Records Contributed by Vicki Bell-Reynolds [email protected]

One Saturday afternoon a cow boy came into town on his horse behind the saddle and as drunk as he could be, rode his horse in the front door and out the back door of all the business house of the town and sang a song, "There is going to have to build another hell this hell is to good for me". About sun down he rode out of town and was never heard of again.

There was a lady school teacher there in Woodville and a young boy going to school as a scholar in her school, there was a merchant that got jealous of them both and told that the boy was hugging and kissing her. The boy was told of the yearn, so he fixed a ball of lead to a long piece of rubber & tied one and the rubber to his wrist and the other and of rubber to the ball of the lead, he slipped the ball of lead up his sleeve and went into the store and jumped on the merchant & he drew back his hand and threw the lead ball hitting the merchant on the top part of his forehead cutting a strip about 4 inches long in the merchants head or skull. Just as soon as the merchant was able to get around after many months he located the boy out in a pasture picking up pecans on the ground under a tree. The merchant got a railroad pick handle and slipped up behind the boy unexpectedly hit the boy over the head with the pick handle. So the merchant left that part of the country for a number of years before coming back to Woodville, the boy finally died from this lick over the head.

Woodville, was a wild country not having any city laws of any kind. Stock such as horses, mules, cattle and hogs would run at large wherever they wanted to go.

There was a public well in the center of the town and hogs would root out a wallow hole, this hole got to be about 3 to 4 feet deep and about 5 or 6 feet long.

There were two men one time at the well getting them a drink of water, one of the men was Bill Allred and the other name was Jim Stiff. Jim Stiff and Bill Allred got into a fight and Jim Stiff took his pocket knife and cut Bill Allred into shoe laces & then knocked Allred down and off into this hog wallow. He then jumped in on him and stamped him farther down into the mud, by that time a crowd of people had gathered around the well. They pulled Jim Stiff off of Bill Allred and got Allred out of the mud hole and took him home and cleaned him up and sent for his father-in-law Bill Ayers, to come to see him quick if he wanted to see him alive. Bill Ayers jumped on a horse just a rope around the horses neck and went running to see Allred, when he arrived at the Allred place Bill Allred was laying on his front porch on a quilt hollowing and yelling to the top of his voice, Bill Allred told Bill Ayers that he had been killed and that he was a dead man. Bill Ayers told Bill Allred that he was making a hell of a racket for a dead man and got his horse and went back home.

It went along for a number of years the town was moved about two miles to the north and some laws had been established in the town by then. Jim Stiff had become city marshal of the town but, Bill Allred was still a gambler and drunkard. Bill Allred got drunk their one Xmas and Jim Stiff under took to put Bill in the Caboose that they erected there in the town. Another fight got started between these two men again, and in the scuffle Jim Stiff knocked Bill Allred down again and for some unknown reason Bill Allred got his hands on Jim Stiff's pistol while down on the ground, Bill begin to shoot at stiff while on the ground and Stiff was over him, one bullet cutting off all the buttons of Stiff's overcoat. The next bullet went through Stiff's

Page 4
Page Index