Tales of Old Trails

Cypress along the banks of the sabinal crossing near Eutopia

                     April 5^th 2011  , Dad and I drove up to Mason, Texas to do some banking business.  We took a scenic route on Hwy. 16 through Bandera, and then over to Kerrville, then on to Mason.  On the way back Dad and I were talking about research that I have been doing on great great grandfather Benjamin Holly Norwood’s civil war records. Benjamin Holly was one of 4 brothers that survived the civil war fighting for the Confederacy in the Army of the Tennessee under Gen Braxton Bragg. They survived 5 major battles of the war and after their Parole from the army, like so many decided to move to Texas. They left Mississippi in covered wagons.  Some of the slave families though freeman after the war came with them to Texas.  We began to talk about the slave families that came with him from Mississippi and wondered what might have become of them.  Dad told me often times of an experience that he had when he was about eight years old.  His father Louis Lee Norwood one day in about 1939 took him to Centerpoint, Texas, which is a little community not far from Kerrville.  He stopped at an old frame house where an old horse was tied to the porch rail, and there sitting on the front porch was an old black man that Louie called Sandy.  Sandy had been a former slave of his grandfather Benjamin. Louie introduced his son Don to him and then asked, “Sandy what do you remember about the trip over from Mississippi? “  Sandy, who Dad described as an old man of about 80 years old with very short kinky hair that was white as snow, said  “Well sir Mr. Norwood I walked behind yor grandpapy’s wagon all di way from Mississippi.  I was bout maybe eight year old. “  Louie, “ what do you remember about the trip over here. “ “Well sir, I sho remember dem der ribers. Yes sir I was scared of crossin those ribers.”

“We had to hold up and camp sometime cause those ribers was high and we had to wait till they went down.” Louie continued, “Sandy how long did it take you to get to Texas?” “Well sir, I bleve it took bout 3 months to get here from der.”

            I asked Dad if he could remember any more of the conversation but that is about the extent of what he remembered. Considering he was only a small boy himself when he witnessed this conversation it amazes me he remembered that much.  We were not far from Centerpoint on our planned route for the day so I asked Dad if we could detour over there for a little bit and poke around and see if we couldn’t maybe find the old house where Sandy lived or maybe get a lead on where he was buried.  If I could find his grave and see his last name I might get a lead as to what might have happened to those former slave families. We actually don’t know how many families came on the trip from Mississippi.  Centerpoint is still a very small community and it is the first time that I have been there.  I have poked around on the Internet looking for clues to the whereabouts of the former slave families but have not been able to find out much that way.  I think if I can contact old timers of that community I might yet find a trail to follow. We drove through Centerpoint and I stopped at the Post Office and asked a lady that was there if she had lived there for a long time.  She said no, but I asked her if she knew someone in town that knew a lot of the history of the community and might have lived there for a while.  She referred us to a gentleman named Mr. Lackey who owned a feed store in town. She said his family had lived there for a long time and if anybody knew something it might be him.  Dad and I drove a short distance and found the feed store but he had an employee there that knew not much about the community.  We looked up Mr. Lackey’s phone number but were unsuccessful in reaching him.  We decided to go out to the cemetery and see if we might get lucky and find a clue but the cemetery was fairly large and the chances of finding Sandy’s grave without a last name would be slim. The cemetery had a state marker at the entrance that was very interesting.  It said that there were over 30 Texas rangers buried in that cemetery along with such notable old pioneers such as the famous writer A.J. Sowell.  I wanted to see Mr. Sowell’s grave but was not successful in finding it.  We decided that the time was getting away from us and so we decided to travel on.  I guess I will have to take up the trail another day.

            April 6^th, of 2011 .  I knew it would be a fun day and a day that I would remember simply because I was going to spend the day with my best friend, my father.   We had planned to go fishing at Choate Canyon Lake but due to boat mechanical problems we were left looking for something else to do.  I had always wanted to take Dad back to Sabinal, Texas and the surrounding area to show me some of the old places that were the site of some of the old family stories. I was thinking of the old Davenport Pioneer cemetery out at Ranchero Creek in particular because I had heard from someone in Sabinal that the cemetery had been cleaned up and fenced off by one of the historical societies in Uvalde County.  We just decided to go up there and see what we could see. After spending the night at my sister’s home in San Antonio near Helotes, We got up early had breakfast while visiting with my sister, and soon we were off headed north on Highway 16 through the little town of Pipe Creek and on toward Bandera, Texas.

