Tomlinson Hill

by Chris Tomlinson

  At first a few gathered in knots and discussed the matter, and in the course of conversations the remarks were made that they, meaning the white people, clean the town of the negroes. This was carried to the negroes, who began to leave the neighborhood in a hurry. We have learned here that a number went to Bonham (the county seat) and reported the matter to the authorities there.

  Sometime last night a note was dropped in the front yard of Mike Yeager, a negro. It does not have anybody’s name signed to it and it reads as follows: “To the negroes of Leonard: You must leave this place; don’t let the sun set on you in Leonard tomorrow. This means all of you.”

  This gave the negroes another great scare and they have left hurriedly today. Only a few are left in town now.33

  The next day, the Dallas Morning News reporter confirmed that all of the African-Americans had left Leonard except for one of mixed race, whom whites called, pejoratively, a “Guinea negro”:

  The small hours came and grew larger until the sun came up, but it shone on no dusky faces, and today with the exception of John Browning, the village “Guinea negro,” not one has been seen on the streets.

  “Old Uncle John” has come and gone at will: the children have listened to his bear stories, the boys around the grocery stores have not forgotten to give him a slice of watermelon just as usual; he has shown the same inclination to “argify ’ligion,” [argue about religion] in fact he has the freedom of the town. He knows that Mike Yeager got a warning and that it said, “This means all of you,” but Uncle John prides himself on being an “ole time niggah,” and says it didn’t include him.34

  The news reports from Leonard spread across the state and the nation. Newspapers condemned the residents and the constable for the ethnic cleansing. One resident of Leonard wrote a letter to the Dallas Morning News, complaining about the stories describing the incident. J. A. Thomas claimed that “there was no real threat of violence” against the African-Americans living there, and said that the white residents only wanted justice and the black community was responsible for the boy’s death. In the Marlin Democrat, Kennedy called those responsible by their proper name:

  This act of the Ku Klux shows that community to be possessed of a gang of hoodlums that would disgrace the most disreputable community in Texas. It is an everlasting shame to Texas that such people reside within her limits. This is a free country and every person, no matter how humble has a right to live here.35

  Kennedy’s tirade against the racial injustice in Leonard was just the beginning of a fifty-year career campaigning for equal rights as the publisher of the Marlin paper. But the fiery Irish-American usually found himself in the minority among his fellow newspapermen, who more frequently supported the white mobs, most of whom were customers.

  The government’s inaction in Leonard sent a clear message to whites across the state and, the following week, whites distributed leaflets in Mineral Wells, High Island, Cleburne, and several other Texas towns, ordering all the African-Americans out. They all left.

  LEAVING THE PLANTATION

  R. E. L. graduated from Sam Houston Normal Institute on June 10, 1886, and returned to Tomlinson Hill with a teacher’s certificate of the first rank. His brothers had the farm under control, and Eldridge was planning his marriage to Ella Louise Landrum. Ella was the little sister of Lizzie Landrum, who had married Gus. Double in-laws were not uncommon in small towns during the nineteenth century.36

  R. E. L. got a job teaching at the Busby School, a white school near Little Deer Creek, not far from Tomlinson Hill. He eventually became chief pedagogue.37 He taught English, using the Blue Back Speller, and the school held Friday-afternoon spelling bees.38 A former student described what school was like in that era:

  During recess periods we played tag, wolf-over-the-river, stealing chips and mumble peg. We had no school band, but did have a little organ which had to be pumped by hand that we used for our exercises in the rooms. It was moved from room to room. I played for singing hymns and marching. Bessie Owens and Mrs. Tom Clampet, wife of a local attorney, also played for the school—had no Parent Teacher Association in those days—the girls wore hats and sunbonnets to keep their white and fair skin—students took buckets and baskets filled with buttered biscuits, boiled eggs, fruits and other goodies. Students started at nine in the morning and closed at four in the afternoon—hour for lunch and two recesses of 15 minutes—teachers applied the “hickory” and required stay-ins after school as punishment for misbehaving—usually a few “tough bullies” in schools—usually conquered by a razor strap.39

