Grayson County TXGenWeb

Early Grayson County History

The Whitewright Sun
Thursday, March 12, 1925
pg. 1, 7

TELLS ABOUT EARLY TIMES IN GRAYSON COUNTY
S.Y. Creager Claims to be the Second Person Born in This County
by W.S. Adair in Dallas News

"No, I was not the first white child born in Grayson County, but until recently I claimed to have been the second," said Y.S. Creager, 5804 Belmont avenue. "I saw it stated in The Semi-Weekly Farm News the other day that Henry Moss, living somewhere in West Texas, was born in Grayson County the same day I was, November 25, 1846. If that is so, it will depend upon which of us was born earlier in the day. I know Henry Moss, but I never heard that we were the same age. The first child born in the county was Texiana Dumas, now deceased. (Editor's note: Texiana Dumas was born three months before Grayson Co. was formed from Fannin Co. on March 17, 1846 - January 3, 1846; therefore, she was not born in Grayson Co, but in Fannin County) She was married to Reece Cannon, who is still living at the age of 90 years at Van Alstyne. My father, William Creager, born in Virginia, emigrated to Kentucky, and from there came to Texas and settled in Grayson County in 1844. He took a league of land, which was surveyed by Tom Bean and built on it a double-log house, near Van Alstyne.

KEEP LOOKOUT FOR INDIANS
"My mother, Bexy McKinney, was a daughter of Daniel McKinney, also a pioneer. My parents had fifteen children, thirteen of whom lived to be grown. The McKinneys were also a numerous family. They and the Creagers constituted a kind of colony and lived close together in order that they might the better defend themselves against Indians. When the women went to the spring to wash, the men would get their guns and watch for Indians, but, that they not alarm the women, they would pretend that they were going hunting. Ordinarily the Indians would not attack settlers in their houses, but would kill them if they caught them out. Hostile Indians were all gone before my day, but father told me that when he first came he often had to quit work to join the settlers in running them out of the country. There were, however, plenty of friendly Indians just across Red River, and they were familiar apparations at Sherman and other trading points on the Texas side. Nor were there any buffaloes nearer than the western part of Cooke County, but Grayson County was still white with buffalo bones and skulls. I killed my first buffalo in Hall County in 1879. Deer, bear, and turkeys, however, were abundant, even as far east as Sherman, and the woods were peopled with wolves, wildcats and panthers, and prairie chickens were almost as plentiful as grasshoppers.

CREAGERS AND McKINNEYS
"Collin McKinney, brother of Daniel McKinney, owned a lot of land. When Collin County was organized the settlers divided his name and named the county for one part of it and the county seat for the other. The first settlers did not attempt to farm, or even to raise stock on a great scale, since there were no accessible markets. Their idea seems to have been to live off the bounty of nature and hold the land until it should become valuable. Father addressed himself to horse raising rather than cattle raising as being the more profitable. Before the war he found a ready market for horses at Jefferson and Shreveport. From the earliest times W.W. Wheat and the Dumas had cattle on what was known as the Flats, an extensive prairie beginning eight or ten miles west of Van Alstyne. They drove cattle out of the country before the Civil War, but to what destination I do not know, and they were the first, or among the first, to take cattle over the trail to Kansas after the war, traversing the old Preston Road, which had been an old Spanish military highway across the wilderness and which, after the cattlemen got to using it, was called the Preston Trail.

EARLY ATTEMPTS AT FARMING
"Farmers raised more or less wheat from the first, which was ground at the local mills and hauled to Jefferson, Shreveport, Millican and sometimes as far as San Antonio. My brother took flour to San Antonio, where they peddled it out, there being no wholesale or commission houses to take it off their hands. I remember seeing them start with six yoke of oxen hitched to the wagon. As a boy and youth, I made many trips to Jefferson and Shreveport. The wagons brought to Texas by the early settlers were what were variously known as Virginia, Tennessee or Conestago wagons. The beds of them turned up at each end like the ends of a boat. But heavier and stronger wagons were needed, and C.W. Wysong of Van Alstyne began to make wagons of bois d'arc timber about 1856. He sold them as fast as he could turn them out, for they were the most durable wagons in the world, since bois d'arc lasts like steel. I have no doubt some of his wagons are still in use in North Texas. The first Northern wagons seen in North Texas were brought, I think, by the Wheats and Dumas, when they took their first herds of cattle to Kansas. These wagons were good enough for ordinary farm use, but were too light for freighting.

