’ we are ‘law-abiding,’ and work to please our friends and customers.”

In April 1889, the Austin Weekly Statesman ran a long booster-style feature titled “GEORGETOWN: The Principal Points and Surroundings About a Live Texas Town,” cataloging the city’s hotels, churches, mineral waters, university, and merchants for Austin readers who might be persuaded to visit, invest, or relocate. The piece moved through Georgetown’s leading businesses in turn, and when it reached Leavell, it described him as one of the town’s essential figures: he carried a large and lately acquired stock of general merchandise and country trade goods, and was among the first in town to adopt new business technology. He was also, the article noted, among the first Georgetown merchants to hire women as clerks. That same year, the San Marcos Free Press reported that Leavell had equipped his store with a National Cash Register, described as a wonderful machine that recorded cash and credit sales and exposed mistakes with “unfearing certainty.” It was worth a trip to his store just to see it.

Over the next decade, Leavell’s operations expanded into a small commercial empire. He ran at least two businesses simultaneously: a mercantile interest in W.F. Magee & Co., known locally as “The Good Luck Store,” on the south side of the Public Square, and a second firm, Leavell & Sharpe, located in Block 51 near the corner of Locust and Brushy streets. His son-in-law Alfred L. Sharpe was his partner in the latter. In April 1898, the Sun reported that Leavell left for St. Louis and Chicago “for the second time this year to buy goods for the firm of Leavell & Sharpe and W.F. Magee & Co.” He was supplier and buyer, wholesaler and retailer, and by the mid-1890s he had branched well beyond dry goods into farming implements, wheel goods, land, and money lending.

In 1891, Leavell sold off his hardware, wheel goods, and farming implements stock to Jack Steele for $5,000, retaining only the dry goods department. The Austin American-Statesman reported the reason: “Mr. Leavell finds himself physically unable to manage so extensive a business as he has heretofore conducted.” It was August 1891. The language was polite, but something was already beginning to give way.

Beyond the stores, Leavell was a civic presence. He led the first hook and ladder company of the Georgetown Fire Department and was known for making frequent donations to the department. His obituary called him “liberal and public spirited,” and added that when seeking recreation, “he was as cheerful and light hearted as a boy.” He was, by all the evidence, a man who threw himself fully into whatever he was doing, whether it was selling soda crackers or fighting fires. The Sun also noted his reticent disposition, a man who kept his own counsel but could be genial and companionable when he chose.

He also invested heavily in land. By the time of his death, the estate held promissory notes valued at over $80,000, most of them secured by land. He extended credit to farmers and fellow businessmen across Williamson County, bought and sold rural acreage, and held a 10-year wood-cutting privilege on timberland northwest of Georgetown that allowed eight of his tenant families to gather firewood. He was not just a shopkeeper. He was a landlord, a creditor, and a one-man financial institution.

In April 1898, just eight months before his death, he petitioned the city for permission to erect a metallic shed for the storage of vehicles. And a month before the end, in November 1898, he placed a small ad in the Sun: “John H. Leavell. Wants to buy land notes. He is a home man, and keeps your notes at home.” It was the last advertisement he would ever run.

The Family on College Street

For fifteen years the house was the center of a large and rising family. As Helen Cordes wrote on her local history page, Hidden HerStories and MoreStories, in a post titled Women Making Georgetown Shine, Lula Leavell, with daughters Blanche and Kate, founded the Woman’s Club of Georgetown in the house on College.

It was there in the house, on March 28, 1895, that Kate Leavell married Alfred L. Sharpe, her father’s partner in business and twelve years her senior, before a few relatives and intimate friends. The Fort Worth Daily Gazette carried the wedding on its front page, calling Kate “the reigning belle of Williamson County” and Sharpe “one of Georgetown’s best citizens.” Within the year, the same parlor would hold a funeral.

Lula

A notice in the Austin American-Statesman on September 22, 1895, reported that “the condition of Mrs. John H. Leavell is considered critical” and that all of her children were at home. She was 41 years old.

Lula Holland Leavell died on Sunday morning, November 17, 1895, after a lingering illness of several months. Her obituary in the Williamson County Sun the following Thursday gave the cause of death as consumption.

The funeral was held at the family residence on College Street. The floral decorations were described as profuse and beautiful, and a quartette played sweetly solemn music. All six children were present when she died. She was buried at the Odd Fellows’ Cemetery.

The Unraveling

There is a gap in the record after Lula’s death that the documents, taken together, help to fill.

Lula died in November 1895. Under normal circumstances, her will would have been filed promptly. The estate was entirely free of debt, a named executor was ready to serve, and the legal path was clear. Instead, the probate was not filed until December 1896, more than 13 months after her death. There’s no apparent reason for the delay.

John’s obituary, published three years later, offers a possible explanation. “Several years ago Mr. Leavell’s mind became unbalanced from business worries,” the Sun reported, “and it was found necessary to place him in a sanitarium for awhile.”

The timing aligns. The 1891 sale of his hardware stock, attributed to being “physically unable” to manage such an extensive operation, may have been an early sign. By 1895, with business pressure mounting and his wife gravely ill, maybe something broke.

The sequence, as the documents suggest, is this: Lula dies in November 1895. John’s mental health collapses. He’s placed in a sanitarium, possibly the Texas State Lunatic Asylum in Austin, the primary facility of the era. He remains institutionalized through 1896. Someone else is managing the stores and the children. Eventually he recovers, or recovers enough. He files Lula’s probate in December 1896. He returns to business.

After his release, the obituary continued, “he traveled extensively, and grew strong in mind and body, sufficiently so to resume his business.” Every summer he camped across Texas, and in the fall he went East to make his purchases. A September 1896 item in the San Antonio Express-News reported that “Mr. John H. Leavell has returned from an extended trip of several weeks through Northern and Eastern States.” He appeared, to his family and friends, fully restored. They likely anticipated a long and prosperous life.

It didn’t last.

The Last Days

In October 1898, a lightning bolt destroyed John Leavell’s barn. It was a minor loss for a man of his means, but for a mind already fragile, every blow must have landed differently. In the weeks that followed, those close to him noticed he was restless and depressed. He reportedly expressed fears of “again losing his reason.”

On Saturday, December 3, 1898, three days before his death, Leavell went to see his attorney, Robert A. John. He needed to update his will. Lula had been named executrix in the original document, drafted in 1891 when both of them were living. Now, three years after her death, that provision was meaningless. Attorney John drafted a codicil. Leavell copied it out in his own handwriting, formally revoking the bequests to his deceased wife and appointing three of his adult children as executors in her place: Charles, Kate, and Blanche. He signed it in the presence of three witnesses.

Was this prudent planning, or a man putting his affairs in final order? Both are possible. The codicil’s language is calm and precise, the work of a sound legal mind. John D. Hudson, one of the witnesses, testified under oath that Leavell was “of sound and disposing mind and memory” at the time of signing.

On the night of Monday, December 5, Leavell went to his daughter’s room. He was complaining of nervousness. He stayed until midnight, conversing with her and her husband. Then he retired to his own apartment. Nothing unusual was heard during the night.

Sometime before dawn on Tuesday, December 6, he rose, lit the lamp, and opened his desk. He took out a Bible and a Testament and marked passages with strips of paper on which he had penciled dates. He wrote a letter to his children and sons-in-law, sealed it, and marked it private. Then he stood before the bureau mirror in his undershirt and pantaloons, barefoot, with a Winchester rifle. The ball passed through the transom glass above the door. Death, the Sun would report two days later, was of course instantaneous.

Sometime around six o’clock that morning, the household heard what sounded like a stone thrown against the house. Nobody investigated. Leavell was often late to breakfast, and the family assumed he was sleeping in, knowing he had been restless. He did not appear at his place of business. Around a quarter to 11, his son-in-law and partner, A.L. Sharpe, grew uneasy and walked home to check on him. He went around to Leavell’s room, peered through the shutters, and discovered the body.

The news spread through Georgetown within minutes. Friends arrived at the house. The absent children were telegraphed. Blanche came from Temple. Charles came from the State University at Austin. The aged father came from Leon County.

The funeral was held the next afternoon, December 7, at the residence on College Street. Rev. G.W. McCall conducted the services. The interment was at the Odd Fellows’ Cemetery. It was largely attended.

What He Left Behind

The Sun described the deed as “undoubtedly committed in an insane moment.” That was the language of the era, a way of understanding what had happened, a way of granting mercy to the dead and to the family left behind.

Within weeks, the probate machinery began to move. The will and codicil were filed on January 2, 1899. Notice was posted at the courthouse, in Taylor, and in Round Rock. On March 24, the will was proved in open court and admitted to probate. Charles, Kate, and Blanche were confirmed as executors without bond.

When the appraisers finally tallied the estate, the figure was staggering: $167,720.56. The inventory included nearly $60,000 in real estate, interests in both mercantile firms, over $80,000 in promissory notes, two life insurance policies totaling $12,500, and $7,826 in cash. His personal property was modest by comparison: an office desk and safe valued at $125, a pony named Bessie worth $10, a cow named Jennie Bell worth $35, and a pony cart worth $15.

The house on College Street was set aside as the family homestead, not subject to partition while the two youngest children, Gray and John, remained minors. It would stay in the family’s joint ownership into the early 1900s.

Two of his daughters were at school in Washington, D.C. at the time of his death, a mark of just how far Leavell’s ambitions for his children had reached. His son Charles, who had been at the University of Texas, appears to have transferred to Southwestern University in Georgetown after the death, likely to stay closer to his responsibilities as guardian of young John. The guardian accounts paint a picture of life after the father: boarding fees, school supplies, a summer spent at Fort Davis in far west Texas, enrollment at San Antonio Academy, a $5 Christmas gift to the grandfather.

The late John H. Leavell carried $12,000 in life insurance, the Sun noted on December 15, 1898. Seven thousand in the New York Life, $5,000 in the Equitable. A man from Temple representing the former company had already been to Georgetown to make settlement.

The business of death moved quickly in 1898. The estate was settled, the homestead was set aside for the minor children, and the world moved on. The house on College Street, the one John Leavell had built of cypress in the year he arrived in Georgetown, remained.

What happened to 803 S. College after the Leavell family is a story I am still untangling. The 2010 Williamson County Sun article on the Cox renovation mentioned, almost in passing, that the owners between the Leavells and the Coxes had not stayed long. That note has stayed with me. In Part 2, I’ll follow the deed and see what the records can tell us about the families who came after.

Sources

John H. Leavell — Death and Funeral

“John H. Leavell’s Death,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 8 December 1898, p. 1; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 2 April 2026).

Lula Leavell — Death and Funeral

“Death of Mrs. Leavell,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 21 November 1895; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

“Georgetown Gleanings,” Austin American-Statesman (Austin, Texas), 22 September 1895, p. 4; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

Probate and Estate Records

Williamson County, Texas, Probate Minutes, Estate of Mrs. Lula Leavell, deceased, No. 929, 21 December 1896; “Williamson, Texas, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (familysearch.org : accessed 3 April 2026), Image Group Number 007573773.

Williamson County, Texas, Probate Minutes, Estate of John H. Leavell, deceased, No. 1047, 24 March 1899; “Williamson, Texas, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (familysearch.org : accessed 2 April 2026), Image Group Number 007573775.

Williamson County, Texas, District Court, Chas. H. Leavell, et al. v. Lulu Leavell, et al., Commissioners’ Report of Partition, 9 August 1899; “Williamson, Texas, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (familysearch.org : accessed 3 April 2026), Image Group Number 008340471.

Business and Civic Life

Jno. H. Leavell, advertisement, The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), May 1880; “GET OFF THE SIDE WALK!!!,” advertisement, The Williamson County Sun, December 1880; digital images, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

“Georgetown: The Principal Points and Surroundings About a Live Texas Town,” Austin Weekly Statesman (Austin, Texas), 18 April 1889, p. 1; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 4 April 2026).

[National Cash Register notice], San Marcos Free Press (San Marcos, Texas), 1889.

“Georgetown Gleanings,” Austin American-Statesman (Austin, Texas), 30 August 1891, p. 1; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

“Leavell & Sharpe” [buying trip notice], The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 14 April 1898; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

[Council proceedings, metallic shed petition], The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 14 April 1898; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

John H. Leavell, “Wants to buy land notes,” advertisement, The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), November 1898; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

The House — Property Records

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records, C.A.D. Clamp to John H. Leavell, Lots 1 and 2, Clamp’s Addition, recorded 30 April 1880, vol. 23, p. 240; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown.

Clara Scarbrough, “Data on Georgetown Buildings 1976 for National Register Survey: John H. Leavell Home, 803 College,” 1976; copy in project research files.

Marriage and Family

W. D. Wood, comp., A Short Biography of Daniel B. Wood and Family, William Horn and Family, Isaac F. Wood and Family, W. D. Wood, his Wife and Her Family (San Marcos, Texas: Democrat Print, [n.d.; received April 28, 1971]), p. 32.

1880 U.S. Census, Williamson County, Texas, population schedule, Georgetown, John H. Leavell household; digital image, FamilySearch (familysearch.org : accessed 3 April 2026) or Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

“Marriage at the Residence of the Bride’s Father” [Kate Leavell and Alfred L. Sharpe], Fort Worth Daily Gazette (Fort Worth, Texas), 29 March 1895, p. 1.