  R.E.L. taught for five years before the area’s white children started attending a new, larger school. He moved to Marlin, where he got a job as a deputy county clerk and spent his days recording deeds and marriages. R.E.L. lost another brother on April 29, 1888, when James died suddenly at the age of forty-five, leaving his forty-three-year-old wife, Emma, a widow with four children, who ranged in age from thirteen to nineteen.40 Emma remained on the Hill, and later that year her eldest son, William, married Harriet People, the daughter of a Confederate veteran from Arkansas. The couple lived with Emma until William and Harriet could build a home of their own nearby.41

  Down the hill in Cedar Valley, Milo Tomlinson’s son, Peter, celebrated the birth of his seventh child. In 1895, his wife, Josie, gave birth to Vincent in the family’s two-room cabin. Peter’s children attended Tomlinson Negro School, and the white Tomlinsons and Stallworths continued to serve as patrons. An African-American teacher named Annie Hodges ran the school in 1897. A school report in the Marlin Democrat said, “The patrons are taking a great deal of interest in the school and where we find cooperative patrons we will always find a good school. Attendance was good, very little tardiness.”42

  In 1891, R.E.L. began wooing Bettie Etheridge, one of William Etheridge’s twin daughters. Etheridge, the old Unionist, had just finished a term in the Texas house of representatives and taken over the county prison camp, where he leased black prisoners to local farmers. Whatever political differences the Tomlinsons and Etheridges may have had before the war did not carry over to their children. R.E.L. was thirty years old, but that didn’t matter to twenty-three-year-old Bettie. The two went on double dates with Bettie’s twin sister, Billah, and R.E.L.’s cousin, Frank Stallworth. Frank had also moved to Marlin to work at his father’s shop with his brother, the Marlin postmaster. On December 23, R.E.L. and Bettie, as well as Frank and Billah, married on Tomlinson Hill:

  The double wedding of R. E. L. Tomlinson and Frank M. Stallworth to the popular Bettie and Billah Etheridge twins on December 23, 1891 was the social event of the season. Old Beulah Church was packed with family from all over the county to witness the nuptial ceremony performed by the popular Baptist preacher Rev. J. R. M. N. Touchstone. F. M. Boyd, Sanford Tomlinson, Mary Liza Tomlinson, Lena Etheridge stood with the two couples. Following the wedding, an old fashioned In-fare and reception was enjoyed by the guests. Tables groaned under the weight of fried and baked chicken and all of the trimmings. The festivities even followed the two couples to Marlin, where they made their home.43

  After Frank won election as city marshal, R.E.L. decided to enter politics as well and won election as Falls County clerk in 1892, serving one, two-year term. Afterward, he returned to teaching and began selling real estate in addition to helping manage the family farm. R.E.L. joined the Masonic Temple and became a deacon in the First Baptist Church, helping the Reverend Touchstone build a new chapel in downtown Marlin. R.E.L. taught Sunday school, and Bettie joined the church’s women’s auxiliary.44

  Marlin was thriving, too, so much so that in 1890 the editor of the Marlin Ball released a special edition on October 23 for the ten thousand people living in Falls County. Thomas Oltorf wrote the opening article, welcoming all of the men moving to Marlin, “whether he served under the Star Spangled Banner or followed the Bonnie Blue Flag” carried by Texas troops in the Civil War. He said the special edition was to celebrate Marlin’s businessmen and farm
ers because he felt “a just and pardonable pride in their marvelous growth and general prosperity.”

