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Beattie Gin
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016
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History in
a Pecan Shell
Charles F. Beatty,
is the town's namesake despite the slight change in spelling. Beatty
arrived in what would become Beattie around 1892.
The 20th Century arrived to find Beattie with the essential businesses
of grocery, drugstore, barber and cotton gin - but no railroad. If
one needed a doctor or sheriff, one could call Comanche
(City) by telephone. The post office (frequently to blame for misspellings
of town names) was only open from 1902 to 1908. 1930 is the town's
population high-water mark when 150 people lived there. By the time
WWII ended,
it had lost half of its businesses and 2/3rds of its 1930 population.
By the late 1980s there were no businesses in Beattie and the population
estimate has remained at 50 for the last 60 years.
This bare-bones history is supplemented by Remembering
Beattie, Texas a richly detailed personal account of Beattie written
by Harland Moore - the man who provided the entertaining and
equally detailed history of Bend,
Texas. |
Beattie TX -
Road Sign
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Beattie Community
Center
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Playground with
seesaws
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Beattie Community
Center sign
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Beattie Community
Center
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Broken Bronc
Cowboy Church Sign
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Broken Bronc
Cowboy Church
Photo
courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Broken Bronc
Cowboy Church
Photo
courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Church
playground
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Beattie gin
water tank with windmill
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Beattie
Gin
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Beattie Gin
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
REMEMBERING
BEATTIE, TEXAS
by Harland Moore |
Columbus
discovered America in 1492 but I discovered Beattie in July of 1936.
My Dad had previously contracted to top-work some pecan trees for
John Scott and his brother Pink Scott. Their native pecan timber was
located on Copperas Creek about two or three miles north of Beattie.
Daddy had started the contract work on these large native pecan trees
the previous winter. He and Thomas January had topped or "dehorned"
these trees with a cedar ax and a one-man cross cut saw. The larger
trees did not have any limbs small enough to put buds on the first
spring. After they were topped, young sprouts would put out and start
growing all over the trees. By late July or early August these sprouts
had grown enough to be thinned out and budded with "bud-wood" from
some paper-shell pecan trees. At that time, we used mostly Burket,
Mayhan and Delmus varieties. Daddy, Thomas January and I were on our
way to the Scott place to do some summer budding when I got my first
view of Beattie.
At that time we lived at Bend,
Texas, and since it would take two or three days to do this phase
of the job, we had packed our tools, bud-wood and camping equipment
on Daddy's pick-up truck. That pick up was only a couple of years
old but they were not too well built then. The back half of both rear
fenders had already vibrated off, leaving the rear wheels almost totally
exposed. It didn't bother much until you got in the mud. Then it would
sling mud high into the air and it would fall all over the cab, bed
and hood. That was the dirtiest truck in Comanche
County at that time and there was very little pavement. We were
lucky that it was not raining at that time or everything we had in
the back of the truck would have been covered in mud.
As we drove through Comanche
that afternoon, I saw some things that I remembered when I had visited
Grandpa and Grandma Moore in previous years. We drove north on a street
that Grandma and Seth and Raymond used to peddle fruits and vegetables
on. We drove on north on a dirt road. In places there were dried ruts
through the clay as a reminder of previous rains. After the ground
had dried the cars started straddling the old dried ruts and made
a new set of tracks that were not so rough. This worked fine until
you met a car from the opposite direction in the same set of tracks
and both vehicles had to move over. This was a slow but rough process
when it was dry. Some times it was almost impossible to move over
out of the ruts when it was wet and raining. The road ran in a north
or west direction most of the time with many sharp turns and corners
as it made its way by the many sandy land farms. In some places the
road went through some deep blow sand and even the most experienced
drivers would have problems driving through dry sand. We crossed Sweetwater
Creek and went by the old Sweetwater Store. We then worked our way
north and west and went by Taylor's Chapel and Concord Cemetery. We
crossed Martin Branch and went by the Louis Nelson place and on up
to another corner where Bert Frazier lived. We passed by Will Frazier's
house at the top of a rise. We then went down a slope by four or five
dwelling houses and two church houses. We crossed a branch on a culvert
made of bridge planks and found ourselves sitting in downtown Beattie.
|
The
country road that ran north and south through Beattie was in poor
repair. It was full of ruts left over from the last rain. In places
it had chug holes as big as a wagon bed with loose sand traps here
and there. There were a few small spots of gravel and adobe dirt in
the road that had been put there by the road commissioner just before
the last election. On the west side of the road there was a general
store called Blair's Store. A little north of that was a blacksmith
shop operated by Uncle John Kelley. I think at that time Dan Bingham's
barber shop was on that side of the road. (It was a small building
and he moved it two or three times on either side of the road.) There
were two or three dwelling houses on that side of the road, including
Cousin Kitty's house.
