History of Cuthbert

A History of Cuthbert, Mitchell County, Texas
by Ruth Edwards Morgan
(1974)

The Cuthbert (Texas) Cemetery

Darkness calls
Its splendor falls
Over those who are sleeping.

Deep, deep sleep, without a
Dream they rest
Knowing no more loneliness.

They do not for their souls
Are not found in these mute mounds;
The souls we love
Have gone above
And dwell in glory there with God.

    That is just about all that is left of a little town set on a hill in the northwest corner of Mitchell County, Texas. Five miles to the north is the Scurry County line (the southwest corner of that county) and about ten miles to the west begins Howard County.

    In the windy month of March, year 1890, Mr. and Mrs. D. T. Bozeman, a young school teacher and his wife, moved to this frontier, purchased 320 acres of land and built a half dugout in which to live until materials could be hauled out from the railroad which had arrived in Colorado (now Colorado City) about ten years prior to this time.

    This spot was about fifteen miles north and west from the town of Colorado from which all supplies had to be hauled by wagon and team. “Colorado had become quite a 1arge shipping center, shipping supplies all over the plains country by wagon and this place (Cuthbert) was on the road to north and west including the Cap Rock country.” Therefore, Mr. Bozeman decided to open a general store and build a wagon yard. People began to buy land and to settle in the vicinity. That necessitated a post office. Since Mr. Bozeman was teaching in nearby schools, he filed for the post office in his wife's name and she was named as Postmistress until 1904. They had to have a name for their post office now and Mr. Bozeman submitted a portion of a good friend's name (Cuthbertson) and the name "Cuthbert" was sent back in 1901.

    In 1904 Mr. Bozeman quit teaching and spent his time with the store and the post office and obtained a switchboard from the telephone company which he installed in his new home. His wife, who was one of the most charming southern women I ever met, operated the switchboard day and night. She was so employed when I can first remember as a teenager and he was a very busy man with all of his businesses and interests.

    He worked some extra with the surveyors, marking off section lines which had been sold to the railroad company and now the company was selling to the pioneers as they settled in the community.

    My uncle bought a tract of land from Mr. Bozeman in 1904 for a blacksmith shop and his dwelling. My father, who was a doctor reared and educated in Kentucky and Tennessee, was on his way to New Mexico, Lubbock or somewhere north trying to find a good location and was routed through Cuthbert. One of his horses became lame and it was necessary that he stop at the blacksmith shop. My uncle took him into his home until the horse could continue the trip. There was a need for doctor here and the people insisted that my father stay. He was to board and room at my uncle's and it was there he met my mother. They also bought a small tract of land from Mr. Bozeman in 1906.

    In 1906 the people of the community built a church. Since the church building was taller than the other buildings and since the elevation of the hill on which the town stands is higher than the surrounding countryside, one could see the church building for many miles.

    Mr. Bozeman encouraged and helped support the church and the camp meetings held at the time. People came from all over the country and camped on the grounds.

    He was also interested in the school, having taught and then several years later, seeing his oldest daughter teach in the school.  When I was in grade school there, he would often stop in the school on his way home from a walk through his pasture (in which the schoolhouse stood) and talk to us, telling us stories, checking our reading materials, asking us questions to make us think about ordinary things about us; encouraging us to be observant of things, such as "How does a horse or a cow get up, do they put their hind legs or forelegs up first?" Sometimes he would read poetry to us or sing songs. I was always so glad to see him come to visit and have always thought he was one of the most interesting persons that I have ever known. 

    He lived in Cuthbert until he died and is buried there. His tombstone shows “May 10, 1858–August. 31, 1927.” Only 69 years old!

    I failed to mention that he had also built a cotton gin on his property and it operated for several years.

    The place I like to call home is indeed tiny both as to the house and the small country town where it is located. In fact, there is now very little left of the town which in my very young years consisted of two general merchandise stores, one of which housed the post office, one blacksmith shop, one church, a schoolhouse and one cotton gin. It had its own telephone office which served an outlying community of cotton farmers and cattle ranchers.

    The land was comparatively new; that is, the men who were farming at the time I was born here, had acquired their land by purchase of pre-emption from the State. And had cultivated it for the first time.

    Almost the very earliest recollection of my life is the memory of my mother and other relatives running out into the yard crying. I remember, although I was only three years old, pleading with my mother not to cry. I could not at that time realize that my father had been killed by his runaway horses only a short distance from the town but out of sight because of the low lying hills in that direction. He was a doctor and was answering an early morning emergency call.

