A living reminder of the earliest days

The Founders' Tree

Given that Friday was Arbor Day, this column will be about a tree, one very special tree, and how it stands witness to the earliest times of our community.

While researching another topic for this column, I ran across the following in Bob Bennett's history of our community:
"Joshua D. Brown himself had a log cabin located in a grove of live oak trees near the present residence of Mrs. A. C. Schreiner, Sr., in Block 22-A on Water Street."

Joshua Brown, you'll recall, was the founder of Kerrville. He arrived here in 1846 with nine men to build a shingle camp -- they here to harvest the cypress trees along the river and make shingles from them.

Soon, however, the local Native American tribes "became troublesome" and that first camp was abandoned. But on the shinglemakers' second attempt, in 1848, the camp took hold, and Kerrville was born.

Later, in 1856, Joshua Brown purchased 640 acres from the heirs of Benjamin F. Cage. Cage was a veteran of San Jacinto, and the land was given to him by the Republic of Texas for his military service.

In this one transaction, Brown purchased the land that became most of downtown Kerrville. It was this site Brown convinced the Kerr County commissioners court, in its first session, to make the county seat.

Bob Bennett's book continues: "Brown probably salvaged what was usable from his old shingle camp and added other building materials to build on this choice location, which he later sold to the Burney brothers, Hance, Robert, and DeWitt."

Elsewhere Bennett reports "Hance Burney's house was in Block 1. DeWitt and Bob Burney were at that time living in the log house built by Joshua D. Brown on the river bank."

The great old house between our print shop and the library, there where Clay Street runs into Water, that's the A. C. Schreiner home mentioned earlier. And near there, according to Bob Bennett, was a cabin in a "grove of live oaks" where the founder of Kerrville lived with his family in 1856, when Kerrville, at Joshua Brown's insistence, became the county seat of the newly formed Kerr County.

Here's the thing: if you look today between our print shop and the Schreiner home, you'll see two great and very old live oak trees.

The largest measures about 45 inches in diameter 4 feet above the ground.

I've asked several experts who all agree: it's impossible to exactly estimate the age of an old live oak without taking a core sample, which no one is suggesting. But this word also came back to me from people who know: that large tree is likely between 150 and 200 years old.

Meaning, Gentle Reader, that particular live oak, standing so pretty between the print shop and the Schreiner home, was possibly one of the trees in the "grove of  live oaks" where the founder of our community once lived. A living reminder, if you will, of Kerr County's earliest days.

How it's survived this long, given all of the changes in our town since those days, I'll never guess.  I hope it can be preserved and even set aside as significant to our history.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who has spent most of his life on land once owned by Joshua D. Brown. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times April 28, 2012.

Views of Bandera Pass

Contest Answer: several right answers!

My long-time friend, John M. Mosty was the first person to post the correct answer to my mystery photo contest.  Mr. Mosty, a former mayor of Kerrville, shares my love of local history.  Below I'll show you the photo, the clue, and what the site looks like today.

Click on any image to enlarge

Kerrville, 200 block of Sidney Baker, around 1915.
I believe the fellow with the cows is George Morris, a former mayor of Kerrville

The photo I offered as a clue: the arrow points to
the Schreiner Company's windmill shop and feed store.
This building is seen in the "mystery photo" on the left.

The same section of Sidney Baker Street today, April 2012.
The new city hall is under construction on the left; the top of the
clock tower waits to be placed upon its tower.

Contest Answer: Wait, wait, don't tell me.

Yesterday I posted the following photograph and asked if anyone could identify where it was taken, and what is there today...

Click on any image to enlarge

Mystery photo, Kerrville, around 1915

This photo, taken much later, might provide a clue:

Aerial view of Kerrville, around 1960.

I'll reveal the answer on Thursday -- if you have an idea where you think the "Mystery Photo" was taken, please put it in the comments below.  Have fun!

Contest: Where was it?

Ok, for fun, I thought we'd have a contest.  If you think you know the answer, you can put it in the comments section below.
Below is a photograph taken in Kerrville, probably around 1915.  It was not taken on some hidden alleyway.  Where was the photograph taken, and what is there today? Good luck, and have fun.

Click on image to enlarge

Mystery photo, Kerrville, around 1915.

A funny thing about early trail drives from Kerr County

A cattle drive.  Source

I found a first-hand account of the start of the cattle business in Kerr County which had an unexpected twist.

