Pioneers South Taylor Co. Texas

The Circuit Riding Preacher

"The circuit riding preacher used to ride across the land
With a rifle on his saddle and a Bible in his hand
He preached all about the promised land
And he went riding, singing down the trail"

The territory around San Saba was rough and wild. Circuit riders were given $25.00 to buy a pistol and $125.00 to buy a horse. The terriority was tough, churches were few and and far between and bible was scarce. They were strong men possibly wearing a swallow-tail coat and a black hat. Suggested reading: Bible in Pocket, Gun in Hand, the story of Frontier Religion by Ross Phares New York: Doubleday and Co., 1964. U of Neb 1971. Based on obscure pastoral autobiographies, early missionaries diaries, minutes of church court trials and covers the bad men preachers, scoffers, trouble makers and the fierce jocular competition among the various sects of the old West.

Rev. James A. Robinson
"died as he lived a Christian'

Rev. James A. Robinson was a "Circuit Rider" of Taylor County and held services in a different community each night of the week to be back home for the weekend at the home church, Lemons Gap, a wooden building which served as a schoolhouse during the weekdays.  He carried the news of deaths, marriages, new babies, etc.,  From his home at the foot of Bald Eagle Mountain, near Ovala Rev. J.A. Robinson travelled a circuit north leaving with his Bible and bedroll on Monday morning. One night was at Buffalo Gap, then almost to Abilene, then westward until it was time to return home across the hills. On the last day on the circuit he would stop for a brief visit with Rev. and Mrs. Mckeever at Bluff Creek. He would stop at the same ranch on the same night every week where the family would make him welcome.and some folks would ride all day to hear his sermon and then ride all night to return home. He would arrive at Bald Eagle on Saturday in time to prepare his Sunday sermon which he preached at Lemons Gap. The family always knew they would have scrambled eggs for Saturday night supper. His congregation on the circuit donated eggs and live chickens, possibly other foodstuffs to take home. The chickens were tired by their feet and hung from the saddle, and eggs no matter how well cushioned, were subject to being cracked, if not entirely broken. Kate Sutton Edwards said Rev. Robinson would come by in his buggy and take them to church at Lemons Gap.

The Rev. James Andrew Robinson was born August 8, 1830, in Enneskeller, Ireland.  Both parents were Scottish, but had settled in Ireland.  His parents were William Andrew Robinson who married Margaret McIntyre from Scotland.  He came to North America in 1860 after the war in that country and began his Ministry in Montreal, Canada.  He met and married Chloe Anna Bell Fry in Windsor Mills, Canada.  She was born May 11, 1834, in Sherbrooke, Richmond County, Quebec, Canada.  In the year 1865 Grandfather Robinson was ordained as a minister of the Methodist Church. There were several James Robinson's in the ministry so he added the initial A. They had seven children: Mary Francis, Fred J, Abbie L,  Margaret J, William H, Ada F, Amelia E .Robinson who died in Vermont at age of 12.  Grandfather and Grandmother Robinson moved to Texas bringing with them Mary F.'s children, their grandchildren Willie, Fred and Mabel.

He felt called to a new frontier, this time to Colorado City- to the church there. He also helped establish churches in San Saba, Buffalo Gap (and the college there), and Sweetwater and preached in several small communities.

"San Saba Presbytery was formed by order of Colorado Synod in 1881. According to the directory appearing in the General Assembly minutes of the following year, the ministers composing this presbytery were Revs. Z.T. Blanton, J.S. Boatright, T.A. Ish, F.E. Lawler, S.M. Lewis, J.A. Robinson (stated clerk), W.C. Sparks, and R.D. Wear. This presbytery embraced a large territory extending westward indefinitely. In those days when the presbytery would meet on the extreme western border it would take four or five days for some of the brethren to go to presbytery. Rev. J.A. Robinson was in charge of the Colorado mission, which in 1886 and 1887 reported more than fifty members

Buffalo Gap Presbytery. In 1884 Colorado Synod ordered the formation of a new presbytery to be known as Buffalo Gap Presbytery. In 1895 the name was changed to Abilene Presbytery. Buffalo Gap is situated about fourteen miles southwest of Abilene in a range of hills which at this particular place attain to a height of three or four hundred feet above the surrounding country prairie. This range constitutes the watershed between the Brazos and Colorado Rivers. The location was a very healthful one, the climate begin dry and the altitude of the town about 1,900 feet above sea level. The Buffalo Gap College was founded in 1882.". Source: History of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Texas. Centennial Volume. Published by Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House. 117 Eighth Avenue, South Nashville, Tenn. 1936.

