“Do you have a card?” the man asked. He sat behind a desk crowded with papers, with a filing cabinet tucked to one side of the desk, a peek-through counter on the other, as if he’d built a fort of paperwork from which to face newcomers like me. His skin looked odd from long exposure to low-bid fluorescent tubes in the windowless room of a government building. Though his manner was professional, his voice was impatient.
I replied that I had a Library of Congress card, but he wasn’t impressed. (Honestly, I haven’t found much use for the LofC card, either.) He gave me several papers to fill out, asked me for my driver’s license, pointed toward the card catalog and returned to his paperwork fort. Soon he presented me with a little rectangle of cardboard allowing me access (though not guaranteeing access) to the archives of the State of Texas.
The room itself was artful: somehow the architect had managed to make the room both functional and amazingly bland – quite an accomplishment given the grandeur of the building encasing it. It’s clever what you can do with some wood-grained Formica and a drop ceiling.
The Texas State Library and Archives building faces the senate wing of the Capitol, wears a burnished deep blush granite skin and sports the six seals of Texas. It looks quite impressive from the outside. The foyer continues the grand theme, with its sparse collection of documents, including a facsimile of the Texas Declaration of Independence. In the foyer I found a receptionist and an armed DPS guard.
While it contains many documents vital to our understanding of Texas, it also contains a jumble of papers that are only remarkable because they’re old, like the box of receipts from the Kennedy era squirreled away in your garage. The building in many ways represents the boxes in the State’s garage, though they’re slightly better organized.
After signing in at the foyer and heading to the archives room, where you sign in again, and passing the paperwork required for the all-important card, you are given a table, a form, and access to the card catalog.
The collection’s catalog is not computerized, as far as I could tell. Luckily I am of a certain age, and my training at Hal Peterson Junior High School came in handy: I can still use a card catalog, though this one is unique. Gone are the simple ideas of subject, author, title; this card catalog is organized along the phonetic sounds of the Babylonian alphabet, and cross-referenced by the five tones found in classical Asian music.
In truth, this card catalog should have been named Legion after the demons in the New Testament story: it is not one card catalog, it is many. The three main card catalogs there can be summarized as “Interesting Things,” “Other Interesting Things,” and “Interesting Things not Classified Elsewhere.” Then there were several other (obscure) catalogs.
Having found a few promising items hiding in the (obscure) catalog, I scribbled out my form and waited at my table.
This gave me time to observe my fellow researchers. Two main things became apparent: First, the researchers in the archives room seldom move. They are immobile, like a forgotten moss or fern. Secondly, one should refrain from whistling. Even the man behind the paperwork fort demonstrates facial coloring when one whistles. It’s a small point, but it’s important: No whistling.
After only a brief wait the box I requested arrived at my table; I found for each box the routine was the same. The librarian instructed me on the use of the materials, taught me how to use the place marker, told me the routine for requesting photocopies, and, frowning, advised me to never, ever use a pen in the archives room. (I had filled out my form in ink.)
We went through this routine each time they brought me a box, and the routine was repeated even when the same person brought me the box, once after an interval of only a few minutes. Complete strangers can tell I’m a slow learner.
My first day, I’m sad to report, yielded very little new information, though I enjoyed reading a first-person account of the arrival of the Miles Lowrance family in Kerrsville (as our town was then called). This story is repeated in Bob Bennett’s excellent history of our county.
Mr. Lowrance asked a man standing by a fence in a lonely, desolate stretch of the Texas frontier how far it was to Kerrsville – to which the man replied “You’re in Kerrsville now.” Our town must have been quite impressive to travelers at the time.
The second day I had better luck, stumbling across the papers of James Kerr, for whom our county is named. One of the more interesting items was a small journal, about the size of a checkbook, though thicker, in which Kerr jotted things he needed to remember. Some of them might surprise you.
I’ll share more about the little book next week.
Until then, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who likes to whistle.
A little past 9 a.m. yesterday, the first copy of the Sept. 29, 1887 Kerrville Eye to be printed in Kerrville in 119 years rolled off of our digital press. What had originally been printed by Robert Guthrie (at the building which still bears his name on the corner of Earl Garrett and Main Streets in Kerrville) using moveable type smashed directly on waiting paper had been transformed into binary data — strings of ones and zeroes — and translated into color images at our Water Street office.
