Charles Thomas CRUTCHFIELD

  General Notes:

Crutchfield Family History letter (electronic copy with John Allen Pierce, Jr.):

CHARLES THOMAS, born January 12, 1857 in Dallas, died February 28, 1952, and is buried in Glenwood cemetery in Dallas. He married Annie Minerva Eades September 23, 1890 in Blossom, Texas. She died July 5, 1898, in Blossom, where she is buried in her family's lot in the Odd Fellows Cemetery. Charles Thomas married Annie Allen Vesey in 1902.

Charles was fond of telling his children and grandchildren about his life as a boy and a young man. His daughter, Bess, wrote down the stories, added a few facts that she knew, and the finished product gives a clear picture of Charles and of life in Texas during his early years:

Charles was raised on a farm on White Rock Creek where Lakewood Country Club now stands outside Dallas. Dallas in those days was a mere village but the Sangers, Knights, and Caruths were relatives who were among the James Crutchfield's close friends. Once Mrs. Sanger came to my grandfather's home for dinner. She wore a skirt having a train, which was the prevailing style. Charles was just a boy then, and as they walked in to eat, he was walking behind Mrs. Sanger and stepped on the train, tearing it off at the waist. He later said it nearly scared him to death but she was a kind lady and very nice about it. As a boy he hunted all up and down White Rock Creek which is now White Rock Lake. While hunting one day he came upon a footprint of a huge animal petrified in the rock on the creek bottom. There was an old man from Switzerland who lived near them, and Charles called him to go and look at what he'd found. The old man did and said it was the footprint of a dinosaur. They got the rock up and sent it to the Smithsonian Institute and they wrote back that they were correct in what they thought it was. It is probably still among the relics at the Smithsonian. The Crutchfields were a close family during Charles' youth and he adored his grandparents, spending a lot of time with them.
When he was fifteen, about four miles east of Dallas while hunting squirrels, he shot at something in a tree bigger than a squirrel. It was later reported in a Dallas newspaper that he'd killed "a catamount four feet and five inches long, tawny with black spots."
He went to Austin to the old Texas Military Institute, a school on a hill in what is now the Enfield addition. It looked like an old castle. The school was then run by old professors from Virginia. The boys had very crude furnishings - there were two hundred of them, and all slept on the floor - but Charles loved his years there. He stood at the head of his class and up until the time of his death could recite the names of the boys in the company of which he had been sargeant. He also could recite all the declamations he had spoken in his classes there. While he was in the Austin school, Coke took over the state government. (In the election of 1873, Richard Coke had received twice as many votes as did E.J. Davis. The election for governor had been characterized by fraud and intimidation on both sides. Davis, the incumbent, proclaimed that he had a right to finish out his four year term and the Texas Supreme Court held that the election vas illegal. Disregarding the court, Coke and the Democrats secured the keys to the second floor of the capitol and took possession. Davis was reported to have state troops stationed on the first floor. The Texas Rifles, summoned to protect Davis; were converted into a sheriff's posse and protected Coke. Two legislatures were then operating at the same time.) Commandant Jones of TMI offered Davis the services of the cadets to fight the Yankees, the school to provide the ammunition. The tense situation lasted through January 16 and 17, 1874, until a telegram from President Grant said that he did not feel warranted in sending federal troops to keep Davis in office, and Coke was inaugurated. (REFERENCE: The Handbook of Texas, Austin, 1952, v.1, pg. 370)
Charles was later given an appointment to West Point by Governor Throckmorton and left Austin and school to go. His mother, knowing of the hazing that went on at the Academy, persuaded him not to accept the appointment. Charles then rented 320 acres from Grandma Floyd. Grandpa Floyd was dead and she had moved to Dallas to live with her daughter Bettie Floyd, Charles' mother's sister.
In 1880, Charles went west with Frank Cole, a friend of the family's. The Coles had been to Henrietta and had gone west and came back to Dallas to visit, telling of the interesting life in the west, that there was plenty of land and game. Charles became interested and returned with them. When he first went west he and Frank Cole passed through what was Wichita Falls. There were only two houses there and they spent the night in one, with Mr. Kemp. He tried to persuade then to stop and stay in Wichita and not go on. But Charles said that after thinking it over he decided "Wichita Falls was 150 miles from the railroad and would never be very much of a town."
He spent four years on a sheep ranch near Mobetee, living in tents and dugouts. He took up several sections of land but later sold them before returning to Dallas. He often rode the early cattle trails to Dodge City, Kansas, and experienced life then as the early cowboys knew it. He in his old age would tell of those experiences and though many years had passed he seemed so interested and made me feel those years had been happy ones for him. That was hard for me to believe, for Papa was a gentle, retiring if not timid person and I found it hard to picture him at home in an early day West Texas setting where life was so rough and people so lacking in culture.
He has told many interesting stories of those years in the west. There were many rough characters there at that time. At one time he moved 1800 head of sheep from the ranch to Big Wichita and crossed private land, not knowing he was trespassing. Frank Fowler, a boy who worked for him, was approached by the "Brookins outfit" - a notorious gang - and told to leave. The boy said he wouldn't and came home and told Charles the next day that they had shot at him. Charles went out and tried to find some of the men but couldn't so they moved up the Red River a few miles. That night the Brookins gang came to what had been Charles' camp and shot it up thinking they were getting the sheep. The next day Charles met them and talked with them and they then helped him to move his sheep out.
