Tarrant County, TXGenWeb

McKnight Biographies

Colonel M. T. Johnson
provided by Margaret R. Bates
from "Southeast Corner of Tarrant County Before the Civil War"
by Sallie Hodges McKnight

The first inhabitants about the two points that were to become Mansfield and Johnson Station, the latter said to be the oldest town in the county, were the Caddo Indians. Johnson Station was first known as Terry's Trading Post, where Indians traded pelts, pecans and ponies for blue calico, beads and ammunition. Terry's Trading Post later came to be known as Big Bone Spring, named from the big fossilized bones of wild animals found in the stream leading from the spring.

When Colonel Johnson established a military post there, Big Bone Spring became Johnson's Station, and in Col. Johnson and his company of rangers the Indians found acceptable neighbors. Col. Johnson and General Houston were personal friends, and this was the point selected as a rendezvous for various tribes of Indians with which General Houston sought to negotiate a treaty in 1842.

It was said that no man wielded a mightier influence over the destinies of the young country of Tarrant than did Col. Johnson, who, after serving in the Mexican War, brought with him Colonel Daggett from the little Indian village of Waco, and established not only a military post but a social center of no mean importance. He owned a large retinue of slaves and gave great balls, attended by many out-of-state dignitaries.

Chief Jose Marie
provided by Margaret R. Bates
from "Southeast Corner of Tarrant County Before the Civil War"
by Sallie Hodges McKnight

At a point between Mansfield and Johnson Station, in a wooded section later the home of the Subletts, an Indian was shot and killed by a small detachment of rangers under a petty officer. Shortly after, Col. Johnson was summoned to appear at Austin before Neighbors, the Indian agent, with whom complaint had been duly filed. There Col. Johnson met his accuser, Jose Marie, brave and fearless Chief of the Caddos, furious at the killing of one of his tribe and determined to have money or blood.

Col. Daggett related that the Chief made a "big speech," saying the Caddos had held peaceful possession for years, one of their tribe had been deliberately shot down while hunting in territory not forbidden, and if a good round sum was not paid for the Indian's life he would order his tribe to go on the war path. Many whites, including women and children, would bit the dust, and though the Indians might be defeated, the killing of the brother would be avenged. The authorities paid Jose one thousand five hundred dollars in cash.

Col. Daggett described the Chief of the Caddos as a remarkable Indian who had fought the whites, first and last, from the Brazos to Fort Belknap, territory he claimed as his lands. He was five feet tall, heavy set, with square shoulders, prominent nose and piercing eyes. Imperious and impressive, his appearance was not impaired by the fact that he wore a large ring in his nose, to which was attached a garnet ring.

In 1842, when certain of the small settlements were a law unto themselves, John Huitt arrived from Arkansas and was selected as moderator. His duty it was to pass upon guilt and order punishment. The whipping post was the favorite means of moderating undesirables, while forty lashes and a banishment constituted a not unusual punishment. Later, however, after Mr. Huitt's time, as has happened before and since to reformative movements, the necessity arose to regulate the "moderators," which resulted in an organization of "regulators."

At a time when caskets were unobtainable, burial was as elemental as death itself. There were no softly cushioned caskets, no hearse, no flowers, no concealing the hard clods that were to fall upon the coffin, no seats, no shelter from storm and rain. Of necessity, P. G. Davis, a skilled woodworker, met this common need and made coffins of pine which he skillfully covered by tacking black velvet over the outside of the frame. Mr. Davis was born in Blount County, Tennessee, and was as excellent a wheelwright as woodworker.

The life of Richard Bratton on this Texas frontier was preceded by a romance in London, England, when, as a gardener on a gentleman's estate, he fell in love with the gentleman's daughter. Winning her affection, they embarked on an immigrant ship, found their way to Texas, located near what is now Mansfield, and raised a large family of splendid citizens, among their descendants a commissioner and County Judge of Tarrant County. When such articles could not be bought, Mr. Bratton made to order the necessary supply of shoes, from the tanning of the leather to the finished article.

