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Granny's
Neck by
Bob Bowman
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Granny's
Neck is one of the oddest names ever given to a piece of East Texas real estate.
Also known as Old Granny's Neck and Harper's Crossing, the small
community was six miles southeast of Cooper, where the Old Bonham-Jefferson Road
crossed the Suphur River in Delta County.
The land was settled in 1846
when Brig DeSpain, his wife Narcissa and their three daughters arrived from Tennessee
to claim land awarded to a relative, Randolph DeSpain, a Texas Revolutionary soldier
who was killed with James W. Fannin, Jr., at the Goliad
Massacre in 1836.
The DeSpain survey was situated on both sides of
the Bonham-Jefferson Road, which was used in those days as a route for transporting
cotton.
Soon after they put down their roots, the DeSpains built a bridge
across the South Sulphur River on the highest ridge in the area.
The
bridge was built of native oak and bois d'arc wood to withstand the heavy traffic
of ox wagons and horse-drawn vehicles. Built high enough to escape flooding, the
bridge made the road a popular trade route.
More settlers joined the DeSpains,
including Mary (Granny) Sinclair, the matriarch of her family, who raised goats
on a neck of land that jutted into the river.
The community was named for
Granny Sinclair and, after the Civil War, it had a school, Granny's Neck School,
with one teacher and thirty-two students. The school later moved to Pecan Grove.
Until
cotton and corn became important crops, the
South Sulphur ran clear. Afterward, eroded dirt from plowed fields muddied the
river's waters and shortly after 1870, when Delta County was organized, the bridge
was washed out by heavy rains and another bridge was built at a new crossing named
for G.W. Harper, a toll keeper.
After the bridge was paid for and the toll
booth was closed. Delta and Hopkins counties shared the maintenance costs of the
bridge.
The bridge remained important to freight haulers during the 1920s
and 1930s, but as agriculture became less important to Delta County, so did the
road and residents began moving out of the Granny's Neck community.
Some
maps still identified the community and crossing in the l960s, but by 1984 the
road was no longer in use.
In 1970, the Delta County Historical Commission
placed a Texas historical marker at the intersection of State Highways 154 and
19 to mark the site of Granny's Neck. |
All
Things Historical >
September 18, 2006Column
Published with permission
Distributed by the
East Texas Historical Association. Bob Bowman of Lufkin is a former president
of the Association and the author of more than30 books about East Texas. |
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