This Brookins gang stole some horses and drove them in Bull Turner's pasture, from up the Wichita. The people who owned the horses found them and the Grand Jury called Bull Turner and asked him where the horses came from and who put them there. He didn't want to tell, but the sheriff made him and promised to protect him. Bull came into town and with Jot Gunter was seen going back to the ranch. As soon as Bull left town, three men were seen leaving too, riding heavily armed. Traveling men saw them and warned the sheriff, who went out but arrived too late. He found Bull Turner dead and Jot Gunter wounded.
Charles took his wool from the sheep 180 miles to Dodge City, Kansas, to sell it. He was there once when it was very cold. It was snowing and there was no place to get warm except the hotel. There was a big iron stove in the little lobby and everybody was crowding around it trying to get warm. A cowboy came in and couldn't get to the stove so he went out and brought a big armful of wood, saying "Get back, fellows. I'll fill her up and we'll all get warm." The men were armed, so one fellow took cartridges and put them in the stove, sitting down putting his feet up to the stove. The men all ran, and he had the stove to himself.
Western Texas was largely unsettled at that time, and a man there lived very differently than he would have in Dallas. Charles put up the Dalton gang and others for a night in his camp many times. It was an unwritten and unspoken law of the code of western hospitality that whoever appeared at the door or the fire must be fed and bedded without a single question.
Life on the plain was not without dangers. Charles once was riding late at night and came up to what he thought was a small creek bed. He urged his horse to go down the side and across, but the animal refused and Charles finally had to give up the struggle. It wasn't until the next day that he found he'd been at the edge of a canyon. One night he was sleeping on the ground beside a rough corral where he kept his sheep. He woke the next morning to discover a panther had killed a sheep and dragged it out of the corral near his head. And once Charles was walking in an open meadow when he heard a herd of cattle come thundering from the north. The man helping to drive them saw Charles, but had the whole herd following and couldn't turn them. There were a few persimmon trees on an edge of the meadow, so Charles scrambled up one of them and waited until the herd had passed.
The weather on the plain was sometimes fierce, and men many times were without the shelter of houses or even huts. Charles was cooking rice in a skillet over an open fire one night when it began to hail stones the size of a grown man's doubled fist. He and his companions ran for a cave for shelter but not before the skillet had been dented and rice scattered, and when the storm finally subsided Charles found that several sheep had been killed.
Life in the small western towns was different from life in eastern Texas too. Once Charles was in a courtroom with a rough bunch of men. The Judge stopped the proceedings and ordered them thrown out, but it couldn't be done, and they continued their noise. The Judge ordered a loaded shotgun brought into the courtroom and held it all through the trial, saying that he'd blow the head off any man who made a sound. Charles said you could have heard a pin drop.
Lou Casner was a well-fixed stockman. He had a big ranch and fine horses. One day he was en route to Seymour in his buggy. One mile north of Seymour he saw a young woman hoeing corn. He had never seen her before but he stopped and told her if she'd go with him and marry him she'd never have to work again. She agreed and got in his buggy, and he took her to a friend, Mrs. Tobernon, giving Mrs. T. money and telling her to get the girl a fine trousseau, which she did. He married the girl and they moved to his ranch. Charles knew him and knew his new wife, and said that she was terrible, that she chewed tobacco and was rough. Casner shipped his wool to Boston. He worried because his friend Charles wasn't married so suggested that Charles write a note and put it in his sacks of wool to be sent to the factory in Boston. In the note,. Casner wanted Charles to ask the mill superintendent to pick out and send him a wife. Charles listened to Casner's idea, but thanked him and said he wasn't .very interested in getting a wife he hadn't seen.
While in West Texas, Charles developed typhoid and was quite ill for a long time. His mother came out there and nursed him and he said to me "When my mother put her hand on my brow I felt I would get well." His mother was to him always a symbol of perfection. She persuaded him to return to Dallas and he decided to do so, selling the land he had taken up. In those days I suppose mineral rights were not thought of for as far as I know he never retained those rights in the sale of his property though if he had he might have become rich, as Baylor and Wheeler Counties have produced an abundance of oil.
On his return to Dallas he rented land from his grandfather and farmed for a while. He loved plant life - he was an expert in "budding" plants and flowers of all kinds he liked to grow. I remember well as a child our yard was always blooming with geraniums, roses, sweet smelling cyclamen and our garden furnished us vegetables the year round.
Papa adored his mother but he and his father did not always see "eye to eye" on many things. His father, Major James Crutchfield, had served in Hood's brigade during the Civil War and spent most of his period of service in Louisiana. I do not think he was ever a real Major and have wondered why the title by which he was called. He was a man of medium stature, clean cut and had a small beard and moustache. He was rather "dressy" for a man of that age. I do not know why nor in what year he moved from Dallas to Blossom, Texas (near Paris), but he did and opened a store of general merchandise in which at the rear he had the only bank in the town. I remember that well - and on his bank checks had the picture of one of his grandchildren, Mabel Crutchfield, Uncle Randie's daughter.
Charles married Annie Eades whom he met in Blossom after his family moved there. The Eades family came to Texas from Greenville, Kentucky. There G. B. Eades married Sophia Jane Ellison and then, after the birth of their six children, moved to Texas with his father-in-law, Mr. Ellison. G.B.Eades had a brother, Will, one of whose sons also moved to Texas later. Mr. Eades settled with his family in Blossom, where he became a druggist, though he always regretted that he had not become a Baptist minister. He later was postmaster in Blossom, and before her marriage his daughter Rena worked at the post-office with him.