Perhaps one of the most lovable characters who came to this section before Fort Worth was a town and when knives and forks could not be bought at the small settlement of Dallas, was T. J. Ragland, whose father was a soldier of the Revolution under Washington.

Mr. Ragland was originally from Virginia, and having pioneered on both sides of the Mississippi, his mind was a store-house of memories antedating the birth of most men living then. He was not a churchman, but was a "Jackson Democrat," and often late at night he might be heard making Jackson speeches as he rode home alone across the bald prairie.

It was said of him that "a stranger seeing for the first time this tall, lean, old man sitting on his front porch, with his fine head crowned with the gathering whiteness of almost a hundred years, and his strong, intelligent face as full of strength and purpose as in his prime, would think him some old statesman in philosophic retirement."

He served on the first grand jury ever convened in Tarrant County, and until his death lived on his original headright of 320 acres. Mrs. J. H. Ragland, wife of his son and grand-niece of Col. M. T. Johnson, still lives with her son and his family on land including the original headright.

Napoleon Bonaparte Perry was a gracious, white haired and white bearded old gentleman of the old school. Although conditions were hard and the resources of life meager, he always preserved the dignities of life and never went to his own dinner table without the formality of a dress coat, though "jeans" was the only available material.

He came from North Carolina, was a constant reader of the best literature to be had, and far into the seventies still rode to the hounds with the zest and enthusiasm of younger days, following a fox after younger men had dropped out of the chase.

P. M. House was the first farmer to settle on the immediate blackland section. He was a quiet, unobtrusive old man from Tennessee, dressed in "homespun." He was not at all bloodthirsty, although he might inform you quite casually that he had just "axed" a neighbor for his plow.

That wouldn't mean that either the neighbor or good English had suffered violence. It was just a fancy bit of Chaucer English somehow handed down through a long line of English ancestry from the time when "axe" meant to "ask." As this settlement was largely English, it was not uncommon to run up on such Chaucer expressions at "hit" for "it," "pore" for poor," and the English of Shakespeare was in common use, as in the following:

If a man didn't "keer" to do a thing, he was not inclined to do it. He "holp" (helped) his neighbor, or "clomb" (climbed) a fence, or "wropped" (wrapped) a package, or "whupped" (whipped) the children in true Shakespearean style.

Financial transactions were accomplished without difficulty, unless the creek happened to be up, in which case the borrower waited for it to "run down" before visiting "Uncle" Johnnie Wyatt, who lived north across Walnut Creek. Application for a loan might be made to "Uncle Johnnie" or to his wife, "Aunt Susan." Neither hesitated longer than to exchange news and learn the amount required, when he or she reached in between the feather bed and mattress, and the transaction was completed without the formality of taking a note. Being a neighbor, that is somebody they know or had heard of, was indorsement enough.

Also north of Walnut Creek were the homesteads of Nathan Poole, John Hudson and W. T. Murphy, who found the depredations of wild animals, deer and wild turkey, an added hazard to the young corn, along with drouth, blizzard and too uncertain rainfall.

L. H. Stephens was commonly known as "long-headed." He possessed a remarkably keep mind, good judgment and executive ability. The boundary of his many acres of blackland was outlined and preserved from trespass on the part of man or beast by a bois d'arc hedge, the only form of fencing at that time. These hedges throughout the country were kept neat and impregnable by experienced hedge-cutters who contrived a cumbersome piece of horse-drawn machinery which left little to be desired in the way of a thorny barrier.

Mr. Stephens was one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church, a factor in school building later on. He was a man of strict integrity, despised troublemakers, pugnaciously defended his principles, and was known to drive a weak-minded neighbor off his premises with an ax-handle when the conversation dropped to the level of objectionable gossip.

These old settlers were, on the whole, a peaceful lot, rarely shooting each other over boundary disputes, and the greatest indignity that could have been offered to any one of them would have been a presumption that he was like anybody else under the sun.