Last week I reported here on the memories of J. J. Denton, a Kerr County pioneer who recalled family incidents with bands of Indians, his fondness for bear meat, and what life was like here in the very earliest days of the county. I found this story in an old issue of J. Marvin Hunter's "Frontier Times," published long ago in Bandera.

Denton's memories about cattle drives were quite surprising.

"When the men were at the front during the Civil War the cattle went wild," he remembered. "There was nobody to brand them, and, in the absence of marks, after the war, they belonged to the first man who could clap a hot iron to them. There was a wild scramble to see who could brand the greatest number."

Without a market, though, the cattle were "almost worthless."

And then markets sprang up in Kansas.

I've written in this space about trail drives, about the hardships endured by the cowboys who made the trip, about how young many of those cowboys were.

I once heard T. R. (Ted) Fehrenbach, author of numerous works on the history of our state and region, and one of my favorite authors, give a talk about the Cowboy era. Mr. Fehrenbach suggests that the fellows we recognize from the Westerns, the flickering black and white matinee images, the Cowboys, were really a part of the short-lived Cattle Kingdom that sprang up right after the Civil War and was virtually gone by the 1890's. What gave rise to this important, but brief, part of our history was pure economics: cattle were worth 50 cents a head in Texas, but worth $16 per head in Kansas. The invention of the cowboy was created to meet the challenge of getting the cattle from here to there.

The cattle of Mexico were largely used for their hides; the markets in Kansas focused on the value of the beef needed to feed the growing industrial cities of the American North. All types of people were needed to help move the cattle north to market, and many of the Cowboys were Hispanic or Black, foreign or Yankee, and they blended together into their own culture. They were almost uniformly young, "teenagers out in a dangerous area making their own rules."

Young people responded to the dangerous job of moving the cattle north for several reasons: the adventure, the challenge, but mostly for the freedom. "There were no structures in the Texas West, where you had 1 person in 100 square miles -- because you couldn't impose structure in that environment."

The job itself wasn't the glamorous Hollywood picture we've grown accustomed to: you could get killed on a trail drive, and cowboys seldom made two trips. The work was hazardous, cold, dirty, wet and often brutal, and all for little pay. Yet the trail drivers seldom lacked recruits.

And yet there was something funny about the very start of the cattle business in Kerr County, according to J. J. Denton.

"In 1872 or 1873 the first trail herds of South Texas were gathered up. Reports that settlers could get actual money for cattle for the mere trouble of driving them to Kansas at first found little credence among us and many refused to believe until men who were known to have started north with cattle came back and showed the gold pieces.

"From that time on the movement of cattle north increased every year. They went by the tens of thousands, making people along the route wonder where they all came from and why, after so heavy a movement, there appeared to be as many of them as there ever were still on the range."

Disbelief. That was Kerr County's initial reaction to driving cattle north.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who couldn't drive cattle to water, much less make them drink. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times April 21, 2012.

Progress on Kerrville City Hall construction

Construction of the clock tower, crosswalk, and new city hall continues. 

The cone-shaped thing is the top of the clock tower and will be placed on
the two-story base to the left

A different view of the top of the clock tower.
Do you notice a resemblance between the cone shape and the hat
Mickey Mouse wore in the Sorcerer's Apprentice?

Eastern Star ribbon

Among the items from the Morris family I found this Eastern Star ribbon, in a clutch of other ribbons from other places, all dated 1912.  I'm guessing Mattie Morris was a member of the Eastern Star.   The image on the ribbon is fairly common; I've seen it reproduced in Grinstead's magazines and also on postcards.  I'm guessing the photo was taken by J. E. Grinstead, though there's a chance it was taken by Starr Bryden, sometime around 1910.

Click on image to enlarge

Eastern Star ribbon, Kerrville, 1912

Wednesday Ephemera: Charles Schreiner Bank checkbooks

Recently I received a box of Kerrville memorabilia from the George Morris family. George Morris was mayor of Kerrville at one time; his family owned the St. Charles Hotel in the early part of the last century. These three checkbooks were his wife's.  I notice three different styles here -- the upper one has a date of 1970 in it, but I don't think that could be accurate.  The middle one is dated 1936; the bottom one, 1928.  I suppose there are a lot of these in old boxes in attics around town, but I've never seen their kind before.

Checkbooks, Charles Schreiner Bank, Morris family

A Kerr County Settler's Story

Can you imagine life here in Kerr County as a settler in the latter half of the 1800s?  Fortunately some of the settlers' stories were written down, and I recently found one I'd never seen before, about a Kerr county man and his family.