"Brother Robinson came to Texas in 1878,  joined the Little River Presbytery, (he acted as State Clerk of said Presbytery) and  later assisted in forming the San Saba Texas Presbytery also the Buffalo Gap now Abilene Presbytery.  He acted as a missionary for said Presbytery.  He heartily favored union of the Cumberland Presbyterian and the Presbyterian Churches. He was very anxious to see the consummation of the two churches.  Such men as Bro. Robinson will never die, though they fall asleep.   We laid his body to rest in the Buffalo Gap Cemetery on the 5 inst.  A large crowd witnessed the last of him in this world.  After a funeral service by the pastor he was buried in the I.O.O.F. honors. A good man has fallen. God bless the bereaved."  Source: A sketch of Rev. J. A. Roberson's Life by W.J. Johnson, Pastor, Buffalo Gap. The Western Presbyter, a Cumberland Presbyterian Weekly, Thursday June 15, 1905, Dallas, Texas. 

J.A. Robinson death record is recorded at the Taylor County Courthouse in Abilene. J.A. Robinson, Irish, male, 74, Buried Buffalo Gap, Resided Audra, 4/4/05, citizen, cause La Gripe, Doctor J.M. Rumple. His death record is not in Austin.

Rev. James A. Robinson settled on the east side of Bald Eagle Mountain, near what is now Ovalo, Texas, and bought a herd of goats, Wilfred, Mabel and Clarence were to herd them and let them graze on the mountain.  Rev. James A. Robinson began to buy small tracts of land, a little here and there in Taylor County. There are still two tracts one of ten acres, one of fourteen acres at Buffalo Gap, one acre and sixty-seven acres at Old Audra in the south part of Taylor County. He had bought a block (the one across from the Old Settlers Reunion grounds) at Buffalo Gap and a home there, not large but comfortable for the time.

Now at this time the stagecoach ran from Abilene to Ballinger with a stage stop at Buffalo Gap (which was the county seat then) and Old Guion and Old Runnels. Must have been one more but do not know that location unless it was Winters.  The Edenborough’s had moved to Texas and set up a store about four miles south of Old Guion and it is there as well as Old Audra. Lena (Wilf’s oldest sister) was sixteen she met Frank Sheppard and married him. He worked for years at the Edenborough store.  It seems even though there was not too much to eat or wear, there was always music, a piano and guitars in the house. Frank and Fred went into a venture with the store at Old Audra about 1900, and that is two and a half or three miles west of Bradshaw. 

A school and church were in the vale at Lemons Gap, as the people settled near the mountain and springs for water and protection for their cattle there were first large acreage. There was the old Bradshaw estate, just west of Lemons Gap road, the Captain Pearre estate that later was divided and became the Roberts Ranch and the Jackson ranch. The Pearre cattle brand was a shape of a pear and a captail E. Further west Major Griffith had land on the Bluff Creek range. West of Bradshaw and east of Shep was the old Hunt Ranch.

So the Guion community grew and among those who settled there was  Alonzo Charles Albro and his wife Mary Martha Magdeline YERION b. 12 Dec. 1837 Wythville, Wythe Co. Virginia. Because of her loss of health they moved to a farm in south Taylor County.   Their daughter Myrtie was fourteen years at that time and went to school at old Lemons Gap.

Mary F. married M. Will Harrington. Their home was in Highgate, Vermont. Both music teachers and toured the country giving musical programs. Mary F. came to Texas with her children leaving her husband behind.  Will was a band director leaving for a tour of Europe at the time. 

Wilfred James Harrington

Born June 4, 1872 in Belford, Canada to William and Mary C. Francis Robinson Harrington. Mary went back to her parent's home in Canada to have her baby.  Wilfred came to Texas in 1880 with his mother, moving to Taylor County in 1884. Mary, professor of piano, taught music at Sweetwater and before that Old Runnels, which later became Ballinger, seat of Runnels County and San Saba. It was while she was at Sweetwater and the children were growing up that Inez worked in a printing shop or newspaper and that Wilfred was for a time a jockey for an old judge there at Sweetwater.   She continued to teach music and traveled on horseback from ranch to ranch giving lessons but the people were fast settling the Tuscola Flat, and the farm land between the mountains and toward the Jim Ned Valley. Her other children were Lena A. b. 1869 in Vermont,  Mabel Gertrude b.  July 6, 1873, in Cerro Gondo, Iowa,  Artie died as a baby, Clarence b. 1877 in Iowa, and Inez A. b. 1878 in Iowa.  W.J. lived in a log cabin on Wallace Creek near San Saba, use to play with the Indians.