The East side of the road had two service stations with grocery stores
in them. One of these stores bought produce such as cream and eggs
from people that farmed in the area. There was also about four more
dwellings and a church house on that side of the road. At one time
there was a garage which offered auto repair and gas and lube. At
one time there was a cotton gin which operated in down town Beattie
but at that time only the old earth pond called the gin tank was the
only visible reminder of the cotton country before the bole
weevil.
About a hundred yards south of the Beattie Branch there was a dirt
road going east. John Andress and Dan Bingham lived a short distance
down this road. A little farther down the road, Aunt Polly and Aunt
Ruthy Butler lived to be about a hundred years old. Elmer and Boyd
Butler lived near by and Roy Butler moved from there to De
Leon later. The road that ran west from Beattie went by Jim Wright's
house and another house just across the road. If you went on west
on that road you would come to the old Carter place and Egbert Teague's
place. Just a little farther up was the Auvenshine place and the George
Moore place. Located north of downtown Beattie was the two story school
house which was just across the road from the Halbrooks place and
not far away was the John Welch place. If you went west from the school
house to the first corner and turned north, Uncle Ben Keith's place
would be on your left and B. Ray McCorkle's place would be on your
right. He had planted several acres in pecans and fruit trees. Mr
McCorkle was superintendent of the Beattie School for a good many
years and then he served as County Supertendant for a while.
There are a lot of incidents and interesting stories and events that
need to be recorded about Beattie. They need to be written and kept
for our descendants and future generations. Some of them are tragic
and sad, others are comical and some are unbelievable. I will try
to record some of them as I remember them or as they were told to
me. |
My
Father-in-law, Jimmy Wright, told me that in the early 1930's he raised
several acres of Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes. He built two "tatter
houses" or cellars to cure and store the potatoes in. After the potatoes
were "cured out" and ready for market, he would load up his old "bob-tailed"
truck and haul them to West Texas and peddle them out to grocery stores.
He had a sign painted on each door of the truck which read " J.N.
WRIGHT -- POTATO GROWER-- BEATTIE, TEX." Mr. Wright told of a time
when he was out in West Texas and a total stranger walked up and read
the sign and he said. "Beattie, Texas, I was there once and I'll tell
you what I saw" He went on to say that he had stopped at Beattie for
the first time in his life and was sitting in his touring car enjoying
a cold drink. He said that a man came out of a filling station and
fell down on his all fours in some sand. He began to bellow like a
bull and paw up sand into the air. About this time a fellow came running
out of the barbershop waving his hair drop cloth in that "bull's"
face and yelling "Ole, Toro". About that time a man came running out
of the blacksmith shop and jumped a straddle of the "bull". He yelled,
"Yahoo, By Grabs" while another bystander shouted "Ride 'em Cowboy!"
Jim Wright said that he could tell you who these characters were and
he named. Dimmet Wright, Dan Bingham and John Kelley.
Uncle John Kelley was the "Village Blacksmith" at Beattie for many
years. On a clear morning you could hear from miles away, the ring
of the hammer on the anvil as he beat out and sharpened the plow sweeps
for the local farmers. If you were a little closer you could hear
him whistle and warble the tune, "Listen to the Mocking Bird". I never
had the pleasure of hearing him play the fiddle, but I have been told
that he was an outstanding fiddle player. Uncle John was an avid fisherman
and it was said of him that he would go to the creek fishing and if
they were not biting he would stay with them until they did even if
it took several days. "Slick" Robertson told me one time that he went
by the blacksmith shop and said,"Uncle John, Let's go fishing." Uncle
John looked around him at all the plow sweeps that needed to be sharpened
and he said, "There is about a hundred reasons why I shouldn't go
fishing, but right now I can't think of a one of them." "Give me five
minutes to get my tackle and I'll give you back three of them."
In the early days of the automobile, Zuleam's grandpa, Dimmet Wright,
owned what was later called an antique. It was an old two cylinder
Maxwell. The engine sat cross ways, that is, it was parallel to the
axles kind of like some of the modern front end drive vehicles. The
Maxwell was not a front-end drive, but it used chains like a motorcycle.
It had a large visible flywheel on the side. It had a drip lubricating
system and carbide lights. When it ran it sounded like a "Popping
Johnny" or an old two cylinder John Deere. Dimmet Wright also ran
one of the early "Filling stations" in Beattie. The story goes that
a lady was driving a T Model Ford through Beattie and she stopped
at the service station. She ask Mr. Wright if he had a Rest Room there.
He said, "No, but I have a chair that I can put under that tree and
you can rest there." |
Zuleam
had a lot of cousins in and around Beattie. She still has dozens of
them of varying degrees, that is first, second, third and fourth and
ever more than that if you count that far. Two cousins that grew up
with her were Boyce and Neilly Bingham. Boyce was actually a second
cousin, being Zuleam's great Uncle Plez's son. He was quite a character
and we will be writing more about him later. Neilly was double kin
in that he was a first cousin and a third cousin. His mother was Aunt
"Tom", (Thelma), Zuleam's daddy's sister. His father was Uncle Emmit
Bingham, a first cousin to Zuleam's mother, Leona (Bingham) Wright.