The original had been printed only a few blocks away from my office, but getting a copy of this important newspaper for Kerrville proved to be quite difficult. The University of Texas, my alma mater, had it squirreled away in the Center for American History. They wanted a fortune for its release — more than $200. Actually, they wanted a fortune for a photograph of the newspaper, including $100 for “preservation fees.”
Several bureaucrats at the Center told me how reasonable their fees are, and how their funding had been cut, etc., etc., etc.
To help insure this newspaper is not held for ransom again I will be happy to provide free copies to interested people at our office at 615 Water Street. I am also posting copies of the four pages on the front window of our shop. The old newspaper makes for interesting reading.
I had wanted a copy of the newspaper because it is the issue published as the railroad came to Kerrville in 1887. My search for this newspaper began when Joanne Lochte Redden loaned me some photographs of a mysterious parade in downtown Kerrville. I will post these photographs in the front window of my office, too.
The old photographs show a parade approaching the Heritage Star (at the intersection of Earl Garrett and Water Streets today) from three (count them, three) different directions. The photographs show flags and bunting everywhere, and two large archways erected on Water Street; one about where One Schreiner Center is today, in the 800 block of Water Street, and one where Pampell’s is today, in the 700 block. The puzzle came from a banner beneath the archway near where Pampell’s is today: it read “Wilkommen.”
It was my theory that the banner was meant for visitors to our city for whom “Wilkommen” was an everyday greeting; several communities near Kerrville conducted most of their everyday business in German until the late 1910s. What would bring a lot of German-speaking visitors to Kerrville, I wondered?
I thought it might have been the first train to arrive here in early October 1887.
According to the Texas Transportation Museum website, “at 11:45 AM on Oct. 6, 1887, the first train arrived in Kerrville. On board the six Pullmans were 502 passengers, 200 from San Antonio, 131 from Boerne, 141 from Comfort and 30 from Center Point. Altogether this was 200 more people than actually lived in Kerrville. It was a banner day for the town, with parades and speeches.”
I was hoping this copy of the Kerrville Eye would list some of the preparations being made for the arrival of the train. Since the Eye came out each Saturday, the Sept. 29 edition would have one week earlier than the train the following Saturday.
Reading over the issue I find some things around the Kerrville Eye office were, well, let’s just say they were relaxed. The front page of the issue is dated Thursday Sept. 29, 1887. The inside pages are dated Thursday, Oct. 6, with the explanation: “It will be noticed that the outside of this issue is dated one week later than the other. This resulted from the postponement of the barbecue; the outside was printed and off the press before this occurred. As the issue was 2,000 [copies printed], we considered it too much paper to waste and time and labor to loose [sic] to print 2000 more to correct so slight an error.”
So the issue I’ve tracked down was printed for the big day, the day the first train pulled into Kerrville.
More on this newspaper next week. If you’d like a copy, please stop by our office.
Until then, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native.
Last week I began my column “I love a good mystery, and that’s exactly what I stumbled upon early last year when Joanne Lochte Redden brought by a group of old photographs.” There are three photos of one event in old time Kerrville, a parade which seemed to double in on itself, approaching the intersection where today’s Heritage Star shines, approaching the intersection from three different directions.
I’ve had a lot of comments, and one very nice letter from Ms. Esther B. Wiedenfeld of Comfort. Of the parade photo, she wrote, the photo “tells me that it was when there were any number of German-Americans very active in civic activities in Kerrville.”
This is true. Many of the leading citizens of our community’s early days were of German descent; some, like Charles Schreiner, were born in Europe. Looking over a list of early Kerr County citizens, many bear a German-sounding surname.
Ms. Wiedenfeld also writes “the backdrop looks like a design from Comfort’s early parades.” This backdrop, or archway, is unique, and there are two, one each shown in two different photographs. These two large arches were erected on Water Street, large enough for the parade to pass beneath. Both arches are decorated with greenery; one sports a star at its zenith, the other a lyre. I noticed today the lyre is also made of greenery.