The story comes from an old issue of Frontier TimesMagazine, published in Bandera by J. Marvin Hunter, and features J. J. Denton of Center Point.

"My father, B. F. Denton," the younger Denton remembered, "was waterbound in Arkansas for some time...and came to Texas in 1859."

The elder Denton "took a survey in the fertile valley of Turtle Creek, a crystal clear stream fed by pure mountain springs and tumbling into the Guadalupe River."  Taking a survey meant Denton claimed land; "the head of a family could file on a tract of 160 acres and a single man, 80 acres."

When the family moved to Turtle Creek, "the Indians were still stalking abroad in the light of the moon. We often heard of their forays at a distance and the settlers were constantly on the alert for them, but to our immediate locality they made but a single visit.

"One night, when father was away and mother was looking out for herself and children, her attention was attracted by a commotion at the barn. She saw the Indians lead the family mare out and one of them mount her. She stood in the door of the house, gun in hand, but recoiled from the thought of starting a battle, thinking it better to reserve her fire should the marauders attack the house. But luckily for us, they contented themselves with the horse, with which they hurried away."

Many are the stories of a woman and children facing a band of Indians alone. Those stories were often remembered, in crystal detail by the children in the family, even after decades had passed.

Denton recalls something else I've heard in other places:

"When we went to Kerr County all that part of the country was covered with the most luxuriant native grass, three to four feet in height, and as thick as it could stand, over the mountains, as well into the fertile valleys."

In other accounts I've heard the grass described as "coming up to my horse's belly." By coincidence many of the earliest settlers arrived in our area during a wet year -- when everything is green and alive. How beautiful it must have looked.

"Unbranded cattle that had no owners peopled the country in incredible numbers. Deer, bear and turkeys, which had not as yet learned to fear man, abounded. The buffaloes, however, had moved farther west, but the ground was still white with the bones, hooves and horns of them, which the cattle chewed for the sake of the salt they yielded." 

"For some time after our arrival in Kerr County we lived in a tent after the manner of the Indians, but a year or so later a settler set up a sawmill on the creek near us and there [my] father got lumber enough to build him a house.

His father planted corn and they hauled it to Fredericksburg to be ground into meal. The family had no flour. "The first biscuit I ever saw my grandmother sent me as a present and curiosity when I was 9 years old."

The rarely used sugar, replacing it with honey. The women of the family made clothing using a wheel and hand-loom, and they wore moccasins "in default of shoes. All the men and boys wore buckskin leggings."

The family was never short of meat or honey. Though hogs and deer, Denton preferred bear meat. "You can eat bear meat every day in the year and never tire of it, and, when cured, you can eat it raw as well as cooked. Everybody used bear oil as a substitute for lard; it made the best shortening in the world. My uncle, John Lowrance, was a mighty bear hunter and often had 1,000 pounds of bear meat in his smokehouse. He considered it the most wholesome of meats and believed that a diet of it would cure any sort of stomach trouble."

Bears are few now, though my wife, the brave Ms. Carolyn, spied one in neighboring Real County a few years ago. Many old-timers here (like me) can remember when there was a bear cub spotted in the cottonwood tree behind Mosty's Garage on Water Street.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who collects items of historic interest from Kerrville and Kerr County, Texas. If you have something you'd care to share with him, he'd appreciate it.  This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times April 14, 2012

Photo of the Founder of Kerrville, along with his wife and one child.

Thanks to my friend Jan Wilkinson, Kerrville finally has a decent scan of the photograph of Joshua D. Brown, his wife Sarah Goss Brown, and their young son Potter.

Members of the Joshua D. Brown family, Kerrville, 1873.
From left to right: Alonzo Potter Brown, J D Brown,
and his wife Sarah Goss Brown

For those who don't remember, Joshua D. Brown was the founder of Kerrville, coming here in the late 1840s with nine others to start a shingle camp. It was Joshua D. Brown who convinced the very first Kerr County commissioners court to make "Kerrsville" the county seat, and it was Brown who sold the first lot in town, to Daniel Arnold, a bear hunter.
Brown served in the army twice: first, during the War for Texas Independence, and again during the American Civil War.
Ms. Wilkinson has uncovered some evidence that Joshua D. Brown was related (by family) to Major James Kerr, the man for whom Kerrville and Kerr County are named. Kerr was Brown's paternal aunt’s brother.  Of course, Gonzales, in DeWitt's colony, was not all that big to begin with.  Brown and Kerr must have had many dealings with each other over the years.  But this new link -- that Brown and Kerr were related -- was discovered by Jan Wilkinson.
Ms. Wilkinson, in turn, is related to Joshua Brown; her grandmother was Alonzo Potter Brown's daughter.  Potter Brown is the little boy in the photo above.
The photo above was taken just a few years before Joshua Brown's death in 1877.

