Reminiscences of J.B. Marlow

Wichita County Pioneer

The oldest settler in Wichita County to my recollection was Tom Buntin. They had been living here twenty-five years when we came here. They lived in the dugouts out on what is now Ninth Street about where the car line turns to go to the Lake. They had two children buried at that point. The location was lost when people later hauled rocks from that part of the hill. In 1875 the old man moved from that place over on what is now Ed Waggoner tract. He hauled the lumber from Sherman that he built his house with, by oxen team. The records will show that he preempted the land that he claimed and owned. I knew the Buntins quite well on account of them having three or four boys about the same age of me and my brothers, and they always kept a big bunch of hounds, and we seldom missed a Saturday night that we did not go coon hunting and we usually caught a few bob cats.

The Wheeler family settled on Wichita River just below the Tenth Street bridge in 1875. He preempted 160 acres of land out of the E. A. Austin Survey, and that was settled in court in Henrietta in 1881, giving him a title to the land.

The Ficklins, Barwises, Ballews, the Harris family and Judge Seely and his family, all came in 1878 and 1879.

Mr. Buntin left in 1887; said it was getting too thickly settled for him. McFarlan settled in 1865 on Red River.

In 1880 they were all fixed to move out to Seymour, and E.L. Napier, my step-father, went and looked the country over and decided it was a little too far out.

I moved here in 1885 and my first job was to go down towards Charlie and buy corn. At that time what few people lived at Charlie did most of their trading at Henrietta, as we had no bridges and no roads between here and Charlie. So after driving for fifteen or twenty miles through high sage grass and following the divide around between Wichita River and Red River I ran into a settlement just west of the town of Charlie. That was my first acquaintance with August Bevering, who was one of the earliest settlers in this county. He had a fine crop of corn that year (1885) and charged me the sum of 25¢ per bushel. He was living then just across the river from the mouth of Brushy Creek, and the whole bed of Red River was absolutely black with wild turkeys. Up until that time I had not had a chance to look around and did not know there were that many turkeys in the State of Texas, but I remember making the remark that Mr. Bevering had plenty of turkeys, and he told me they were old wild turkeys, and that they came across the river and ate up his corn.

While I am talking about turkeys, I might just as well mention the prairie chickens. The most of the old timers will remember an old settler named Shulty who owned the land just east of the Catholic Cemetery. Mr. Shulty had planted a crop of rice corn. At that time the prairie chickens would hatch their young on Red River in the sand holes and in the fall they would drift south like geese and ducks. During the prairie chicken season when they were plentiful we boys would make expense money by selling them to J.H. Keller, who would ship them out. He paid us 75¢ to a dollar per dozen. It is my recollection that the prairie chickens had cleaned up Mr. Shulty's ten-acre patch of rice corn in about three days, and as there were no other feed crops our hunting season was about over.

My grandmother on my mother's side, came to Texas with the Austin Colony, when she was about six months old. And my grandfather on my mother's side; his people settled in Red River County something like eight or ten years before the Peters Colony was organized. My mother was born in Red River County. On my father's side; his family moved to Grayson County from Missouri in 1846, and lived there until a little while before the war broke out between the states. My father enlisted in the Confederate Army, and right after the war he came back to Texas and he and my mother were married in 1866. They came to Cambridge for a while, but the Indians were bad and they did not stay long; they moved back to Whitesboro. I was born in Grayson County in 1873. My parents lived in Gainsville when they ran the first train in there. They lived in Corsicana for a year or two.

This is the only town outside of Ft. Worth that ever shipped a carload of plover. For years I had a contract with Berry and Hollis of New York City to furnish them with as many as 500 dozen plover per day during the plover season which would last from about April 25th to May 10th. Many of the railroad men would lay off on the Ft. Worth and Denver and come up here, and of course it was great sport and the fact that I would pay them 50 cents per dozen for these birds, they could make expenses besides a little money. So in 1896 the birds were very plentiful and Mr. Berry sent a representative here and we established three camps; one at Jolly, one at Wichita Falls, and one at Iowa Park, so he shipped a carload of crates to pack the birds in and made a trade with Mr. Newby for cold storage, believing that we could actually get a car-load of birds from this section of the country. Up until that time we had been sending them to Ft. Worth every morning by express, which of course, added considerable to the cost of the birds. So I did a little advertising and had probably 75 or 80 men out shooting birds, and I want you to know that we did not have a bit of trouble getting that car-load out.

They furnished me specially loaded shells, with lots of powder and not so many shot, because they did not want to tear the birds up. The shells were $5.00 a case. We always had two teams, one that we drove in the morning and one in the afternoon, because it was hard on the teams. One morning we started out, Fred Morris driving for me a team that we hired from old man Soule's livery stable, and we got 248 birds in the morning, and in the afternoon I started out with 500 shells and killed 412 birds. I had a little pillow tied on the but of the gun, which was supposed to serve as a shock-absorber, but I was black and blue all over from that gun kicking. After a short time people got to killing so many plover that the state legislature passed a bill to prohibit them from shipping the birds. Joe Meyers was express agent at the time and I continued for several years to kill plover. I would just set them out in front of the house at night, and the next morning they would be gone, and in a few days I would get a check from the same people that I had been shipping to before they passed the law. It was about 1896 when they passed that law, and for several years I continued to ship birds myself, but of course I could not hire any helpers. These people that I worked for followed these birds to the Argentine Republic during the winter, and in the spring when the birds started leaving there they would write me that they were coming, but not to kill any for a few days until they had time to fatten up after their long flight.