“Misses Lula and Grace Leavell...” [Fort Davis return], The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 7 September 1899; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 3 April 2026).

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

On August 10, 1874, two days after his twenty-third birthday, Andrew Jackson Glasscock sat down and wrote a letter he likely spent the next eight years regretting.

Andrew, whom readers of last week’s story will recognize as the original builder of the house at 316 East 7th Street, was a 23-year-old bachelor that summer, and he was in a hurry. The Williamson County Sun wasn't publishing yet, so the story that followed traveled through the Austin and Dallas papers before I found it. But it got around.

Jennie

The young lady in question was Miss Virginia C. “Jennie” Shell, second daughter of John and Anzeline Shell, one of Georgetown’s founding families. The Shells had arrived from Missouri in 1849 and settled the land just east of the future university grounds; their tract still appears on modern surveys as the Shell Addition. The original 1849 limestone walls John and Anzeline laid by hand still stand inside the greenhouse at the Carothers-Thomas House at 603 East 7th Street, recently featured in a four-part series by Preservation Georgetown and, as of this writing, on the market for sale.

Jennie Shell was about 17 years old in the summer of 1874. The exact circumstances of how she and Andrew came to be engaged aren’t preserved in any document I’ve found. What we do know from court documents is that at some point in 1874 Andrew and Jennie had entered into “a mutual agreement... to marry each other.”

We also know what the letter said:

This does not seem to be the courteous breaking off of an engagement that 1874 society expected. This was a brush-off, dictated in haste, sent by messenger, demanding the ring back the same day.

Jennie Shell — and her father — kept the letter.

Another young lady

What Jennie may not have known, and what Andrew did not spell out in his letter, was the reason for his haste.

Less than a month after the letter, on September 3, 1874, Andrew applied to the Williamson County District Clerk for a marriage license. Two days after that, on September 5, he married 16-year-old Georgetown resident Esther Louisa Lemond.

Was Andrew courting both young women in the summer of 1874, or did the engagement to Esther come together suddenly in the four weeks between the letter and the wedding? All we can tell for sure is the timing. Andrew demanded his ring back on August 10. He was married to someone else by September 5. Jennie Shell got engaged, jilted, and replaced in less than a month.

The lawsuit

John Shell, “as agent and next friend” of his daughter Virginia, filed suit against Andrew J. Glasscock for breach of promise of marriage. The petition asked for $10,000 in damages, which was real money in 1874 Texas. Andrew’s entire 1,400-acre purchase from his brother eighteen months earlier had cost $17,000.

By November, Andrew had retained a small army of attorneys: Makemson & Posey, Montgomery & Peeler, and his own brother George W. Glasscock. The Shells had hired McFadin, Fisher & Dalrymple. Six attorneys, a packed courtroom, a 17-year-old plaintiff, and a one-paragraph letter.

On Wednesday, November 18, 1874, the parties came in person and announced ready for trial. A jury of “good and lawful men” was empaneled and sworn.

The arguments were, as the out-of-town papers later reported, ably presented on both sides. The case had drawn a crowd. The jury also likely knew the part of the story the lawyers may not have needed to spell out: that the defendant sitting before them had married a 16-year-old neighbor ten weeks earlier. The jury retired to deliberate. They were back in half an hour.

“We the Jurymen decide in favor of Plaintiff and assess the damages at four thousand dollars.”

Four thousand dollars. That letter was going to cost Andrew Glasscock roughly the price of a thousand acres of Williamson County farmland.

The Dallas Weekly Herald, four days later, did something the Austin papers did not. It printed the entire letter. Whatever shred of dignity Andrew Glasscock had likely hoped to preserve in Williamson County was now being read in Dallas, Austin, and presumably every front parlor between.

The motion, and the silence

Andrew’s lawyers moved for a new trial. The court overruled it. He gave notice of appeal to the Supreme Court of Texas, posted bond, and then… nothing happened for a good long while.

Life moved on, as it does. Jennie Shell married Samuel G. Anderson at her father’s house in April 1876. She was 19 years old with a $4,000 judgment still pending on appeal in her name. Whether she considered that a consolation or an aggravation is not recorded.

Esther, meanwhile, named her second daughter Virginia in 1877.

Andrew, for his part, got on with things. The silver mine excitement of 1881 came and went on his land. He built his two-story house on the San Gabriel. He sold most of his acreage to his brother George. By every indication, life was carrying on for Andrew Glasscock more or less normally.

Until it wasn’t.

The disappearance

On the morning of Tuesday, February 28, 1882, about sunrise, Andrew Glasscock left his residence two miles outside Georgetown on horseback “to open his front gate to admit a nurseryman.” He told his wife he would be back to breakfast.

He did not come back to breakfast.

By Wednesday his family was alarmed enough to send a telegram to the Austin American-Statesman, which ran it the next morning under the headline MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF A CITIZEN.

By Thursday, the entire town was looking for him. The San Antonio Express filed a dispatch on March 6 reporting that searchers had combed caves, woods, and branches “where a murdered man might be concealed,” then assembled seines, grab-hooks, and boats and dragged the San Gabriel for about a mile. They found nothing. The dispatch ended on a curiously hopeful note: “the belief seems to prevail that there has been no foul play, and that the lost man will turn up in some neighboring town.”

The lost man did turn up in some neighboring town. The Austin Weekly Statesman of March 23 reported that Judge Glasscock had received a telegram from Abilene confirming that his brother Andrew had surfaced there. The same paper added a detail I cannot improve upon:

Andrew Glasscock left his house at sunrise to open a gate and turned up two weeks later in Abilene, while his hometown ate the fish his neighbors had pulled from the river while looking for his body. The papers never said what he had been doing in Abilene, why he had gone, or whether he had told anyone before he left. Andrew's older brother Albert Horton Glasscock had moved to Taylor County the year before, settling about fifteen miles south of Abilene to run sheep. The telegram to George announcing that Andrew had "turned up at that place" almost certainly came from Albert. On the question of why he disappeared and caused the whole town to search for him, we are left unsatisfied. He simply reappeared.

The Supreme Court decision

About three months after Andrew resurfaced, his eight-year-old appeal was finally argued before the Texas Supreme Court at Austin. On June 6, 1882, Justice Bonner handed down the opinion. It was, as the Austin papers noted with some satisfaction, the first breach of promise of marriage case ever decided by the state supreme court.

Andrew won on a technical point about jury instructions. The $4,000 verdict was reversed. The case was remanded to Williamson County for a new trial.

The dismissal

A new trial never came. On July 3, 1882, the parties appeared in Williamson County District Court and agreed to dismiss the case, with Andrew paying the court costs. Jennie Shell had long since married Samuel Anderson back in 1876, so maybe by then it was all just water under the bridge. Eight years after the break-up letter, after a $4,000 verdict and a Texas Supreme Court opinion, the parties walked into court and shook hands.

Sources

Newspapers

“Breach of Promise,” Austin American-Statesman, 24 November 1874, p. 2; reprinting an item from the Georgetown Democrat; digital images, Newspapers.com.

“Breach of Promise,” Weekly Democratic Statesman (Austin), 26 November 1874, p. 2; reprinting an item from the Georgetown Democrat; digital images, NewspaperArchive.com.

“In the case of Virginia C. Shell vs Andrew J. Glasscock...,” Dallas Weekly Herald, 28 November 1874; digital images, NewspaperArchive.com.

“Georgetown. Mysterious Disappearance of a Citizen,” Austin American-Statesman, 2 March 1882, p. 1; digital images, Newspapers.com.

“Georgetown. The Community Searching for a Missing Man...,” San Antonio Express, 8 March 1882, p. 3; digital images, Newspapers.com.

“Judge George W. Glasscock received a telegram from Abeline to-day...,” Austin Weekly Statesman, 23 March 1882, p. 2; digital images, Newspapers.com.

“Two important cases were decided by the supreme court...,” Austin Weekly Statesman, 8 June 1882, p. 3; digital images, Newspapers.com.

“Glasscock vs Schell, from Williamson county,” San Antonio Express, 9 June 1882, p. 3; digital images, Newspapers.com.

Court Records

John Shell as Natural Guardian and Next Friend of Virginia C. Shell, a Minor v. Andrew J. Glasscock, No. 1405, District Court Minutes, 6 November 1874; 18 November 1874; 21 November 1874; 3 July 1882; District Court, Williamson County, Texas; in “Williamson, Texas, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSTJ-DSC2-C : accessed April 30, 2026), Image Group Number 008340469.

A.J. Glasscock v. John Shell, next friend, 1 Tex. L. R. 292 (Tex. 1882), opinion by Justice Bonner; digital text, PlainSite (https://www.plainsite.org : accessed 2026).

Marriage Records

Marriage license and return, A.J. Glasscock and E.L. Lemond, license issued 3 September 1874, Williamson County, Texas; Texas, U.S., Select County Marriage Records, 1837–1965; digital images, FamilySearch.

Marriage license and return, Samuel G. Anderson (age 25) and Virginia C. Shell (age 19), license issued and ceremony performed 27 April 1876 at Mr. Shell’s residence by W.F. Gillespie, ordained minister, Williamson County, Texas; Texas, U.S., Select County Marriage Records, 1837–1965; digital images, FamilySearch.

Family Records

Family group record, George Washington Glasscock Sr. (1810–1868) and Cynthia C. Knight (1815–1866), with eleven children including Andrew Jackson Glasscock (1851–1886); FamilySearch family tree (KVJR-CL7), accessed May 2026.

Family group record, Esther Louisa Lemond (23 March 1858 – 28 May 1950), daughter of James Neely Lemond (1814–1879) and Virginia Jane Edwards (1824–1908), with daughters Cynthia Annie Glasscock (1875–1946) and Virginia L. Glasscock (1877–1886); FamilySearch family tree, accessed May 2026.

Preservation Georgetown, “Carothers–Thomas House Series, Parts 1–4,” documenting John and Anzeline Shell’s 1849 settlement of the Shell Addition at present-day 603 East 7th Street.

B. B. Paddock, ed., A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas, 2 vols. (Chicago and New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), 2:441–42.

Earlier in the series

“The House on San Gabriel,” Old Town Echoes, 3 May 2026 (https://www.oldtownechoes.com/p/the-house-on-san-gabriel).

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

At the end of my last story, I left you with a bit of a teaser... Buried in the records of the Connell family’s hardest decade, I had found a house; it was the one on Block 17 of the Glasscock Addition where Sam and Lillie lived during the years between Connell’s terms as sheriff, the years of infant loss and financial ruin. It’s still there. And like most Georgetown historic homes, the story took an unexpected turn.

A house in a file

The house at 316 East 7th Street, on lots 1 & 2 of Block 17, sits three blocks east of the courthouse, a two-story wood-frame dwelling with weatherboard siding, a gabled roof, and a two-tiered porch facing north. The Texas Historical Commission’s 1984 inventory form describes it as a vernacular house with a Georgian plan, an exterior stone chimney, and a jig-sawn balustrade along the second-floor porch. The surveyor estimated the construction date as 1880.

I first encountered this house as a line item in the Connell deed records. When Sam Connell lost the sheriff’s office in 1890, he traded 308 acres of land between Georgetown and Hutto to Senator G.W. Glasscock, receiving in partial payment what the Sun described as “the two-story residence situated about two blocks east of the square, and now occupied by Mr. Nat Q. Henderson.” The paper noted that Connell would have the dwelling “repainted and somewhat changed” and would occupy it at the expiration of his term of office. By November 1890, another brief item confirmed it: “Mr. Sampson Connell has moved to his place a short distance east from the square.”

That’s how I connected the Connells to 316 East 7th. I was out for a walk with the dogs one day, and I decided to swing past the address to see it in person. It was then I noticed the plaque on the front porch naming the home the Dever-Estes House, c. 1880. Dever-Estes? If the house was sold from Glasscock to Connell in its earliest days, why was it the Dever-Estes House? Did I have the wrong place?

Still not intending to write about the house, only hoping to satisfy my own curiosity, I went looking for the research file. Southwestern’s Distinctive Collections holds the archive of old Preservation Georgetown paper files on Georgetown’s historic homes. Once I had my hands on the digitized file, I found, among other things, a data sheet from 1983 listing the property as Lots 1 and 2, Block 17, Glasscock Addition, with the ownership chain running from Glasscock to Connell, Dever, Wilcox, McInnes, Dolan, Estes, and Kucler. The Texas Historical Commission inventory form, filed the following year, gave the architectural description but acknowledged something that caught my attention: no one could pin down when the house was built. The best anyone had managed was “circa 1880,” but nowhere did it say where that estimate originated.

And there was another interesting tidbit in those files; a home tour article featuring the home in 1994 had the following quote from the owner:

When the house was featured in Georgetown’s 2005 Home Tour, the brochure’s description of the home admitted they still hadn’t solved it. Next to a pen-and-ink sketch of the two-story facade, the entry for the Dever-Estes House opened with a confession: “The earliest history of Pat Kucler’s house at 316 East 7th Street is somewhat a mystery.” I read that line and thought: well, let’s see about that.

