Who is my granddaddy?

                                                                           HANGING BROTHER JAMES

 

James “Jim” Washington Anderson, born 1829, was the oldest of Henry and Sarah Anderson’s eleven children. Before James moved to Young County, Texas, he had married Margaret Eaves and had two children, James W., and Sarah, both under 5 years old. He was listed as a “rancher”, the creek that ran into the Brazos River from his ranch is called the Jim Anderson Creek. The following is the story on James tragic death. 

The first Young County District Records concerning James appeared in 1860, THE UNITED STATES vs. JAMES ANDERSON –GAMING.   It was against the law in Texas to gamble, James Anderson was indicted on playing cards in a gambling house.  Although gambling in Texas had long been against the law, there was not a pioneer or man in Texas that had not gambled.   Every Saloon had gambling tables, somewhere in the house. Prostitution was against the law also, but we have read about the “Chicken Ranch” which existed in Texas for many years. The movie, Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, was based upon the Chicken Ranch of South Texas

Much information for the following story was obtained with the help of Mr. Dorman Holub, a professional researcher, Ms. S. Krehbiel and Barbara Close, a great granddaughter of Mitchell Anderson. Many years later, cousin JoRetta Lewis, a great granddaughter of Lucinda Anderson Ratliff, was curious about the death of James and began inquires. …… she found that James Anderson was killed in Young County, Texas in the month of April 1860. The court records were found in the Texas State Archives, Young County District Court Records, and Volume 1.  When the gambling case came to court they were told of his death and the case abated.

By 1860 it was estimated there were four to five million head of cattle of cattle in Texas. The Anderson boys would round up the wild un-branded longhorn cattle and place their brand on them, all very legal. Each boy would have his own brand, great grandfather Albert J.’s brand was a simple A J.

YOUNG COUNTY DISTRIC COURT RECORDS, Vol.1, page 53, no. 32, (1860) The United States vs. James Anderson. Marking and branding cattle.

James Anderson had been stealing cattle from two men, then changing just a little slant on the cattle brand, to make the brand like his. The two men’s brand was so close to James Anderson’s, making the change simple. The Young County Sheriff caught James stealing cattle from the two men and he was taken in. (The cattle that James Anderson was stealing and changing brands belonged to his brothers, John Henry and Mitchell Anderson).

 

 

 

 

Local rumor indicates that John and Mitchell Anderson hung their brother. Perhaps they didn’t want the community to hang him? Perhaps they did not want their brother to face another trial? When the first jury could not decide, maybe they felt they should carry out justice themselves

YOUNG COUNTY DISTRICT RECORDS, page 56, May 24, 1860. The State of Texas vs. John Anderson and Mitchell Anderson. Assault with intent to kill.

After hearing the evidence on John Henry and Mitchell Anderson, the argument of counsel and after our deliberation had thereon returned to the court “WE THE JURY CANNOT AGREE. M.A, Thompson, FOREMAN”. Judge R.L. Waddell, District Judge advised that a mistrial be entered on record and the case stand continued until the next term of court. District Court would meet two more times before final dismissal. On August 8, 1861, the jury was suspended and the District Court in Young County ended due to the Indian uprising in the county. Hence, the court case never came back for continuance!

One of our cousins wrote, “it would have been hard to get 12 Jurors to convict the Anderson brothers for killing a cattle thief, when the un-written law in Texas was…hang a cattle thief. When you stop to think, this great country was carved out and created by folks like the Andersons, Ratliffs and Georges and many, many others. Illiterates, tough men with determination, strong women with more courage than most of us have seen in a lifetime. Their history is fantastic and interesting; I am honored to share a small leaf of their family tree”.

We will never know how Henry and Sarah Anderson took the loss of James. It is hard to imagine the scene when Mitchell and John Henry returned to their folk’s house to tell their parents what had happened to their son James. Several years later John Henry Anderson wrote his sister Lucinda and said “I will say this much that I will never come to Texas any more to live”. The reason could not  have been the dangerous life in Comanche country, the boys were simply not afraid. Our cousin wrote “I now feel that his memories of Texas and Young County and his brother, so burdened his heart that he would never return to live there”.

 

                                                           TOUGH TIMES NEVER LAST, BUT TOUGH PEOPLE DO.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Williamson County, Texas,  1850-1855 was wedding time for several of Henry and Sarah Anderson’s children

         Mary Anderson married Phillip S. George, 20 October 1850.

         Lucinda Anderson married Archelaus Ratliff, 30 June 1853

         Elizabeth Anderson married James S. George, 1854

        James “Jim” Anderson married Margaret Eaves, 21 Oct.1855.

After five years in the Milam/Williamson District,  Henry had itchy feet to move again.   In 1855, the lure of millions of longhorn cattle in west Texas, found the Anderson, Ratliff and George families , inching north and west about 250 miles to Young County, (west of Ft. Worth and Weatherford, Texas). Again the journey had to be miserably slow and brutally painful in covered wagons across hostile Indian territory.

Around 1856, county records show Henry Anderson, along with Philip and Henry George had migrated to Young County, Texas. The Young County Commissioner Court Minutes, book 1 read “the Anderson brothers arrived in Young County in April 1856, one of them (Mitchell) married one of the Sutherlin girls”.  Not sure of the exact date when James S. George and his wife Elizabeth Anderson came to the area, but they are listed in the 1860 census of Young County. There is a creek in Young County named for Phillip George and another named for his brother-in-law, Jim Anderson. Both empty into the Brazos River near Miller Bend. Henry and Sarah were believed to have settled between Graham and Fort Belknap, along the Brazos River.

This would be a time where the Apache/Comanche Indians and the white families (such as the Anderson, Ratliff and George’s), were battling for the control of Young County. Henry George was one of four men who called for an election to organize Young County in 1856. Phillip George, Mary Anderson’s husband, was a prominent citizen and loaned money to area settlers.

For safety from Indian raids, Henry and family lived in or near the military Forts, Belknap, Davis and Griffin.  From the book LONESTAR by T.R. Fehrenbach, we find the government placed a string of forts along the Comanche frontier. These forts never  adequately served their purpose, which was protection of the white frontier to their east. They did not and could not separate Indians raiders from the white settlements. When the federal government assumed the job of protecting the Texas frontier, its army had no formal cavalry branch.  Some of the first troops sent out on the edge of  the vast Plains were infantry, mounted on mules.  As Texans remarked bitterly, the only way they could damage the hard-riding Comanche was possibly by causing the Indians to laugh themselves to death. Conditions did improve briefly by gathering border Indian tribes into the reserves which helped end petty depredations. More important was the appearance of the best-mounted regiment that ever rode the American West, the 2^nd U.S. Cavalry.

The year 1860 in west Texas is best described by S.C. Gwynne’s book, EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON, “one of the bloodiest years in the frontier”. Following many Comanche raids. All hell broke loose. People panicked and fled the frontier as fast as they could. Within days there were hundreds of deserted farms in the area west of Weatherford, Texas. The raids were remarkable because the panicked whites in that arc of settlement, west of Fort Worth, did not seem to be able to do anything to stop them. Governor Sam Houston had authorized Colonel M.T. Johnson to raise a regiment of Rangers to punish the Indians. It was a failure.

 Yet not everyone was leaving. Henry M. Anderson and his boys, James, Albert, Mitchell, John, William and Phillip, were in the cattle and horse business with no intentions of leaving (tough times never last but tough people do).