The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 3, July 1899 - April, 1900 Page: 266

266 Texas Historical Association Quarterly.
were soon erected from the logs of the forest, and a thriving trade
sprang up with the neighboring Bedias and Coshatties and occasional
passing immigrants. As white settlers began to occupy the sur-
rounding country, the trading post developed into a store, the com-
modious log-cabin home into an inn, and when a new-comer, Thomas
P. Carson by name, had get up a. blacksmith shop, the beginning of
the town of Huntsville was made.
The spring which led to the founding of the town on its present
site still bubbles near where our electric light and ice factory now
stands, and until a few years ago supplied with its never-failing
stream the only public watering trough in town. The little open
prairie included the present public square. The trading post of the
Grays was on the edge of the prairie, near the present site of Mrs.
Cotton's ,drug store. The cabin home of Pleasant Gray occupied
the spot where the residence of our popular townsman, W. H.
Woodall, now stands-in fact, Mr. Wo-odall's residence contains some
of the timbers of the old house. Ephraim Gray's home stood in
what was known as "the cedars"-the corner lot north of the present
electric light plant.
The Anglo-Saxon is ever a home-lover. Even when banished
from his native land he loves to perpetuate in the geographical terms
of his new abiding place the names associated with his childhood
home. It was thus with Pleasant Gray. To the settlement which
he founded in the Texas forest he gave the name Huntsville, in
honor of his old home in Alabama. Worth noting in this connec-
tion, is the deep interest frequently evinced by the people of Pleasant
Gray's Alabama home town in the struggles of the Texas patriots.
The historian Yoakum mentions Huntsville, Alabama, as one of
the towns in the United States that in the autumn of 1835 raised
troops and funds to -aid the Texas revolutionists. In the massacre
at Goliad, a company known ,as the "Huntsville Volunteers" sealed
their devotion to the patriots' cause with their blood. Among the
historic relics belonging to the Normal School is a'muster roll of the
"Huntsville Rovers," enlisted in the service of the Republic of
Texas .at Galveston, May, 1842. The captain of the company was
Jeremiah Clemens, who was subsequently a member of Congress
from Alabama.
In the year after Pleasant Gray established his Texas home, the