The clippings

Before I had time to dive into the deeds and chain of title, I ran into Liz Weaver. I asked her what she knew about the Dever-Estes House on 7th. She immediately said, “It was moved.” Of course, she already had a file on it, and she sent me a set of newspaper clippings that she had collected from the Sun, among them one that settled the move date quite clearly.

The house had been moved from the country to this lot in the fall of 1883. It hadn’t been built on Block 17 at all.

That answered one question and opened three more. When had the house been built? Where was “the Andrew Glasscock place”? And who was Andrew Glasscock?

The brothers Glasscock

The Glasscock name is hard to miss in Georgetown. The town itself was named for George Washington Glasscock Sr., who donated the land for the county seat in the 1840s. But the 1883 clipping mentioned “Judge Glasscock” and “the Andrew Glasscock place,” and I needed to know how these men were all connected, so I put on my genealogist hat.

George Washington Glasscock Jr., the “Judge Glasscock” of the clipping, was the eldest son of the town’s namesake. He had served as county judge, represented the district as a state senator, and laid out the Glasscock Addition to Georgetown. He was also the “Senator Glasscock” that Sam Connell traded 308 acres to in 1890 for the two-story house. Andrew Jackson Glasscock was G.W. Jr.’s younger brother, and “the Andrew Glasscock place” was his property in the country.

When G. W. Sr. died, Andrew was a minor and G. W. Jr. was his guardian. In January 1873, G.W. sold Andrew roughly 1,195 acres out of the Antonio Flores one-third league survey, plus 248 acres on the adjoining Porter survey, for $17,000. But G.W. retained one thing in the sale: “all the improvements.” Whatever was standing on that land in 1873 stayed with G.W. Andrew bought the acreage, but he would have to build his own house.

And that’s exactly what he appears to have done, roughly eight years later.

Georgetown’s silver mine

I need to take a minute to tell you about the silver mine, because the house and the mine are two stories unexpectedly tangled together.

In the spring of 1881, someone discovered silver ore on Andrew Glasscock’s land, “about a mile from town.” The Sun reported in May that a mining company had been organized, with Judge G. W. Glasscock himself appointed to the executive committee, and that ore samples had been sent to Leadville, Colorado, for assay. By June, the Dallas Daily Herald reported the ore was assaying at fifty dollars per ton and shares in the company had doubled.

Through the summer and fall, the newspapers throughout the state tracked the excitement. Stockholders surveyed the mine and refused a buyout offer. Then, in late October, they tried to smelt two tons of ore and the furnace failed. By November, the Dallas Daily Herald noted in a section from Georgetown that “the excitement created by the prospect of a rich mine here has quieted down in great measure.” The bonanza that Georgetown had been dreaming of didn’t materialize. It seems the mine was a bust. But the excitement had placed Andrew Glasscock’s land at the center of Georgetown’s attention for six months, and it might have done something else, too. It might have given Andrew reason to believe his property was about to become very valuable, and perhaps that had even been a good reason to build a fine two-story house on it.

Reading the tax rolls

The tax rolls told me what the newspapers couldn’t. I tracked Andrew Glasscock’s Flores survey land across a decade of Williamson County assessment rolls, and the pattern was clear. From 1875 through 1881, the assessed value of about 800 acres on the Flores survey held steady at about $3,200, roughly four dollars per acre.

Then, in 1882, the value jumped to $8,000 on the same 800 acres, more than doubling the per-acre rate to ten dollars. The acreage didn’t change. The location didn’t change. Something expensive had been added to the property between the 1881 and 1882 assessments. That something was almost certainly a house.

I should note a complication: the silver mine excitement was happening on this same land at the same time, and it’s possible that the 1882 value spike reflects mineral speculation rather than construction. But the mine seems to have collapsed by November 1881, and the $8,000 assessment held into the following year. Inflated mineral values don’t usually survive a bust. A new two-story dwelling would have, though.

A homestead designation filed by Andrew in January 1883 shows the house was standing and occupied. He described it as “my homestead improvements where I now reside,” and reserved 200 acres in the northeast corner of the Flores survey as his homestead, calling the land his separate estate, inherited from his parents before his marriage.

On the other end of the transaction, Block 17 in town told its own story. The lot had been assessed at $200 to $250 through the early 1880s, bare-lot value. After the house was moved onto it in the fall of 1883, the value climbed to $400 in 1884 and then jumped to $1,250 in 1885, a five-fold increase. By January 1885, G.W. Glasscock was advertising the property for rent:

The numbers on both ends matched. Value disappeared from the country and appeared in town.

“The Andrew Glasscock place”

So where, exactly, was this property? The oral tradition that the house had been “floated down the San Gabriel River” conjures quite the picture: I can almost see it, the two-story frame riding the current to Georgetown, the house perched on some impossible raft, drifting past the limestone bluffs with a couple of men on the roof steering it with poles, like something out of a frontier tall tale.

The evidence told a less dramatic story. A General Land Office survey map of Williamson County places the Antonio Flores survey immediately north-northeast of Georgetown, roughly a mile from the courthouse square.

The deeds confirm it: the 1877 sale of a 76-acre tract along the river describes a starting point “at a stake in the centre of the channel of the San Gabriel River and in the East line of the Antonio Flores survey,” with Andrew’s field fence and a pecan tree twelve inches in diameter serving as landmarks. This was practically Georgetown’s back yard.

The “floated down the river” tradition likely reflects a garbled memory of the house’s riverside origin rather than its method of transport. The property bordered the San Gabriel, and the house came from near the river, but it almost certainly did not come by the river. A one-mile overland move with log rollers and ox teams was more likely given the capability of 1880s house-moving technology.

Andrew’s last years

In 1882, Andrew sold his brother George all of his interest in the Flores and Porter surveys except his 200-acre homestead. In August 1883, he sold the homestead itself for $2,000. The Sun reported:

Six weeks later, the house was being moved.

On January 28, 1886, the Sun reported Andrew’s death. Andrew Jackson Glasscock had died of typhoid pneumonia at his home near Florence. He was 36 years old.

His obituary noted that he was “a native of Williamson county, his birthplace being north of the San Gabriel, a short distance below North Georgetown,” and that “he died on the headright league of his father, Mr. George W. Glasscock, for whom Georgetown was named.” He was buried in the Odd Fellows’ Cemetery.

He had been born on the land, built a house on it, and sold it all before he turned 34. The house survived him by 140 years and counting.

What the house saw

Sam and Lillie Connell moved into this house in November 1890, the same two-story dwelling that Andrew Glasscock had built on the Flores survey and G.W. had rolled into Georgetown seven years earlier. They had just left the sheriff’s residence at the county jail after Sam lost the 1890 election, and for the first time in years, they needed a home of their own.

By 1891, Connell was already on the city’s delinquent tax list for the same lots. He filed a homestead designation on Block 17 in May 1892, trying to protect the property. In June 1893, the Sun reported: “Mr. Sam Connell has traded for the Dever livery business. He transferred his two story residence to Mr. Dever in the trade.”

The house that Andrew Glasscock built, that Judge Glasscock moved into town, that Sam Connell traded 308 acres to acquire, was traded away again for a livery stable.

Three decades later, Block 17 appears on the Sanborn fire insurance maps for the first time with a two-story dwelling shown on the northeast corner lot where the house still stands today.

Still standing

The house passed through the Devers, the Wilcoxes, the McInneses, the Dolans, and the Estes family, who held it for more than forty years. The Kuclers bought it in 1977 and undertook a painstaking thirteen-year renovation using old materials for accuracy.

Today, the house at 316 East 7th Street still stands, 145 years after Andrew Glasscock built it on his homestead along the San Gabriel River (likely in 1881) and 143 years after his brother moved it into Georgetown.

The researchers who studied the origins of this house over the past four decades didn’t crack the origin story because the answer wasn’t in the building itself; it was in the tax rolls and the deed records and, crucially, two small and easily overlooked newspaper clippings from 1883. The house started its life on Andrew Glasscock’s homestead near the San Gabriel River the same year that Georgetown briefly dreamed of silver. When it arrived in town, the street it landed on was called San Gabriel Street. The city later renamed the street 7th. The house came from near the river and settled on the street that bore the river’s name, and even that small connection has been nearly erased by time.

I’m not sure when the house was first called the “Dever-Estes House,” or who decided on the name. The 1994 Sun article doesn’t name the home, but the 2005 home tour brochure does, so it was named sometime during that period. At the time, the Dever and Estes families had kept the home longest, and naming conventions tend to favor longevity. If I were naming it today, though, knowing what the records now show, I would call it the Glasscock-Connell House, c. 1881, for the men who built it and moved it and for the sheriff who traded 308 acres to call it home.

Both the Dever and the Estes families were good stewards, but Andrew Glasscock raised the walls, George Glasscock moved it into town, and Sampson Connell tried to build a life outside of the county jail inside its walls, and those earliest parts of its story are worth remembering.

As usual, I found some interesting material about the life of Andrew Glasscock while researching the origins of the house. It involves a young woman named Virginia Shell, an engagement, a Williamson County jury that ordered Andrew to pay dearly for his choice of words, and a historic Texas Supreme Court decision. I’ll spill the tea on that drama next time!

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Sources & Research Notes

The House at 316 E. 7th Street

Texas Historical Commission, Historic Sites Inventory Form, 316 E. 7th St., Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas (Site No. 63, USGS Quad 3097-313); recorded by D. Moore/HHM, July 1984.

Georgetown Heritage Society, Research Data Sheet, 316 E. 7th St., Block 17, Lots 1 & 2, Glasscock Addition, Georgetown, Texas; compiled 1983/84; present owner Franole Kucler.

Georgetown Heritage Society, 1984 Survey Response, 316 E. 7th St.; in GHS research files.

“Dever-Estes House,” Georgetown Holiday Home Tour brochure, 2005; entry for 316 E. 7th St., with pen-and-ink sketch.

Newspaper Clippings

“Judge Glasscock is having a two-story dwelling moved from the Andrew Glasscock place…,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 18 October 1883; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

“The two-story house moved by Judge Glasscock to the lot near the Presbyterian [frame] church is up…,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 22 November 1883; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

“Judge Glasscock has purchased of Mr. Andrew Glasscock the latter’s place in the country,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 6 September 1883, p. 3; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

“FOR RENT. A two story residence of 7 rooms near the public square, with stable, well and water works. Apply to G. W. Glasscock or W. C. Belcher,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 15 January 1885; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

“Sheriff Connell has traded 308 acres of land between Georgetown and Hutto to Senator Glasscock…,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 9 October 1890; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

“Mr. Sampson Connell has moved to his place a short distance east from the square,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 27 November 1890; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

“Mr. Sam Connell has traded for the Dever livery business…,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 15 June 1893; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

“City Delinquent Tax List for the Year 1891,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 10 March 1892, p. 2; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 27 April 2026).

“Died:—Of typhoid-pneumonia, at his home near Florence…Mr. Andrew J. Glasscock, aged 36 years,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 4 February 1886; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

Silver Mine Clippings

“Georgetown’s Silver Mine,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 26 May 1881, p. 3; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

[Georgetown correspondence, silver mine update], Dallas Daily Herald (Dallas, Texas), 17 June 1881, p. 1; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

[Georgetown correspondence, mine and railroad meeting], Dallas Weekly Herald (Dallas, Texas), 20 October 1881, p. 7; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

[Georgetown silver mine update], Brenham Daily Banner (Brenham, Texas), 18 October 1881, p. 2; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

[Georgetown correspondence, copper and silver mine], Dallas Daily Herald (Dallas, Texas), 26 October 1881, p. 1; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

[Emery Taylor mining offer], Dallas Daily Herald (Dallas, Texas), 23 October 1881, p. 1; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

[Georgetown mine, smelting attempt], Dallas Daily Herald (Dallas, Texas), 26 October 1881, p. 1; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

[Georgetown mine assay in St. Louis], Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas), 16 November 1881, p. 1; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

[Georgetown mine excitement fading], Dallas Daily Herald (Dallas, Texas), 24 November 1881, p. 4; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 1 May 2026).

Deed Records (Williamson County)

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records; deed, George W. Glasscock Jr. (Travis County) to Andrew J. Glasscock (Williamson County); 1,195 acres out of the Antonio Flores survey and 248 acres out of the Nicholas Porter survey, excepting tracts previously sold and “all the improvements”; $17,000; dated 22 January 1873, filed 22 January 1873, recorded 24 January 1873; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown, Texas.

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records; deed, Andrew J. Glasscock and Esther L. Glasscock to W.G. Pettus (Fort Bend County); 76½ acres on the Antonio Flores survey along the San Gabriel River channel; $459, paid by M.W. Northington Jr.; dated 16 June 1877, filed 16 June 1877, recorded 18 June 1877; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown, Texas.

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records; homestead designation, A.J. Glasscock; 200 acres out of the NE corner of the Antonio Flores survey, Williamson County; designated as homestead and separate estate acquired by descent before marriage; dated 10 January 1883, filed 30 January 1883; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown, Texas.