            The country was really dry everywhere we looked.  As we drove Dad commented about the Cedar that has literally taken over the hill country.  He said that great grandfather William Norwood had told him that when he was a boy the Texas hill country didn’t have much cedar in it. The hills only had some scrub oak trees, live oak and Spanish oak mostly, and that the grass was as tall as a horse’s belly in most places. Great Grandpa William was born on Turtle Creek, near Kerrville, Texas.  After the civil war his father Benjamin Holly Norwood, after fighting in the confederacy brought his family and some of his former slave families with him from Choctaw, County Mississippi.  He settled on a small farm near turtle creek and his 1^st cousin Andrew Jackson Norwood settled just up the road on a little creek called bushwhack creek.  Grandpa William was born on the Turtle Creek property in 1882 and he lived at a time when the great Indian raids were just about over and the land was beginning to transition into a tame and settled land. Before his time however the Indians had ranged the land and according to him they kept the cedar from taking over because they frequently set fire to the prairie grass to spur it’s growth in order to attract the buffalo that were still plentiful in those days.

.        After going through Pipe Creek Dad pointed out a little rock walled building, dilapidated and abandoned just off the road.  He said back in the 30’s an old man owned that place and it was just a little country store and bar.  He said that they stopped there often when they were coming in from Bandera into San Antonio for a coke or something to snack on.  He said that one time when they stopped there he smelled a horrible stinking smell coming from the back part of the building. He didn’t say anything till they got in the truck to resume their trip but then remarked to his Dad how bad it smelled in that place and wondered what could cause such a stink.

His Dad Louie told him that the smell was from a weed called marijuana or peyote.  He said the proprietor of that place often smoked it and then Louie began to warn Dad about the dangers of smoking that weed and best not have anything to do with it.  Dad said the stink of that place made him never curious about wanting to smoke marijuana.  He said the smell was horrible.

            We continued on our drive through Bandera and began turning north on 173 for a piece and then 16 again. Dad said turn here, so we turned left onto Ranch road 470 and started down a road I had never seen.  It was a beautiful, scenic drive twisting and rolling through beautiful hill country vistas.  Dad said he had not traveled the road since he and mom had first married.  At one point you drive up high on a hill and then breaking through a cut in the mountain you see a beautiful overlook that almost takes your breath away. He remembered stopping there with mom for a while just to look.  he said that during the fall that area is particularly beautiful. He mused that he had not traveled that road in over 53 years. As we rolled along we noticed that there were a lot of properties for sale.  The oak trees seemed to be suffering; many of them were dead either from Oak wilt or just casualties of drought.  Many of the places seemed to be owned by wealthy folks that just clean up the property and use it for a playground.  It didn’t seem to me that there were many old ranches in the cattle or sheep and goat business like there used to be. On many of the hills especially off Hwy 16 as we passed Pipe Creek and Bandera were the expensive multimillion dollar mansion homes that are now becoming common place for that area.  We talked about how much Texas has changed since the years that Dad was young. And even in my own 52 years the landscape has changed vastly.  Texas is growing and the population is exploding and much of what had been productive cattle ranches are now just hunting lodges for wealthy folk and tax write off properties that produce very little. I can remember as a young boy driving old Hwy. 87 out of Mason and going for miles and seeing few houses and mostly sheep and goats and deer.  As we rolled along getting closer to Utopia, Texas we saw high fenced properties with strange Antelope and exotic breeds of deer. The country looks like little Africa more so than Texas. It makes me wonder if in years to come those exotic breeds take over the native white tail deer and become the norm of the country. Mixed in with the exotic deer you often see a Llama out grazing along with the sheep.  Llamas have no real market in Texas as of yet but they do get great tax benefits to the landowners.  Who knows what lurks in the woods out there beyond the back roads of that country.