Judge Bean, dispensing his law west of the Pecos, had nothing on Squire Grimsley who was Justice of the Peace and the law itself in this end of the county at this early time. He left technicalities strapped up in his saddlebags on his old gray mare and dispensed justice without any frills. He was a great stickler for the dignity of the court, and upon an occasion when John Hayter, a rising young lawyer, asked for a new trial on account of error of the court, he indignantly called out, "John Hayter if I ever again hear you so much as cheep about an error in this court I'll fine you ten dollars!"

He gave everybody a square deal in spite of the law, if necessary, remarking that he might not know all the legal twists and turns but that he did know, "By Gatlins," the difference between right and wrong. He also tempered justice with mercy, as in the case of a rather well known citizen found to be in illegal possession of a cow. After due consideration, he rendered the following opinion and decided the case accordingly. "If I try you under the new statute, you'll go to the penitentiary in spite of hell and high water, so I'll just try you under the old statute which makes it a finable offense."

If his docket was crowded he held night sessions wherever the case might be, on a goods box by the light of a tallow candle.

When there were no roads and not a doctor in all the large stretch of country between Village and Mountain Creek, Dr. D. G. Hodges, with his young wife and one child, made the trip by covered wagon from Tennessee, dispensed his own medicine which he carried about in his saddlebags. As his practise extended over a sparsely settled country, he might find a relay of calls left at each home which often extended a single round of visits to a week or more.

The most common diseases were chills and fever, black and yellow jaundice, and typhoid fever. These he treated with fair success notwithstanding his views on malaria, which he took literally as "bad air," cautioning his patients against exposure to too much of it, and advised building on the second instead of the first "rise" from the streams. He made annual trips to New Orleans for his medicines, which always included a large supply of quinine, and dosed his patients with bluemass or bled them according to the weather, or the mood he was in.

He did surgery as emergency demanded, such as extracting stray bullets from the anatomy here and there, removing odds and ends from the eyes, freely amputating both upper and lower limbs, and even cut out tonsils with a queer sort of knife and fork instrument, while a hefty helper held the head and assisted the patient to keep the mouth open by carrying on a whispered conversation with the Doctor concerning the untoward accident of swallowing the instrument.

While his knowledge of medicine was limited to his day and time, and a man's liver attracted most of his professional attention, he knew his patients as a father knows his child, and held a sort of restorative and paternal influence over physical waywardness. He died early from exposure.

Iddo Cope, a tall rather commanding man in appearance, with a massive head and clear blue eyes, was the original "Free Thinker" of the new settlement. He had a keen sympathy for the under dog, combined with a singularly contradtictory nature and an irresistible urge to unhorse the mighty, no matter how firmly seated on the popular side.

When there were no churches, denominations weak, and sinners flourished, he had himself ordained preacher in first one sect and then another, choosing the weakest, and brought to bear against sinners and stronger sects such a fury of sound and gesture as to cause them to quake in their boots and lose large numbers of followers.

Later, when sectarians grew strong and sinners dwindled to a decided minority, he joined the ranks of the sinners and there remained, leaving instructions for his epitaph as follows: "Iddo Cope, Lived and Died an Infidel."

He didn't believe in slavery, but believed far less in the disinterested righteousness of the "Yankee" and threw his full strength to the growing movement of secession, and later to the Confederacy, pointing to the fact that General Grant retained his slaves up until the beginning of the war, while General Lee had given his slaves freedom some time before. He was deeply resentful of New England abolitionists as "self-righteous Puritans" who, he said, "in the old country sold white men as slaves into the Barbadoos and were the first in the new country to build ships and trade in slaves." He came from England and preserved scrappy bits of family records from as far back as the Reformation, in which his ancestors actively participated, probably first on one side and then the other!

One incident in his life was taken by the settlers as vindication of Providence versus Cope. Peeved at a long wet spell, Mr. Cope mounted a high rail fence and sought to have it out with whatever powers might be responsible for the irregularities of the weather. As lightning flashed and rain beat and his timid old wife waited in terrified silence, he called in a loud voice, "If there is a God, I call upon you to strike me with lightning!" Whereupon the sky began to clear, rain and lightning ceased, the rail fence gave way, and Mr. Cope found himself submerged in a pool of muddy water.

