Mrs. Josie Mingus Duckworth of Hico, Texas, before her death a few years ago, wrote an interesting letter to Mrs. Bess Woodruff, of Mineral Wells about some early day happenings in this vicinity.  Josie was born to William Mingus and Julia Frances Spellman Mingus August 7, 1861, in Palo Pinto County.

Josie was born where Mingus is now located and the town was named after her father.  He was among the first white people to locate in Palo Pinto County and he settled at Mingus.

In fact, white people were few and far between and the very loyal to each other in those days, they had to be, for protection.

Josie's first remembrance of people were if the neighboring settlers, the Claytons, Davidsons, Strawns, Stewarts, Hendersons, Curetons, Blues, Slaughters, Shelleys and Daves.

Josie's father William Mingus, was justice of the peace and a captain in the Texas Rangers.

The county at that time was wild, not many settlers were around close.  There were lot of Indians too, and Josie said, "What a terror they were to the white people.  My mother was so afraid the Indians would steal some of her children."  The Indians did take some of the white children.

The Mingus home was a two room log house that had a large log chain through the door  -- to fasten it.  There was also a high picket fence around the house so the Indians couldn't get in.  According to Josie, the Indians came by every light of the moon and tried to steal horses, and kill any white people they could.

Mingus raised horses and cattle and as she said, "by the hundreds."  He was a stockman and the one particular time the Indians stole 18 head of horses.  He kept a number of fine horses in the corral, and the Indians made several attempts to steal them, but Mingus being a Texas Ranger, kept a close watch.  They didn't get the fine horses.

Some of the neighborhood men ran down a wild buffalo and shot him 16 times before they finally killed him after running him in the corral.  A little neighbor boy, Billy Cureton, and Josie peeped through the fence and saw the buffalo.  To the children he looked as large as a house.

The ladies along with Mrs. Mingus took a large pan and butcher knives to get a steak for dinner but the old buffalo was so old and tough they couldn't cut the hide or meat.  Then the men had to get all the oxen in the neighborhood to pull off the buffalo to a dump ground.

One time the men had to go to mill and the nearest mill was at Weatherford, so two men left in a wagon loaded with wheat and corn, with four oxen hitched to the wagon.  The men took shotguns and then four more men on horses went along to guard the men and wagon as they drove to the mill.  The trip to Weatherford and back was made in four days time.

There were no churches in the neighborhood so all the settlers got together to organize a church.  The women baked and cooked all the food they could get and got things ready for the meeting.  That night a flood came.  Mr. and Mrs. Mingus took their two small children to the little mountain near where the railroad station now stands.  (However, this was many, many years before the railroad.)  The water got up about three feet or more in the Mingus house.

Flood or no flood, the settlers decided to try church again.  This time they built an arbor and had church.  Of course everybody took their guns and all the kids to church on account of Indians.  Col. Slaughter was the preacher at that first little arbor church of the settlers in the vicinity of Mingus.

The Mingus family hadn't been in Palo Pinto County very long when one of the neighbor's daughters took a fever and died.  There wasn't any "bought" cloth to make her a dress to be buried in, so Mrs. Mingus gave them her wedding dress which was a white Swiss with gold embroidered flowers.  The girl was only eighteen and had been away to school. She was the only daughter of the Davidsons.

Mrs. Mingus spent lots of time at her loom and spinning wheel and today visitors to the Smithsonian Building in Washington can see this loom that was used so faithfully and long by the Mingus family in Palo Pinto County.