Still, the one confusing clue is a word emblazoned on a huge banner beneath the archway decorated with the lyre: “Wilkommen.”
Why did the archway say ‘Welcome’ in German?
I think the community was celebrating a big event, and I think the community was expecting visitors. Further, I think the community was expecting visitors for whom “Wilkommen” would have been a normal, every day greeting.
What events might meet these criteria?
Looking through old newspapers, I see the community celebrated several ‘trades days’ when the merchants banded together offering special pricing and incentives. Several of these were organized by J. E. Grinstead, an early newspaperman who was an early booster of the area.
But none of the accounts mention a parade.
There was one event, in 1887, that would qualify, but I’m not sure there were cameras in Kerr County at the time. While photography had been invented much earlier, cameras took a while to reach the frontier, and in 1887 Kerrville was still a frontier town.
But it is possible. Photography had become a hobby as early as the 1850s, but the process was much more arduous than simply clicking a disposable camera. Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), who wrote ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ ‘The Jabberwocky,’ and several learned treatises on logic, was an amateur photographer in England, and his photographs date from the 1850s to the 1870s. George Eastman founded the Kodak company in 1881. So it’s within the realm of possibility that an event occurring in 1887 in Kerr County would have been the subject of three photographs.
To confirm my theory, I’ve been communicating with my old alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin. The Center for American History, an overlooked department of The University, has in its collection a Kerrville newspaper dated September 29, 1887 which would either prove or disprove my theory, but my dear old school wants a fortune for a copy:
4 scans @ $20 ea.
1 CD @ $3
4 preservation fees @ $25 ea.
Postage and handling, $6
Sales Tax, $15.59
Total: $204.59
Not bad for a newspaper which originally sold for a nickel. Of course, the University of Texas is an institution noted for its lack of resources; perhaps they need the money.
Let me work on this this coming week. I’ll let you know how it goes next week.
Until then, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who would never charge ‘preservation fees’ for access to his extensive Kerr County collection.
I love a good mystery, and that’s exactly what I stumbled upon early last year when Joanne Lochte Redden brought by a group of old photographs.
Three of the photographs are of a parade. It’s the parade that’s the mystery. What were the people of our community celebrating?
Let me give you the clues I see in the photographs – saving the most important clue for the very end.
Looking at the photos, you can tell they’re taken of the same parade. A man on horseback and wearing a sash leads the parade, followed by two other horsemen, one bearing a flag. Just behind them, marching on the unpaved and dusty streets is a band. In the midst of the band are more flags and a strange metallic object. This metallic object is horn-shaped, with the bell facing downward; it also sports two pom-poms, drooping like a puppy’s ears on either side.
One of the most useful clues is missing from the photos – there are no automobiles in the scenes. Automobiles are useful because they help date the photo – you can look at the autos and guess roughly when the photo was made. Horses do not provide the same helpful clue.
So we know the photo was taken before 1908 when Jack Hamlyn brought the first automobile to the community. Mr. Hamlyn was the first auto dealer here, and in one short year Kerrville’s streets were clogged with eight motor cars.
The second clue I can infer from the photos – whatever they were celebrating, it was a really big deal.
Two of the photos show the parade marching on Water Street. In one, the group is heading west; the lead horse is about to Francisco’s Restaurant and the Heritage Star, the giant star in the roadbed at the intersection of Water and Earl Garrett streets. Yet in the next photo, the group is on Water Street in front of Pampell’s, heading east. In the third, the group is heading south on Earl Garrett street (then called Mountain Street). In all three photos the parade is heading directly for the Heritage Star. In all three photographs it appears the same people are in the parade.
Even in my more creative moments I cannot figure out how the throng went in these three directions without circling around the small community several times. A parade that circles on itself seems (at least to me) to indicate a large celebration.
That, and the street is elaborately decorated. There are flags on almost every building, there is bunting on facades and there are two large arches erected on Water Street, large enough for the parade to pass beneath. Both arches are decorated with greenery; one sports a star at its zenith, the other a lyre.
In all of the pictures it seems more people are in the parade than observing the parade. The sidewalks lining the parade are not filled with people though there are a few. Most of the sidewalks are clear except just beside the approaching parade. People are walking along with the band and the horsemen.