An invitation to use Dropbox

I use Dropbox for this blog

I'd like to ask some of the readers of this blog for a small favor.

I use Dropbox.com to transfer historic Kerrville photographs from computer to computer.  The folks at Dropbox say I can get more storage for free if I invite others to use their free service.  If you'd like to help me get a bit more storage, you can click HERE to help me out. Because I believe in the product, I'm happy to invite you to use it, too.
What is Dropbox?
It's like an online computer folder where you can drop files you need to have in more place at one time, a folder in the "cloud."
I sometimes use it to transfer files to readers.  For example, this week when Schreiner University wanted to use some of my images in a display at the school, I put them in Dropbox,  and then send them a link so they can download the images.
You could use it the same way.  Say you took a lot of photos of your family at Easter, and you wanted to share them with your far-flung family.  You could load the photos to Dropbox, then send all your family members a link so they could see the photos too.  And your photos are safe: no one else can see them without the link.
Dropbox has been an important tool that I use almost daily for work on this site.  If you join their free service by clicking HERE. I'll get a few more gigabytes of storage.  (I won't get any money or a commission or anything.)  And I think you'd like using Dropbox or I wouldn't recommend it.

Ok, end of commercial/plea.

Thanks --
Joe

Fishing and camping with Kerrville's Ola B. Gammon

1913 Logbook

Recently some kind friends gave me a logbook kept by a Kerrville woman, Ola B. Gammon, which she kept after getting her automobile, a Hudson Six, back in 1913.
She was very faithful in recording the trips she made in her new car, documenting how far she traveled, the road conditions, what kind of time she made, and who joined her on the trip.
Many of the trips were camping trips, often lasting a week or more.  I've looked up the Gammons in the Kerrville papers of the day, and their trips were reported in the local news columns.
One of the principal recreational activities on these trips was fishing, often with a cane pole.  Since I'm a fisherman myself, I enjoyed these images and hoped you would, too.

Click on any image to enlarge

I'd be surprised if any fish were left in that spot.

Looks like she had better luck.

As did she.

I'm thinking he got his line caught in the lily pads at least once.

An extremely rare photo: Kerrville's "Cabbage Hill" School

Schreiner University recently allowed me to look through some glass negatives in their collection, acquired when the school took over the Charles Schreiner home on Earl Garrett Street.  The negatives, from what I understand, were once the property of Ralph Harmon, the aeronautical engineer/designer.  Quite a few of the images are of Kerrville, and most date to the turn of the last century.
One in particular interested me: a photo of a group of students, and I asked the library staff at the W. M. Logan Library on the Schreiner campus if I could possibly have the image scanned.  Here's what the scan revealed:

Click on image to enlarge

"Cabbage Hill" School, Kerrville, around 1902.

You'll  notice that some of the students have slates in their hands, and a close examination saw these names on the slates: "Margie Fifer, Willie Fifer, Earl Neal, Frankie Howard, Willie Dillworth, Daisy Raborn"  Recognizing the name Fifer, I contacted my long-time friend Clifton Fifer, and he said Willie Fifer and Margie Fifer were his great-uncle and great-aunt.

He suggested this image was taken of the Kerrville school for African-American children, which was nicknamed the "Cabbage Hill" School, which was near the intersection of today's Schreiner and Lemos Streets.  The principal was a Mr. Wheat.  Perhaps that's him on the far right.
Some research suggests Ana Walker Doyle taught at this school; later a different Kerrville school would be named for her: the Doyle School, where my friends B. T. and Itasco Wilson taught for so many years.
This photo is extremely rare; I've seen very few images of African-American schools, especially in Kerrville.  Part of the reason for its scarcity was economics; few families could probably afford a copy of this print.
The larger reason, though, was the same idiotic notion that separated students by race in the first place.
I am glad some photographer back at the turn of the last century chose to take a school portrait of this group of students.  I'm not proud of the racism that separated these students from others, but I am proud this photo exists as a reminder, so it hopefully never happens again.
My special thanks to Sara P. Schmidt, Associate Professor, and Reference/Special Collections Librarian, at the W. M.  Logan Library at Schreiner University. 