  Marlin’s rapid growth meant that water was in short supply. The nearest surface water was a small creek that ran into the Brazos River six miles away. In 1891, the Marlin city council issued $25,000 in bonds to drill an artesian well that could supply the entire town with fresh water.45 The contractor drilled to two thousand feet and struck nothing, so in 1892, the council asked him to drill to three thousand feet. On the way down, the city struck hot mineral water, which stank of sulfur and, while drinkable, tasted sour. The water gushed to the surface, but residents demanded sweet water. So the city council decided to drill deeper, until on March 31, 1893, the city ran out of money. That summer, they asked the contractor to keep drilling deeper, running up $4,125 in debt. The contractor got down to 3,350 feet, where he broke the drill bit and couldn’t continue drilling.46 Marlinites pledged to pay the city’s debt and convinced the contractor and the council to develop the mineral-water well. The council ordered a network of pipes throughout the city so at least the fire department could use it, thereby driving down insurance rates.47

  The council tried to sell the mineral water and built a public bathhouse. They sprinkled streets to keep dust down and offered the mineral water at a lower price than fresh water. But there was still more mineral water than demand required and the excess ran down a gulley out of town.48 Residents who used the water, though, noticed it had strange qualities. Ill People and animals who bathed in the water benefited from its properties, and their chronic skin problems healed. Those who drank the water claimed to feel healthier. A black man bathed his mangy dog in the gulley, and the dog was cured. One day a man from Houston with a horrible skin disease passed through town, and Marlinites got an empty barrel and started soaking the man daily. In six weeks, he was cured.49

  Local doctors had read about healing waters in other places and ran tests on the Marlin water. They determined the mineral content was curative for both internal and external diseases, mostly bacterial problems. Several doctors and businessmen formed the Marlin Natatorium Company and built a bathhouse in 1895. That company transformed into the Marlin Sanitorium Company and began offering a course of healing baths for a fee. Local businessmen, including J. M. Kennedy, organized the Marlin Commercial Club to pool their money and buy national advertising promoting Marlin as a health resort. The club convinced the county commissioners to improve the road between Marlin and Waco and build a new bridge over the Brazos at Tomlinson Hill to attract customers.50

  Bizarre medical treatments, snake oils, and quackery ran rampant in the 1890s. The vast majority of ads in the Marlin Democrat were testimonials for some sort of mail-order remedy. Before the discovery of penicillin in 1928, there was no treatment for bacterial infections, but the sulfur in hot mineral wells was a natural antibiotic.51

  Once word got out, Marlin’s growth went into overdrive. By September 1896, there were between fifty and one hundred visitors a day seeking “the cure,” and the existing bathhouses and hotels couldn’t meet the demand. Local investors built more baths and hotels. Gus Welle won a license from the city to build the county’s first electric power plant and string transmission lines throughout the city. On January 9, 1897, the owner of the Marlin Opera House turned on electric lights for the first time, replacing the oil lamps he’d used for years. A few weeks later, his troupe performed Faust for an audience that included many tourists who had come to town for the waters.52

  Economic growth was always Marlin’s priority. Frank Stallworth’s uncle, Dosh Stallworth, repainted the interior of his general store and fitted it with oak-finished cigar cases and fixtures, promising that his store would be “the very latest and most up-to-datest place in this progressive burg.”53

  Ever the contrarian, Kennedy noted that while Marlin progressed, Texas was still a backwater: “The per capita (GDP) in Massachusetts is $264, while that of Texas is $8. We need factories.” Kennedy also reported in the same issue that the mayor fined three ladies with excessive makeup one dollar each for “vagrancy,” a sign of Marlin’s prosperity.

  LEST WE FORGET

  As Marlin grew and filled with enterprising businesspeople, Civil War veterans reached middle age and worried about their legacy. All of the Tomlinsons who had fought in the war had died by 1897, and the majority of Texans were too young to remember the war. The old veterans saw their numbers dwindling and worried that no one cared anymore about their sacrifice for the Confederacy. Frank Stallworth’s father, Nick Stallworth III, was the adjutant of the United Confederate Veterans’ group in Marlin, Will Lang Camp No. 299. He wrote a letter for the March 4 edition of the Marlin Democrat, calling on veterans to start showing up for meetings, to rally in memory of their dead comrades, and to remind Falls County residents of their sacrifices.