I would assume it’s a July Fourth parade except for two additional clues: first, not all of the flags appear to be the Stars and Stripes. A large tri-color flag hangs from Schreiner’s wool warehouse (which stood roughly across the street from today’s Arcadia theater). Because the photo is black and white, I cannot tell what three colors decorated this large flag; it certainly could have been red, white and blue. But another clue in the same photo makes me wonder if it could have been a different flag.
This is the clue that gives me the biggest problem: the archway with the lyre, which was erected about where Pampell’s and the corner of the Sid Peterson Hospital are today has a large banner which simply reads. “Willkommen!”
Why would you offer this German greeting on July 4th?
I think I’ve stumbled across one potential answer – and next week I’ll share it with you. Until then, please put on your thinking caps and help me solve this mystery.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who hopes a reader can solve the mystery.
It’s the time of year when Orion is directly overhead just before sunrise, staring straight down our chimneys. The Pleiades, just out of his grasp and dangling from the sky like a seven-bulb chandelier, seem oddly out of place in the zenith of the predawn sky. Autumn, easily my favorite season of the year, waxes on toward fullness, each day becoming more gibbous, edging toward plumpness.
This second wave of American snout butterflies visiting us was a surprise to drivers, but a welcome one to the birds who’ve been passing through, heading to their haciendas to the south. Several of us have noticed the birds offering a car cleaning service, feasting on the unfortunate snouts on cars’ grills. Bats, too, have been working the snout wave. Still, millions of these hapless butterflies skitter by, most seeming to travel toward the north and northeast, a direction which seems to me to be exactly the wrong direction to fly.
I enjoyed Thursday’s performance of the Symphony of the Hills, the first of this season. Once again the house was full and the music was wonderful. Sitting there I remembered something I’d thought of years before at one of my children’s soccer games.
Writing this column weekly for 12 years I’ve run across many stories about the families of our community, stories of generations of families here.
At that long-ago soccer game I noticed some of the children were descendents of early Kerr County families. As they ran up and down the field I saw them striving toward the goal, opposed, as it happened, by children of other old-time Kerr families.
Perhaps by greater coincidence, it happened that the two families had striven against each other before, several generations earlier. The several families on that field that day had been in competition on many fields before – in economic, political and even social competition. The soccer game I was watching (and cannot remember well) was just another of a long series of matches between these larger families.
Be patient with me, I’m getting to my point.
The result of all of that striving had less to do with the competitive nature of these families than with the community those efforts built.
Each of us plays better when we’re matched against a skilled opponent. We run faster, we plan better, we work harder. And through such efforts communities are made.
So, back to row G of the Cailloux Theater last Thursday evening: I think the Symphony of the Hills is one example of the striving of our community. Others that come to mind range from Playhouse 2000, the Point Theater and the Kerr Arts and Cultural Center, examples of our artistic efforts, to charitable efforts such as Raphael Free Clinic, the Salvation Army, Partners in Ministry and Any Baby Can. Even commercial efforts, like James Avery Craftsman, where silver and gold are molded and hammered into artful jewelry, or Mooney Aircraft, where pieces of aluminum and bundles of wires are constructed into flying machines, or the Burch’s shooting range, where the Olympic flag flutters over our community -- these are all bits of the mosaic of our community’s efforts to become, well, itself.
I sat there listening to the music Thursday and considered what we were doing. Hundreds of hours’ work had gone into preparing for the performance. Musicians had practiced, volunteers had organized, the Cailloux staff had set up… hundreds of hours had been spent.
And the audience, too, had gathered together from several counties to play its role. We listened and appreciated, our part of the bargain. We didn’t take the much more efficient route, downloading symphonic works onto our iPod and listening at our convenience, little white earbuds corked in our ears, multi-tasking our way through Sibelius or Grieg, pushing the pause button to take a phone call. We were part of the ritual of live music, where mistakes can (and do) happen, where imperfections haven’t been edited out, but where, on rare occasions, magic happens. We were there not to hear the sterile presentation of mass-produced compact disc, but the surprising accident of talent, of genius. We were there to be startled, and we got what we came for.
