Part 2: 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.

In Part One Brown County’s 14 years were not the fodder of 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.

In 1861, secession-fever had swept across Texas in epidemic proportions. Brown County men gathered under a live oak, voted overwhelmingly to leave the Union, and raised a Confederate flag sewn by Mrs. Welcome Chandler and Mrs. Brooks Lee from red calico, white cotton and blue wool brought 300 miles by ox wagon. The pole was one hundred feet tall, visible for miles, a gauntlet thrown at any Yankee who dared ride south.

That same year a company of Brown County riders demanded surrender of Federal troops at Camp Colorado. Captain Kirby Smith handed over the post without a shot, then rode south to become a Confederate general. Rumor says the Brownwood boys toasted him with pecan whiskey and predicted he’d “whip the whole Yankee nation before breakfast.”

In a country without creeds written on paper, faith was written on the hearts of Brown County citizens and the first church, Methodist Episcopal, was organized in 1862 by circuit riders George Vest and William Mayberry. They preached in brush arbors where Baptists, Methodists, Campbellites, and “hard-shell” Presbyterians sat side by side on split-log benches. When the spirit moved, a Comanche-scarred Ranger might shout “Glory!” right beside a former slave. The preacher was everybody’s preacher because he preached the Bible straight, no fancy dogmas to separate brethren.

Rev. Fisk’s camp meetings on Blanket Creek lasted a week. Families came in wagons, camped in circles, and cooked over cedar fires. At night, the prairie glowed with pine-knot torches while mourners wept at the altar and converts waded into the creek at dawn singing “Shall We Gather at the River.” One old settler swore he saw a Comanche scout watching from the bluff, silent as a shadow, then ride away without harming a soul, moved, some said, by the singing.

While men rode the range or stood guard, women pieced quilts that told stories. A “Lone Star” block might mark a baby’s birth; a “Log Cabin” square remembered the first home. At quilting-bees the needles flew and tongues flew faster… news of raids, weddings, and which bachelor was courting which widow.

Dances were rarer but legendary. Word would spread: “Fiddle and banjo at Coggin’s barn Saturday!” Couples rode fifty miles through wolf-howled darkness, mothers with babies tied to their saddles, rifles across the pommels. They danced till dawn; Virginia reels, square dances, and waltzes; then slept in the hayloft and rode home Sunday singing hymns to keep the devils behind them.

Brown County pioneers, the Hannas: David, John, James, and R. M. Hanna settled in Hanna Valley in 1856. David served as commissioner, grand juror, and Texas Ranger under Captain John Williams (killed 1863 at Babyhead). His daughter Josephine, first white child born in the county in 1857, grew up to marry Albert Rice of Tennessee. Welcome W. Chandler: richest man on the frontier, raised the first corn crop (40 bushels/acre for 15 straight years), brought the first seven slaves, and watched his daughter Jane become the county’s first postmistress.

In 1857 came the great surge, J. M. & S. R. Coggin were bankers, college founders, and civic saints. Israel Clements, first tax collector, died with his boots on. Greenleaf Fisk donated land for the first courthouse and preached hellfire and salvation. The fledgling county also welcomed the Mullins boys, the Baugh brothers, and Brooks W. Lee (a lieutenant in the Texas Rangers, who was nearly scalped on a peace mission to parlay with the Comanche). Other quiet men who did loud deeds were Richard Germany, the Kirkpatricks, Henry Webb, and D. F. Mosely who came in 1858.

The Brown County economy grew out of corn, cotton, cattle, and courage… Chandler’s 100 acres of corn in 1857 proved the soil was rich. W. F. Brown ginned the first bale of cotton in 1868 on a horse-powered gin under an old tent. G. H. Fowler trailed the first cattle from East Texas in 1856, herds that would one day make Brown County famous.

As far as supplies were concerned, a pound of coffee sold for a dollar, when you could get it. Before the war, Houston was two months away by ox wagon. During the war, men drove cattle to Mexico, traded for coffee, salt, and calico, then ran the gauntlet home past Yankee patrols and Comanche ambushes.

Brown County pioneers and settlers stayed on and endured ‘the slings and arrows of misfortune’ to create a bastion of peace for future generations. By 1870 the great raids were tapering off. The buffalo was gone, the Comanche pushed west. The log courthouse had given way to brick. Children who once hid under quilts during moonlight raids now attended Daniel Baker College.

But ask any old-timer in 1925, and he’d tell you the same thing: “We laughed when we could, cried when we had to, prayed every night, and never let go of each other’s hands.”

That was Brown County from 1856 to 1870, 14 years that felt like 40, lived by men and women who met horror with humor, danger with dance, and death with defiance. They were hearty folk. They were our people… and because of them, we are here.