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records; deed, A.J. Glasscock and E.L. Glasscock to George W. Glasscock; 200 acres out of the Antonio Flores one-third league survey, being the grantor’s homestead in the NE corner of said survey; $2,000; dated 28 August 1883, filed 28 August 1883, recorded 30 August 1883; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown, Texas.

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records; deed, G.W. Glasscock to Sampson Connell; Lots 1 & 2, Block 17, Glasscock Addition; October 1890; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown, Texas.

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records; deed, Sampson Connell to G.W. Glasscock; 308 acres between Georgetown and Hutto; October 1890; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown, Texas.

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records; homestead designation, Sampson Connell; Lots 1 & 2, Block 17, Glasscock Addition; filed May 1892; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown, Texas.

Williamson County, Texas, Deed Records; deed, Lillie Connell [or Sampson Connell] to Mrs. T.C. Dever; Lots 1 & 2, Block 17, Glasscock Addition; June 1893; Williamson County Clerk’s Office, Georgetown, Texas.

Tax Records (Williamson County)

Williamson County, Texas, Assessment Roll of Property, Years 1875–1888; entries for Glasscock, A.J. (Flores survey, Abstract 235) and Glasscock, G.W. (Block 17, Glasscock Addition); FamilySearch, “Williamson, Texas, United States records” (familysearch.org : accessed 1 May 2026).

Williamson County, Texas, Roll of Unrendered Property, Year 1884; line 36 (Glasscock), Porter survey 497, value $1,000; FamilySearch, “Williamson, Texas, United States records” (familysearch.org : accessed 1 May 2026).

GLO Map

“Map of Williamson County,” cadastral map, November 1880; General Land Office, State of Texas; digital image, The Portal to Texas History (texashistory.unt.edu : accessed 3 May 2026), University of North Texas Libraries; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth89070/ : accessed May 3, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Texas General Land Office.”

Correspondence

Liz Weaver to Amanda Durdin, email, 27 April 2026; re: Dever-Estes house clippings and Presbyterian church location.

Kucler Renovation

“House on Holiday Home Tour required 13 years of renovations,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 23 November 1994, page 2A.

Research Notes

The THC inventory form’s estimated date of 1880 for the house at 316 E. 7th St. was unsourced and appears to have been a visual estimate based on architectural style. Tax roll analysis of A.J. Glasscock’s Flores survey land narrows the construction date to circa 1881, based on more than doubling of the assessed value from $3,200 to $8,000 between the 1881 and 1882 assessments, with no corresponding change in acreage. The 1882 value spike coincides with the Georgetown silver mine excitement on the same property (May–November 1881), which could partially account for the increase, though the sustained assessment after the mine’s collapse suggests a permanent improvement rather than speculative inflation.

The “floated down the San Gabriel River” oral tradition associated with the house does not hold up against the documentary evidence. The Flores survey is approximately one mile north of Georgetown, too short a distance for river transport. However, multiple deeds confirm the property bordered the San Gabriel River, and the tradition likely reflects a memory of the house’s riverside origin rather than its method of transport.

Sanborn fire insurance maps for Georgetown (1889 and 1900) do not include Block 17 because coverage was limited to the commercial core. The block first appears on the 1916 Sanborn map. The absence of Block 17 from the earlier Sanborn maps is not evidence that the house was not present; the mapmakers simply were not surveying residential blocks that far east.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

Sampson Connell died on January 10, 1915. He was 57 years old, a member-elect of the Texas Legislature, a former eight-term sheriff, and one of the most beloved men Williamson County had ever produced. His son-in-law, Tax Collector Halsey Davis, received a telegram around 9:00 that morning with the news.

The telegram came from the insane asylum in Austin, where Connell had been a patient since at least early December. The death certificate, filed the next day, lists the cause of death as “Exhaustion from General Paresis.”

If you’re not familiar with that term, neither was I. We’ll get there. First, though, I want to describe how I got here, because this is not a story I set out to write.

The story behind the story

When I started researching Sam Connell, I was writing about small-town politics. The 1906 perjury scandal was juicy, absurd, and perfectly preserved in the pages of the Williamson County Sun. A sheriff accused of padding $4.00 in mileage, a reluctant city marshal pressured into filing charges, a grand jury that barely returned an indictment, and an election that made the whole thing backfire spectacularly on the accusers. It was local drama at its best, the kind of story that practically writes itself.

When I looked for what happened next, I found something I wasn’t expecting. Sam Connell’s obituary on the front page of the January 14, 1915, Sun opened with the telegram and the asylum and then, with the careful discretion of a small-town paper that knew everyone involved, pivoted to the man’s biography.

The Austin American, reporting from the city where Connell died, ran the following headline, only saying “he had been under treatment for several weeks.”

The papers were clearly leaving something out. They were silent on his cause of death, so I went looking for the document that would tell me how and why Sam Connell died in an insane asylum at the age of 57. Death certificates are confidential in Texas for 25 years from the date of death, but after that they’re public record.

When I found it, I understood. The papers were protecting Sam and his family.

So… the political story became a family story, and the family story became a medical story, and Sampson Connell’s story ended in a way that nobody in 1915 wanted to talk about.

At home in the county jail

Connell was first elected sheriff in 1888. He moved his wife and young children from Liberty Hill into the residence attached to the new county jail in Georgetown when it was completed in 1889.

Still standing today, the jail is a substantial stone structure. A Sun reporter who toured it in January 1889 described a building that was part fortress and part home: the lower cells struck him as “dark and gloomy dungeons, with poor ventilation,” while the upper story included cells “designed for the insane, and for women.” The jailer’s residence, by contrast, was described as one of the best houses in town.

By February, the Sheriff and his family had moved in.

This was standard practice at the time. Sam’s granddaughter, Billie Connell Jordan described Sam’s wife Lillie’s role at the jail:

Lillie was a brave and gracious woman. The Sheriff's residence was in the county jail and she raised her large family there. Sheriff Connell would be gone for many days at a time and she always carried out her duties in overseeing the cooking for the prisoners and made sure they had their meals on time.

Local historian Liz Weaver did a wonderful series of posts on the jail last year on her Historic Georgetown Texas Facebook page, including videos of the interior of the residence. If you want to see the rooms where Lillie raised their family, her research is the place to start.

Sam and Lillie had married on January 3, 1883, at Liberty Hill. She was Lillie Ann Bainbridge, born in Alabama. During their courtship, Sam had been away on cattle drives, writing letters home about rain and cold and loneliness on the trail. By the time the couple moved to Georgetown, they had four young children: Effie Myrtle, born 1883; Beulah Virginia, born 1885; Ivy Evie, born 1886; and Lillie Maud, born 1888.

Connell served one term and then lost the office in 1890. What followed were eight of the hardest years of the family’s life. Sam tried everything. The newspaper trail shows a meat market partnership, a grocery business with two successive partners, a livery stable on Oak Street, and a stint reviving and running the Georgetown Hotel. He broke 300 acres of sod for J. H. Booty south of town at $3.00 an acre with four yoke of oxen. He bought land between Georgetown and Hutto, sold the family’s Liberty Hill home, moved Lillie and the children to a home on Block 17 of the Glasscock Addition, three blocks east of the courthouse, and eventually traded the two-story residence on that block for the Dever livery business. The civil docket tells the rest: he was on the city’s delinquent tax list for Block 17 in 1891, and he had at least one foreclosure judgment against him in 1895. A second foreclosure suit was eventually dismissed.

The Connell family Bible tells what was happening at home during these same years, and it’s a poignant record. The first four children, the girls born between 1883 and 1888, all survived to adulthood. But starting in November 1889, while the family was still living in the jail residence, something shifted.

An infant son arrived on November 23, 1889. The Sun reported his death on December 12; he had died the previous Sunday evening and was buried Monday in the Odd Fellows’ Cemetery. He was only two weeks old. His is the only grave I’ve found of the children that were lost by the Connells.

Their first son to survive, Sampson, was born May 5, 1891. Another son, David, was born in February 1893. David only lived for three days. An infant daughter arrived in August 1895, unnamed in the Bible. No death date was given, but she didn’t survive to be listed on the 1900 census. Of the six children born after 1888, four died in infancy. The pattern is stark in the Bible’s careful handwriting: four healthy daughters in five years, then over a decade of mostly loss.

By January 1898, papers around the county were noting that Sam Connell was being urged to run for sheriff again.

He won. He moved the family back into the jail residence, and this time he would stay for seven consecutive terms, fourteen consecutive years. Whatever that return to office meant for Sam’s public career, for Lillie it must have meant a roof that was paid for, a position that carried a salary, and an end to the years of instability.

But Lillie was suffering, too. In January 1899, the Sun reported that Mrs. Sampson Connell had been quite sick for several days. In May 1900, she was reported quite ill, and a week later, extremely ill at her home. Through all of this, she was pregnant again, or had just delivered. Ella Agreta was born May 30, 1900, in the middle of Lillie’s worst documented illness. Ella died the following day. By August, Lillie had been sent to Mineral Wells, the health resort town west of Fort Worth known for its mineral springs, where she was reported improving. She was still recovering in October.

In the 1900 census, Lillie reported eight children born and five living. A daughter named Willie arrived in November 1902, and by 1910, Lillie’s count had risen to 10 born and six living; four children lost across a span of 11 years.

Big-hearted Sam

The man the community saw was the public sheriff, and by all accounts he was exceptional at the job. J. L. Lane, who encountered Connell as a twelve-year-old boy at a First Monday trade day in Georgetown, remembered him this way decades later: a large man riding a fine sorrel horse through the crowds, smiling and waving to everyone, wearing a big Stetson hat, boots and spurs. Lane recalled that Connell was “a man all people honored and loved” and that “the rougher element of the section honored and feared him.” He noted that unlike later sheriffs who sat in their offices and dispatched deputies, Connell saddled up and said “Come on, boys.” He was a leader who rode hundreds of miles monthly, day and night, and landed horse thieves and outlaws in the very jail where his children were growing up.

He wasn’t just a lawman. Connell was also the kind of man who took in other people’s children. In 1902, Roseanna McLaughlin Carr, wife of Robert Carr of Granger, died of appendicitis, leaving behind four young children. That same year, according to a contemporary county history published in 1911, Sam and Lillie adopted the youngest, a boy named Wilmer Carr.

Connell’s 1915 obituary summed it up as: Connell “had raised several children besides his own, among them an adopted son to whom he was a real father and who was as devoted to him as any of his children.” Billie Connell Jordan’s narrative about the family confirms that Sam and Lillie also “raised” the other three Carr children, though it may be more accurate to say that they fostered them; Willie was 17, Mabel was 15, and Maud was 14 when Robert Carr died and Connell was named guardian of the older children. The Carr heirs are a story unto their own, though, so I’ll have to leave that for another day.

The quiet way

After leaving the sheriff’s office, Connell went back to farming near Liberty Hill. He wasn’t done with public life, though. In the summer of 1914, he ran for Flotorial Representative in the Texas Legislature from the 92nd District, composed of Williamson and Burnet counties.

A Leander correspondent for the Sun, writing on June 11, 1914, captured the campaign in a single line: “Ex-Sheriff Connell was with us Saturday interviewing the voters in his usual quiet way,” adding that any man who beat him would know he’d been in a real race.

He won the Democratic primary in July and the general election in November. The Thirty-Fourth Legislature was scheduled to convene on January 13, 1915. Sam Connell would not live long enough to take his seat.

October

The collapse, when it came, was fast.

A week later, on October 15, another brief item:

At some point between October and December, Connell was transferred to the Austin Hospital for the Insane, which the death certificate identified by its older name, the State Lunatic Asylum. The attending physician first saw him there on December 9, 1914. He lived just one more month.

What the death certificate said

Connell’s cause of death, written in a physician’s hand: “Exhaustion from General Paresis.”

General paresis of the insane, or GPI, was one of the most feared diagnoses of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First identified in Paris in the 1820s, it was a progressive, invariably fatal disease that attacked the brain. Patients experienced tremors, unsteady gait, slurred speech, personality changes, delusions, memory loss, seizures, and eventually complete paralysis. Death typically followed within two or three years of the first symptoms. There was no treatment and no cure.

By 1913, researchers at the Rockefeller Institute had confirmed what many physicians had long suspected: GPI was caused by Treponema pallidum, the spirochete responsible for syphilis, invading the brain tissue years or even decades after the initial infection. In medical circles, the connection was settled science by the time Connell fell ill in 1914.

What the Connell family actually understood is a different question. By 1915, syphilis was widely understood by the general public to be a sexually transmitted disease, and a GPI diagnosis carried with it a certain implication about the patient’s past.

Country doctors, family physicians, and especially the families of respectable men had long preferred gentler explanations. Overwork. Nervous strain. The toll of a hard life.

When Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, died of GPI in 1895, even the Lancet described his condition as the result of “an over-full life in every direction.” If a British medical journal could find a way to avoid naming the underlying cause for an aristocrat, it is easy to imagine that a Texas family in 1914 may have received a similar kind of framing, or may have preferred not to ask too many questions.

We can’t know from the death certificate alone what Lillie and the family were told. All we can say is that the newspapers apparently knew enough to not print it.

