Part 1 Brown County from 1856 to 1870: A Frontier Forged in Blood, Laughter, and Unbreakable Spirit

Originally published by Leroy Wise in the Brownwood Bulletin, dated October 22, 1925, then expanded and annotated for modern readers by Jim Fish in November 2025.

 

The story of Brown County’s first 14 years is not a gentle tale. It is the raw, unvarnished chronicle of men and women who carved a civilization out of wilderness while the Comanche rode moonlight raids, while neighbor killed neighbor over secession, and while children were born in log cabins with rifles often propped beside their cradles. Yet, amid the horror ran a current of stubborn humor, fierce faith, and neighborly joy that turned hardship into legend. This is their story; horrible, humorous, political, religious, and gloriously social.

“Every light of the moon brought terror,” said Leroy Wise in his original article, Brown County from 1856 to 1870, in the Brownwood Bulletin in 1925. “In November 1857, a settler named Lewis rode home along Stepps Creek to find his cabin in flames and his scalp gone.”

That was the first recorded Indian raid. It would not be the last. For in 1858 the Jackson family; father, mother, 18-year-old daughter, and two toddlers; went pecan gathering on the Pecan Bayou. Comanche warriors rose from the tall grass like demons. Five fresh graves were dug before sundown. Two older children, a boy and girl, were carried north as captives. Pursuit came hard and fast; nine miles above Blanket Creek the warriors flung the terrified children into the prairie and vanished. The boy lived to tell how his sister’s screams echoed long after the hoofbeats faded.

A year later, in the Mosely-Kirkpatrick settlement, Richard Robbins rode out to check cattle and never rode back. They found him with 17 arrows in his chest and every horse in the settlement gone except Jay Kirkpatrick’s old gray mare that refused to be caught.

These were not isolated incidents. They were the rhythm of life. Mothers learned to listen for the whistle that meant “Indians in the valley.” Children grew up knowing that bedtime stories might be interrupted by war whoops. Yet, the settlers stayed on and endured.

Even in the shadow of death, however, the frontier found room to laugh… as when Harvey Adams remembered the night the neighbors penned their horses in Brooks W. Lee’s “Indian proof” corral, which were designed with split rails 12 feet high and chinked with bois d’arc logs. Guards walked the perimeter in shifts. Lee, suspicious of his slave John’s tendency to nap on duty, slipped up behind him, found him snoring against a post, and quietly lifted his rifle.

Minutes later John burst into the cabin, eyes wide as saucers… “Massa! Injun slip up hind me and tuk ma gun!” Lee fixed him with a stern eye. “John, why’d you let an Indian take your gun?”

John scratched his head, thinking hard. “Well, Massa… dare was two of ’em.”

The room exploded in laughter that carried clear to the corral. Even with Comanches possibly listening from the cedar brake, the men laughed until they cried. Fear loses its grip when you can still laugh at it.

Brown County itself was born out of politics. In 1858 the Texas Legislature sliced it out of Comanche, Travis and Coleman counties and named it for Captain Henry S. Brown, the Alamo defender who fell at San Jacinto with the cry “Remember Goliad!” on his lips. The first elections in August 1858 resulted with Thomas J. Kusee as Chief Justice, M. G. Anderson as County Clerk, Ichabod Adams as Treasurer and Israel Clements as Tax Assessor-Collector. 

The first courthouse was a log pen on the north side of town near the Swinden farm. Water ran short, so they dragged it; logs, benches, and all; down to the Bayou near the present Santa Fe bridge. In 1860 Greenleaf Fisk, preacher-turned-land-baron, donated 100 acres “for the seat of justice forever,” and Brownwood was born.

To be continued next week.