The journeys of Kerrville's Oma B. Gammon

I've enjoyed going through the little logbook kept by Ola B. Gammon when she got her 1913 Hudson.  Really, it's about more than just a woman and her new car.  It's about her new-found freedom.  No longer was she required to hitch a team of horses if she wanted to travel.  Many of her journeys are recorded in the little book, complete with photographs she took along the way.

With her camera she lets us see what she saw.
Some of those photos show things that simply no longer exist.  Take this series of photos taken of two cowboys breaking a horse. The series is labeled "Horse Breakers, Remboldt Ranch."  This ranch was "1/4 mile from Junction on Llano River."

Click on any image to enlarge

Horse breakers, Remboldt Ranch, Kimble County, Texas, July 1915

Horse breakers, Remboldt Ranch, Kimble County, Texas, July 1915

Horse breakers, Remboldt Ranch, Kimble County, Texas, July 1915

Horse breakers, Remboldt Ranch, Kimble County, Texas, July 1915

Some of the things Ola Gammon saw in her 1913 Hudson

Friends recently gave me a unique logbook kept by Kerrville's Ola B. Gammon when she purchased her 1913 Hudson.

She traveled around the area and recorded her journeys in both words and photographs.  Here are a few of the things she saw while traveling.
Most agricultural work was still done with animal power; the two images of threshing were taken at the Gammon's farm/ ranch in Kerrville, which I believe was called "Happy Valley Ranch," and was on Bear Creek.
The bottom image is fairly rare, of the Reservation School, which, at the time, also housed a Baptist church.  This shot of the school predates the second location of the school.

Click on any image to enlarge

Threshing, Kerr County, 1915

Threshing, Kerr County, 1915

Reservation School, Kerr County, 1915
This is the first site of the Reservation School, which was built in 1907;
the school would move in 1919.  A Baptist church met here.
Note the brush arbor between building and right automobile.

Lots of mud on that surrey's wheels.  Kerr County, 1915

Wednesday Ephemera: Scofield School for Girls embosser

I know "ephemera" generally means paper items, and technically paper items which were never meant to be kept.  I posted a photo of Hilda Real's diploma from the Scofield School for Girls on this blog some time ago, and the photo caught the eye of a kind woman in Arkansas.
First the photo of the diploma:

Hilda Real's diploma from Kerrville's Scofield School for Girls, 1911
Note the seal on the gold foil above ribbon.

Seeing this diploma, and the photos of the Scofield School and its students I posted here some time ago, the woman contacted me via email and offered to send me something from the school.  When it arrived, I was very happy, and I played with it for a long time, making embossings with it.  Pretty neat, huh?

Embosser, Scofield School for Girls, from the
turn of the last century

The old embosser still works!

In addition, she sent three interesting postcards.  I'm studying those and will post about them later.

What a boy saw: Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library Dedication, August 1967

I've placed an arrow at a young fellow in a photograph from my collection.  Did you notice him before? He's the one with a camera, taking pictures.  I've often wondered who he was, and what his photographs looked like.

Howard Butt speaking at the dedication of the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library.
Note the boy with the camera, Marvin Neunhoffer. (Follow arrow.)

Julius Neunhoffer knew exactly who that boy with the camera is -- it's his brother Marvin.  Their father, Julius Neunhoffer, was county judge in 1967 when the library was dedicated.  

Julius brought in some of the photographs Marvin took that day, including the one he's taking when the above photograph was taken.   Marvin was 11 years old at the event, so these photographs show what a young boy saw that day.

The photograph Marvin took at the moment
the above photograph was taken.

Howard and Mary Butt.
Behind them I see Tom Murray and Peggy Monroe.

Lady Bird Johnson.  It's not every day an 11 year old
gets to photograph the First Lady.

Even First Ladies like cake.  Gordon Monroe, who was
Kerrville's mayor then, is to the right.

Lady Bird Johnson speaking at the dedication of the
Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library, Kerrville, August, 1967.

Mary Butt, an unidentified woman (perhaps the artist), and Lady Bird Johnson
in front of the mosaic on the lower level.

Kerr Pioneers Rest Between a Tire Store and Wal-mart

History isn't hard to find in Kerrville and quite often it can be found in the oddest places.

I cannot help but wonder what those buried in the Starkey Cemetery might think if they were to wake and see Kerrville's largest retail store where their fields once stood. The cars would be a puzzle of course, as would the large paved parking lot. And the store building itself would be mind-bogglingly large.

Years ago, as a kid growing up near there, I would cross a drooping wire fence to enter the tangled little cemetery, reading the tombstones there and marveling how old they were. I'm proud that the Starkey family has made the spot so nice with the decorative fence and gate.

