Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County, Texas) Page: 8
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thereafter, married Sam Barnes. . . . Soon
after came the families of L.H. Scrutchfield,
J.K. Helton, William Gary, S.S. Locker, Wm.
McCurry, Allen Anderson, F.M. Gandy, A.C.
Pearce, the Mabrays, the Kells, the Horn-
beaks, the Thomas' and several others,
including the first Norwegian settlers."
As Roger Norman Conger writes in his
Highlights of Waco History, "firsts in any-
thing are of interest, and particularly in the
field of history." It is a significant truth,
however, that it is sometimes impossible to
establish who came into a hitherto undevelo-
ped region first. While it is known with some
degree of accuracy that Albert Barton settled
at the junction of Steele's Creek and the
Brazos River about 1850 and Ewell Everett
built a cabin near present Valley Mills about
the same time, there are those who will
dispute the fact that these two pioneers were
the "first" settlers in the new county; perhaps
John W. McKissick and James C. Frazier
preceded both Barton and Everett.
John W. McKissick, who built "either the
first or second hotel constructed in Waco,"
came to present Bosque County in 1847 and
purchased a league of land between Steele
and Cedron Creeks for twenty-five cents per
acre. McKissick traded his hotel in Waco for
this Brazos River tract of land. He built a log
house with a shed room on his land in 1847,
but because the land was so sparsely settled
and the Indian danger so very real, McKissick
returned to Waco. Two years later he re-
turned to Bosque County with his family and
built two more similar houses-one to serve
as living quarters, the other to serve as a
kitchen and dining room. Apparently the
McKissick family remained permanently in
Bosque County to become one of the first
families in the Steele Creek-Brazos River
area. The Barton family must have arrived
about the same time (1849). James C. Frazier
came to northeast Bosque County in 1849 but
remained only a short time. He returned to
the area in 1851 to settle near Steele Creek.
A third pioneer in the Steele Creek region was
R.S. (Sam) Barnes, a veteran frontiersman
and Indian fighter, who arrived in 1851-52
after a long career as a Texas ranger and
Indian fighter in the days of the Republic of
Texas. Barnes was also a pioneer settler on
Little River in Milam County and a veteran
surveyor with George B. Erath.
During the year 1850 the Universal Immi-
gration company of England purchased
27,000 acres of land along the upper Brazos
and soon dispatched thirty families (about
125 persons) to Texas to launch the so-called
colony of Kent. The English immigrants
arrived at Galveston in the fall of 1850 to
begin a long overland journey to central
Texas. In January 1851 they founded the
town of Kent at the foot of an elevation
known as Solomon's Nose on the west bank
of the Brazos River at Kimball Bend. SirEdward Belcher, leader of the group, attemp-
ted to interest other settlers in his project but
his efforts were futile. Hardships of the
frontier proved too much for the adventurous
English, and the town of Kent was abando-
ned in 1852. Writing in 1954, the late Frank
Frazier tells of the first settlements near
Kimball Bend:
Col. de Cordova had sold 27,000 acres of land,
comprising all of the Kimball Bend and all
of the country where Kopperl and Union Hill
now are, to a colony called the Universal
Emigration Company of England. Sir
8Edward Belcher, of the British navy, brought
the colony by ship to Galveston and to
Bosque County by ox wagons and settled on
this land. At a location about 3 miles north
of where Kopperl now is and 2 miles south of
Kimball at a pass in the mountains the colony
laid out a real city which they named the City
of Kent. Its main street lay right where the
public road now passes through this gap in
the mountains. The colony was doomed to
failure from the first and not a tree of the City
of Kent remains. The colony was made up of
city people who were not used to hard work
and they soon became dissatisfied. Some
were enticed away by unscrupulous land men
to other settlements, some fell from dissipa-
tion, and others just drifted away.
In the meantime other permanent settlers
established homes in the Bosque territory.
During the years 1851 and 1852 the families
of Lowery H. Scrutchfield, J.K. Helton,
William Gary, Jaspar Mabray, William
McCurry, and F.M. Gandy settled in the
Bosque River valley. In the fall and winter of
1852-53 the families of Frank M. Kell,
Samuel S. Locker, John Thomas, William R.
Sedberry, and A.C. Pearce settled in the
Bosque region.
Primary information is fragmentary con-
cerning these and other pioneer families that
migrated to the Bosque territory prior to the
organization of the county in 1854. Jaspar N.