THE TRIBE OF BAD MEN
"In the late '50s and the '60s, Jefferson was a live town in point of business as well as of wild West doings. The streets were almost constantly congested with traffic. Once, at the beginning of the war, the soldiers were called upon to clear the jam and start things to going. It was difficult to tell which were the busiest, the legitimate business men, or the gamblers and saloon men. Between Van Alstyne and Jefferson there were three places of celebrity. They were Black Jack Grove in Hunt county and Mount Pleasant and Gray Rock in Titus County. They differed from Jefferson only in being pitched on a somewhat smaller scale. On the frontier everywhere were a tribe of men who called themselves, and were called by others, 'bad men,' and who were always looking for trouble. It seems that when a man passes a certain mile-post on the road to perdition he gets impatient for his destination, and seeks to provoke somebody to kill him, so it always appeared to me that the bad man was out to be killed rather than to kill, though he did not care how many he killed in the process. When a little fellow I accompanied my brothers on a trip to Jefferson. When we arrived at Gray Rock early one morning, we heard that a bad man had blown into town and announced that he meant to kill somebody before he left. That announcement had put everybody on alert. Later in the day, nobody having volunteered as a victim, the bad man stopped in front of a store, and said to a clerk, a boy not more than 19 or 20, 'You may be the man.' The clerk reached under the counter for a pistol and cracked down before the bad man could draw, killing him instantly. He pitched forward and fell in the sand. When the men turned him over, I saw his blood-bespattered face, a dreadful sight.

WAR STIMULATES AGRICULTURE
"At the beginning of the war five of my brothers joined the first company organized in Grayson County, and were hurried beyond the Mississippi. George, next to the oldest, was killed at Corinth. The others came home at the end of the war. I was considered too young to go at first, but they took me two years later. My command remained west of the Mississippi. Although I was in the service two years, I saw no fighting, and, therefore, have no thrilling experiences to relate. The war caused a great shortage in the cotton production of the world, and it had an immediate effect on the agriculture of North Texas. Cotton commanded a price that Grayson County settlers believed there would be big money in growing it and hauling it all the way to Jefferson, Shreveport and Millican. The first attempts were so encouraging that by the late '60s cotton was produced on a large scale on both sides of Red River, and Jefferson had become a considerable cotton market. In the meantime a market had been found in Kansas for the great accumulation of cattle in Texas and one immense herd after another began to move over the various trails.

RAILROADS MAKE A STIR
"The result was that the people were enjoying great prosperity when the railroads came in the early '70s. To all appearance Sherman was the coming town. The business men felt so confident of the future that they refused to put up a bonus of $100,000 as a condition of getting the railroad shops and headquarters. The shops were located at Denison, and everybody knows the result. I have always believed that if Sherman had raised the bonus the contest for first place in North Texas would have been between Dallas and Sherman. With the coming of the railroads, settlers began to pour into North Texas faster than ever and to develop farm lands and to build towns. Some of the best land sold as low as $2 an acre after the war. Five dollars was top price. The price went up to $250 during the World War. It now ranges from $175 to $200.
"I began life as a farmer. Later i sold groceries and hardware at Van Alstyne and farm implements at Sherman. I served as Deputy Sheriff six years under Sheriffs Bob May, Lee McAfee and Ex Hughes. I was married May 25, 1872 to Bettie Cooper, daughter of Capt. G.R. Cooper, who came to Texas in 1866. My wife died on November 18, 1923."