These two boys spent a lot of time hanging around the Beattie Stores
and visiting Zuleam's place where a lot of other kids hung out.
Boyce and Neilly pulled some pretty good ones. In some ways Neilly
was a little timid and Boyce delighted in embarrassing him. On one
occasion there was a girl by the name of Ann Wall visiting with the
John Andress family in Beattie. I think that she was from Brownwood.
Boyce and Neilly were teen age boys and the girl, Ann, was about their
age and they thought she was very pretty. The two boys were at the
Beattie Store when they decided that they would walk up to the Andress
home and "call on" Ann and visit with her. The boys walked up to the
Andress place and went through the yard gate. Instead of going to
the door and knocking on it, they stood in the front yard and yelled,
"Hello !" as people some times did in those days. It was after dark
and what happened next surprised several people. The boys didn't know
that Ann's father was there. He came to the door but when Boyce saw
him he ducked under the front porch and left Neilly standing all alone
in the front yard. Neilly quickly sized up the situation, whirled
about and ran out the front gate and all the way to the store. Boyce
remained quietly under the porch until things cooled down, then he
sneaked out and made his way quietly to the store.
During the late thirties and early forties times were kind of "tuff"
around Beattie. We would work hard all day from sunup until sundown
for one dollar in American money. Our work clothes were worn and raggedy
and patched and worn out and re-patched again. Most all boys had started
smoking by the time they reached their upper teens. Bull Durham smoking
tobacco cost a nickel a sack or six sacks for a quarter. The boys
all carried a pocket full of kitchen matches from the family kitchen.
Bull Durham tobacco took a lot of matches because as soon as you quit
puffing the hand rolled cigarette would go out and had to be lit again.
One of the worst hazards of carrying matches in your pocket was that
occasionally they would rub together and ignite in your pocket. You
would have to run your hand into the pocket and pull out the flaming,
smoking matches. Besides your burned hand and burned out pocket you
smelled strongly of burning sulfur for the rest of the day.
On one occasion, I was eating lunch (we called it dinner) with the
Jimmy Wright family. I was a regular diner there and I sat at the
table in a rope bottom chair. ( Years earlier it was a cane bottom
chair but when the cane wore out it would be replaced with a crisscross
of small rope.) As I sat in this chair with my raggedy pants some
times the rope and the raveling didn't match up properly. Boyce Bingham
came in the house before I finished eating. He squatted down behind
me and leaned back against the wall and rolled himself a Bull Durham
cigarette. When he lit the cigarette with a kitchen match he noticed
a raveling hanging down from the seat of my breeches through the bottom
of that rope bottom chair. Before he extinguished the match, he touched
it to the raveling. The flame went right strait up and so did I. I
yelled and stood up so fast, I tipped the table over on those across
from me. They kept the table from going completely over but it cleared
every thing off the table. I am glad that we were about through eating
any way. This was really embarrassing to me but every body else in
the house just roared with laughter. |
As
I begin to think of it now I believe that Boyce was just plain mean.
He and Neilly were sitting in the Beattie store enjoying soft drinks.
Neilly had a milk chocolate drink setting there and Boyce noticed
a package of Ex-Lax on the shelf near by. He broke into small pieces
and dropped them into the milk chocolate bottle. I don't think that
he ever knew that the drink was spiked but he didn't show up at the
store for the next two or three days. He later said that he thought
he had a bug.
Bobby Ferguson was one of the fastest runners that ever grew up in
Beattie. His parents and several brothers and sisters lived in the
Uncle John Kelley house in down town Beattie for years. Hubert and
Harold Kelly were school teachers and lived there part time, especially
during the summer. Money was scarce in those days and teachers seemed
to have more than anyone, or so it seemed to Bobby. He was constantly
begging Uncle Hubert or Harold for a nickel to buy a coke or a bar
of candy. When they were not there, Bobby had to depend on his ingenuity
to raise a little money. When he heard a hen cackle at his mother's
chicken house, he would run like lightening and grab the egg and race
down to the store where he would trade it for a penny piece of candy.
Some body said that he visited his neighbors hen house , but I am
not sure of this. Eggs did bring twelve cents a dozen at that time.
I have never seen any one move any faster that Bobby with an egg in
his hand.
Bobby was helping his dad, Sid Ferguson, clean up the cemetery at
Concord. They came up on an open grave where the casket was showing.
Sid suspected that grave robbers had dug up the grave. He told Bobby
to run back to the Beattie Store and phone the sheriff. It was about
two miles to Beattie and Bobby made it in just under eight minutes.
We didn't have an official timer there or he would have been the first
to break the four minute mile. It turned out that two workers were
exhuming the body on a court order and they were waiting nearby for
a hearse to come pick up the body.
© Harland Moore
July
24, 2005 |
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Three miles
to Beattie
Photo courtesy John Beatty, June 2016 |
Comanche
County TX 1907 Postal Map showing Beattie
(Above "M" in "COMANCHE")
Courtesy Texas General Land Office |
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