By marking some of the birds they found that they could actually fly from Argentine to Wichita Falls in three days! They never shipped any in the fall because they were too fat and would not keep.

Speaking about early days and men that were good with their six shooters; The first sheriff of this county, F. M. Davis, had three boys from ten to fourteen years old, and it is my recollection that Jim had played hooky, so the old man used a quirt on him rather promiscuously. Jim had a big dog that would weigh about ninety pounds and was considered one of the best hunting dogs in this part of the country, and of course all we boys thought a lot of old "Ring", but when the old man began to use a quirt on Jim this dog made a rear attack and took part of the old man's pants. Anyway, he made the old man turn the boy loose, but the Sheriff did not like for the dog to interfere, and felt like he had a right to lick his own son for playing hooky. The dog seemed to know that he had make a mistake and began to run. He was at least 100 yards away when the old man picked up his old "45" and killed that dog. We all mourned the old dog's death as much as if it had been a human being.

And then about the drouth of '86. On the first day of April, 1886, there was a very light snow, just barely enough to whiten the ground. We did not have any more rain until October, 1887. I remember, Ed Napier, my half-brother, then about 1 1/2 years old was out in the yard playing when it began to sprinkle, and it like to have scared him to death. It was the first rain he had ever seen.

In the Spring of 1888 Mr. Shaw who owned 200 acres of land just west of Holliday Street had it all planted in wheat in the fall of 1887 and we did not get very much rain through the winter, so the first of March it did not look like it would make anything. Mr. Shaw had gone through the drouth of '86, so he decided he would sell out and leave. He went to Mr. Kemp and offered to sell him the land, improvements, house, etc. Mr. Kemp put the proposition up to Gus Newby that if he would furnish the money they would buy it together. Mr. Newby went out and looked it over and decided he did not want anything to do with it, but he let Kemp have the money. I helped thresh that wheat and it made an average of 26 bushels to the acre. I have often heard Mr. Kemp say that was one of the best investments he ever made. He paid $8.00 per acre, $1600.00 for the tract. The whole 200 acres is now in the city limits.

In the fall of 1886 Henry Ford sowed 200 acres of wheat and it did not come up until the fall of '87.

Mr. Ford had moved here in '85 from Missouri and had bought some land on Holliday Creek and agreed to pay four dollars per acre, and had paid Mr. Bacon half down on the tract, had it put in cultivation and built a house on it, but in '87 he was so badly discouraged he went to Mr. Bacon and tried to give it back to him; told him if he would just buy him two tickets back to Missouri for him and his wife, he could take the land. However, in '88 Mr. Ford made enough money to pay his debts, pay out his tract of land and at one time he was worth in the neighborhood of $250,000.

In the fall of '85 Barry Anderson and Lish Stevens, who were managers of the Box Kay Ranch, decided one day that they would have a little fun, so they got John Wheeler and Tom Buntin, a couple of "old nestors" they called them, and said "Let's get them drunk and have some fun." Anderson and Stevens both were inclined to be a little overbearing. They accused Wheeler and Buntin of stealing their cattle, so they started a big fight. This all took place in the old White Elephant Saloon. So I and two of the Buntin boys were waiting to ride out with their dad, and knowing that we would be more likely to find him in the White Elephant than anywhere else, we sneaked up and looked in there and saw the fight just as it started. Anderson and Stevens were usually ready to carve up on the fellow they fight, so they got their knives out and went to work on Tom Buntin. John Wheeler was a kind of a "knife man" too, so he did a little carving and had it not been for Maj. Davis and Sheriff Davis, and ever other bystander getting into the fight, I don't think there is any doubt but what the results would have been more serious than they were. If an ordinary man had been cut up like Wheeler and Buntin were, he would probably have been in the hospital for thirty to sixty days. Wheeler and Buntin did not know how bad the other fellows were hurt, so they got in a wagon and pulled out of town and drove several miles up the river, and had one of the boys to drive the team back; the way we happened to locate them, the next day was Sunday and we were out hunting as usual; the dogs began to bark and we went to see what they had treed, and it was Wheeler and Buntin. Of course what they were most anxious to know was whether either of the other men had died; when we assured them that their wounds were not mortal, they returned home.

(Above copied from files at Kemp Library)

Jim Marlow was 12 when his family arrived in Wichita Falls in 1885. His step-father was Ed L. Napier. On August 24, 1898 Jim married Sophia Mataska, whose family came to Wichita Falls in 1888. He formed his own brick making company which furnished brick for many of the buildings in early Wichita Falls. From his real estate office he helped develop the Floral Heights & Lakeview Additions. He was mayor, 1918-20. With Harold Carpenter he brought the 1st airplane to Wichita Falls in 1910.