Sam Connell had been carrying a disease that would explain both the pattern of infant deaths and Lillie’s chronic illness. We know this because of how Sam died. General paresis of the insane develops only after the bacterium has lived in the body for years, sometimes decades. By the time the neurological symptoms appeared in 1914, Sam had been infected for a long time.

Did Lillie know?

Syphilis in a marriage does not stay with the husband. It passes to the wife, and it devastates pregnancies. The medical literature of the era documented the pattern clearly: miscarriages, stillbirths, infants who survived days or weeks before dying, and eventually, in some cases, children who were born apparently healthy but carried the effects of the disease into their own lives. The sequence in the Connell family Bible, four healthy children followed by repeated infant deaths, is consistent with an infection acquired sometime in the late 1880s. Lillie’s years of illness, her trips to Mineral Wells, and the babies she buried, these weren’t separate misfortunes; they were likely part of the same disease that would kill Sam in an asylum twenty-five years later.

We can’t know what Lillie was told. Doctors of the era routinely concealed venereal diagnoses from wives, sometimes at the husband’s request. A woman would know she was ill, but she wouldn’t necessarily know why. Whether Lillie ever understood what was happening to her body and her children is an unanswered question.

What the papers said

The legislative escort at Connell’s funeral was significant. Members of the Legislature went to Acting Texas Governor Q. U. Watson and requested a committee to accompany Sam Connell’s remains to Liberty Hill. Watson appointed Representatives Bland, W. G. Blackburn, Myron Blalock, B. C. Dubbs, V. C. Dove, E. E. Dewitt, and J. R. Harrison. The funeral was held Monday afternoon at Liberty Hill followed by Masonic rites. A large number of friends and relatives were present, and the Sun noted that the crowd would have been much larger but for the bad condition of the roads.

The funeral drew county officials, judges, the entire Commissioners’ Court, and citizens from Georgetown, Taylor, Granger, and Milam County. Family came from Milam County, Lometa, and Hereford.

This wasn’t the funeral of a man whose community had abandoned him.

The thing nobody said

The newspapers handled Sampson Connell’s obituary carefully and with respect for his family. Just the bare fact of the asylum, stated once.

Georgetown in 1915 likely understood enough about general paresis to draw their own conclusions and seem to have made a collective decision that this was not the thing that defined Sam Connell. The man who rode through the crowds on a sorrel horse, who took in orphaned children, who bought twelve newspaper columns to answer his accusers and then won re-election by 570 votes, that was the man they buried.

In 1920, Lillie was living in Georgetown with her daughter Evie and son-in-law Wayne Magill, along with her youngest daughter Willie and Wilmer Carr, the adopted son to whom the sheriff had been “a real father.” By 1930, she had moved to the household of her daughter Willie and son-in-law Albert Lunsford, near Liberty Hill, back in the country where she and Sam had started. Sam’s biographical sketch, published while he was still in office, said that when the sheriff’s office was done with him, “he expects to go to his farm and make an honest living by the sweat of his brow.”

He didn’t get the chance to do that for very long, but Lillie kept the family together for another sixteen years in the place where it had all begun.

Sampson and Lillie Connell are buried at Liberty Hill Cemetery. Lillie outlived him by exactly sixteen years, dying on January 10, 1931, the anniversary of his death.

Lillie’s death certificate, filed in Travis County, lists her cause of death as lymphatic leukemia, with a duration of three years. She was 68 years old. The diagnosis was confirmed by blood count. Her son, Sampson, was the informant.

The word “leukemia” would not have meant much to most readers of the 1931 Georgetown papers. But it appears again, and again, in the records of this family.

Young Sampson, the boy who survived infancy when his brothers born on either side of him did not, died on June 27, 1958, at Seton Hospital in Austin. He was 67 years old, a retired fire inspector. His cause of death: chronic lymphatic leukemia.

Willie, the youngest, died on January 20, 1967, at Allen Hospital in Burnet. She was 64. Her cause of death: lymphatic leukemia.

Chronic infections are known to increase the risk of blood cancers by keeping the immune system in a state of sustained overactivity, and syphilis, which can persist in the body for decades, is documented to disrupt immune function and chronically stimulate the lymphatic system. In infants, congenital syphilis produces blood abnormalities so similar to leukemia that the two are routinely mistaken for each other.

A mother and two of her children, all carried off by the same diagnosis, all in their sixties. The two children who died of it were the two surviving children born during the years of documented infant loss and illness, the two who survived infancy when four of their siblings did not. The shadow of Sam Connell’s illness likely didn’t end with his death in 1915 or Lillie’s in 1931; it may have followed the family for more than fifty years.

One more thing

Most of my research for Old Town Echoes starts with a house. As the Historian for Preservation Georgetown, house histories are the threads that I pull. This story wasn’t any different; I came across Sam Connell’s 1906 perjury scandal while I was researching a property that has nothing to do with him. One thread led to another, and here we are.

But that’s how this work goes… because buried in the records of the Connell family’s hardest decade, I found something else: a house. Don’t think I didn’t notice, since the houses are usually center stage in my research. It’s the one on Block 17 of the Glasscock Addition — the two-story residence Sam traded away for a livery business when the money ran out.

I found it. I know where it stood. Is it still there? We’ll talk about that next time.

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Subscribe now

Sources & Research Notes

Sampson Connell’s Background & Family

“Death of Sampson Connell,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 14 January 1915, p. 1; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 16 April 2026).

“Connell, Member of Legislature, Dies at Local Hospital,” The Austin American (Austin, Texas), 11 January 1915, p. 8; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 17 April 2026).

Texas State Board of Health, standard certificate of death no. 2307, Sampson Connell, 10 January 1915, Travis County; digital image, “Texas, U.S., Death Certificates, 1903–1982,” Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 17 April 2026).

Connell Family Bible, births page; images, “Holt, Hutchinson, Texas, United States records,” FamilySearch (familysearch.org : accessed 20 April 2026), image 231 of 1273; Sons of the Republic of Texas application attachment.

Connell Family Bible, births page (second copy); images, “Texas, United States records,” FamilySearch (familysearch.org : accessed 20 April 2026), image 1100 of 1793.

1900 United States Federal Census, Williamson County, Texas, Georgetown, District 0123, sheet 25, dwelling 177, family 486, Sampson Connell; digital image, Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 17 April 2026).

1910 United States Federal Census, Williamson County, Texas, Georgetown, District 0117, sheet 4b, Sampson Connel [sic]; digital image, Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 17 April 2026).

1930 United States Federal Census, Williamson County, Texas, Precinct 3, District 0012, dwelling 186, family 194, Lillie Connell in household of Albert Lunsford; digital image, Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 20 April 2026).

Billie Connell Jordan (1924–2024), granddaughter of Sheriff Sampson Connell, 'Historical Narrative by Billie Connell Jordan,' in 'Sheriff Sampson (Sam) Connell 1888–1890 and 1898–1912,' Williamson County Texas History (https://williamsoncountytexashistory.org/sheriff-sampson-sam-connell/ : accessed 24 April 2026).

“Sampson Connell,” in History of Central and Western Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., c. 1911), pp. 706–707; digital image, FamilySearch (familysearch.org : accessed 20 April 2026). Notes “six children and one foster son” and states “Wilmer Carr, an orphan boy, was adopted by Mr. Connell in 1902.”

Sam Connell’s Career & Public Life

J. L. Lane, “Memories of a Williamson County Pioneer,” published in Williamson County Texas History (williamsoncountytexashistory.org : accessed 17 April 2026).

"A Texas Sheriff: Sampson Connell," The Houston Post (Houston, Texas), 18 June 1911, [3]; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com: accessed 17 April 2026).

“Sheriff Connell is occupying the residence in connection with the new jail,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 7 February 1889, p. 4; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 17 April 2026).

The Williamson County Jail

“Our New Jail,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 17 January 1889, p. 3; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 20 April 2026).

“Jail to Get Historical Marker” and “County Jail to Get Marker,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 14 January 1965, p. 3; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 20 April 2026). Construction cost of $20,906 per county records cited in the 1965 article.

Evans Studio. [Williamson County Jail Photographs #1], photograph, Date Unknown; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth497012/m1/1/?q=Williamson%20County%20jail : accessed April 23, 2026), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.

Liz Weaver, series of posts on the Williamson County Jail, Historic Georgetown Texas (Facebook page), 2025. Includes video of the interior of the jailer’s residence.

The Connell Infant Deaths

“The infant son of Sheriff Sampson Connell died last Sunday evening and was buried Monday in the Odd Fellows’ cemetery. It was only a few weeks old. The Sun joins a large number of friends in extending sympathy to Mr. and Mrs. Connell,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 12 December 1889, p. 3; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 23 April 2026).

Connell Family Bible, deaths page; entries for infant son (died Dec 8, 1889), David Carvell Connell (died Feb 16, 1893), and Ella Agreta Connell (died May 31, 1900).

Lillie Connell’s Illness

“Mrs. Sampson Connell is quite sick with dengue fever,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 7 October 1897, p. 5; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 23 April 2026).

“Mrs. Sampson Connell, wife of the sheriff, has been quite sick for several days, but is now improving,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 12 January 1899, p. 5; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 23 April 2026).

“Mrs. Sampson Connell is reported quite ill this week,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 24 May 1900, p. 5; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 23 April 2026).

“Mrs. Sampson Connell is extremely ill at her home in this city,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 31 May 1900, p. 5; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 23 April 2026).

“Mrs. Sampson Connell is reported improving at Mineral Wells,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 23 August 1900, p. 3; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 23 April 2026).

“Mrs. Sampson Connell and Mrs. Harry Journeay are both reported improving,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 4 October 1900, p. 5; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 23 April 2026).

The Carr Children

“Little Wilmer Carr, adopted son of Sheriff and Mrs. Connell, was reported quite ill last evening,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 10 December 1908, p. 4; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 19 April 2026).

Will of Robert Carr, dated 21 December 1910, Williamson County, Texas, probate records; digital image, accessed 19 April 2026.

“Death of Robert Carr” [identifying Wilmer Carr as adopted son of Sheriff Connell], The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 9 February 1911, p. 9; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 19 April 2026).

“Deaths at Granger” [Mrs. Rosa Carr death notice], The Waco Times-Herald (Waco, Texas), 15 June 1902, p. 6; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 20 April 2026).

The 1914 Campaign & Collapse

“Ex-Sheriff Connell was with us Saturday interviewing the voters in his usual quiet way...,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 11 June 1914, p. 8; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 17 April 2026).

“Ex-Sheriff Samson Connell, who was taken ill while on a visit to his brother near Sweetwater...,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 8 October 1914, p. 4; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 17 April 2026).

“Ex-Sheriff Samson Connell is under treatment at the East Lake Sanitarium in San Antonio for a nervous breakdown,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 15 October 1914, p. 4; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 17 April 2026).

Lillie Connell After 1915

1920 United States Federal Census, Williamson County, Texas, Georgetown, Wayne Magill household, including Lillian Connell (mother-in-law), Willie (sister-in-law), and Wilmer Carr (brother-in-law); digital image, Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 19 April 2026).

Death Certificates of the Connell Family

Texas State Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, standard certificate of death, Mrs. L. A. Connell [Lillie Ann Bainbridge Connell], 10 January 1931, Travis County; digital image, “Texas, U.S., Death Certificates, 1903–1982,” Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 23 April 2026). Cause of death: lymphatic leukemia, duration 3 years.

Texas State Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, certificate of death no. 10176, Maud Connell Southern, 1 February 1955, Washington County; digital image, “Texas, U.S., Death Certificates, 1903–1982,” Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 23 April 2026). Cause of death: carcinoma of uterus.

Texas State Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, certificate of death no. 36149, Sampson Connell [V], 27 June 1958, Travis County; digital image, “Texas, U.S., Death Certificates, 1903–1982,” Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 23 April 2026). Cause of death: chronic lymphatic leukemia, duration 5 years.

Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, certificate of death no. 00710, Evie Magiel [Magill], 30 January 1963, Bexar County; digital image, “Texas, U.S., Death Certificates, 1903–1982,” Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 23 April 2026). Cause of death: carcinomatosis, due to carcinoma of colon.

Texas Department of Health, certificate of death no. 13223, Effie Myrtle Shaw, 12 February 1967, Williamson County; digital image, “Texas, U.S., Death Certificates, 1903–1982,” Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 23 April 2026). Cause of death: cancer and pneumonia, due to cancer of stomach.

Texas Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, certificate of death no. 00876, Willie Connell Lunsford, 20 January 1967, Burnet County; digital image, “Texas, U.S., Death Certificates, 1903–1982,” Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 23 April 2026). Cause of death: lymphatic leukemia, duration 8 years.

General Paresis of the Insane

Jesper Vaczy Kragh, “Neurosyphilis: Historical Perspectives on General Paresis of the Insane,” JSM Schizophrenia 2, no. 2 (2017): 1013.

“General Paralysis of the Insane – Part One,” Staffordshire’s Asylums: A Case for the Ordinary (staffordshireasylumrecords.wordpress.com : posted 7 April 2021, accessed 17 April 2026).

Juliet D. Hurn, “The History of General Paralysis of the Insane in Britain, 1830–1950” (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1998).

