Texas is what makes you

Several years ago a friend in Red River County was invited to take part in a Texas Historical Association-sponsored to-do at Clarksville Cemetery. Jim’s oldest Texas ancestor was buried in the cemetery in 1838, and had emigrated to Texas in the 1820s as a member of the Wavell Colony.

At one point in the event, Jim said, he and a young woman from the commission were standing next to Jim’s ancestor’s grave.

“She pointed at the small stone at the foot of the grave, and she said, ‘What’s that?’” (The small stone is inscribed “George Faithful Servant And Friend.”)

Jim said, “I told her that back in those days tradition was when a man died, his body servant was buried with him. She said, ‘They did not do that!’ From her expression, I knew she didn’t know whether to believe me or not.”

I said, “She wanted to believe you, didn’t she.”

“I think she did,” Jim said. He got a serious expression. “It’s a funny thing – People go to Austin, they change. Austin changes people.”

I’ve noticed that about different parts of Texas, especially those parts whose inhabitants want to tell you what a real Texan is. Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston – I’ve heard it from people in all those places, from Amon Carter’s “Fort Worth is where the West begins and Dallas is where the East peters out,” to the Urban Cowboy types in the mid-to-late-1970s. Especially galling, though, are the non-Texans (East Coasters and Left Coasters usually) who think they can tell the rest of the country about Texas and Texans. “All hat and no cattle,” I read many times about former President George W. Bush, the statement always made or written by a limp-wristed pinky-raiser who read it from an Ann Richards speech. But I am not writing about those people.

Jim said one time, “Any movie made about Texas, when the character enters, the movie has scenes from somewhere west of Wichita Falls. If they go farther east, it looks like Louisiana or Arkansas.”

Fact is, most Texans of early importance came into the state in what today is northern Red River County. Sam Houston, James Bowie, David Crockett all crossed the Red River to the no-longer-there town of Jonesborough (or Jonesboro). In the same area were Pecan Point, Mrs. Gaffney’s Landing, Bryerly’s Landing and Wright’s Landing, the first three downstream and the third upstream of Jonesboro. Ben Milam took the first steamboat up the Red as far as Jonesboro. The Wright house is the oldest house in Texas continuously occupied by the same family. The house has undergone changes since 1853, but still has the original floor, some of the original walls and original bois d’arc underpinnings.

Wright Landing used to be due south across the Red River from Fort Towson Landing. That changed in 1840 when the river bed moved a couple miles north following a flood. The same flood took out Jonesboro.

All that remains at the Jonesboro site now is a house surrounded by a chain link fence. Pecan Point remains only as an area of scattered pieces of iron from a grist mill, and a few foundation stones.