If you ask what our community is striving to become, look to see where it is making its efforts. Follow the money. Count the hours spent. Only then can you understand its dreams, only then can you see what we’re striving to become.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who strives to put words into sentences, string sentences into paragraphs, and tie the whole bundle with a plain bit of binder’s string.
Driving to work via the new bridge and road has changed my perspective on our community and I’m thankful to the taxpayers of the state for building the road so convenient to my daily commute.
The road connects the Coronado Street area of our city, where I live, to the heart of downtown, where I work.
For a while my drive to work was punctuated by the ebullience of the sun bubbling over the rim of the city’s eastern hills. The skies, painted in yellows, oranges and purples, and the dark outline of the distant hills made me stop more than once to take a photograph. It was like driving in a postcard.
Lately, though, the sun has been postponing its daily rise a bit longer each day, and my drive has been marked by the staccato lights of stars overhead contrasting with the warm puzzle of lights of our city to my left. From the new road, in the pre-dawn morning, our city looks like a spray of jewels on wavy bed of velvet, and, because I’ve spent my whole life here, I feel a special attachment to the place as I look over at it. In the early morning the lights don’t allow one to make out landmarks easily; it’s hard to tell from where all of the lights are shining. In the early morning light the city is more of a suggestion, an impression, a nuance, glittering in the valley, surrounded by the comforting arms of the ringing hills. I look over and don’t see the city I know, I don’t see the structures on a grid of a map. The lights twinkle as the city awakes. On my drives to work I have seen a city stumbling quietly for its first cup of coffee, its bed still warm and its dreams still vivid.
My favorite part of the drive is just past the municipal glow of the water treatment plant and before the official glow of the Kerrville State Hospital, there with its guard box and reflective turtles and complicated entryway. In the lull between these two governmental sites, the road wakes up and realizes it’s in the hill country. It weaves between the crowding hills to the south and the deep arroyos to the road’s north, little canyons that tumble to the green river below.
Past the state hospital the road is once again on the flat floodplain, and from there it’s smooth driving to Sidney Baker Street, a quick left, and crossing the Charles Schreiner Bridge another quick left into our parking lot.
The new bridge near the Armstrong’s Lakehouse restaurant, though it remains nameless, is a lovely thing. It has fancy lights and fancy arches along the rail lining its sidewalk and two small balconies on each side, perfect I suppose for stopping a minute to observe the river below. These balconies are decorated with stars in the sidewalk and are a nice touch. The bridge is equipped with lights beneath the roadway, shining on the river below. Approaching the bridge from the east, heading toward Highway 27, it glows like an Old World landmark. The new bridge is something to be proud of; while it serves a very utilitarian purpose, extra effort went into making it beautiful. This reminds me of a saying we saw carved into the mantle of a CCC-built cabin years ago, “the beautiful is as useful as the useful.” This new bridge is both.
Driving home in the evenings is quite a different drive. With the sun still shining, I can look to my right and see the city I know, picking out landmarks along the way. On the drive home the city is more concrete, more understandable. My eyes always search for the first sight of Tally Elementary School, where Ms. Carolyn works. The road flirts with a view of the school from a point just past the state hospital, so looking for the school takes some effort. I also inspect the progress being made on the Dietert Senior Center each day. From the new road the center seems to be coming along nicely.
If you haven’t had an opportunity to drive the new road or see the new bridge, burn a little gas this weekend and check them out. They’re a nice addition to our community.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who should ride his bicycle to work.
By Joe Herring Jr.
The Daily Times
Published September 16, 2006
I was very pleased Joseph Benham was named Citizen of the Year by the Kerrville Daily Times at the Kerrville Area Chamber of Commerce’s annual banquet Thursday evening.
I’m not sure when I first met Joe, but it must have been very soon after he and Verna moved here, escapees from suburban Houston.
Our common interest in words, especially groups of them strung together into sentences, then hopefully arranged into meaningful paragraphs, was our first bond. But we found we had many other common interests.