            When we arrived in Utopia I was hoping to catch the little museum open there but unfortunately it was closed.  I have seen some old family photographs in that museum and hope to get a copy of them if it can be arranged. Utopia is the original settling place of our Davenport ancestors.  John M. Davenport settled there with his family in the early 1850’s along with Capt. William Ware, and the Cranes, Robinsons, Anglins, Thompsons and others.  They were one of about 12 families that settled the area.  Many of their children intermarried over the years.  The little settlement was originally named Waresville, but later was changed to Utopia in 1884.  We stopped by the old Waresville, cemetery.  We walked around the place looking at some of the old graves that are there.  Many of those folks are kinfolks from way back.  William Wares crypt and memorial plaque given by the State of Texas is there.  It commemorates his service as a captain in the Texas Revolutionary war.

Gideon Thompson's marker

Captain William Ware's marker

 Gideon Thompson’s grave is there. Gid served in the confederacy, fought at Shiloh during the war and later after returning built a cattle ranch.  In 1870 He threw his herd in with Chris Kelly , our ancestor, and  the two men drove their herds west to California more than once. They made good profit on those trips and built two formidable cattle ranches together. I have previously written about this in my blog article “In Her Own Words”, an interview with great great grandmother Emma “Kelly” Davenport.

site of the old Kelly ranch headquarters

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old blue water hole

            After leaving the cemetery we continued on our way headed to Sabinal.  A few miles before we reached Sabinal on Hwy 187 we pulled over at a bend in the road just before going across the dry frio and we stopped and looked at what had once been the old Kelly ranch headquarters the place where grandma Emma spoke about in her 1938 interview. Others own it now but it is still a beautiful old place.  I was disappointed that I could not see a name on the gate or someway to contact the landowners for permission to go up to the place.  The gate was locked so able to go no farther I snapped a picture with my phone and we went on up the hill a little ways. Behind the old ranch house place is the old “ Blue water Hole” that grandma Pearl often spoke of.  It is a place where our ancestors used to hold family reunions and such long ago but is also the place where Chris Kelly nearly lost his life to an Indian attack while watering his horse there one day in the early 1870s. I was able to snap a picture of it by parking my truck off the road and climbing the hill a little ways but still I was disappointed I could not get closer.    As we drove on down the road Dad pointed to the land on the right side of the road and told me that the Kelly ranch once comprised 16 square miles of land in Bandera and Uvalde counties. Grandma Emma’s portion of that inheritance was 8,000 acres that sat nestled in the canyons of a place grandma Pearl called sugar loaf mountain.  It is located about 12 miles northwest of Hwy 128 between Sabinal and Concan, Texas off county road 344. After she married grandpa John William Davenport it became the Davenport Ranch.  It is the place that grandpa Rollie and his brothers grew up and the object of my intense curiosity for many years.

            We continued to roll down the road finally reaching Sabinal and we decided to stop at one of the icehouses near Main Street.  While Dad was shopping in the store I asked the clerk if she knew anyone in town named Howard. She said yes, there was Dorothy Howard.  She owns a real estate place just up the way.  I wanted to contact them because they own the land that the old Davenport cemetery is on.   This is the land just a few miles east of Sabinal where John McNew Davenport originally settled after leaving Waresville.  It’s located on the old Hwy 90 just 6 miles east of Sabinal on Ranchero Creek. I was able to acquire her business card and from that gained some telephone numbers. I called her up and told her what I wanted to do which was to visit the old cemetery. She was very nice and gave me her husbands cell number but warned me that he might be short of time because he was busy working on a broken plow.  I decided to call and sure enough he told me he just couldn’t get away but that if I would give him more notice on another day that he would try to accommodate me.  Well I was disappointed but I understood.  So that was a bust.  I had also asked the icehouse lady if she knew any Hortons around Sabinal.  I had heard that the Horton’s were still the landowners that owned the old Davenport place previously mentioned. On several occasions going through Sabinal I have tried to locate the Horton ranch and find a way to contact them but to no avail.

