Last week’s column about driving to May in 1894 mentioned a home called the Anderson place, which existed along Old May Road at Salt Creek at that time. My friend and fellow columnist Dr. Don Newbury, who was born in that area, related to me some of his memories of his early years there, and I think you will enjoy reading what he had to say. He wrote, “The May piece brings back whispers of my early life. I was born a half-dozen miles west of May, and often introduced as being from “near May.” That to say, I was born at home, at a total cost of $25. Yep, the doctor drove out there in 1937 to deliver me!”
“After a couple of years in Blanket, my parents and I moved to a small frame house (total of 3 rooms) about a quarter-mile west of Salt Creek Baptist Church on the dirt road leading to Highway 183. It stood vacant until a few years ago, but is now gone. In fact, if memory serves, that dirt road where it entered 183 also was near the ruins of the old “Anderson house.” Hazily, I remember a failing rock structure at that “T” where dirt met pavement of 183, just north of the stop sign. I do know that ruins were there until recent years, but may or may not have been Anderson place,’ Newbury related.
I found a few tidbits of information about the Anderson’s ranch that give those of us who are curious a few brief windows into what life was like there, and how the people of that family contributed to the formation of Brown County in its early days.
According to an excerpt from James C. White’s Book, The Promised Land, a History of Brown County Texas, “Moses Anderson was one of the pioneers of this county, and was the first county clerk, having been elected to that office in the first three elections held here. The Anderson home was established in the Salt Creek community, where he built a log house for his family.” An article in Brownwood News published in 2017 and written by local historian Clay Riley states, “There were 244 residents of Brown County in 1860, including Moses G. Anderson, an uncle and future father-in-law of William Columbus Anderson and David Q., brother of William Columbus Anderson. Salt Creek was identified on the 1863 Government Land Office (GLO) map of Brown County.”
Another report gives a more intimate view of ranch life at Salt Creek while the area was still frontier land. “Ellis Petty was born in Brown County, on Salt Creek, August 6, 1874,” according to a recorded interview published in 1938 by the U.S. Work Projects Administration. “His great-grandfather was Moses G. Anderson, first County Clerk for Brown County, Texas.” Petty told the following story about his grandmother’s ranch at Salt Creek. I am not sure if this was the Anderson place, or a family owned operation nearby. Nevertheless, it’s a great peek into how life was lived at this location and in that time.
“When I was about fifteen I went to work for my grandmother’s (S 3bars – Harriet Clements) ranch in Brown County,” Petty recalled. “She had a pretty big outfit, and kept a lot of horses. The country was for the most part open range then; however, they were beginning to fence some of it. There was one good bronc buster working for grandmother while I was there. His name was Cooke. He made a good cowhand when necessary, but his trade was bronc riding. He contracted to break horses, and he sure got some tough ones sometimes. I don’t believe old Booger Red had anything on him.” Petty also reminisced about the wire cutting wars and how they created a lot of bad feelings between the larger landowners and the smaller ones in that interview.
Such were the days around Salt Creek in the late 1800s. It was a tough life, and it took tough people to survive it. When Dr. Newbury contacted me about his remembrances from his youth spent near where the old Anderson place was once located, I drove out to see if I could find anything that looked like the pile of rocks he remembered that might once have been the old Anderson homestead.
The brush is thick and fenced off, but there is one old live oak in there that might have been there when Moses Anderson and family first set foot on the small rise where the house is said to have been. Maybe the Andersons built their wooden house there by that tree, for the shade. Across the road is an old rock wall. It’s possible that once those rocks fenced in livestock on the Anderson home place, while the tough grandma of Ellis Petty oversaw their care.
The sun was going down, so I stood out there to watch. I thought about that family, how they must have seen that exact same sight many times from a front porch nearby. Even the ruins of the house seem to be lost now, buried in the ever-shifting soil of progress and the relentless movement of time. Still something lingers in the spot–the shouts of cowboys urging one of their own to go on riding the toughest bucking horse, the click of a rifle pointed at an unknown sound through an open window. Many names and dates are lost here, but perhaps the land itself remembers some of what most of us have forgotten.
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com. Comments regarding her columns can be emailed to [email protected].
