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Water came to the Iuka House by way of Duson Street by a two-inch galvanized pipe on stilts, two or three feet above the surface. Later the pipe was replaced by a six-inch cast iron pipe with lead and open joints. The pipe was not painted but was dipped, which gave the water a taste. The first water tank was of wood, and water flowed from an artesian well to the wooden tank. When a new water storage tank was built, water was pumped from the old wooden tank to the new, large tank. There was speculation about how to get the old tank down, but one night it fell down between the posts.
The town had no sewer system at that time, so every house had an "outhouse." A wagon came around every month and shoveled out the solids and took it to the mud flats west of town. Twenty-five cents an outhouse was charged for this service.
Wheeler Phillips put in a septic tank and dug a five foot sand well as a drain. He put in flush toilets, and the health department arrested him and tried him before the court. Mr. Gray, the city attorney, had the case thrown out of court after about twenty witnesses came forward.
Cattle ran free through the town, and on one occasion Mrs. Phillips pinned a new skirt on the clothes line and a cow ran into it and wore the skirt through the town. When an animal pound law was passed, everyone wondered what the ranchers would do with their cattle which were roaming free. The City of Palacios penned two hundred cattle in a corral and sent word to the owner that it would cost him one dollar per head to get them out. He paid his fine, and gave the town marshal twenty-five dollars a month to drive his cattle out of town. Another man did not believe the law, and traveled by train to Bay City to hire a lawyer who would sue the city. The lawyer asked five hundred dollars to handle the case, so the rancher came home and paid his two dollars in fines to get his cows from the pound.
The Palacios school was located on East Bay and stood on seven-foot concrete pilings. Professor Gray was the principal of the school. There were several rooms on the north side of the lot. They were built of strips of 1 x 12 boards. Wood stoves were used in the school and the wood used for fuel was also used for stepping blocks when it rained. The drinking fountain was a pipe which came from the ground with a row of pipes sticking up about six or eight inches.
Interview: Mr. and Mrs. Jim Phillips; Story by Mr. Phillips
Historic Matagorda County, Volume 1, pages 401-402 |
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Wheeler Phillips was the third of nine children born to Piercy W. Phillips (1839-1928) and Sarah Anna Wheeler Phillips (1843-1925).
His siblings were: On August 23, 1903, in Iuka, Pratt County, Kansas, Wheeler married
Martha "Mattie" Elizabeth Brown
Phillips Lynch Mattie was the third of six children born to Josephus Brown (1828-1898) and Martha Jane Garnett Brown (1832-1922).
Her siblings were: Wheeler and Mattie had four known children, the first two being born in Iuka, Pratt County, Kansas. Their third child, Elsie, was born in Palacios, Matagorda County, Texas. Nothing is known of the fourth children.
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Odd Fellows will conduct their funeral rites for Wheeler Piercy Phillips, 66, of San Juan Capistrano, today at 3 P. M., in the cathedral chapel of J. J. Mottell Inc. Rev. Louise Newman of Unity Church of Practical Christianity will officiate. Interment will be in Westminster Memorial Park. Mr. Phillips was a member of the Methodist Church and belonged to the I. O. O. F., both in Kansas. Surviving are the widow, Mary Eva Phillips, of San Juan Capistrano; a son, James W. Phillips, San Diego, and two daughters, Mrs.. Blanche Long, Long Beach, and Mrs. Elsie Smiley, Portland, Ore.
The Long Beach Sun, Long Beach,
California, August 24, 1936 |
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Word has been received here of the death of Mrs. Martha B. Lynch, the former Mrs. Wheeler (Mattie) Phillips, on December 29, 1955 at the home of her daughter, Mrs. M. L. Smiley in Portland, Oregon. Mrs. Lynch was born July 29, 1886. For several years she ran the Iuka House here. A year ago she was in Del Mar, Calif. with her son, Jim Phillips, and while there suffered a heart attack. She recovered enough to be able to return to Portland where her daughters and many of her friends lived. She is survived by her two daughters, Mrs. Elsie Smiley and Mrs. Blanche Fouts and one son, Jim Phillips of Del Mar., Calif.
Palacios Beacon, January 12, 1956 |
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James Wheeler Phillips June 17, 1904 Pratt County, Kansas January 7, 1994 Houston, Harris County, Texas Buried Houston National Cemetery, Houston, Harris County, Texas |
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Eula "Blanche" Phillips Fouts July 29, 1906 Iuka, Pratt County, Kansas January 21, 1980 Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon Buried River View Cemetery, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon Blanche Fouts FOUTS--Blanche, 73; sister of James Phillips; 3 grandchildren, nieces and nephews include M. Jeanne Brucken, Louella Elkanan. Funeral services Thursday, 11 am, Fuiten Mortuary, Beaverton.
