Dac Crossley's Western Blog

A Texas Lady Worth Knowing

Texas history is crammed with strong women, who stood up to the thorns, droughts and general chaos they frequently faced. Those who were outside the mainstream of history may become forgotten. One such women was Suzanna O’Docharty of San Patricio, Texas.

Suzanna, a tall red-head, became a civil leader in little San Patricio, a new colony of Irish immigrants to Texas. Her husband William O’Docharty surveyed the little town and was its first Alcalde.

She helped develop the arrangements between San Patricio colonists and the people of Matamoros, Catholics all. That meeting culminated in a banquet held on Banquete Creek, approximately at the town site of present Banquete, Texas. El Lugar de Banquete became an annual event.

Suzanna, a devout catholic, sympathized with her Mexican friends during the Texas revolution. After Santa Ana’s surrender at San Jacinto, Suzanna moved her family to Matamoros. When a semblance of civic law was established in south Texas, Suzanna returned to San Patricio. Once again a civic leader, she taught the town’s children in her home.

According to the Handbook of Texas, “Her legacy of red hair marked generations of O’Dochartys as a badge of honor.”

With a nod to my favorite red-headed classmate,

Dac Crossly
October 26, 2016

“You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you. If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s path.” – Joseph Campbell.

German Texans in the Civil War

I’ve got an interest in South Texas history immediately following the Civil War, when lawless chaos reigned. In San Antonio, German residents began to return to the city.

At the onset of the Civil War, German citizens in Texas found themselves pressured to support the Confederacy. Many had immigrated to Texas because of political upheavals in Germany. Some supported the Confederacy, others the Union, and some didn’t seem to care.

In San Antonio, many German settlers packed up and left for Mexico rather than support the Confederacy. Not all. Among others, my German ancestor manufactured mercury-fulminate caps for Confederate munitions (William DeRyee, right). Among those who left San Antonio was Anton Wulff, who had drygoods stores in Fredericksburg and elsewhere. Perhaps because of his anti-secession views, Wulff opened stores near the Mexican border, in Laredo and Presidio del Norte. He soon moved his family to Presidio and opened a mercantile business. He supplied Union and Confederate garrisons with hay and corn.

Texas declared him a traitor and tried unsuccessfully to arrest him. Wulff moved his family to Monterrey and then to Hamburg.

After the Civil War, Wulff returned to San Antonio. He built a large home on King William Street, now a showplace. Wulff became a civic leader in the city.

The fate of my ancestor’s munitions plant is unknown.

Dac Crossley
October 18, 2016

“If God wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates.” – Jay Leno.

Two old Men

They were the two largest trees on the property. Unfortunately, they grew near the site selected for my cabin in the woods. Construction damaged their root systems and they began dying. The imperiled the cabin and my car. They had to be removed.

Both trees were in their eighties, perhaps my own age. They germinated from acorns atop a ridge between two small cotton terraces. Someone cut them back when they were small, right down to the nubs, and they regenerated multiple stems, four or five each, which grew into enormous trunks.

In the 1930’s when they were young, these trees would have seen a mule pulling a plow (those terraces would have been wider had they been designed for power equipment). Cotton, the currency of the Old South, was still a money crop in the 1930s. If we were to analyze tree rings from their early years, we’d likely find traces of arsenic. This was the major poison of insecticides in those years.

The two old men were spared cultivation because they lived atop the ridges between terraces. Rocks disturbed by the plow were their companions. Other trees began to germinate on the ridges, but the two old men dominated them all.

Sometime in the 1940’s cultivation slowed on the terraces. Manpower shortages in WWII, perhaps, or declining soilproductivity. Cotton is a heavy feeder and rapidly depletes soil nutrients.

The last plow might have been in the early 1950’s, but no later. The terraces began to return to the wild, with little annual flowers, vines, and a few pines. If we were to analyze trees rings from this period we might find traces of the widely-used DDT or its metabolites.

Fast-forward two decades and hardwood trees are scatted across the terraces, including many water oaks, perhaps the offspring of one of the old men. And between 1975 and 1980, tree rings would show a decline in lead content. We quit putting tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline. It declined in our atmosphere. Tree rings no longer contained lead.

Some thirty years ago the two old men went under a conservation easement, and the terraces were protected from further development. Except for the rare cottage, such as mine.

They would not have lived forever. Water oaks, I’ve read, live for about 80 years. The two old men were near the end of life when construction of my cabin did them in. I will miss them.

And I’m pushing the envelope myself.

Dac Crossley
October 14, 2016

“Growing old is compulsory, growing up is optional.” – Bob Monkhouse.

Octoberfest at Georgia's Bavarian Village

I know it seems unlikely, but it works. The little town of Helen, Georgia remodeled itself as an alpine village.

Helen valley on the upper reaches of the Chattahoochee River had fallen into decline. It was the home of Cherokee Indians until the big removal, thanks to Andrew Jackson and his policies. By 1839, all Cherokee lands had been awarded to citizens of Georgia under a lottery system. It was good farmland, the fertile Nacoochee Valley and the Chattahoochee floodplain in Helen Valley itself. Then gold was discovered.

Georgia’s gold is in quartz veins, most of it to the west of Helen near Dahlonega. Panning the placer deposits near Helen worked for a time. Then miners went after the quartz deposits, power washing them and crushing the ore with stamp mills. In the Helen valley, fortunes were made from sales of promising-looking properties. Gold fever finally ran its course. The miners moved on.

Next it was timber. A railroad extension reached Helen Valley. Prime forest trees were harvested; saw mills appeared. Once the timber resource was depleted the railroad disappeared along with the sawmills. Once again people moved away. The valley returned to agriculture.

In 1968 a group of local businessmen met to make plans. What can we do to save our town? Just a few run-down buildings? The children all leaving the valley for work elsewhere? But there was an artist friend there who’d been to Bavaria. He made sketches showing how the old buildings could add façades and appear Bavarian.

That’s how it started. Today, Helen Georgia is a major tourist attraction. German restaurants, souvenir shops, tubing down the fast-flowing Chattahoochee River, and so forth. And in the autumn, a big Oktoberfest.

We drove up last Saturday to find the village crowded with revelers. Beer flowed in the square with singing and dancing, music blasting away (but not oom-pah music). Think of a three-block tailgate party. That’s Oktoberfest in Helen, Georgia.

We chose to eat in the Old Heidelberg restaurant, good wurst and German beer, upstairs and away from all the noise. We took a carriage ride around the town. I was allowed to feed the horse (Nellie) a carrot. Everyone we saw seemed to be having a ball.

Clearly, the town of Helen, Georgia saved itself in an unusual manner. Once a major Indian settlement (the Unicoi Road passed through the Helen Valley), struck by gold fever and then lumbered nearly out of existence, it found a path to salvation.

A model for other little towns that are just handing on? I think of all those other little Georgia towns with a just caution light, a dollar store and a Mexican restaurant. Yes, there is hope.

Dac Crossley
October 4, 2015.

“The best things in life are free. The second best things are very, very expensive.” – Coco Chanel.