Almonta Huling Bartlett

     Almonta Huling Bartlett was born on 3 December 1846 in Jasper County, Texas.¹

Following the Civil War in 1865, Monte's father, Thomas B. Huling, an early settler and one of the citizens who signed a petition to make Lampasas a county, died. His widow, Elizabeth, was left with six children and a large estate to administer. A daughter, Almonte ‘Monte’ (1846-1922) had two older sisters: Isabella ‘Bell’ and Rebecca, and four younger brothers: William ‘Dick’, John, Mark, and Proctor.

In 1859, Monte and her older sisters were sent to school in Austin, and Bell wrote to her mother in Lampasas complaining of Monte’s conduct. Bell wrote, “I want you to write to her and tell her she must behave herself. She quarrels here before the boarders and will disgrace herself if she don’t quit it, and I have told her of it and talked to her and it don’t do any good.”
:TAB:When Monte was a young girl, one of her favorite things to do was ride horseback and race with her brother, Dick. One of these rides turned into a life-threating event when they went riding up Pitt Creek, northwest of the Huling ranch house. Monte was on her favorite horse and was considered a good rider. That particular day, Dick was riding a young horse that had not been “broken” long. They reached Pitt Creek, a waterhole about 1 ½ miles from their house, and were letting their horses drink, when Dick saw a small band of Indians aroaching from the west. He told Monte to ride as fast as she could for the house. She started off and looked back to see Dick’s horse bolting. She came back to him, and he told her to hurry and he was sure his horse would follow[. It did, and they were chased right up to the ranch house by the Indians.

The two older sisters had already married when members of the Townsen family introduced Almonte to a handsome young blade named Robert S. Randolph. Against her mother’s best judgement, they were married. Her mother had him investigated and found he was part of a San Saba gang who robbed and murdered in surrounding counties. He began to demand that Almonte receive a large portion of her inheritance. When her mother, Elizabeth, refused, he encouraged his friends to intimidate her by crawling under the house at night and beating on the floor. They even went so far as to threaten harm to Almonte’s three younger brothers.

In the middle of the night, Elizabeth and Morgan Jordan, a freed Negro man who had been overseer of her property for years, harnessed up the buggy and drove her young sons to Salado. In Salado she entered them in Salado Academy. Elizabeth and Morgan hurried home so that no one would know they had gone.

At home, Dick, then twenty, had become head of the household and was doing his best to protect the family. One night he was coming down the hall and looked through the door into his mother’s bedroom, where he saw Mr. Randolph holding a knife at his mother’s throat. He was demanding that she sign a land deed over to him. Almonte was locked in an upstairs bedroom, so it was left to Dick to protect his mother. He pulled out his gun and shot Mr. Randolph to death. Almonte, her mother, and brother decided that they would report that Randolph accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.

Fearing revenge from the “San Saba Gang”, the family staged an elaborate funeral complete with grieving widow, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law. He was buried in November 1870 in the Huling family cemetery plot, and a tombstone was erected.

Several years later, when Almonte consented to become the bride of J.C. Bartlett, a local lawyer, she took Morgan Jordan out to the family cemetery where they rolled Mr. Randolph’s tombstone over the side of the hill and flattened the grave even with the ground.

Mr. Bartlett died in 1891, and was buried in the Huling cemetery. Almonte then married Dr. James A. Abney, and they lived in Brownwood. – Written by Charlene Nash and Evelyn Smith. Contributed by Peggy Smith Wolfe, Technology Chair of Lampasas County Historical Commission. Several other members of the Huling family and some of their former slaves also have stories well worth reading in this book, Lampasas County Texas, Its History and Its People, Vol. I.²

Almonta married Dr. James Addison ABNEY, son of Paul Collins ABNEY and Margaret Elvira Fullerton, in 1893 in Texas. In 1895 Abney moved his new family to Brownwood to be near the 2,000-acre ranch estate in Blanket, Texas, Brown County, which Almonta brought into the marriage. James continued his medical practice there and later became owner of a 10,400-acre ranch on Brady Creek, near Eden, Texas, Concho County.

As a ranch owner, Dr. Jim worked in conjunction with the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad Company (Frisco) to establish the town of Winchell, Texas. He organized the Citizens National Bank with his son, Frederick, in Brownwood in 1906. Dr. Jim spent the remainder of his career in the banking business.

Almonta Huling Bartlett died on 27 January 1922 in Brownwood, Brown County, Texas, at age 75. She was buried in Greenleaf Cemtery.