Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County, Texas. Page: 179 of 1,110
vii, 9-1011 p. incl. ill., ports. : ports. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this book.
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r~~~HSOYO DLA ONY 7
eled in Dallas county: Mrs. Dalton, a daughter
of John Hewitt, asked for a divorce from
her husband. We gave it to her, and before
sun down that day Henderson Couch, foreman
of the jury, married her! Bill Ochiltree
was the judge. The first legal hanging was
in 1853 or 1854. A negress was executed
for knocking a man in the head with an ax
at Cedar Springs. He had her hired and
she murdered him while he was asleep. I
can't recall their names.
"The town of Dallas burned July 8, 1860.
A lot of men had been smoking that Sunday
around Sam Prior's drug-store, and I think the
fire started from that. Crill Miller's house
(the burning of which was mentioned in last
Sunday's News) was not burned, but his
wheat stacks and cribs were burned. A chunk
of fire had been placed on a bed beneath the
mattress, but when the mattress was turned
back it smothered the fire out and the house
did not burn. Crill's negro boy, Bruce, told
about another negro, Spence, giving him a
dollar to fire the house. I think the hanging
of the three negroes for burning the town
wm unjust, because I don't believe they were
guilty. At the courthouse, when the committee
was investigating the fire, there came
near being a squally time between Judge
Nat M. Burford and Colonel John C. McCoy.
"I am a broad and a dyed-ib-the-wool
Democrat, and I am a Clark Democrat. I
believe in giving every man a show at office."
Calaway IL Patrick settled in Robertson,
now Lon, county, April, 1841. November,
1848, he removed to Dallas county and settld
dve miles southeast of Willner, where hehas since resided. He is an old Mexican war
veteran and an Indian fighter. "One evening
in the year 1843," lie said, "I was engaged
with others building a flatboat at the fall of
the Brazos. I went out of camp a short distance
and I thought I heard an owl hooting.
I listened, and 1 soon decided that the owls
which I thought I heard were Indians, because
when a man mimics an owl there is an
echo, but there is no echo to a genuine owlhoot.
I got lost from camp, and not long
after I heard the Indians I saw some deer
running from me. I wouldn't have fired at
them for any money, but it was a good opportunity
for me to run and I took after them.
I swam a bayou and found my way into the
town of Bucksnort. The next morning we
made up a party there and went out to look
for the Indians. We found that they had
followed roe the evening before up to the
bank of the bayou, but they had left the
locality and we could not find them. In
1843 a treaty was held with the Indians at
Grapevine prairie. I was there, and after the
treaty a party of us went to Cedar Springs,
and we came on down the trail now known
as McKinney avenue to John Neely Bryan's
lug cabin, which was located at the foot of
what is now Main street in Dallas. I bought
eight quarts of whisky from him, at 25 cents
a quart, and it was whisky, too. He had
about a barrel and a half of whisky, a keg of
tobacco and some lead, powder and caps,
which he had hauled from Shreveport. That
was his stock. When you went to a man's
house in those days, if he was fortunate
enough to have a house, you slept in the
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Lewis Publishing Company. Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County, Texas., book, 1892; Chicago, Illinois. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth20932/m1/179/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Public Library.