Wilf use to tell tales of the cowboy friends and him trying to trap and tame an Albino stallion that was stealing mares from the ranchers. Ranchers also going thirty miles on horseback to help other ranchers with roundups in the spring.  He went on one cattle drive through Indian Territory. Wilf and his brother Clarence used to have fun with the wild cattle by building a brush fence in front of a bluff.  Then they would chase the cattle and they would run through the brush over the bluff into the creek.  He can't remember it ever hurting any of them since the creek was deep.  

Major Bradshaw, father of Brick, Dave and the Bradshaw girls had land west of Lemons Gap and also around the land he gave for the Bradshaw townsite. For the spring round up Major Bradshaw would ask Wilfred Harrington and Brick, both working on ranches training horses, etc., to get bedrolls and things ready to go help with the Parramore Roundup and branding. There were no fences. They crossed the county just south of where the Peak and land of the west of Bradshaw  then crossed Valley Creek.


Alonzo Albro

Wilf first met his future wife Myrtie ALBRO in school in Colorado City, TX  at eight and ten years of age,  where her father Alonzo Charles Albro was working with the T & P Railways it was being built in 1880s and later moved to Taylor County and settled at the little community of Guion.  Myrtie walked three miles to school, Moro, and studied a "Blue Book Speller."   Robinson family also moved to Taylor County.  Mr. Wilfred Harrington married Myrtie Nella Albro on December 19, 1897,  in Guion, Texas at the home of her parents, the late Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Albro of Guion, Texas.  The ceremony was performed by his Grandfather, The Reverend J.A. Robinson, minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. They lived on a small farm north of Guion.  Myrtie was born November 21, 1874, in El Paso, Illinois.  She came to Texas with her parents. 

It took the Albro two months to come from El Paso, Illinois to Weatherford, Texas in the fall of 1877, moving to Taylor County in September 1883.  They brought two wagons, an extra team of horses and their milk cow. Mrs. Mary Albro brought with her in the wagon, three feather mattress, her sewing machine and her clock. As they came through Abilene, which was just beginning, that the streets were so deep in mud, it took time and sometimes two teams to pull the wagons.

Alonzo worked on the T&P Railroad as manger of water wells and telegraph as it was being built between Colorado City and Stanton, Texas. While they were building the railroad they would set up home in a rented house or tent every ten miles that is why the small towns west of Fort Worth like Weatherford, Milsap, Eastland are approximately ten miles apart. When Myrtie was seven they were at Stanton and she said she had always enjoyed going down on the platforms and watching Grandfather work also that year the prairie grass or some grasses were as high as the cattle and horses bellies and   their son, Joe, herded some sheep.  Mary Albro became ill and the doctors were unable to help her and finally her brother, Joe Yerion and when he came he told her out on a farm or open country. After working on building the T & P Railway he farmed at Guion. Myrtie Albro, there daughter,  was fourteen years old and went to school at Old Lemons Gap a walk of three miles (across the mountain) nearly six miles by road. Mrs. Mary Albro of Buffalo Gap died February 5 1922. Buried Lemons Gap along with her husband.   The Albro’s use to travel from Old Guion to Buffalo Gap for supplies and leave their wagon at the Taylor wagon yard in Buffalo Gap over night making it a two day trip.

Telephone in the Bradshaw Post Office.Telephone History:
January 1912 Wilf purchased the telephone exchange at Bradshaw before that he farmed at Guion were they had a small farm house of two main rooms and a comfortable shade kitchen. Wilf, travelling in a horse drawn buggy, repaired and built the lines and Myrtie ran the switchboard.  They ran the telephone until 1928.  The switchboard, called "eye ball board", the drops were shaped like balls, when a customer rang in the balls turned over and were red, when the plugs were inserted into the lines they closed and were black. At that time the "big can" the distributing center was on a high telephone pole outside an inside distributor rack was behind the board.  In 1912 there were about 100 subscribers, or families with telephones, in a range of several communities, Guion, Moro, Bluff Creek besides the Bradshaw community and the town.   They had one or two customers that had both Bradshaw and Ovalo (eight miles north of Bradshaw) telephones, in case of emergency could get in touch with Ovalo through them.   Wilf would "fix" lines every so often and especially if someone had trouble. At first we always went in the buggy with our gentle old mare (Dewey), named for Admiral Dewey.  This old horse was raised and trained by Wilf and when he told here to "stop" or "stay" she would stand so still he could use the wheels of the buggy to stand on to repair a line or place a new insulator on a post. The telephone lines were placed on 2X4 posts with big nails for him to climb, of course at roads and corners we had to have regular telephone poles. All the insulators were either glass or china.  When we started out for a day on the lines, he carried most everything he might need, batteries for the telephones, wire stretchers a special kind, insulators, nails, and taps he used were leather, also a water jug, peanut butter stick candy, cheese and crackers that was for lunch. A trip to the Moro community took most of the day, and if he went to the Guion Community, he had to stop and visit with at least a few of the  farmer neighbors and old friends. Later in the 1920s Wilf would be walking a line and a daughter would follow with the car. They always closed the office on Sunday from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Wilf was the night telephone operator.