    My father’s mode of transportation was a buggy with two horses. Since he drove so much, he often broke or trained wild horses for buggy horses. He liked horses and was breaking a buggy horse for a friend the day he was killed.

    My mother could well understand how it happened. A short time before we had all been in the buggy and when she attempted to raise an umbrella to shade a sleeping child, the horses became frightened and ran, and father just barely managed to stop them before we reached the crossing of a deep creek where it would appear all four of us would have been killed.

    Father had lived in Texas only a few years. He was born In Kentucky; educated in Kentucky and Tennessee. He first practiced in the eastern part of Texas but later decided to come to the western part which was just settling up and doctors were needed. I believe be had planned to drive to the Panhandle of Texas as he started west with his buggy and team. He had come to Texas partly for his health but I suspect partly for adventure. I am sure it was an interesting challenge to think of helping in the opening of this frontier.

    At least he had had no plan to stop at the place he did as he had never heard of it. As he drove on west from one of the oldest towns in this part of the State, Colorado City, Texas, one of the horses began limping. He was glad to reach a blacksmith shop and he and the blacksmith concurred that the horse must have a few days rest before the journey could be continued.

    He was invited to stay in the blacksmith's home. When the people of the community learned that the doctor was looking for a location, they asked him to remain. Bad weather and bad roads made it sometimes difficult for a doctor to reach the community. My father decided to remain for awhile anyway and continued rooming and boarding at the blacksmith's. It was there he met and married the sister of the blacksmith's wife.  They built their home at the edge of the town but in the space of a little more than four years my mother was left a widow with two small children.

    West Texas history of course, begins with horses and the men who rode or drove them to wagons and buggies farther and farther into the west. I have heard my mother say that horses had played a big part in her life. They had been instrumental in her becoming acquainted with my father and then they had caused his death.

    Near my father's grave is the grave of a young man who was thrown from his horse and killed about a year before my father was killed. Some three years ago I had occasion to make a business telephone call to a woman in a distant town. Her name was similar to the one on this tombstone and which has become so familiar to me throughout the years, that tho with some hesitancy but feeling compelled to know, I asked her if she were named for some special person. She replied, "Yes, my father named me for his young brother who was killed when thrown from his horse far out in a little West Texas town." l told her that was the reason I had inquired. He had been killed just in front of the house in which I was now living and is buried near the grave of my father.

After many years we have returned and are now trying to clean up the old place.  As I pick up old iron horseshoes from in and around the spot where the blacksmith shop stood and I find some buried deeply in ashes and dirt, I am reminded with very little nostalgia, that automobile tires have replaced the horseshoes; the filling stations and operators, the shops and the blacksmiths; and modern motels, the old wagon yards. Such comfortable and convenient means of transportation have not only been a boon to travelers, but a respite to horses.

    During my lifetime it has been necessary that we go to other places for work and schooling, but never in our thoughts, dreams or plans did we forget our home. Every opportunity that presented itself for us to be able to earn our living in our home town, was eagerly seized upon. Consequently, my brother and I were able to attend school here for about four of our grammer school years.

    The school was the one-room, one-teacher type. The building itself was phenomenal in that there was an upstairs room of exactly the same size as the downstairs schoolroom. It had been planned for the upstairs to be a community hall and in previous days had been used for community lodge meeting. The tall building, set only on heavy rocks for its foundation, had to have guy wires, four on each side, to prevent its blowing over in the high winds. When the wind blew hard as it often does in big sandstorms and cold northers, the building would sway back and forth. I am sure it was not conducive to the best study situations as we pupils tried to brace ourselves if it did go over with the next gust of wind.

    The founder of the little town had given the land for the school and it was situated in a corner of his pasture. He had been a schoolteacher and as long as he lived was interested in the pupils who attended the school. I remember often looking out the window and seeing him approaching the schoolhouse as he returned from a walk through his pasture. He would come in for one of his welcomed visits and we would put up our books and listen to his interesting talks. From the subjects which I recall on which he spoke, l know that he was a student of philosophy and I wish I knew more about his philosophy--what he thought and what he read most.

    His talks were such as would interest children, encourage them to think for themselves, and to observe and learn from the ordinary things about them. Many of the things he told us I have forgotten but I do remember a few.  Sometimes he told inspirational stories of men and women who had applied themselves and made valuable contributions to the world.