I know the stories of a few of those buried in that little cemetery. Perhaps next time you pass the spot you'll think of those resting there.

James Monroe Starkey was born in 1820 in Tennessee; his second wife, Martha, was also born in Tennessee, in 1834. Her mother, Henrietta Rees,

James Starkey had earlier married Elizabeth Young Ridley in Tennessee, and shortly before she died, they had a daughter, also named Elizabeth.

Leaving his daughter in the care of her grandparents Ridley, Starkey became a  Forty-Niner, going with eight friends to the gold fields of California. This group called themselves the "Invincible Eight." 

According to a 1941 article by T. U. Taylor, "After five years of gold digging, James Monroe Starkey took passage by boat for Panama and finally landed at New Orleans."  This was well before Teddy Roosevelt had the canal constructed, so Starkey crossed the isthmus on a narrow-gauge railway, then on by boat to New Orleans, then by stage from New Orleans to the Texas state line.

Starkey made his way from East Texas to what would become Kerr County on the back of a pony named 'Bustamante.'   His dead wife's parents, the George Ridleys, were now in Kerr County, as was his daughter Elizabeth, then 10.

"In Kerr County [Starkey] soon began to clear some land for a crop, and also went into the business of making cypress shingles, which at that time command a ready sale in San Antonio."

Martha, his wife, got to Kerr County when she was 18. Around 1851 "the Widow Rees and her four children" arrived near the site of Bandera. The Indians proved troublesome, so they moved to the valley of the Guadalupe, a few miles from the present town of Kerrville. The "Widow Rees," was Henrietta Rees, who was buried in the little Starkey cemetery in 1882.

Starkey met Martha A. Rees in Kerrville, and on April 3, 1860 they were married. Together they had five children, including Jones Starkey, who died on his sixth birthday, and is buried in the little cemetery near his parents. Alice, the eldest, was a teacher; John James became editor of the Kerrville Times, and quite an expert on local history; Alonzo Lycurgus, who served as county surveyor for nearly fifty years and for whom a local elementary school is named; and Edwin, the youngest, who lived a good bit of his life out of the state.

During the Civil War, Starkey served as "chief justice" of Kerr County, a role similar to today's county judge. During that struggle he was also appointed "enrolling officer" for the Confederacy, and Provost Marshall for the county.

Later, when the county was building its first courthouse in 1876, Starkey was appointed to the committee to oversee its construction.

He also owned and operated a mill with partners Alonzo Rees and Miles Lowrance, near, I suppose, where Starbucks is today.

Martha Starkey was a church leader who helped found the Methodist church here, first at the old Rock schoolhouse, which I believe was at the corner of Main and Sidney Baker, then at the Union Church, and finally at the First United Methodist Church.

James Monroe Starkey died in Kerrville in 1891; Martha A. Rees Starkey, also in Kerrville, in 1905. Among her last words, as she recalled her life, were "T'was all a pleasure."

Think about them as you pass the little cemetery, tucked there between the tire store and Wal-Mart.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who thinks we trip over history every day in Kerrville. A small portion of his collection of historic Kerrville photographs is on display this month at Starbucks Coffee in Kerrville. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times April 7, 2012

The further adventures Mrs. Ola Gammon and her 1913 Hudson.

Friends recently gave me a book called "My Automobile," which turned out to be the logbook/scrapbook of a Kerrville woman, Mrs. Ola Gammon, who faithfully recorded her adventures with her new 1913 Hudson.
It turns out Mrs. Gammon bought her car from a very young Hal Peterson, the Kerrville entrepreneur for whom Hal Peterson Middle School is named.  At the time Hal "Boss" Peterson sold the car to Mrs. Gammon, he was only 13 years old.  That would make him about the age of the students now attending the school which bears his name.
We've been scanning the book (there are over a hundred images), and I'll be sharing them with you here over the next few weeks.
Mrs. Gammon was around 35 when she bought her automobile.  It is no exaggeration to say this car meant freedom.  Freedom from hitching a team of horses to a carriage, caring for them, and plodding along behind them.  Freedom to take trails the railroads failed to find.  Freedom to explore.  And explore she did.
Here are some of the many camping shots found in the little book.  I'll post the details of one particular trip in the next few days.

Click on any image to enlarge

As you know, I love picnic photos.

Car trips often meant picnics and camping for Mrs. Gammon.

A fishing trip to Dripping Springs

Perhaps my favorite camping photo.  Note the fishing poles, car,
tent, and Victrola.