Oregonian, (Portland, Oregon) January 23,
1980 |
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Elsie Louise Phillips Smiley February 26, 1909 Palacios, Matagorda County, Texas July 18, 1957 Multnomah County, Oregon Buried River View Cemetery, Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon Elsie L. Smiley Funeral for Mrs. Elsie L. Smiley will be Monday at 11 a. m. at the Little Chapel of the Chimes, 430 North Killingsworth Street. Mrs. Smiley died Thursday after an extended illness. She was 43. She was born in Palacios, Tex., February 26, 1909, and had lived in Portland for the past 31 years. She was a member of Alberta Church of Christ, Portland. She is survived by her husband, Merrill L. Smiley, two daughters, Mrs. Marilyn J. Quirk and Mrs. Shirley A. Pfeiffer, and two grandchildren, all of Portland, and a brother, James W. Phillips of San Diego. Oregonian, (Portland, Oregon) July 20, 1957
[Residence: 3325 NE Prescott, Portland, Oregon] |
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J. W. Phillips of Port Lavaca, we're talking about. Phillips says somehow his hair got bleached, which could have to do with his 81 years, but there's still a touch of red there and you wouldn't know his age if he didn't mention it, because he's still something of a live wire. I went by to talk to him a little about when he was a boy at Palacios, but he also told me some about how he used to raise orchids in California, for about 15 years at Del Mar, and also how he served as a medal smith with Torpedo Squadron Eight which made such a name for itself at the Battle of Midway and elsewhere in the Pacific during World War II. Phillips was in the Navy from 1926 to 1947. He was something of a salt even before that, however and was sailing Tres Palacios Bay back before he was big enough to hoist the sails himself, but once he could get someone to do it for him the bay was all his. That was when his parents had the Iuka House at Palacios, where you could get suites of two rooms for $15 per month with electric lights, bath and toilet and a free boat to roomers for fishing and hunting. Phillips has an old postcard showing the family gathered on the porch of The Iuka and also a picture of their sailboat, named "Jim Phillips" after him. There are also pictures of a fancy horse trough that his father built on the grounds with some Campfire Girls from Caldwell gathered around it, and one of what he says is the first parade in Palacios, also there's a good snapshot of him looking like Huck Finn. Phillips was born in Kansas, at the old town of Iuka for which his folks, Wheeler and Mattie Phillips, named the rooming house in Palacios, but when they moved to Texas in 1908 their first stop was Port Lavaca where they stayed for a short time at the old Lavaca Hotel. He remembers that one time when his dad went down to the dock to eat some oysters and asked a man to keep an eye on him. "I bought a wagon load of watermelons for a dollar," he recalls, "and sold them for a nickel apiece. Made me a dollar." The picture of Phillips as a barefoot boy looking like Huck Finn, with a fishing pole and a tin can to hold his bait, was taken when he was maybe 10 or 11 years old. "I never wore a pair of shoes out until I was 15 years old," he recalls. Phillips can remember when they'd be out in the bay and stop by the old Half Moon Reef Light Station, which is the small lighthouse that's now sitting near the Chamber of Commerce office in Port Lavaca. It was in Matagorda Bay between Palacios and Port O'Connor, and he says the tenders would come to Palacios about once a month and load their kerosene and pick up supplies and fresh water, since otherwise they only drinking water they had was what they could catch off the roof. There was usually a man and wife at the lighthouse, and they had a sailboat which they kept tied to a big concrete block in the water. "I know, my dad made it," Phillips says. There was no communications, but if there was a problem at the lighthouse the tenders would fly Old Glory upside down, to get the attention of passing boats. Phillips tells a story about once when they were fishing in the surf off Matagorda Peninsula. "Something kept throwing a fin up about half the size of a door," he recalls "I had the feeling it was after me, whatever it was." He said they were in a seine boat and decided to move down the beach a mile or so, but that the big fish followed them. They had dropped the net to see what they could catch and when they pulled it in they had a 11-foot-10-inch manta ray to contend with, or devil's fish as some call it. "We had never seen anything like it," he says. "It took four men to hold that side of the net." It wasn't until they stopped at the lighthouse that they knew what they'd caught, and he said later on at Palacios they took a picture of the son of the boat's owner standing in the mouth of the big fish which almost had the boy swallowed in the picture. I enjoyed visiting with Phillips and his wife, Elaine, who is originally from Eastern Washington. They were married in 1936 in San Diego. Phillips says his family moved from Palacios when he was still a boy, about 1920, after his father had traded the rooming house for 500 acres of wheat land at Panhandle, in Carson County. "You know that deer in the center of the street at White Deer," he says. "We put that in, my father and I, made it out of concrete." Would have been about the time he was wearing his first pair of shoes out.
Victoria Advocate, January 26, 1986 |