Classical music, for one. Joe’s leadership of the Symphony of the Hills as president this year has been one of many roles he plays in our community. The Symphony of the Hills, which only a few years ago played to small but appreciative audiences in Schreiner University’s Dietert Chapel Auditorium, now boasts a sold-out season for the second or third year in a row in the beautiful Cailloux Theater. With Joe’s leadership of its board, the orchestra will have four concerts this year, the first one next month, featuring the San Antonio Symphony’s Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio on violin. Another concert will feature rising stars, young players with great talent, and of course, the symphony will offer a free children’s concert early next year.
And we both share an interest in the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library. Joe Benham has been its tireless advocate, not only serving as president of the Friends of the Library, but also attending countless meetings of commissioners court and city council, urging our public officials to do the right thing and fully fund this important community resource. Unlike some of us, Joe has kept his cool when some public officials made remarks about the library that were, at best, misguided.
He’s also a student of history, active in the Sons of the American Revolution, a group dedicated to preserving the ideas and hope of the founding patriots.
When Kerr County celebrated its 150th birthday, many of the news items you read in local papers and heard on local airwaves were written by Joseph Benham. He keeps very busy writing press releases for scores of worthwhile causes, an often thankless job that many people assume “just happens.” Without his work publicizing events, many charitable groups would find attendance lacking at fund-raising events, and they would find it harder to complete their missions. Joe’s words, often printed without credit, have helped make our community a better place.
And, of course, he’s a columnist for the Kerrville Daily Times. Joe’s Wednesday column, found on the editorial pages, is a weekly “must read.” Always informative and often filled with sly humor, his column quietly reflects his long career in journalism. His words in this newspaper often precede issues about which we’ll read about later on the front page. With his journalist’s instinct he often reports issues in his column well before the community is aware of their importance. Even in his weekly missives he exerts a quiet leadership.
I guess it’s obvious: I think a lot of Joseph Benham and his lovely wife Verna. They’re good folk, and we’re lucky to have them in our community.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who really enjoyed the performance as Sonny and Cher offered Thursday evening by Kerrville’s own Carrie Overby and Brian Bondy. The beat goes on….
Ms. Carolyn and I snuck away this week for a quiet dinner at Rails, the little restaurant housed in the old railway depot on Schreiner Street, near Sidney Baker.
Many newcomers to Kerrville would be surprised that Kerrville had railway service up into the 1970s, but it did. There are many of us left who remember the trains that came to Kerrville.
Rails, by the way, is a nice spot for an excellent meal. Entrees range from below $10 to a few above $20, and everything I’ve tried there is very good. I especially like their use of the old depot, which was renovated by Mark Stone, because preserving some of our old buildings is so important.
There was a period when so many of our old buildings were demolished (in the name of progress) that I wondered if anything old would survive. In the span of a few short years landmarks such as the Bluebonnet Hotel, the First United Methodist Church, the Kellogg Building, the old bus station and the old wool warehouses downtown all vanished; many beautiful old homes along Sidney Baker Street also disappeared. So I am glad the old depot survived.
The building was in danger of being demolished when the Walkers saved it, if I remember correctly, running a hamburger restaurant there, and I believe there was another restaurant in the building before Rails opened several years ago.
Sitting there this week I had time to look at the old building and remember the trains that came slowly through town.
By the time I came on the scene here most of the remaining trains were freight trains. I do not remember a passenger train; they must have stopped earlier.
Hugh Hemphill, a train enthusiast and author, tells me he has a film made from the caboose of the last train to Kerrville, in 1971. Mr. Hemphill, who has written several histories of trains in Texas, is also with the Texas Transportation Museum in San Antonio. He would like to bring the film of the last train to Kerrville here and present it to the public if enough people are interested.
According to the Texas Transportation Museum website, “at 11:45 AM on October 6, 1887, the first train arrived in Kerrville. On board the six Pullmans were 502 passengers, 200 from San Antonio, 131 from Boerne, 141 from Comfort and 30 from Center Point. Altogether this was 200 more people than actually lived in Kerrville. It was a banner day for the town, with parades and speeches.