Research Notes

The Connell Family Bible records two copies of the births page, both listing the same ten children. The four infant deaths are consistent with Billie Connell Jordan’s count of “four died in infancy.” The deaths page of the Bible records three of the four: an infant son (died December 8, 1889), David Carvell Connell (died February 16, 1893), and Ella Agreta Connell (died May 31, 1900). The fourth death, an infant daughter born August 26, 1895, is not recorded on the deaths page but is inferred from her absence on the 1900 and 1910 censuses.

Lord Randolph Churchill’s death from GPI in 1895 and the Lancet’s framing of it are drawn from Hurn (1998) and the Lancet notice of 26 January 1895, pp. 239–240. The Noguchi et al. confirmation of T. pallidum in GPI brain tissue (1913) is from Kragh (2017).

After Sam Connell’s death, I located the death certificates for Lillie and five of their six surviving children. The three family members born during or after the period of suspected infection — Lillie, Sampson, and Willie — all died of lymphatic leukemia. Three of the children born before that period died of other cancers. Chronic infections, including syphilis, are known to disrupt immune function and chronically stimulate the lymphatic system, and the clustering of lymphatic leukemia in three members of one family is medically striking, though the historical record cannot establish a definitive causal link.

A note on living descendants: Sampson and Lillie Connell have descendants living in Central Texas today, and some may encounter this piece. The medical conclusions presented here — particularly the connection between Sam's diagnosis, Lillie's illness, the infant deaths, and the later leukemia cases — are the author's interpretation of the historical and medical record, not established family history. The death certificate is a fact. The chain of consequences drawn from it is inferential. If you are a member of this family and have documents, photographs, or family knowledge that would add to or correct this account, I would genuinely welcome hearing from you.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

On June 19, 1906, the city marshal of Georgetown walked into a justice of the peace’s office and filed perjury charges against the Williamson County sheriff. He didn’t want to be there. The justice didn’t want to take the complaint. The whole thing was, in the marshal’s telling, a job nobody else would do… and it was all over $4.00. To understand how a $4.00 mileage dispute turned into a perjury charge, I need to introduce Sam Connell.

The Sheriff

Sheriff Sampson Connell III had held the office, on and off, since 1888, and by all accounts was a popular figure. One Leander correspondent would later describe him as “big-hearted, big-bodied Sam Connell.” By the summer of 1906 he was seeking his fifth consecutive term since returning to office in 1898.

He was also, in a very real sense, a son of the Republic. His grandfather, Sampson Connell Sr., was a War of 1812 veteran who, family tradition holds, served with the Texas Army as a wagonmaster during the Battle of San Jacinto, later receiving a Republic of Texas land grant for his service. His father, Sampson Connell II, came of age during the Republic years and was recognized as a Citizen of the Republic of Texas for the period 1836–1846; a bronze DRT plaque marks his headstone at the Connell Cemetery at Bear Creek, near Liberty Hill. The sheriff’s family name was one of the closest living links Williamson County voters had to the founding of the state.

According to a group of Georgetown citizens who called themselves “the committee,” he was also a grafter (a word commonly used at the time to describe a corrupt person, swindler, or someone who made money through dishonest means, particularly through the abuse of political or official influence).

Specifically, they accused him of padding his mileage. When his deputies served subpoenas out in the county, Connell submitted accounts to the county charging for miles that, the committee alleged, nobody had actually traveled. The sums involved were not exactly Watergate-level scandalous. One of the two perjury complaints centered on $4.00 in mileage. But the principle, they insisted, was the thing.

So, they did what any reasonable group of concerned citizens would do in 1906: they started publishing articles about it in the newspaper.

Meet the papers

Georgetown had at least two papers at the time: the Williamson County Sun was the establishment paper, and the Georgetown Commercial was... another one. The committee’s articles ran in the Commercial under the heading “Public Issues,” signed by various citizens, laying out the case against Connell.

For what it’s worth, the Commercial does not appear to have enjoyed a sterling reputation for fairness outside Williamson County. In July 1906, right in the middle of the Connell fight, the Houston Chronicle ran a piece titled “Fairness in the Campaign” accusing the Commercial of doctoring its coverage of a political speech. The Chronicle noted, with some amusement, that the Commercial was in the habit of boasting that it was “the fairest journal in the whole state of Texas.”

Maybe this tells us something about the paper the committee chose as its venue.

Here’s where it gets spicy. When the committee tried to place the same articles in the Sun, the Sun said sure… but you’ll have to pay for them as advertising.

The Sun’s editor explained his position, the 1906 equivalent of “we don’t do sponsored content”:

Translation: We see what you’re doing, and we’re not doing it for free.

The committee declined to pay the Sun, so the attacks ran in the Commercial, and the Sun maintained what it called “non-interference.”

“Fair Play” writes in

On June 14, the Sun published a letter from Leander titled “The War on Connell.” It was signed “Fair Play” and it made an argument that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever watched a political scandal break in an election year:

Fair Play had a point; it’s the same point every politician in history has made when opposition research drops in October.

The reluctant city marshal

A week later, the committee made their move. On Tuesday, June 19, City Marshal R.Y. Secrest of Georgetown walked into Justice of the Peace W.T. Starnes’s office and filed two perjury complaints against Sheriff Connell.

The two complaints covered separate subpoena accounts Connell had submitted to the county back in August 1905, both for witnesses in the R.W. Thompson murder case. The first alleged he’d falsely sworn to $4.00 in mileage for 80 miles Deputy Bauchman supposedly traveled to serve three witnesses. The second alleged he’d falsely sworn to $7.50 in mileage for 150 miles Deputy F. T. Turner supposedly traveled to serve five more. Combined, the committee was alleging about $11.50 in padded mileage, though only the first complaint — the $4.00 Bauchman account — would eventually carry the indictment into court.

Justice Starnes, apparently unable to contain himself, immediately told the Sun reporter that Secrest “acted very reluctantly, and that he would not have appeared as complainant had anyone else been found willing to do so.” Starnes also revealed that the committee had told him directly: if you refuse to receive these complaints, we’ll go to some other peace officer, and then we’ll tell the public you failed to do your duty.

So. The city marshal didn’t want to file. The justice of the peace didn’t want to receive them. The committee was essentially going door-to-door in the county courthouse trying to find someone, anyone, willing to pull the trigger.

Connell showed up the same afternoon, waived examination, posted $500 bond on each complaint, and went back to work.

Connell answers his accusers

The following week, on June 28, 1906, the Sun ran Sheriff Connell’s response. And when I say “ran his response,” I mean it in the most literal possible sense: Connell’s letter took up the entire front page of the paper. All six columns. Every inch. Then it continued onto page 8 and took up that entire page too — six more columns, top to bottom. Twelve full newspaper columns across two full pages, devoted to one man’s defense of himself.

This is more than a tweet thread or even a blog post. This is small-town equivalent of taking out a two-page spread in the New York Times.

The detail that makes the whole thing sing? It ran as a paid advertisement. Remember the Sun’s editorial from two weeks earlier, the one where the editor declared that any campaign material from either side would have to be paid for at regular advertising rates? Connell paid. The committee had refused to pay to run their "Public Issues" articles in the Sun and had taken them to the Commercial instead. Connell bought twelve columns. Whatever the merits of his defense, the man was willing to put his money where his mouth was in a way his accusers evidently were not.

As for the content of those twelve columns: Connell’s argument was, essentially, my deputies did the actual traveling, I signed the accounts based on what they told me, if there are errors they’re honest ones, and they’re the deputies’ fault anyway because I’m not “morally or legally responsible” for their mistakes. He also spent a considerable amount of ink on the theory that the whole thing was a political hit job — noting, pointedly, that the committee had sat on their complaints for months and only acted once the campaign was underway.

And he didn’t write the letter alone. At the top of page 8, the defense continues with an included statement from Connell’s Office Deputy — the man who kept the books, compiled the accounts, and handled the paperwork the committee was attacking. His name was C. H. Gee.

The reluctant grand jury

District Court opened its summer term on Monday, July 2, with Judge V.L. Brooks on the bench and a grand jury of twelve men impaneled.

Almost immediately, the sheriff’s lawyers challenged one of the grand jurors, W.Y. Penn, on the grounds that he was prejudiced. Connell handed the judge a written challenge alleging Penn had signed some of the Commercial articles.

Penn, under questioning, was reported to have admitted it. The judge asked if he’d signed them for “a political purpose.” Penn said yes. The judge excused him.

Penn would write in the next week to correct the record.

With Penn gone, the grand jury went to work. Remember the neutral paper, the one that wouldn’t take sides? When the indictment came down on Saturday, July 14, the Sun reported not just the indictment but the street talk about how it had been obtained:

In other words: the grand jury nearly didn’t do it. They barely got to nine. And the paper that wasn’t taking sides felt compelled to report that.

The indictment falls apart

The indictment charged perjury — specifically, that Connell had sworn falsely to an account for serving subpoenas in the Thompson murder case, to the tune of $5.50, of which $4.00 was mileage.

It lasted about ten days.

District Attorney Moore looked at the document, which had been drafted not by him but by County Attorney Jim Neal, working with “a member of the committee,” and immediately spotted problems. He asked Judge Brooks to reconvene the grand jury to fix it. The grand jury reconvened. A new indictment was returned on July 14.

That one didn’t survive either. On July 23, Connell’s attorneys moved to quash. The motion laid out all the ways the indictment was defective. The indictment didn’t actually say Connell was sheriff when the alleged perjury happened, didn’t say the account was false, and didn’t say the mileage was actually excessive — three fairly important things to leave out of a perjury indictment.

District Attorney Moore agreed with three of the defense’s four points. Judge Brooks quashed the indictment. The crowd that had gathered to watch “slowly dispersed.”

And then the Sun, which was definitely neutral, dropped the following in its coverage of the quashed indictment:

That last phrase is Latin for “a word to the wise is sufficient.” The Sun is saying, on the record: We want it known that we know a lot more than we’re telling you but we’re choosing not to say it.

The paper also used the occasion to clear up a small matter: the committee had apparently been denying that one of their own helped draft the indictment. The Sun named names. It wasn’t County Attorney Jim Neal who’d done the drafting alone, Dan Chessher, former County Attorney and a member of “the committee,” drafted two-thirds of the indictment. Chessher, to my knowledge, never responded in print.

The voters decide

The voters rendered their own verdict on Saturday, August 4, 1906, in the Democratic primary — which in Texas at the time was the real election. The official count ran in the Sun on August 9:

• Sampson Connell: 2,156 votes

• C.J. Brady: 1,586 votes

• Connell’s majority: 570

The Leander correspondent, writing the following week, summed it up:

This is the part where I’d love to tell you there was a dramatic trial, a stirring verdict, a resolution of some kind. There wasn’t. After the July 23 quash, the perjury case seems to have evaporated. I can find no evidence it was ever refiled. The committee appears to have given up, or run out of willing complainants, or both. The scandal didn’t sink Sheriff Connell. It may have helped him.

It’s worth remembering, too, what the committee was actually asking voters to do. They were asking them to throw out a man who had been the voters’ personal choice for sheriff in four prior elections, whose father and grandfather had helped build the Republic of Texas, over $4.00 in disputed mileage charges. Four dollars in 1906 was about two days’ wages — real money, but not sheriff-unseating money. Whatever the merits of the mileage accounting, that was a hard sell, and the vote totals suggest the voters weren’t buying.

The lesson, if there is one

If you swap out the newspapers for Twitter and “the committee” for a group chat, this story is completely contemporary. Everything that makes modern political scandals feel exhausting and familiar was already fully operational in 1906:

• The opposition research drop timed to the campaign. Fair Play was right: the committee had been sitting on this for months.

• The friendly newspaper and the hostile newspaper, each pretending to be the objective one. The Sun genuinely believed it was being neutral while running Connell’s defense on page 1 and dropping Latin subtweets about the grand jury.

• The reluctant witness pressured into going on the record. R.Y. Secrest did not want to file those complaints. The committee pressured him.

• The corrections and clarifications from people who felt misquoted. W.Y. Penn’s “the reporter was seated too far away” is every politician who has ever said “the clip was taken out of context.”

• The pseudonymous letter to the editor defending the embattled official. Every single comment section on every local news site. “Fair Play” would have a blue checkmark today.

• The indictment that falls apart on technicalities and gets quietly dropped. Sounds familiar.

• The base rallying around the accused in defiance of the charges. Connell ran up his biggest margin ever after being indicted. The committee’s campaign against him was, in the end, the best thing that ever happened to his vote totals.

And the best part? The whole thing played out not on smart phones or in feeds but in weekly newspapers read by people who knew each other in person, passed on the street, traded at the general store, and argued with each other after church on Sunday.

The medium changes over time, but small-town drama doesn’t change.

A footnote on the paper

One last thing, because I couldn’t resist. The Georgetown Commercial — the paper the committee chose as its venue, the paper the Houston Chronicle caught doctoring political speeches in July 1906, the paper that existed specifically to be the Sun‘s scrappy alternative — did not outlast Sheriff Connell’s political career for too long.