The lady said “Yes I think there are a number of Hortons that live around here .  I think old man Eck Horton may be the one you need to talk to.  After a quick look in her phone book she gave me a number.  When I got in the truck I used my cell phone and called it up.  I reached a voice mailbox and so I left a message stating who I was and what I had in mind.  I figured well I doubt anyone will answer that message today. I have always envisioned the Hortons as being wealthy ranchers that use the ranch for lease hunting and not really ranching so much any more as so many do in that country.

I was born here April 18, 1958

Mom and Dad's first apartment

            Dad said well son let’s just head up to Uvalde then cause while I’m here I might as well talk with some folks up there while we are so close.   I figured why not because I doubted I would hear back from the Horton’s right a way so on we went up hwy 90 to Uvalde.  We had lunch in a restaurant there.  Dad wanted to visit with some men on a business matter and so while we were there waiting to meet with those men we took a little tour of Uvalde.  I was born in Uvalde but really have little memories there because I was so young when mom and dad left there.  Dad showed me the little hospital where I was born which was literally just up the street from the neighborhood where we lived when I was born.  We looked for the exact house but Dad couldn’t make out the house but was able to find the street they lived on.  We drove by the little apartment house that mom and dad lived in when they came back from their honeymoon.  I wrote about that house in an earlier post called “That will learn ya durn ya.” I took a few pictures and then we decided to take a ride out to the old cemetery.  There was an old Texas outlaw named black jack Ketchum that was buried there.  I wanted to try to find it but after looking for a couple of hours I was unsuccessful.  I did however get a picture of Vice President John Nance Garner’s grave.  We saw his residence in Uvalde as well but it was in the process of being restored and the tours of his house have been interrupted until they complete the repairs.

            After touring the town we went to the business of my Dad’s friend and visited there a while. While Dad was talking I got a cell phone call.  To my delighted surprise it was from Mr. Eck Horton.           

“This Mr. Norwood the voice said.” Yes sir I answered, thank you for returning my call. “Well I know what you want to do and I think it would be okay, I gotta feed and do some things, but I think if you could be here say about 3:00 this afternoon I suppose I could show ya a few things.  Aint much around here any more that was here when your folks lived here but there is a few things I could show ya.”            Yes sir Mr. Horton we could be there at 3:00.  I would really appreciate it .  “Ok then well meet up at at my place, he said.”  He then gave me some directions to get there.  I hung up and told Dad we needed to hit the road in high places because it was already well after 2:00 o’clock and we still had 40 miles to get back to Sabinal.   We got in the pickup and took off.  I was pushing it to be sure and not be late and hoping I wouldn’t pass a state trooper on the way.  Fortunately we arrived on time and the directions Mr. Horton gave took us right up to his front door.  When we arrived I found him cleaning out the back of his pickup next to his barn.  To my surprise instead of a young energetic ranchman I beheld an old man of over 90 years old who was still very strong and adept.  His face and hands were weathered with the roughness of a man who had worked hard all his life and strong voice that was very matter of fact and to the point.  I got the sense that he was a kind man but one that didn’t mince words or put up with any foolishness.  When I arrived and walked over to his pickup I just said Hello! Mr. Horton?

He barely looked up from his work and said You Norwood? I said yes sir. I’m Michael Norwood and this is my Dad Don Norwood.  You kin to the Davenports? Yes sir , I said, My mother was Beverly Norwood who was Pearl Davenport’s granddaughter.  “Oh Okay , Yea I knew Pearl Davenport., Well hop in well take my truck and I’ll give you a little tour.” I slid into the back seat and Dad sat up front with Mr. Horton.  His wife was sitting patiently there in the back seat. She was a little gray haired lady with the sweetest of smiles. I slid in the back seat of the pickup next to her.  I introduced myself and so the tour began.

