How one man's illness changed the history of Kerrville (and Texas)

Charles Clarence, his second wife, Florence, and their three sons.

History is best told as a story – with characters, conflict, perhaps a journey, and an ending, either happy or sad. History is also the story of how chance events can have big consequences for families, towns, regions, and even states.

I suppose it’s these stories that make history fascinating to me.

Consider Charles Clarence, who died in Kerrville in 1915. If it hadn’t been for his illness – he’d contracted tuberculosis in Tennessee about a dozen years before his death – the story of our community would be different. Very different.

Charles Clarence was born in Mississippi in 1848; he was from a large family, with at least seven siblings. His father was a physician, who also ran a small plantation in Carroll County, Mississippi.

When the Civil War came, four of Charles’s brothers fought for the Confederacy, serving in Stanford’s Mississippi Battery. One of the brothers, Benjamin, served as the battery’s unofficial chaplain. The battery saw action in some of the deadliest battles of the Civil War.

Charles, though, was too young to join his brothers in the Confederate Army.

After the war, Charles was active in the affairs of his small town, Duck Hill, Mississippi. In the 1870 census, he is listed as a retail merchant. In 1870, he also served as an alderman for the town. He served as mayor of Duck Hill for three years, and postmaster for seven. He was also an inventor – advertising in several newspapers his invention, an improved coffee roaster.

In the mid-1870s, he married a local girl, Darthula Vinvela ‘Vinnie’ Miller. Vinnie was around 18 when they married, and the couple had two sons – Stanley (b. 1874) and Kearney (b. 1876).

Charles was very busy in those years. He owned a ‘racket store,’ which was a variety store, like a what was once called a ‘five and dime’ store. He also owned a drug store, a hotel, and a bathing house. He was busy and successful.

Then tragedy struck the young family. Vinnie passed away in 1886 at age 28. Charles was now a widower with two young sons.

In 1889, Charles remarried. His new wife, Florence, was much younger than he – about twenty years younger. When they married, Charles was 43, and Florence was 23. Together they would have three sons: Charles, Jr. (b. 1890), Eugene (b. 1893), and Howard, the baby (b. 1895).

No one knows why Charles and Florence left Duck Hill, Mississippi, for Memphis, Tennessee, though it might be because Charles’s oldest son, Stanley, lived there. While there, Charles worked as a piano salesman.

And that’s how history would have remembered Charles if it hadn’t been for his illness: a piano salesman in Memphis, Tennessee. However, sometime during his time in Tennessee, Charles contracted tuberculosis, and that changed the course of his family forever.

In those days, the treatment of tuberculosis often included moving to a dry, warm climate. Because of the efforts of a Kerrville physician, George Parsons, MD, Kerrville became known as a place of healing for those ill with tuberculosis.

Consider this, from an article Parsons wrote for the Southern Journal of Homeopathy in June, 1892:

"...through a series of unfavorable circumstances, I was attacked with serious hemorrhages of the lungs in 1875, and rapidly broke down in health." A change in climate from his native Illinois was recommend by his doctors.

"Upon advice of Dr. T. C. Duncan, then editor of the Medical Investigator, I directed my steps toward San Antonio. Upon an examination of my lungs the doctors in that city shook their heads and told me they thought I had come too late."

One doctor, a Dr. Fisher, "had just returned from an extensive outing in the Health Belt...and recommended Kerrville."

Parsons came to Kerrville, got better, called for his family to join him, and soon opened a sanatorium near where city hall stands today. Parsons even served as Kerrville’s third mayor.

So: what happened to Charles Clarence and his family, who, like Dr. Parsons and hundreds of others – moved to Kerrville in 1905 seeking health?

Charles Clarence was an invalid and unable to work, so his wife, Florence, had to find some way to support her family. After attempting to sell items door to door, she rented a small building on Kerrville’s Main Street for $9 a month – “It had rooms above to live in,” she wrote years later, and the family moved in. Downstairs, she opened a small grocery store.

Charles Clarence – Charles Clarence Butt – lived for another ten years in Kerrville, passing away in 1915. His brief obituary ran on the front page of the Kerrville Mountain Sun on March 13, 1915. In a town where death by tuberculosis was common, his obituary was short and to the point. None of his early successes, and none of the public offices he held Duck Hill, Mississippi, were mentioned. Tuberculosis also claimed the life their son, Charles Jr., in 1926.

Today, the grocery store Florence started on Kerrville’s Main Street is known as H-E-B, and is one of the largest privately-owned companies in the country.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who is a faithful customer of H-E-B. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times October 8, 2022.

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