Early Pioneer Life

Information Sources:  Mrs. Mabel Scott, Keller; Mrs. D.E. Hedgecock, Dallas; Lucille Price Ramsey, Dallas.

For years there was continual warfare between the white and the red man.  Another neighbor, William Youngblood, was pounced upon, killed and scalped while alone in the woods, splitting rails.  My father and Uncle Sim Ritchie, encountered this same murderous band of Indians and fought them off until rescued by the Rangers who had been trailing the Indians. 

An uncle, John Lopp, was killed near Beeman’s place, about five miles north of Weatherford.  His name is engraved on the memorial dedicated to the pioneers by Parker County citizens.  (An account of this is given in Wilbarger’s “Indian Depredations of Texas”).

For better protection against the red marauders, Father moved our family near to a government fort, garrisoned by U.S. soldiers.  This fort, built on the banks of the Trinity River, was named Forth Worth in honor of William Jenkins Worth, a commander of American forces during the Mexican War of 1846.  Here we remained until 1866, when we moved fifteen miles north of the fort.  Father built a log cabin home and cleared land for cultivation.

Times were hard indeed.  Confederate money had depreciated and gold was out of circulation.  Some folks hoarded and buried their gold.  Our family managed to get along without going hungry.  We raised garden stuff, some wheat and corn and a few chickens.  An old water wheel mill ground our corn.  Meat was no problem.  There was plenty of wild game consisting of deer, antelope, turkey and prairie chickens.  Coffee and sugar came from New Orleans.  The sugar was brown and unrefined; there was no white sugar.  Finally, we couldn’t get brown sugar and had to substitute molasses.  Sometimes we boiled the molasses down until it sugared.  This we used for all sweetening.  Soda, we made from a homemade ash hopper.  From salt springs we hauled water which was boiled in huge kettles until it crystallized through evaporation and cooling.

Mother, with the aid of her children, spun and wove cloth for our clothing. Little attention was paid to style, but we were particular about looking neat and being comfortable.

As for social activities, they were few and far between.  Pioneer life was a saga of hard work from morning to night, and we had to retire early to rest our tired bodies.  Our get-to-gethers were meetings at the church, school houses or an occasional quilting bee.  People came from miles around to attend the quilting bees.  We quilted all day and danced all night.  Young and old came, bringing baskets of food which we ate with keen relish.  There were no finicky appetites among the pioneers.  Dancing, when I was a young woman, was a wholesome pastime.  Everybody danced, including members of the church.

Weddings were also big events, followed by feasting and dancing at the bride’s or bridegroom’s parents home.  Fiddlers furnished the music on these occasions, playing the popular tunes of the times.

The only express mail route from east to west passed within eight miles of our home.  The mail station was near the boundary line between Tarrant and Denton Counties.  I remember a knock on our door one cold winter’s night.  It was the pony express rider who had lost his way in a snowstorm.  My husband gave him directions that soon put him back on his route.

The first church built was at Mt. Gilead, a small community five miles east of our home.  This also was the first church built in what is now Tarrant County.  We had services there about once a month.  When we first settled here, we did our trading at Elizabethtown, a small settlement on Elizabeth Creek.

My brother, T.A. Lopp, helped to build the railroad extensions of the Texas and Pacific from Dallas to Fort Worth.  The first rail line north of Fort Worth passed through our pasture and I shall never forget the day we all stood in our front yard to see the train go by.  The little puff, wood-burning engine and its box cars thrilled and filled us with fear and trembling.

Before her death, Mrs. Price was able to enjoy the conveniences of modern times.  From her window she watched the streamlined automobiles pass on U.S. Highway 377 and compared their speed with the covered wagon that brought her to Texas.

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The Lopp family remained in California four years panning gold from the sands of the Sacramento River before returning to Missouri.  But the call of the wild again tugged at his heart and in 1856, Mr. Lopp loaded his family in the old prairie schooner and headed for Texas, settling in Palo Pinto County, later moving to Parker County.

The remainder of this story is written as Mrs. Price told it to her granddaughter, Lucille Price Ramsey before her death, September 13, 1939.

When we first settled in our Texas home, related Mrs. Price, all was peaceful until the spring of 1857, when a drunken white man killed a Comanche Indian in Loving Valley, just a few miles from our house.  This incident angered the Indians and their Chief demanded the life of the white man, stating that if his demand was not granted, he would take ten white scalps to avenge the death of his one warrior.

There may or may not have been justification for the killing.  At any rate, the white man was not delivered to the chief for execution and soon thereafter he and his warriors went on the warpath.  Few families, at this time, lived on the frontier and these few lived miles apart, with no adequate protection against Indian attacks.  The Comanche tribe ruled this part of Texas and out numbered the white people one hundred to one.  Bands of Indians, mounted on fleet mustang ponies, now began roaming a wide area, spying out and killing settlers who traveled alone, she said.

Later, whole families were attacked, including the Mason and Cambreen families.  Mr. Savage, our near neighbor, was brutally murdered while his family stood by horror stricken and helpless.  After plundering the house and barn, the Indians made the Savage children captives.  There was a gentle horse on the place, which the children had been riding.  A young Indian took a fancy to the horse and mounted it.  This same Indian had already tied on of the Savage children to the back of a wild mustang pony.  The gentle old horse, never known to run away, bolted with the young buck clinging to its back and mane, and racing wildly across the prairie, and the horse passed under a tree with a low protruding limb.  The limb caught and jerked off the Indian’s head.  Later, two of the Savage children were rescued by a Negro named Johnson, formerly a slave of Col. M. T. Johnson.

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When pioneer wagon trains were traveling, it was everyone’s responsibility to be on the lookout for water moccasins, rattle snakes and copperheads.  Poisonous snakes were seen often.  On one moonlight night, as the travelers prepared to bed down in the wagons for the night, one of the young men sought a measure of privacy in a clump of bushes a short distance away.  Almost immediately, he screamed for help and said he had been bitten by a snake.  Some of his family lighted lanterns, while other unpacked the snake bite remedy.  A search of the bushes revealed that he had been bitten, not by a snake, but by an irate wild turkey hen, defending her nest of eggs.