    One day he told us about the town in which we lived, when he had begun it and how he named it. Now there is no one left who knows so much about it for most of the town's dwellers have just stayed here, but he lived here until he died.

    I often wonder if he read Walden, one of my favorite books; and, if in his long walks in and around our town, he recalled as I do, Thoreau's "I have traveled a good deal in Concord," or "Give me a draught of morning air--fresh, undiluted morning air," and "If a man does not keep pace with his compainions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

    I do know that he was a Christian gentleman and in early days, along with other faithful church members, encouraged and sponsored the community's religious activities. These, as my mother remembers, consisted in each year inviting some well-known evangelist and gospel singers to conduct a summer revival. Large families came in wagons from many miles away to camp in the churchyard for these "camp meetings." I can remember the hitching posts which stood in front of the church building even long after they were no longer used.

    When I was a child we no longer had camp meetings but did continue the summer revivals and the annual singing convention. I can never forget the Sundays on these occasions when all the families in the community brought large baskets of food and we all shared in the sumptuous feasts served on long table under the arbor.

    Twice in my adult life I have returned to my home. The first time being encouraged by Ralph Borsodi's book Flight from the City, and inspired by the poem of the Chinese poet T'Ao Yuan-Ming's Once More Fields and Gardens, accompanied by my mother, I came back home.  By this time there was only one store in the town. It was a grocery store and filling station. The other store had been converted into the post office and dwelling of the postmistress.

    The fifty-year-old church building which one could see for many miles as he approached the town from any direction, was at that time still standing. It was a building filled with poignant memories.

    There was only one liveable house left on our property. It had been my grandparents' home. They had moved here from Kentucky to live near my father. Grandfather had fought in several battles in the Civil War and was captured and held prisoner for awhile. I am sure he had known many hardships and his brief life in Texas was no exception. He arrived in Texas following a year of good rains and bumper crops and encountered a drought of much severity. Grief, and hard work in trying to make a crop under impossible conditions, were too much. Within a year from my father's death, grandfather was buried. Grandmother lived two more years.

    Two of the many things which Mr. Borsodi recommends in his book on becoming independent of the city, are weaving machines and milch goats. My brother bought us a carpet loom, two cows, and three goats. They were supposed to be milch goats but they did not know it and never found it out while we kept them.

    They gave us lots of trouble but we do owe them some gratitude. Had it not been for them, we would not have had the long walks in and through the adjoining pastures; we would not have known how erosion has formed acres of solid sandrock to form a watershed for the creek to the north of us; nor to have seen the inside of along vacant and dilapidated house, one of the first built in this area where we learned that our goats had taken up residence.

    Finally we realized that we could not spend the rest of our lives searching for goats and when some kind neighbors who had had more experience in raising and handling goats than we had offered to buy them, we sold. By this time there were seven, eight or nine in the herd; and, as I recall. part or all of the selling price was that they were to return some of the young ones to us cooked and canned in glass jars. They were delicious eating.

    During World War II I felt it necessary to move back to the busier areas to work, but recently have made my second attempt to return home.  This time when my mother, my husband and I returned we found the store and the post office closed and the owners moved away. The church building had been torn down and moved away. Paved farm-to-market roads had brought the once distant cities to within a few minutes drive even in bad weather.

    Our house, battered by time and high winds, was beyond repair. We purchased the store and the post office buildings for our dwellings.  It had long been my plan to repair my grandparents' house and furnish it with items and furniture as were used about the turn of the century, or about the time they came to West Texas. Now the special things which I brought back (the wall-type coffee grinder, similar to the one which I remember my grandparents using; the old clock, the striking of which carries my thoughts back a long way, along with a few other old things I have collected) I have had to place in my “new” dwelling, the old store, which had been built in 1906 which subsequently became the last post office at Cuthbert.

    Several days ago a man and woman stopped. She came to the door to make inquiry as to the road leading to the interstate highway. She explained that a long time ago she had lived in a community near this one and that since she and her husband were in the vicinity, she had persuaded him to leave the highway and try to locate their old place. Things had changed so much she was uncertain of even the way to the highway. She asked a few questions about people who had once lived here and apparently would have liked to visit a little and I would have liked for her to, but her husband was sitting in the car with the motor running. I feel sure he was afraid there might be some chance they would be delayed in this desolate looking place if he should take his foot off the accelerator. I could sympathize with him. I have had the same qualms in places I have seen in my life, but here to me is quiet and peace and "Here I am at Home."