In the early '50s, a winding trail that led south from the old fort on the Trinity, winding through unfenced grass knee high to a man on horseback, forded three creeks on the way to the southeast corner of Tarrant County, ended at a little sawmill where post oak timber was being converted into rough lumber. The proprietor was Captain Julian Feild, who was preparing to build the first store of general merchandise, and expected to haul his goods by wagon train from Houston.

The little village of Mansfield was named from its two founders, Captain Feild and R. S. Man, who erected a three story steam flouring mill and secured a government contract to furnish flour and meal to the posts of Fort Belknap and Fort Griffin, besides supplying the greater part of Texas and sections of old Mexico. These Mexican wagons were pushed, rather than pulled, by oxen having a wooden bar strapped in front of the head.

Mansfield was the center of the wheat growing section and the old mill yard was a bustling scene as hundreds of wagons waited to be loaded. One wagon train, carrying flour to Fort Belknap, was ambushed, the crew massacred, wagons burned and mules appropriated by the Indians.

These two founders, Captain Feild and R. S. Man, were opposite in temperament and appearance. R. S. Man, a quiet and reticent man from North Carolina, who loved nothing more than a good book in his own home, presented a striking contrast to Captain Feild, who was physically big, decidedly optimistic, and liked to take an active part in organization and secret orders, and while Captain Feild later sought new fields of endeavor, Mr. Man cast his lot with the people of Mansfield and was known as "the old miller" and the father of Mansfield. Captain Feild was from Harrison County.

Up to this time there had been little interest in education. Mrs. Sarah Halsell, from Virginia, had taught private schools in the home of Col. Johnson and Captain Feild. In the early '50s Joseph Nugent, a Canadian of strong personality, opened a private school for the general public, and proceeded to show what could be accomplished in a short time by the use of a great deal of impatience and a long rod. Mr. Nugent believed in nothing but accuracy and arithmetic, and fairly tanned figures into the hide of reluctant youth.

The general idea appealed to the adult population, and in 1876 they cleared a wide swath in the brush preparatory to building a college. They wanted the best or nothing and entertained no delusions about not having to pay for it themselves. They had always paid exactly and in full for everything they had obtained. Even defeat at arms had been achieved at a terrible cost, and they had only to tighten their belts and live a little longer on the reconstruction diet of barley coffee, polk salad and corn bread.

Dr. John Collier, Presbyterian minister and noted educator, was secured as president, later to be joined by Smith Ragsdale, an educator of state-wide prominence. The institution was co-educational, non-sectarian, and was known as the "Mansfield Male and Female College." With Dr. Collier as a Yale man, Fleet of the University of Virginia, and head of the piano department from New York City Conservatory of Music, pupils were attracted from as far away as Montana.

Dr. Collier included in his curriculum all higher mathematics and one dead language, so that pupils arriving with little preparation were at once plunged into deep water. Strangely enough, most of them survived the shock and went out into the world after graduation with courage to tackle anything. There were primary and intermediate departments, but to save their dignity, "grown up" young men were permitted to carry on in all departments at the same time, and often effected strange results by practising English punctuation at irrelevant intervals in the middle of Latin sentences.

A typical example was that of Zill Harlan who arrived absolutely without preparation, at once plunged into the deep, was fascinated by exclamation points, and came up for air at the end of a short time with the following translation into Latin of the English sentence "I love you:" "I amo you Amas! Amat!" and after deep cogitation, to round out the sentence added "Amamus! Amatis! Amant!" This he boldly inscribed on the blackboard at public examination. That he later became a cultured man and a brilliant county attorney of Falls County, was perhaps more to his credit than if he had been led up to it gradually. Many men who became prominent later were educated here.

This page was last modified 15 Jan 2003.

Copyright © Tarrant County, TXGenWeb 1998-2003. All rights reserved