Denton County, Texas - Chapter 2, 1918

This rich territory, up to the time of settlement, was known only by migratory bands of wild Indians, by the Texas Rangers, and by an occasional band of prospectors passing through its borders.

The rangers had it assigned to them by the young republic over which to draw their line of frontier protection against the Indian on the west. They had established some trail ways across the streams and through its timbers, but on the prairies they needed none as they traveled by guides, such as Pilot Knob, Pilot Point and other places easily seen. There were no wagon ways in this county except the Preston road, but the county was settling from Red River west and south. Bowie, Lamar, and Fannin Counties were considered then on the frontier, and the Indians would make raids in these counties and steal horses and kill the settlers. Their habit was to slip into the settlements at night in the light of the moon and round up all the horses possible by daylight and then make a run to get them out, and they were generally successful.

In the spring of 1841 the Indians of the Keechi village, which was in the forks of Village Creek and West Fork about six miles east of the present city of Fort Worth, made a raid on the settlements in Bowie and Lamar counties and drove off a herd of their horses. Preparations were hastily made to follow them. Col. E. J. Tarrant made up a company to follow them, in which was Capt. John B. Denton, Capt. Henry Stout, Col. Coffey, Col. William C. Young, Capt. Yeary, Samuel Sims, Daniel Montague, James Bourland, William Bourland, Mack Bourland, Andrew

Davis, John L. Lovejoy, Clabe Chisum, John Griffin, Col. Porter, Dick Hopkins, and about forty others. They took the trail which led west up by Bonham, crossing East Fork near the present town of Weston in Collin County; Little Elm, about one-fourth of a mile above the present bridge on the McKinney road; and Big Spring Creek (or Big Elm) at the McKinney road bridge. They then turned nearly south to Bird's Station, afterwards known as Birdsville, Tarrant County, where they scattered and the trail gave out. It could not be followed. This showed the Indian's cunning habits, and the care he had for his family. The Indians were then approaching their village about eight or ten miles away, and succeeded in throwing their pursuers off about ten miles west of them, up on Clear Fork west of Fort Worth. A lone Indian was captured and was forced to tell the location of the village. There the battle was fought the next day, in which John B. Denton lost his life. They destroyed the village, killed many Indians, and gathered up about eighty head of their horses and returned. (The details to be given later.) This company of men had crossed through the center of the county afterwards known as Denton County.

These men were from near Fulton's Ferry on Red River, and Coffey's Trading Point where the immigrants were crossing into the young republic and could give glowing descriptions of the black land belt and its grand prairies. Col. Coffey was the founder of Coffey's Trading Point on Red River and the representative of Fannin County, and afterwards moved up the trail himself into Collin County. The Peters colony later on established their land office for the colony in the southeast corner of this county and had their agents at all the ferries on Red River directing the immigrants how to reach their land office and trading point.

The first view the immigrant would have of this county would be from the great Collin County ridge extending from north to south for nearly forty miles and forming the border for the eastern county line of Denton County. Up this high ridge ran the great national highway (the Preston Road) and from

The Elm Valley, then called the Elm Flats, from six to eight miles wide and forty miles in length, paralleled the highway. In this valley great herds of buffalo could be seen grazing upon grass, often knee-high and glittering in the sunlight as it was lashed into waves like the rolling waves of the sea. Deer in bunches were visible as far as the eye could reach ; turkeys and prairie chickens everywhere. The turkeys at night would almost cover the timber on the creeks and the wild chickens could be seen flying in droves a mile long and had to be minded off of sown wheat until it could be plowed in. Small creeks had large holes of water which were filled with fish. (The holes are all filled with mud now.) Bee trees could be found filled with wild honey. Wild grapevines covered the trees and brush in the brakes all up and down the ridge with various kinds, from the mustang grape down to the little fox grape which ripened about frost and was very sweet. Persimmon orchards were filled with the finest fruits, from which we had "persimmon bread" and "persimmon beer," Plum thickets abounded with the finest red Chickasaw and the yellow Chickasaw plum, and often would cover three and four acres at a place. Just north of Cottonwood branch, one-half mile north of the present town of Frisco, there were over one hundred acres covered almost solidly with a wild plum orchard. This was a great attraction to the immigrant, as the fruit served as food for man, fowl, and animal. There were in good supply pecans, hickory nuts, walnuts, and several varieties of acorns, and the red and black haws. Above all, there was here the finest soil in the Republic of Texas, including many varieties, a fact now demonstrated, but then only partially known by wild growths.

This was the attraction the Great Jehovah spread out before the immigrant like a feast of fat things to induce him to come and to welcome his coming. The Indian called it his "happy hunting ground" and stubbornly refused to give it up. The immigrant regarded it as the promised land, flowing with milk and honey - ^promised to him by the Republic of Texas through the agency of the Peters Colony in blocks of 640 acres to the family, free. This constituted the inducement to settle.

It was found that every sweet had its corresponding bitter ; that want of many other things which could not be supplied here tried the hearts and courage of the immigrant and many of them stayed a while and returned East to more civilized settlements. Here, then, he was outside the pale of civilization, beyond the power of the government to adequately protect him and his family, liable at any time to be killed and scalped by the wild Indian.

But here, the most hardy and fearless immigrant settled on his 640 acres and his 320 acres, and with his trusty muzzleloading rifle, undertook to stem the tide and protect and supply his family. Many hardships awaited him, too numerous for the present citizen to conceive of; but these hardships entered into and constituted the real life of the pioneer of Denton County, some of which it is expedient to mention. Here, only, could be found Indian trails, ranger trails, and buffalo trails. Winding to and fro across these streams - travel and commerce were practically unknown - the pack horse carried the supplies of the scouts. There were no houses, no churches, no schools, no doctors nor medicines, and no neighbors, but constantly the menacing thought that the family might at any time be found scalped. There was a feeling of loneliness unbroken except at night by the unearthly howl of the wolves, (sometimes so close as to make the hair rise on the head unbidden) or the flickering light of some campers' fire on the far-away hill. These settlers, as a general rule, were poor people from the States, seeking a country where they could acquire a home, and coming hundreds of miles in ox-wagons and two-horse wagons with but one wagon to the family, and it usually loaded with the coffee pot, skillet and lid, bread and meat, the gun, the axe, the bedding, and wearing apparel and the family trailed along behind on foot, destitute, as a rule, of tools with which to improve the country. The first plows were great clumsy wooden structures with a wooden mould board ; no iion about them except the share, land-bar, and grass rod. Afterwards the blacksmith came and made what was called the "Gary" plow, which had an iron mould board. The wheat was "tramped out" by horses, and ground on a steel hand-mill bolted to a tree. It took the steady turning of a strong man nearly an hour to grind a meal for an ordinary family.

These settlers raised sheep, built spinning wheels and looms, and made their clothes out of wool. When buttons were unobtainable persimmon seeds served as substitutes. They made their own combs out of cow horns and buffalo horns. They made their chairs and bedsteads and corded and bottomed them out of rawhide (a term applied to green or untanned hides off animals.) They platted ropes and made many other things of these hides, even door shutters were frames covered with rawhide. The first houses built were log huts chinked and daubed with mud, with dirt floors, stick chimneys, clapboard roof weighted on with poles. These hardships are recorded in justice to their memory and that the present generation may know the full price of our present civilization and some of the conditions that surrounded our ancestors. The picture is not overdrawn, though it may be startling when compared with Denton County's conditions of today.