On November 30, 1918, the Taylor Daily Press ran a short item under the heading “Newspaper Changes”:

Two weeks later, on December 13, 1918, the Williamson County Sun came out with a new line on its masthead: “CONSOLIDATED WITH THE GEORGETOWN COMMERCIAL.” The Commercial, established 1897, had been bought by the paper it had spent its early years competing against.

Newspaper consolidations happen for all sorts of reasons — economics, changing readership, an aging owner wanting out. But I do think it’s worth noting which paper was still standing in 1918, and which one got folded into the other.

Sam Connell, for his part, served another term. And another after that. The courthouse where the perjury indictment fell apart was torn down in 1910 and replaced by the one that still stands in the middle of the Square today; if you walk past it now, you’re standing on the same ground where, 120 summers ago, a crowd gathered to watch a case against their sheriff collapse and then dispersed to go home and gossip about it over dinner.

What came next

Sam Connell’s 1906 victory was not his last. He served several more terms as sheriff and in 1914 was elected to represent Williamson and Burnet counties in the Texas Legislature.

But the story doesn’t quite end there, not in a small town.

Remember C. H. Gee, Connell’s Office Deputy, the man who co-signed the paid defense on June 28, 1906? He would later go on to become Williamson County District Clerk. He was also the father of Hays Gee, whose story I told in The Many Lives of Hays Gee. And Sampson Connell’s granddaughter, Halsey Virginia Davis — daughter of Connell’s daughter Beulah Virginia and Tax Collector Halsey Davis — would grow up to marry Charlie Gee, Hays Gee’s son. Which means that the sheriff and his office deputy would, two generations later, share great-grandchildren.

The small world of historic Georgetown keeps getting smaller.

As with most of our historic neighbors, I found that there’s more to Sampson Connell’s story than the 1906 smear campaign, including what happened in the strange, quiet months between his legislative election and his death, and what the newspapers chose not to print about either. We’ll dive into that next week.

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Sources & Research Notes

Sampson Connell’s Background

Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: A Williamson County, Texas, History (Georgetown: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973), p. 80.

Find a Grave, memorial for Sampson Connell II (1822–1873), Connell Cemetery at Bear Creek, Liberty Hill, Williamson County, Texas, memorial ID 34009655; database with images, Find a Grave (findagrave.com : accessed 16 April 2026), photograph by Smilydino; notes the bronze DRT plaque reading “Citizen of the Republic of Texas, 1836–1846.”

“Sampson Connell” (Family Story), contributed by Ancestry user cheryl77581, 21 June 2008; Ancestry (ancestry.com : accessed 16 April 2026). The contributor’s account attributes the San Jacinto wagonmaster service and subsequent Republic of Texas payments to Sampson Connell Sr. (the sheriff’s great-grandfather), citing Audited Military Claims and General Land Office records at the Texas State Archives, and the War of 1812 muster rolls at the Tennessee State Archives.

“Sheriffs of Williamson County, Texas,” in Williamson County Historical Commission Scrapbook, Volume 3 (Georgetown: Williamson County Historical Commission, 1975); digital PDF, Williamson Museum (https://williamsonmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/WCHC-Scrapbook-Vol-3-1975-reduced-Size.pdf : accessed 16 April 2026). Lists Sampson Connell as sheriff from 1888–1890 and again from 1898–1912.

“Death of Sampson Connell,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 14 January 1915, p. 1; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 16 April 2026).

The Papers Themselves

“Fairness in the Campaign: Houston Chronicle Report Was Distorted by Georgetown Paper,” The Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas), 17 July 1906, p. 8; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 13 April 2026).

“Newspaper Changes” [Georgetown Commercial sold to Georgetown Sun Publishing Company], Taylor Daily Press (Taylor, Texas), 30 November 1918, p. 4; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 13 April 2026).

The Williamson County Sun masthead, 13 December 1918, reading “Consolidated with the Georgetown Commercial”; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 13 April 2026).

The “Public Issues” Controversy & Perjury Case

“The War on Connell,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 14 June 1906, p. 1; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 12 April 2026).

“As to the Sheriff’s Race,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 14 June 1906, p. 4; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 12 April 2026).

“Complaints Filed Against Sheriff Connell,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 21 June 1906, p. 7; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 12 April 2026).

“Connell Answers Accusers,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 28 June 1906, pp. 1, 8; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 4 April 2026).

“Indictment of Sheriff Connell,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 28 June 1906, p. 11; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 12 April 2026).

“The District Court” [including “Challenging a Juror” and “The Judge’s Charge”], The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 5 July 1906, p. 1; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 12 April 2026).

“Mr Penn’s Correction,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 19 July 1906, p. 2; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 12 April 2026).

“Connell Indictment Quashed,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 26 July 1906, p. 1; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 12 April 2026).

The Election

“Leander Locals,” The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 2 August 1906, p. 1; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 13 April 2026).

“Primary Election Returns” [official count, 4 August 1906], The Williamson County Sun (Georgetown, Texas), 9 August 1906, p. 8; digital image, Newspaper Archive (newspaperarchive.com : accessed 13 April 2026).

Connell–Gee Family Connections

“Kilgore Bride,” The Shreveport Journal (Shreveport, Louisiana), 15 August 1936, p. 11; digital image, Newspapers.com (newspapers.com : accessed 16 April 2026).

Images

“Williamson County’s 4th Courthouse, 1878–1910,” photograph, Williamson County Historical Commission, Georgetown, Texas.

Photograph of Sheriff Sampson Connell, Williamson Museum, Georgetown, Texas.

Research Note

The Georgetown Commercial‘s “Public Issues” series, which carried the committee’s original allegations against Sheriff Connell, does not appear to survive in any digital collection. The available run of the Commercial begins in 1907, and no physical holdings have been located for the relevant 1906 issues. Consequently, the committee’s specific charges are known only through Connell’s rebuttal in the 28 June 1906 issue of the Sun and through the Sun‘s own summary coverage.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources. AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

You’ll see lots of familiar buildings and landmarks, but so much has changed, too! It’s a reminder that local history can also be read in landscapes, not just in newspapers and documents.

This is my favorite one in the collection, probably because I walk these particular streets almost every day. Can you identify the streets and cross streets? What do you see that’s still here today? Which building is still here but in a different location?

I’m not going to caption this one so that you can discover it on your own, but if you scroll through the entire collection the title will give it away.

I came across these photos in Southwestern’s Distinctive Collections. The University is a great partner in preserving Georgetown’s local history!

Source

Unknown. Georgetown Aerial Collection. approx. 1930s. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/site/southwestern/georgetown-aerial-collection. Accessed 11 Apr. 2026.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources.

AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

Thanks for reading Old Town Echoes!

Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

If you walked through the house at 1810 South Main Street on last year’s Home Tour, you already know it was built around 1915 by Marcus Lafayette Langford and his brother-in-law Claud Byron Lunsford, a builder and a carpenter, who put up homes and public buildings across Central Texas. Today’s story isn’t about the house on Main, though, it’s about the woman who raised one of the men who built it, Mark’s mother, Claud’s mother-in-law, and one of the most remarkable people I’ve come across while researching this remarkable town.

Much of what we know about her comes from A Goodly Heritage, a family history compiled in 1967 by her grandson Ernest Langford.

When Ernest went searching for the right way to describe Christina Catherina Johnson Munson Langford, the word that kept surfacing wasn’t resilient or tough. It was cheerful. Jovial. Back in the old country, they had called her Kristina Klang — a Swedish joke about her talkativeness, since klang means something like “clang” or “clamor.” Christina never met a stranger, never stopped talking, and never stopped moving forward, not when the ocean nearly killed her, not when bandits killed her first husband, and not when her second marriage turned into something to survive rather than celebrate.

Her story starts, as so many Georgetown stories do, somewhere very far away.

From Småland to Boston

Christina Johnson was born in March 1834 in the parish of Barkeryd, in Småland province, south of Stockholm. On July 16, 1852, at 18 years old, she boarded a sailing ship in Göteborg bound for Boston, Massachusetts. She traveled in a large company of Swedish emigrants, many of whom would become the earliest Swedish settlers in Central Texas. Among them were Andrew Munson, the man she would one day marry, and her brother Gustaf Johnson.

They were three months at sea. The crossing was brutal. Nineteen passengers died during the voyage. When the ship finally reached Boston, 20 more were carried to the hospital at Deer Island, Christina among them. All of the hospitalized passengers from the ship died except her.

The healthier passengers, Andrew Munson included, had continued on to Texas. Christina stayed behind in Boston for four years, working and saving. In April 1856, she finally made her way south.

She arrived in Austin and married Andrew Munson on the very same day: April 21, 1856. The couple rented a small farm south of Austin. In Central Texas at that time, there were probably no more than ten Swedish families in the entire region, but Christina, always happy and courageous, dove into pioneer life.

A Widow on the Frontier

Then the Civil War broke out. Andrew Munson served as a freighter, driving wagon trains between the southern states and Mexico, hauling goods along routes that stretched as far as the coast and back. He was away from home most of the time. Christina was left to manage the farm and their growing family alone — by the mid-1860s, they had six children, the eldest only about ten.

After the war, Munson and some other Swedes took up freighting between Round Rock and Huntsville in East Texas, hauling limestone from one place and building materials from the other. Munson had rigged a special hollow in the axle of his wagon where he hid his money, mostly in the form of gold.

It was on one of these trips, around July 1866, that Andrew Munson died near a place called Red Top, in the vicinity of present-day Benchley in Brazos County. Two brothers-in-law, John Nelson and Gustaf Johnson, were traveling with him. Gustaf Johnson rushed to bring Christina the news. She hurried by horseback to her husband’s side, but by the time she arrived, he was already dead and buried.

Christina’s son-in-law, Ernest C. Ischy, recalled decades later that the family understood that Munson had been “waylaid and killed by bandits.” South Texas officers eventually found his body but no trace of his wagons or teams. Christina herself would say that her husband left home on a Friday and was killed on a Friday, and because of that she was superstitious about Fridays for the rest of her life. She would never let anyone leave on a trip on a Friday.

At 32, Christina was a widow with six small children in a land she’d come to only a decade earlier. By November 1868, she had bought 34½ acres of land from J.G. Caldwell about five miles from Georgetown. Her brother Gustaf Johnson was nearby. Neighboring Swedes helped her raise a log house. She would farm that property for nearly 40 years.

A Second Marriage, A Harder Chapter

In August 1869, Christina married again. William Ainsworth Langford was a Civil War veteran that had come to Texas from Tennessee shortly after the war, though exactly when and why he arrived in Williamson County, nobody seemed to know. Together they had five more children: Marcus Lafayette (born 1870), Josephus Forrest (1872), Tennessee (1874), Georgia Ann (1875), and Maud Hannah (1879). All were born near Georgetown.

The family memoir written decades later by Christina’s grandson Ernest Langford paints William as a colorful frontier character: a man of few words, a great marksman who carried his Winchester everywhere (even strapped to his cultivator when he plowed), a lawman who ran down bandits. He never sat with his back to a door, drew the shades at night, and kept his gun within reach while he slept. The first joint of his left thumb was missing, shot off while cleaning his gun. He considered that more humiliating than actually getting shot, so when anyone asked about it, he always claimed he’d worn it down dealing cards.

Some of that is surely true. However, the Williamson County court records tell a far more complicated story, one the younger generation of the family either didn’t know about or chose not to pass down.

Within a year of the marriage, William was already in financial trouble, with a $267 default judgment for an unpaid debt. By 1871, he had enough local standing to be appointed bailiff to the grand jury. That trust didn’t last. In 1872, the grand jury indicted him three times — cow theft and unlawfully removing livestock. He was convicted on two charges, fined, and sentenced to an hour in the county jail. Remarkably, while the cow theft case was still pending, he was again sworn in as bailiff.

It got worse. In 1874, with three Langford babies at home and six Munson stepchildren besides, William was indicted for aggravated assault and then for robbery. He couldn’t make bail. He sat in the Williamson County jail while Christina managed the farm and nine children on her own. He was convicted on the assault, and there are strong indications he was convicted on the robbery as well. He appealed, but the Texas Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction in May 1878.

Meanwhile, Christina was protecting what she had. In August 1878, she voluntarily waived her rights as natural guardian of her five Munson minor children and asked the court to appoint her eldest son, John E. Munson, as their legal guardian.

Christina had bought the homestead herself after Andrew’s death, but the Munson children held cattle and a fractional interest in the land. By placing those assets under John’s guardianship, Christina walled them off from her second husband’s creditors and habits. An 1881 inventory confirmed the arrangement: the homestead was held in common, half to Christina and half split among the Munson children. The legal architecture was airtight; William Langford had no interest in the Munson property.

A Revealing Divorce Filing

In 1883, divorce was still vanishingly rare in America; the national rate was less than one per one thousand. But on August 15, Christina walked into the Williamson County District Court and filed for one. Her petition laid out the private reality behind the public facts: William had come home drunk and struck her while she was sick in bed, he had drawn a large knife on her and threatened to kill the children and their “god damned mother,” and he had threatened to kill “all the Munsons” and tried to take her wagon and horse. She told the court she had raised a small crop of cotton and corn, bought three horses with her own labor, and owned four cows and nine hogs. William, she alleged, was “a dissipated and indolent man, spending most of his time, and wasting his substance in and around the bar rooms in the City of Georgetown,” who had not provided for the children in years.

