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was the principal diet in those days, and it was a wholesome diet.

I was born in Alabama May 29, 1847, and have lived in Texas sixty-nine years. In 1858 Father, Warner Polk and Matthew Clarke began to

plan to get their stock back on the home range, as

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T.

J. M. COWLEY Fentress, Texas

they were pretty badly scattered over the country. F. Clark, Frank Polk, W. B. Cowley, my brother, and myself worked together until the Civil War broke out, when Father sent me with Joe Eustace, Fred Houston and Bobbie Dorn to Brownsville with a lot of cotton for Mr. Huff, who lived two miles below the present site of Luling. We brought back dry goods and groceries for him. In 1862 we went below Corpus Christi after salt, and used ox teams to freight with. My team was composed of six yoke of oxen that were pretty hard to manage. In 1865, in company with P. G. Holmes and T. F. Clark, I went to Mississippi with a drove of horses and mules which we had to sell on time, returning home in January, 1867, and the balance of that year I hauled cotton to San Antonio, freighting with mule teams.

In the spring of 1869 I went up the trail to Abilene, Kansas, with J. H. Smith, George Eustace, Will Hardeman, S. M. Eeds and Cout Rountree in the outfit. We had 1,500 cattle in the herd, 160 of which belonged to me, 175 belonged to George Eustace, and the remainder belonged to J. H. Smith, who bossed the herd. We went by Waco and Fort Worth, where we purchased supplies to carry us through to Abilene. It was cold and raining most of the time, and the creeks and rivers were all

overflowed. When we came to the Smoky River, Jack Kyle pointing the herd, I was riding a little mule, and when I started in to swim the driver, a man whom we did not know, who was riding a bob-tailed horse, said if my little mule could swim the river "old Bob" could swim it. His horse sank with him and the man was drowned. I threw a rope to him but he failed to catch it. His body was recovered three days later. From Abilene myself and S. M. Eeds shipped our horses and mules to Junction City where we bought wagons, loaded up and started back to Texas, reaching home in November.

In 1870, 1871 and 1872 I and my brother, W. B. Conley, freighted to Port Lavaca, and in 1873 we built a home for our parents where Fentress is now located. On November 19, 1874, I was married to Miss Amanda Eastwood, and the following year we moved to the place where my wife was born, two miles above Fentress, where we have lived all these years. We had three children, one of whom died five years ago. The other two, boys, live at Fentress. I served as county commissioner from 1909 until 1916.

SOLD CATTLE IN NATCHEZ FOR $4.50 A HEAD
A. E. Scheske, Gonzales, Texas

I came to Texas with my father and his family in 1855 when I was a small boy. We settled about two miles north of Gonzales, which at that time was a very small place, with just a few stores and a handful of people. The country was all open, mostly prairie, with an abundance of cattle, horses and hogs. And we used to go hog hunting like people hunt deer today, and kill wagonloads of them, some of the finest you ever saw.

I believe the cattle business to be the greatest enterprise the world has ever seen, even greater than the manufacture of automobiles is today, considering the time and the conditions. In the early days the cattle

business was not only the greatest thing to Texans and to the people of the South, but people from everywhere flocked to Kansas to see the vast herds that came from Texas, and the herds that were on the plains there, as well as the buffalo that were so numerous in the early seventies, and which men killed by thousands for their hides from which to make leather and robes. In 1876, when we passed Doan's Store on Red River, we were told that 400,000 cattle had passed there that year for the markets. Lots of them were left unsold and thousands of them froze there that winter. The herd I was with was among those which had to remain through the winter. I do not know of very many of the boys who went up with me that trip. John Henry Lewis, who lives a few miles north of Harwood, a fellow named Van Dyke of Marfa, and my brother, J. A. Scheske, of Terrell, are the only ones that I know of just now, except some negroes.

