"Many a Slip Between the Cup and the Lip"

In the year 1910 President William Howard Taft becomes the first president to throw out the first baseball on opening day.  In 1910 the Wright Brothers and Department Store owner Max Moorehouse undertook the first airfreight shipment from Dayton, Ohio to Columbus, Ohio. In 1910 Francisco I. Madero denounces President Porfirio Díaz, declares himself president, and calls for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico.  This was the year that our country was experiencing the first decade of the new century, and in a little town far far away in west texas our family history was being made on the day Great Grandpa Rollie Ambrose Davenport met and married Hattie Pearl Loman.

Hattie Pearl is center of picture with the broad brimmed hat above the little girl with the bonnet.

Hattie Pearl was a young teenage girl growing up in the little town of Kennedy, Texas. Her father Upton Loman had a farm and was a cattleman working together with his brother. In 1889 He was encouraged by his brother –in-law to become a blacksmith there in Kennedy. Mr Loman continued blacksmithing there until he moved to Pettus , Texas and opened his own shop. Hattie Pearl was going to school in a little one-room schoolhouse, which was being taught by a young schoolmarm named Mrs. Koonce.  There were several young boys that were always trying to get Hattie Pearls attention in those days.  On one occasion one of the boys decided to offer her a gift to impress her.  Her father called her to the front door one morning and asked her to look on the front porch.  After going on the porch she discovered a watermelon, a fine specimen of the fruit, and on the side of the melon was carved the words, “I love pearl, she’s my girl.” The ploy didn’t engender any romantic inclination toward the young suitor but I would give the young man credit for imagination. She lived there happily with her brothers and sisters until one day a man came from Sabinal and told Mr. Loman that there was no blacksmith in that town and that one was badly needed there. So in 1907 Mr. Loman moved the family to Sabinal, Texas. In those days Sabinal was still very much a town in transition. It was a busy ranching and farming community and the little town was booming and growing.  The railroad like many little towns in texas was the economic engine that kept the little town growing. On the streets of Sabinal could be seen wagons loaded tall with cotton along with all kinds of other type of buggies, hacks and buckboards along with horses and dogs and people.  Mixed in this scene from the old world of the 1800’s was the new fangled horseless carriage the automobile. The streets were hot and dusty and smelly during the summer months from the horse manure, but in the rainy days it was a muddy, rutted quagmire of dirt and soupy sludge, difficult to walk across the street in some instances. 

taken in 1912

Some time during the years of 1907 to 1910 the rancher and cowboy Rollie Davenport fell in love with the black smiths daughter, Pearl Loman.  I do not know a lot of the details about how they met and what the courtship was like but my best guess is that they met at one of the many church socials that were often held there or perhaps they courted at many of the family dances or infares that were held in the community which were essentially a wedding reception highlighted by a barbeque and dance that would last sometimes several days.

I do not know many details of the courtship but I do know about the day Rollie took his sweetheart Pearl to be married.  It had rained in the country and Rollie picked up his sweetheart Pearl in a buggy at her home in town. They traveled the muddy streets of Sabinal until they rolled up in front of the Justice of the Peace. Rollie not wanting his new bride to soil her shoes in the muddy street decided to lift her out of the buggy intending to set her gently down on the board walk of the Justice’s office.  When he lifted Pearl up out of the buggy and turned to walk the few steps to the boardwalk he side shifted to miss a mud hole and to his surprise, he slipped backward feet flying flat out, he landed on his back in the mud puddle his bride to be tumbling in after.  I don’t know what words rolled out of Rollie’s mouth during that embarrassing moment but I would imagine it might have been. “Good gladness miss Agnes” a saying that granny Pearl often attributed to him. What an auspicious beginning as they picked themselves out of the street and continued in to the Justice of the Peace office to say their vows and begin a new chapter in the davenport history. One of the good friends of the family in that day was their neighboring rancher and friend John Nance Garner. Mr. Garner was later to gain fame as the Vice President serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Garner allowed young Rollie to take his new bride to honeymoon in a small log cabin on the banks of the frio river on his ranch.  That little cabin was located across the river from the present day swimming hole near the dam at what is now Garner State Park. Though a humble beginning it was a love affair that lasted six decades through all kinds of adventure and crisis.