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http://userdb.rootsweb.com/marriages/cgi-bin/marriage.cgi?main_id=4858&dat abase=Marriage%20Records&return_to=http://userdb.rootsweb.com/marriages/&s ubmitter_id=: Marriage Record for Chas. Thomas Crutchfield Spouse: Annie M. Eades Date: 23 Sep 1890 B/G: Groom County and State: Lamar Co. TX User-Added Notes (click here to add a note): Page Nichols Nickell nickell2@flash.net 2002-08-09 20:59:02 Charles Thomas Crutchfield was b. January 23, 1857 in Dallas, Dallas County, Texas. The Crutchfield's had 4 children: Beth Patience, Hallie Louise, Charles Randolph, and Eugene Eades. Chares dies February 28, 1952 in Houston Texas and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Dallas, Texas
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1900 Census, Lamar County, Tx:
Living with G. Crutchfield, his brother; Occupation listed as "Cotton Buyer"
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Obituary
Crutchfield Funeral Set for Saturday
Funeral Services for Charles Thomas Crutchfield, 95, member of a pioneer Dallas family,

Charles married Annie Minerva EADES, daughter of Green Baxter EADES and Sophia Jane ELLISON, on Sep 23, 1890 in Blossom, Lamar County, Texas.¹⁶¹¹ (Annie Minerva EADES was born on Feb 23, 1870 in , , Tennessee,¹⁶¹³ died on Jul 5, 1898 ¹⁶¹³ and was buried on Jul 6, 1898 in Knights Of Honor Cemetery in Blossom, Lamar County, Texas ¹⁶¹³.)