“At the center of it all was Captain Charles Schreiner, whose visionary plans for the community were being realized in front of his eyes. He had been a significant part of the effort to raise the $180,000.00 demanded by the railroad, the San Antonio and Aransas Pass, before it began work just over a year earlier, August 26, 1886. With the 71 mile line complete, Kerrville's future growth and expansion were assured.”
The depot which now houses Rails restaurant came later, in 1915, according the website. The first depot had been destroyed by fire in 1913, and for 2 years the community had been without a depot.
Of the new depot, the Kerrville Mountain Sun reported “the structure is to be of brick, and will be modern throughout. When completed it will be one of the handsomest passenger depots in a small town in the state.”
Sitting there this week, in the soft light, listening to classical guitar over the restaurant’s speakers, it was hard to imagine the building as a passenger depot.
My own memories of the train include its low rumbling and clacking as it passed by the playing field next to First Baptist Church. Many of us children (who should have been inside the church instead of playing baseball outside it) would run alongside the train as it passed, begging the engineer to blow the whistle.
On those evenings we were actually sitting inside the church we’d listen for the train. In those days, before air-conditioning was considered such a necessity, the big blue stained glass windows of the church would often be left open. In addition to the occasional bird (or bat) that flew into the sanctuary, the rumbling of the train was always a welcome distraction. Again from our pews we children would silently urge the engineer to blow the train’s whistle, and when he did, the preacher would pause, look out the south windows, and wait.
Even this brief respite was welcome.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who often daydreamed, as a boy, of hopping the train as it left town, just to see where it went.
Ms. Carolyn told me to stop it. “You’ve stretched out this story on Major James Kerr long enough,” she said. “Tell them what you’ve learned about him this week, the one thing few people know about him.”
And so I will.
Major James Kerr, for whom our city and county were named, was quite an interesting fellow. I’ve used the last few columns telling you some of his story. This series of articles began after a chance meeting with Walter Womack, a descendent of Major James Kerr. He intrigued me with one comment: “You know, there is one thing few people know about James Kerr.”
It’s true. One thing few people know about the man whose name we say almost every day.
Some might think the fact that James Kerr spent the last few years of his life practicing medicine would be the one surprising thing I’ve learned. On the frontier medical knowledge was in great demand, and James Kerr, after the tragic loss of his first wife and three of his children, knew firsthand the tragedies that pioneer families faced when disease or misfortune struck. According to an excellent oral history prepared by Ann Bethel, of the Kerr County Historical Commission, on New Year’s Day, 1846, Dr. James B. P. January a physician of Jackson County granted Kerr a license to practice medicine. Kerr charged $2 for a regular call, $5 for a night call, and an extra $5 if he had to sit up all night with a patient.
One particular patient’s account tells a lot about the practice of medicine on the frontier, the account of his visit with the wife of Samuel McCullouch, Locola. “In a 2-day struggle for her life, Kerr bled her three times, administered medicine costing $6 and ran a bill totaling $30 before she died at one-half past 4 pm. Kerr then sold McCulloch ‘forty feet of planks’ for her coffin.”
But Kerr’s medical practice is not the one surprising thing I learned about James Kerr.
Nor would it be Jack Auld’s relating how his forebear, Joshua Brown (who founded Kerrville) served in the Texas Revolutionary War alongside James Kerr. According to Auld, the pair were a part of a group tasked with disrupting Mexican military supply lines. They would find a freight wagon train, wait for an opportune moment, steal up quietly, and remove the ‘lug nuts’ which held the wagon wheel onto the axle, then ride away like the wind, leaving the wagon stranded with its load of vital military supplies. It was an effective way to cripple the advancing Mexican army, but it was a highly dangerous mission. I’m hoping Mr. Auld will tell me more stories about Joshua Brown soon.
No, the one thing I learned about James Kerr – the one thing I’ve been keeping back from these pages for more than a month – has been corroborated by two different members of the James Kerr family. Both Walter Womack and Ruth Simons (Kerr) Ray, who was interviewed by Ann Bethel and Clarabelle Snodgrass for the useful oral history I mentioned above – both members of the family say the same thing. This new piece information solves an old mystery for me: why on Earth did Joshua Brown originally name our community “Kerrsville?”