The court granted an injunction restraining William from the property and placed all five Langford children in Christina’s custody. But then, at the very term of court set for trial, Christina dismissed the suit.

Why? We can only speculate. She still had five children under 14. A divorced woman with no income beyond what she could grow would have been in a precarious position, even with the homestead. The injunction had already given her the practical relief she needed. The social cost of actually completing the divorce, in a time when so few women dared to try, could have been a real concern. By dismissing the suit, Christina preserved her legal status as William’s wife and, eventually, her eligibility for his Civil War pension.

The marriage continued for 11 more years. By the late 1880s, William seems to have reinvented himself as a deputy county sheriff, doing real law enforcement work. This was frontier Texas, where the line between outlaw and lawman could be surprisingly thin, and where a man could cross it more than once in a lifetime.

By 1888 he had branched out further: an October 1888 ad in the Sun announced that W. A. Langford was serving Berwick Bay and Select Plant Oysters on the square at low rates. He was deputy sheriff one year, oyster man the next.

William Langford died on March 26, 1895, at Georgetown. He was 53. Christina filed for and received his widow’s Civil War pension. She had earned it.

The House on Timber Street

After William’s death, Christina was a widow for the second time — but she was far from helpless. By the 1900 census, she was head of household, living with her daughter Nellie.

In 1907, Christina orchestrated a remarkable family transaction. Her Munson children, scattered across the US from Oklahoma to Montana, signed over their inherited interest in the old homestead to their mother, each for a dollar “and the further consideration of the love and affection that I have for my mother.” With clear title in hand, Christina and Nellie sold the homestead for $900. Weeks later, she spent that $900 on a house in town: Block No. 68, in the Lost Addition to the City of Georgetown, bounded by Cedar Street and Timber Street (present-day Martin Luther King Jr St). She was 73 years old, and she was done with farm life.

The 1910 census places her on Timber Street, owning her home free and clear. Living with her were Nellie, who had never married or lived independently, and her daughter Georgia Johnson with two grandsons. Her youngest daughter Maud and son-in-law Claud Byron Lunsford were nearby on the same block.

Just next to Christina’s house, facing south on 12th St at 415 12th, stood the home of her closest neighbor, C.H. Gee, a name that will be familiar to my local readers as longtime Williamson County District Clerk and father to Hays Gee. Georgetown was a small world back then, and it keeps getting smaller the more you get to know the cast of characters! For instance, Christina’s daughter Tennessee married Ernest Charles Ischy, a first cousin of P.J. Ischy, who was the husband who drove his car off the bridge in The Widow of 1604.

The Timber Street property was Christina’s last home, and the one where she would live out her final decade. She was a fixture of Georgetown life in the early 1900s. She kept an old horse everybody called “Old Charley,” as gentle a horse as ever pulled a buggy, who was seemingly as old as Christina herself. The grandchildren loved riding him around her back yard. In 1917, at about 83 years old, Christina was still placing ads in the Williamson County Sun: “FOR SALE My gentle buggy horse, gentle for children to drive, works anywhere and scares at nothing whatever. Apply to Mrs. C. C. Langford.”

Grandmother Langford

Christina spoke her native Swedish all her life, read Swedish newspapers, and sang Swedish nursery rhymes to grandchildren who didn’t understand a word. She loved nothing more than sharing stories of her youth, the long journey across the Atlantic, and her early years in Texas. A report in the Sun on the third annual meeting of the Old Settlers Association in 1907 describes Christina as a speaker alongside other prominent names such as Senator Glasscock.

She was a weaver; a photograph from the book Svenskarne I Texas shows her sitting at her loom. A similar photograph, credited to Georgetown photographer N.M. Wilcox, was published nationally in Wilson's Photographic Magazine in July 1894 under the title 'Weaving Rag Carpet.'

Ernest Langford recalled that she must have woven enough carpeting to cover a good part of Williamson County.

A Last Will and a Legacy

On March 7, 1917, Christina signed her last will. The third clause reveals where Christina’s heart was heaviest; it provides specifically for “my afflicted daughter Nellie Alice Munson,” placing her entire estate, valued at about $1,500, in trust with her son Mark Langford for Nellie’s care. Only after Nellie’s death would the estate be divided among Christina’s five Langford children. Everything she owned was to serve, first and above all, the child who could not care for herself.

Notably absent are the surviving Munson children. They had signed over their homestead interests a decade earlier to help their mother move to town. The Timber Street house was bought with those proceeds. Yet the estate built from that transaction went to the Langford children, not the Munsons who had made it possible. The documents don’t explain why, but it’s a silence worth noting.

Christina died on September 15, 1918, at her home in Georgetown, at 84 years old. Her obituary in the Williamson County Sun described her as “a familiar and beloved figure.” The pallbearers were all Munsons, nephews of the deceased. She was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery.

Nellie

There is one person in this story who never gets to speak for herself, yet whose presence shapes nearly every legal document Christina left behind.

Nellie Alice Munson was born around October 1863, the fifth of Christina’s six children with Andrew Munson. She appears in the 1878 guardianship petition alongside her older siblings, about 14, nothing in the document suggesting anything unusual. But by the time John filed his final guardianship settlement in 1884, the other Munson children had married or come of age. Nellie, at 21, was simply “living in this County with her Mother.” Whatever was different about Nellie’s life was beginning to be visible in what the records didn’t say.

In 1907, when the homestead was sold, Nellie was a party to the deed; she made her mark, and Texas law would have required her to understand the transaction. At 43, she seems to have been considered legally competent. Christina’s 1917 will, just ten years later, called her “afflicted.” By 1919, Mark Langford described her as “wholly incapable to take charge of and care for the estate devised.”

One account offers a possible explanation: when Nellie was a young girl, William Langford came home drunk and found her in bed with a raging fever. Thinking he could break it, he threw a bucket of cold water on her. The shock, combined with the illness, possibly scarlet fever, left her permanently impaired. I haven’t been able to verify this account, but it is consistent with what the court records tell us about William. If true, it would give Christina’s lifelong protectiveness of Nellie an even deeper motivation.

The family honored Christina’s wishes after her death, to a point. Around 1925, Nellie was admitted to Austin State Hospital, formerly the Texas State Lunatic Asylum. She lived there for nearly 13 years. When she died in January 1938, the informant on her death certificate was not a family member but “Austin State Hospital Records.” Her four-sentence obituary named only one survivor: “a brother-in-law, C. B. Lunsford of Georgetown.” Her full sister Emma Cannon was still alive, as were her brothers John and Sven Alfred, yet the hospital apparently knew of no one else. She was buried at Oakview Cemetery in Austin, not beside her mother in Georgetown.

What the documents suggest, taken together, is someone who had become profoundly isolated by the end of her life. Whether the family visited, whether they stayed in touch with the hospital, whether the distance and the years simply wore the connections away, we don’t know. But the paper trail at the end of Nellie’s life is strikingly bare for a woman whose mother had built her estate around the promise of her daughter’s care.

Christina had done everything she could. She kept Nellie at home for as long as she was alive to do it. She made the house itself a vehicle for Nellie’s care. When she couldn’t do it anymore, her children carried the obligation forward, however imperfectly.

The House on Timber Street

When Christina died, the Timber Street property was encumbered by the obligation to care for Nellie. In the weeks after the will was probated in 1919, the Langford children conveyed their remainder interests to Maud, Christina’s youngest, for ten dollars and the promise to provide Nellie “a home and the necessaries of life for the remainder of her life.” Even Tennessee’s children, who had inherited their mother’s share after Tennessee’s death in 1918, signed separate deeds over the next several years, each one carrying the same Nellie care clause.

With Nellie’s death in 1938, the obligation was finally released. In 1941, Maud and Claud Lunsford sold the Timber Street property to L.L. Huie for $1,600, nearly double what Christina had paid for it in 1907, but a modest sum for a house that had sheltered a family’s beloved matriarch.

The Langford Legacy on South Main

Mark Langford grew up to build the house at 1810 South Main; he later reinvented himself as a Texas Ranger on the Mexican border. His grandson Ernest Langford became a professor at Texas A&M and the compiler of A Goodly Heritage, the book that preserves the gentler version of Christina’s story. He ended that volume with a Swedish blessing: Vile hon i frid! — May she rest in peace.

The court records tell the harder version, but both versions ring true. Christina was the cheerful grandmother who sang Swedish nursery rhymes and wove carpeting on her loom, and she was the woman who filed for divorce alleging her husband had drawn a knife on her and threatened to kill the children. She was the beloved figure in the obituary and the plaintiff who told the court she’d bought her own horses with money earned doing washing. She held it all together — the farm, the children, the property, the promise to care for Nellie — across 66 years of Texas life.

The house on Timber Street, just like the C.H. Gee house next door, is gone now. Also like the Gee house, the Timber Street house was sold to the Catholic Church. The church purchased it in 1978, and aerial photographs show the house was gone by 1981.

The house at 1810 South Main still stands, though. It and many others were built by Christina’s family, people who had grown up learning from her resilience, and that’s a piece of the legacy inside those walls.

A note on names: Christina’s name appears in many variations across the historical record: Christina, Christiana, Christine, Kristina. Her maiden name is rendered as Johnson and Johanson. Her first husband’s surname appears as both Monson and Munson. I’ve generally used the spellings that appear most consistently in the primary sources, but readers may encounter other versions in their own research.

Sources

Christina’s Life and Family Memoir

A Goodly Heritage: The Family of William Ainsworth Langford and Christina C. Langford and Their Descendants, compiled by Ernest Langford (1967).

Ernest Severin et al., Svenskarne I Texas I Ord Och Bild, 1838–1918, Volume 1 (Austin, 1919), pp. 179, 492; digital images, The Portal to Texas History (texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1433684/); crediting McCulloch County Historical Commission.

Marriage Records

Texas marriage record, Andrew Monson and Christina Johnson, April 21, 1856, Travis County, Texas.

Texas marriage record, William A. Langford and Christina Munson, August 29, 1869, Williamson County, Texas.

Census Records

U.S. Federal Census, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910; Williamson County, Texas.

William Langford — Court Records

Brown Lee Collier v. W.A. Langford, Case No. 931 (1870), District Court, Williamson County, Texas.

State of Texas v. W.A. Langford, multiple cases (1872–1877), District Court, Williamson County, Texas.

W.A. Langford v. The State of Texas, No. 449, Texas Court of Appeals, Austin Term, affirmed May 4, 1878.

Divorce Proceedings

Christina C. Langford v. W.A. Langford, Case No. 2080 (filed August 15, 1883; dismissed January 19, 1884), District Court, Williamson County, Texas.

Deputy Sheriff

“Called Back,” Daily American (Nashville, Tennessee), January 22, 1887.

“W. A. Langford" [advertisement], Williamson County Sun , October 25, 1888.

Civil War Pension

U.S. Civil War Pension Index; Veterans Administration pension payment cards; William A. Langford, pension no. 640604.

Guardianship of Munson Minors

Guardianship of Mary A. Munson et al., Case No. 161 (1878–1885), County Court, Williamson County, Texas; in “Williamson, Texas, United States records,” images, FamilySearch (familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9X3-YHPN).

Property Records

Deed, J.G. Caldwell to Christine Munson, November 30, 1868, recorded December 21, 1868; Williamson County, Texas.

Deed, Langford to Caldwell (1874); Dalrymple to Langford (1889); Munson children to Langford (1907); Langford/Munson to Johnson (1907); Thompson to Langford (1907); Williamson County, Texas.

Langford children to Maud Lunsford (1919); Ischy heirs to Lunsford (1920, 1923, 1925); Lunsford to Huie (1941); Williamson County, Texas.

Affidavit of Christina Langford, proof of heirship for Andrew Munson (1911), Williamson County, Texas.

Affidavit of Sillure and Harris (1941), Williamson County, Texas.

Probate — Christina Langford

Estate of C.C. Langford, Case Nos. 2202–2203 (1919), County Court, Williamson County, Texas.

Obituaries and Death Records

“Death of Mrs. Langford,” Williamson County Sun, September 20, 1918.

“Munson” [obituary], Austin American-Statesman, January 26, 1938.

Texas death certificate, Nellie Alice Munson, 25 January 1938, Travis County, Texas.

Georgetown Life

“The Old Settlers Reunion,” Williamson County Sun, 5 September 1907.

“FOR SALE My gentle buggy horse…,” classified advertisement, Williamson County Sun, 1917.

Nellie Munson — Family Account

FamilySearch, Nellie Munson (LVNR-S8L), “Brief Life History” contributed by user.

Maps and Visual Sources

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Georgetown, Texas, 1916.

1810 S Main, Texas Historical Commission, Historic Resources Survey, 2016.

Find A Grave memorial #8492948, Christina Catherina Johnson Langford.

"Weaving Rag Carpet" [photograph by N.W. Wilcox, Georgetown, Texas], Wilson's Photographic Magazine, vol. 31, no. 7 (July 1894), p. 295.

Old Town Echoes is independently researched using primary historical sources.
AI tools assist in drafting and editing; all content is reviewed, sourced, and verified by the author.

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