site of the Davenport Ranch headquarters

old Sabinal to Eutopia wagon road

Great uncle Tommo's place

     We drove down the dusty caliche gravel ranch road just a mile or so away from Eck’s home place to a red brick house enveloped by oak trees.  He said this was the spot where the old Davenport ranch house once stood.  The house that presently stands there was built by a Horton family member and was built in the mid 1950’s.   Surrounding the house were a variety of barns and corrals. Eck said that some of the corrals were present when the Davenports lived there.  In the back of the house was a gate . I got out and opened the gate so we could drive through.  On the other side we began driving down and old dirt trail rutted in the ground and obviously quite old.  It was a simple dirt trail common in every Texas ranch.  Eck pointed out that this road was the original old wagon road that ran from Sabinal to Eutopia.  The old road has changed very little since the days when wagons and mule teams were the only mode of conveyance. After proceeding up the road for about a quarter of mile we came upon the banks of a dry rocky creek that Eck called the dry Sabinal.  He pointed out that the Davenports often camped out on the banks of that creek and would often spend their days enjoying that place.  Today it is very dry and very little water and covered with Cedar.  I would think back in the day it was a pleasant place with water plentiful in rainy years.  Eck pointed out some wash debris way up the hill where that creek often flooded well over it’s banks in wetter times.  Doubling back from that spot we returned back through the gate at the brick house and headed back up the main road past Eck’s house and toward the hills north.  The Ranch was beautiful to my eyes.  It was a plain of grass and shallow rocky creeks surrounded by tall hills.  We headed overland off the main road a little ways and parked in a grassy meadow looking toward an old windmill that stood at the base of a hill. That windmill marks the old homestead of your great uncle Tommo Davenports place said Eck. I told him that I remembered uncle Tommo . When I was a small boy we used to visit him every time we came to see my folks.  We drove back on the road and headed toward the tallest hill on the place where we had to stop at a tall fence.  “This place on the other side of that fence used to be part of the old Davenport place too said Eck, but it’s been bought up and fenced off and that fellow don’t let nobody on that place. He even locks up his water gaps he said.”  He kind of curled his nose when he said it and his wife said “aint that kinda crazy? “ they seemed rather amused at the way their neighboring rancher seemed to guard the place so much. I would really like to know who owns that place.  Looking across the fence we could see two large hills with a creek that separated the two.  Eck said that this was the actual original old ranch place that belonged to old John Davenport. He said that the Davenports often would pack up and go live up there in the valley on the side of the creek where they had an old cabin in the early days. It was only later in the early 1900s that they made a home at the place where the red brick home presently stands.

the mountain on the left is what grandmother used to call sugar loaf mountain but on ecks maps it's called ringtail mountain. In the valley between the hills runs the little Blanco creek.  Behind those hills was the original Davenport Ranch headquarters.

   As we drove the ranch Eck told us that he remembers Rollie and Pearl and all the Davenport brothers well. He said before his folks bought the ranch that they used to come and visit the Davenports on Sundays occasionally.  He remembered that one of the old Ranch hands, “Old Ben” was always very kind to the children and always had a little candy or some kind of little carved figurines to give to them.  He also remembered the story of grandpas treasure map, which I have written about in a previous post called “All that Glitters”.  It happened that he sat on the grand jury that acquitted grandpa when he was charged with embezzlement because of that map.  It was interesting hearing his memories of that event.

Eck Horton's map of the Ranch as it appeared when purchased,  the upper left quadrant within the yellow line as since been sold off.

   We had such a good time that afternoon and meeting the Hortons was such a delight.  It made me feel good to know that the old ranch was still a working ranch and not just a plaything for some rich lawyer or doctor out of Houston.  We sat and visited a while with them in the home and Eck proudly brought out some interesting maps of the ranch that he prized and also He showed us the plaque given to them by the state of Texas designating the Horton ranch as a century Ranch. Meaning that the ranch had been continually owned and operated by the same family for over 100 years.

     That day will stay in my memory for as long as I live.  It was the culmination of a quest that I have had in my mind since childhood to see that country so full of the stories of my childhood. It will live in my memory because I met a man that remembers my great grandparents and there are few left alive who knew those days.  It will stay in my memory because it was a day spent with my Dad who shares with me my love for history and especially the history of family that always helps me appreciate where I came from and who I am.  It was a little trip back in time where I could see little remnants of a Texas that is no more and will never be again.  It leaves me a little sad but still all things must change and I must change with it.  The land remains forever but we pass and go our way making only footprints as we pass. Thank you Lord for such a fun day and a wonderful memory.