I can see why the ‘s’ was dropped in the 1860s; while most people would probably pronounce the name ‘Kerrzville,’ a few might pronounce it where it sounded like ‘Curse-ville.’ The ‘s’ had to go.
Both Walter Womack and Ruth Simons Ray say that Major James Kerr pronounced his name as if it were spelled “Karr.” They both say the family pronounces the name as if it rhymes with the word “Car.”
“It’s always been ‘Karr’ and they even call it ‘Karr’ in Gonzales,” Ms. Ray told Bethel and Snodgrass.
Joshua Brown, who had served in the Texas Revolution with James Kerr, who was a great friend of James Kerr, would have pronounced his Kerr’s name as Kerr himself pronounced it. When Joshua Brown named our community, when he said the name himself, I’m almost positive he pronounced it “Karrzville.” As newcomers came to town they changed the pronunciation to reflect how the name is spelled. I’m sure some of the original settlers tried to correct the pronunciation for several decades and then finally gave up.
There. I hope it’s been worth the wait, reading about the life of Major James Kerr for these many weeks, and I hope you agree with me. This one new piece of information does change the way one thinks about the name of our community and county.
Until next week, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who pronounces his last name ‘hair – ing’
Several of you have asked me when I am going to finish this series on Major James Kerr, the man for whom and are named, wondering when I will finally get to the one new piece of information I’ve learned that will change the way we think about the name of our community. I’m thinking it might be this week.
For those of you just now joining us, I have used the past several columns trying to get to the newly discovered information, though limitations of space have prevented me (so far) from reporting what I’ve learned.
(This series of articles began after a chance meeting with Walter Womack, a descendent of Major James Kerr, intrigued me because of one small comment Mr. Womack made: “You know,” he told me, “there is one thing few people know about James Kerr.”)
Last week we left Major Kerr residing beside the with his only surviving child, a daughter named Mary Margaret.
But even from this isolated spot, Kerr was in the thick of things in the early history of and knew many of the leaders of the state.
According to a 1957 sketch written by James Kerr Crain, a descendent, “James Kerr's association with Stephen F. Austin developed into a warm friendship that ended only with the death of with Kerr at his bedside. When young Mary Margaret Kerr was baptized into the Catholic faith, Stephen F. Austin was her godfather. It so happened that on her ninth birthday Austin was at the Kerr home, Mary Margaret, or Minnie as she was called, had begged her father often to give her a gun for her very own; on this birthday she renewed the request which was overheard by her godfather. He sent into an order for a small and light rifle to be mounted in silver and to bear the inscription: "Minnie's Rifle". It was an excellent weapon and fired accurately; so much so that many were the requests to use it.”
Another aspect of James Kerr is repeated in the sketch.
“The Texas James Kerr was not a handsome man. Indeed, at one of the rare social gatherings of the sparsely settled community he was a contestant in a simple frontier game called, ‘Uglying for the Knife.’ The contestants lined up before the judge and the one deemed the ugliest was presented with a knife as a prize; the winner must then carry the knife until he met an uglier man to whom he would transfer it. On this occasion a fellow contestant striving for the prize called out; "Stand just as God Almighty made you, Kerr." Whether our ancestor was making faces at the time is not related; at any rate he won the knife. A year or so later Major Kerr attempted to pass the knife to a newcomer who recoiled exclaiming: "Mister, shoot me but don't give me that knife, if I am uglier than you then I want to die." I have concluded always from this sequel that Major Kerr was not making faces when he won the knife.
“In 1833 James Kerr married a second time. His bride was Sarah Fulton, the adopted sister of John J. Linn of . This made life more pleasant for little Mary Margaret who had never really known her mother. Four days before this second marriage James Kerr was baptized into the Catholic Church. I have in the old Kerr bible the baptismal certificate. It is written in Latin and is dated September 20th 1833. The ceremony was performed in San Patricio by Father John Thomas Malloy. His sponsors were Richard Everard and Elizabeth McGloin.”
Well, I’ve run out of space again, but we’re a lot closer to the surprising new information I’ve learned. Hopefully I’ll get it squeezed in next week.
Until then, all the best.
Joe Herring Jr. is a native who hopes to write a book about the history of our area someday.