  UCV members elected Stallworth to represent them at a national convention and declared the last Tuesday of April as “Decoration Day of the Camp,” when they invited students from white schools to march with them through downtown to honor the lost cause of the Confederacy. At their August 29 meeting, the Marlin UCV decided public school history books also needed to reflect their version of the “War of Northern Aggression”:

  We offer no apology for the interest we now take in this matter, nor for the zeal with which we expect to urge this change. We have been patient under the misrepresentation, and often slander, that has been taught our children in the public schools. In the name of our dead comrades, in the name of those who survive, we demand that the truth be taught.54

  African-Americans also remembered the Civil War, but for entirely different reasons. Black leaders organized a club in 1896 to plan Juneteenth celebrations. In the March 18, 1897, edition of the Marlin Democrat, they called on the black community to organize that year’s celebration. The paper reported that the celebration went off well:

  Emancipation Day was observed in Marlin by the colored citizens of the city and vicinity.

  The day was ushered in by the booming of anvils. About 11 o’clock the procession passed through the principal streets to the fairgrounds where the celebration was held.

  A feature of the parade was a float upon which a miniature cotton field was represented. In the field were a number of darkies dancing and playing the banjo. The music for the occasion was furnished by a Waco band.

  The speakers of the day were Rev. S. W. R. Cole, Marlin; Prof. I. M. Burgen, president of Paul Quinn College, Waco; Prof. Blackshear of the Prairie View Normal.

  The colored citizens deported themselves with dignity befitting the occasion. There were no disturbances during the day and everything passed off pleasantly for those celebrating the anniversary of their freedom.55

  African-Americans in Marlin still hold a parade on Juneteenth and offer special sermons to mark the day. On the first Juneteenth after Barack Obama’s election, one family built a float with a miniature cotton field and wooden shanty. In place of a banjo player, they placed an Obama poster and a banner that read FROM THE OUTHOUSE TO THE WHITE HOUSE.

  Across the South in the 1890s, freedmen watched both Union and Confederate veterans organize social groups that transformed into political action committees. Veterans lobbied Congress to give them and their widows pension benefits. As with all wars, many of the veterans returned home handicapped, while others developed physical and psychological problems later in life. The former slaves, who had spent much of their lives physically abused, also demanded a pension for their years in slavery. Specifically, they wanted the forty acres and a mule that many thought the government should have given them at emancipation. While sympathetic whites in Congress introduced bills to provide some compensation, the measures never passed. That didn’t stop white con men from visiting black families and, for a small fee, certifying them as former slaves so they would qualify for a pension that didn’t exist.56

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  If taking from the hands of an officer in the dark hours of
night a helpless prisoner and swinging him to limb is not murder in the coldest, bloodiest, and most brutal form then the law is a travesty and Holy Writ a mockery.

  —J. M. Kennedy

  When most adult men were away during the Civil War, crime was rampant in Texas, and vigilantes routinely hanged murderers and thieves. Most of the victims were white, and the mobs wanted speedy justice for their communities. Lawmen rarely made any effort to punish those responsible, or even to record the lynchings. While most went unreported, a few small newspapers recorded these slayings and the editors shared their stories on the Associated Press telegraph wire with larger newspapers in Galveston, San Antonio, and other cities. Much of the information about Texas lynchings comes from these newspaper reports.

  Almost all of the victims of reported lynchings before 1865 in Central Texas were white. This is not to say that people did not kill African-Americans before emancipation; they just didn’t make it public. While slaveholders illegally killed some of their workers, such slayings were not the result of mob justice. There was also a taboo against killing another man’s slave, because it was the equivalent of stealing another white man’s property.1

  The amount of information known about lynching in a community also depended on the editor of the local paper. Before J. M. Kennedy began publishing the Marlin Democrat in 1890, there were no reports of lynchings in Falls County, while newspapers in neighboring counties reported dozens of slayings.2 Thomas Oltorf, publisher of the Marlin Ball, did not report on vigilantism in Falls County, and his paper’s silence certainly implies that the Marlin mayor’s son was more interested in boosting the county’s image than committing journalism.