My experiences of the trail dates back to the early sixties, when I was a mere boy. The first trip I ever made was with a bunch of horses for the Confederates under Captain H. S. Parker. We drove to Harrisburg. I made three trips there with horses, two under Parker and one under Captain Kelley. The news of Lee's surrender reached us at Harrisburg, but Captain Kelley went on nevertheless. After the war we drove cattle. there in small herds to be shipped. I remember one trip I made with Sam Moore. We had about 400 steers and it was in December, 1868, a very cold winter, Eugene Johnson and I were on herd the first part of the night, a high norther was blowing and it was so cold we couldn't keep our cattle from drifting, and we stayed with them all night. When the boys found us the next morning we could not stand up, our feet and legs were so chilled.

In 1869 the first herd went to Kansas and one to Shreveport, La. Bill Greathouse was the first man to leave Gonzales county for Kansas with a herd of cattle.

He lived about a mile west of the present town of Dilworth, on Peach Creek. They had about 1,000 head. Greathouse himself acted as boss. C. A. Mitchell and Lump Mooney were two that left here with him. In Kansas they all had the cholera and were nursed by the Indians. Mooney and Greathouse died there and Mitchell got well and came back to Gonzales. Andy Moore, who I was with, left Gonzales county for Shreveport, La., in 1869 under the N7 connected brand. We went to Natchez, where the cattle were sold for four dollars and fifty cents a head, steers and stock cattle mixed.

In 1870 I left Lavaca county for Sam Moore, who at that time lived at Moulton. A fellow named Burnett of Lavaca county owned an interest in the herd. They turned over to me a thousand head of cattle on the Lavaca Prairie under the Figure 2 brand. Lee Goss, Will Thornton and John Walker (negro) were some of the boys with the herd. We made the trip to Abilene, Kans., in sixty-four days. When we crossed the Red River it was on a rise and we had to make a raft of willow logs. John Walker, and I put the cattle across. We had a fearful electrical storm that night and the other fellows got cut off from us and the negro and myself were left with the herd all night in the Territory. These cattle were sold to a man named True of Missouri, for whom I herded until fall. On this trip, in Kansas, after the cattle had been sold, we lost part of the horses and I went after them, and rode across the plains for three days trailing them by a drag chain. I came across Big Foot Wallace coming from Columbus on his way out to California, and he told me that our horses had taken up with another herd about five miles south of the Little Arkansas. He insisted on me staying all night with him and his crowd.

In 1871 I went up the trail for J. H. Paramore, who at that time lived at Gonzales. We had a thousand head of the 3P cattle which we also sold to Mr. True, and we

crossed the cattle into Iowa where we turned them loose in the cornfields. Those farmers had made lots of corn that year, which was sold for ten cents per bushel where they could sell it. Corn was so plentiful the farmers were using it for fuel instead of wood. We crossed the cattle where St. Louis is today. That place was then about the size of Gonzales today. An election was being held there and Mr. True tried to get the ferry to take our cattle, but the boatman would not do it, said he was too busy getting people across to vote, so we started them across ourselves and the ferryman ran his boat right into the middle of our herd and turned them so we had to clear the way in the usual manner Texans cleared the way in those days. We were in St. Louis when Chicago was burned.

In 1872 I started up with a herd of horses for myself, but decided to turn to Louisiana, and we got into the worst money panic the South has ever experienced, and we couldn't sell any of them. We almost starved for lack of food, and when we got down to our last fifty cents we bought a bushel of apples which we lived on for about three days, without anything else.

In 1873 I went up with 1,800 head of cattle for Bob Houston and G. W. Littlefield with the Mallet herd. We reached Selina in fifty-five days. The late Ship Parks of the Cross ranch near Fort Stockton, was along, as was also the late D. B. Hodges, J. H. Lewis, a man named Robertson and my brother, J. A. Scheske. That year we passed everything on the road. We made one trip in fifty-four days. A man came to us in Kansas and said that he had heard of us all along the trail and tried to catch us but couldn't. After our herd had been delivered we were started to Fort Sill with 2,200 beeves for the Indians. On our way we had lots of trouble with the Cheyenne tribe. We started with a guide, but he got off with some other herd and the Cheyennes got into our cattle. We had several mix-ups with them, and when the

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