Mabray, a native of Alabama, a veteran of the
Mexican War, and Indian fighter, settled on
the east bank of the Bosque River below the
confluence of Neils Creek sometime during
the year 1852. About the same time William
Gary built his cabin on the west bank of the
Bosque a short distance above the mouth of
Neils and claimed the distinction of being
"the upper settler on the Bosque" during the
year 1852. Other members of the Gary clan
settling in the same region prior to 1854
included Matt Gary, Gaffey Gary, and Isaac
Gary. Besides his vocation as a farmer, Isaac
Gary organized a small school for the children
of the lower Bosque River valley and had the
distinction of being one of the first, if not the
first, school teachers in the new territory.
William McCurry, a native of South Caroli-
na, settled on Neils Creek several miles west
of the Bosque River settlements, and Samuel
Locker, who was born in North Carolina,
located in the Bosque River valley near the
lands of Frank M. Kell. Other neighbors of
Kell and Locker included the families of
Monroe Locker and T.A. McSpadden. John
Thomas settled near Hog Creek in the
southwestern corner of Bosque County and
A.C. Pearce resided in the Bosque valley
before moving to the new town of Meridian
to become a merchant and tavern keeper.
Other heads of families arriving in the
Bosque territory prior to 1854 included
James Mabray, Lum McCurry, Archabal
(Archie) Kell, J.P. Locker, Nathaniel Mor-gan, Captain C.B. Underhill, Israel B. Standi-
fer, Presley Bryant, and possibly others. The
pioneers listed in the preceding paragraphs
were a part of the relatively small group that
can be called the "founding fathers" of the
new county.
Around 1854 the first Norwegian families
came to the county. Not all Texas localities
are fortunate enough to be the home of
immigrants coming to the frontier more or
less directly from Europe. The Bosque
territory, however, was selected as a perma-
nent home by several hundred pioneerfamilies from Norway. These sturdy Norsem-
en, following the lead of Kleng Peerson, Jthn
Nordboe, John Reinert Reierson, and others,
settled at Four Mile Prairie and Brownsboro
in Kaufman and Van Zandt counties in the
late 1840's. Several years later, a small
number of these people found their el dorado
in the hills of Bosque County; it was here that
they established the community of Norse. In
the years that followed, the Norwegian
population of the county grew in strength and
influence. As a result, a recent edition of the
Texas Almanac points to the area around
Clifton as a "distinctive community, the
principal Norwegian-descent center of the
state." The Scandinavian contribution to the
culture and society of the county will revolve
around the descendants of those pioneer
families.
Ole Canuteson (accompanied by Canute
Canuteson) was the first Norwegian settler to
move to Bosque County. He migrated to the
new territory in 1854 and chose a homesite
in the Neils creek valley "on the north side
of Neils Creek about 8 miles from its mouth
and about 13 miles due south of Meridian."
Canuteson's 320-acre tract of land included
the north bank of Neils Creek, a spring, and
"large supplies of timber, enough for fuel
supplies and building and fencing needs."
Canuteson was soon followed by others. Ole
Pierson came to East Texas from Norway in
1853 and was among the Norwegian group to
move to Bosque County in 1854. Also primar-
ily interested in timber and water, Pierson
selected a tract of land on a knoll only a few
hundred yards from the small stream. Stock
pens were constructed of both rail and rock.
During the years of the great depression
(the 1930's), the late Oris E. Pierson, who
taught American history (and a lot of other
values that were good and true) to hundreds
of young students in the Clifton schools,
recorded the pioneer years of his ancestors in
the Bosque hills.
County Organization
By the winter of 1853-1854 the population
of the lands along the Bosque River was
sufficient to warrant political organization.
Bosque County was created from the McLen-
nan territory by an act of the state legislature
on February 4, 1854. This act defined the
boundaries of the new county and provided
for a commission of six members to locate the
county seat "as near the center of the said
county as possible." As a result of the
legislative directive, Lowery H. Scrutchfield,
Samuel S. Locker, William McCurry, Jaspar
N. Mabray, and William Gary (T.E. Everett
could not attend) assembled at a post oak
grove east of the Bosque River and north of
Meridian Knobs and Bee Mountain on June27, 1854. They decided to accept a grant of
100 acres of land from Dr. Josephus Murray
Steiner of Fort Graham and additional
twenty acres from Andrew Montgomery. The
commissioners then decided to locate the
county seat on this tract of land; Jaspar N.
Mabray proposed that the future town be
named Meridian because of the proximity of
the site to Meridian Knobs and Meridian
Creek.
During the week that followed, George
Barnard Erath of Waco surveyed and laid off
the town of Meridian on sixty acres of the
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Bosque County History Book Committee. Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County, Texas), book, 1985; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth91038/m1/24/?q=campbell&rotate=270: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Denton Public Library.