Even in 1912 when they first began telephone work, there were a few customers like the Bluff Creek Community who still were using their new barbed wire to "talk" over.  In that community since it was out of Wilf's range of line, the people bought their own wire, built their lines, Willf furnished the telephones and   insulators, these needed replacing sometimes, but the customers bought their batteries as they paid less for service, of course Wilf paid the Bell Telephone Company in Abilene a percentage on all long distance calls. In those days you had to "build a line" to any distant place. You gave your call to an Abilene operator, and she made the connection to the town you were calling, then on to your customer. Don't remember any trouble to Ft. Worth or most points east.  It was really hard to get a connection into Oklahoma. For years you would pass the call to Abilene, which went then to Wichita Falls, or Ft. Worth, then to Oklahoma City.  So many times there were disconnects or static on the lines, but we did have communications.  If a child was ill, or they need advise, or to get in touch with a love one and did not know how, they thought "Central" ought to know everything.

The bottom fell out. The fire started in the telephone office it seemed but the whole block burned, the telephone office, barber shop, Dr.’s. Office, one general Merchandise store and one grocery store. The Harrington family lost their home, clothes, business and a lot of equipment. History repeated itself in 1951, when they lost the second home and telephone office in Bradshaw.  Mr. Schilling’s helped Wilf locate the small "test board" that became the new switch board. After the first home burned Wilf was so afraid of fire he had an office built in Bradshaw.

After that they farmed for several years in the sandy land near Old Guion, a small farm with cattle.  Wilf and Myrtie had a host of friends and went to all the parties, dances, etc. When they retired, they sold the farm and moved to Tuscola. 

Clarence Coolige Harrington
 Clarence C. Harrington (Dutch), brother of Wilfred, born in July 9, 1877, in Iowa and died at age 92 May 5, 1970,  and was buried in Salem Cemetery, Big Springs, Texas.  Dutch came to Texas at the age of six years.  He moved to Howard County in 1920.  He married Mary Emily Cooper in Guion, Texas on March 12, 1906. Mary  was born July 18 1881 and died December 7 1951. They had seven sons Harold, Carrol, Ora Lee, Raymond, Brick, George and Bill and two daughters Gertrude and Grace. Mary taught school and Dutch was a stock farmer. Index to record of marks and brands at the Taylor Co. Courthouse, Texas, shows C.C. Harrington 2303 no. 155,  horse brands, location left shoulder. Date of registry Feb. 20 1895.
           
 Mabel Gertrude Harrington
Aunt Mabel was born 24 July 1873 Clear Lake, Cerro Gordo, Iowa.  Married  28 September 1892, near Guion, Taylor County, Texas  to John William Miller who was born 25 November 1867 Turnersville, Coryell, Texas. They had lived on the east side of Bald Mountain and had had several children.

The Frank Sheppard Family
When the land in New Mexico came up for settlement,  Inez and Mary F. (Fred Robinson was already out there) they left Bradshaw to take up claims near Lovington.  Frank Sheppard married Lena A. Harrington in Taylor County and was a resident of Lovington, New Mexico since 1907. He was the first licensed postmaster, treasurer and tax collector of Lovington.   Frank G. Sheppard was a postmaster at Guion, Taylor County from July 31, 1897 to July 27, 1905. Their children: Audra, S.J.M, George, Neuma, Texas, Chester and Jennie Lou. The "Audra Merc" at Bradshaw was named after Rev. James A. Robinson first great grand child.
 
Inez Abbie Harrington
Inez Harrington had worked as telephone operator.  In Lovington she worked at the newspaper office for many years with Frank Sheppard. Inez was born 18 December 1878 in Clear Lake, Iowa, the daughter of William James Harrington and Mary Fry Robinson. She owned some land in Buffalo Gap. Died in 3rd July 1929  and was buried 4 July 1929 in Lovington, Lea County, New Mexico. Age at death 50 years 6 months and 21 days. Never married. She had lived in Lovington 19 years 9 months and 1 day.