GRANBURY Or GRANBERRY

GRANBURY or GRANBERRY: “What’s in a Name?”

By Bob Kent May 17, 2014

“It’s a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word”i

The City of Granbury is named for Confederate General Hiram Bronson Granbury who was killed at the Battle of Franklin in November 1864. General Granbury’s family name was spelled Granberry and when he was originally buried in Tennessee the name on his tombstone was spelled Granberry. After the Civil War, veterans, who lived in western Johnson County, filed a petition with the Texas Legislature to form a new County. In 1866, the Texas Legislature created Hood County out of Johnson and Erath County and specified that the County Site (Seat) would be called Granberry.ii Unfortunately, the original petition for the creation of Hood County has been lost and it is not known what spelling (Granberry or Granbury) the petitioners used. We only have the legislation as it was passed.iii A controversy soon developed over the correct spelling of the name of the city and continued for several years. The location of the county seat was also a controversial issue and the site of the present day City of Granbury was not selected until 1867 after three or four county-wide votes. The final location was selected by a special committee appointed by the County Judge.iv

Two prominent Hood County families, the Lamberts and Nutts, donated the original 40 acre town site, although the title to the land was in litigation.v The donated land was undeveloped and there were no business or commercial buildings. Initially, county business was conducted at Stockton, a small village located several miles north-north east of the future location of the City of Granbury. The first public sale of town lots was held on March 3, 1868 and advertised lots for sale in “Granberry.” On August 12, 1869, an article in the Houston Telegraph noted that a building was to be erected in “Granberry” for use as a church, school and courthouse.vi

Figure 1: Advertisement of Town Lots for Sale.vii Shortly after the first lots were sold, Calaway Landers filed an application for a Post Office. On the application, he spelled the name of the new post office as Granbury.viii It not clear why the advertisement for lot sales in the Dallas newspaper called the town Granberry but they were not the only ones to use that spelling. In 1871, when Barnard’s Mill applied for a post office they spelled the name Granberry on the map they submitted with the postal application.ix

In 1873, when the City was incorporated by an act of the Texas legislature, the name of the City was spelled “Granberry,” although a newspaper article discussing the legislation spelled the name Granbury.x Prior to 1873, several newspaper articles referred to the city as “Granberry” and one newspaper included a stage coach schedule for “Granberry”. However, during the same time period, many of the same newspapers also spelled the city name as Granbury; and the Galveston Daily News listed an agent at “Granbury.” The 1873 Texas Almanac listed Charles C. Formwalt as the Postmaster of “Granberry” and Duke and Ewell as the publishers of the “Granberry Vidette”.xi Genealogists, who work with historical documents, have found it is common to find peoples’ name spelled more than one way on official documents. Until the early 20th century, when literacy rates increased, “phonetic” misspellings were common.xii Since most people spelled phonetically, and “berry” and “bury” are homophones, it is not surprising that the name was spelled both ways. Sometime after 1873, newspaper editors began to consistently spell the name of the city as Granbury instead of “Granberry.”xiii In 1890, the misspelling of city names led to the establishment of the U. S. Board on Geographic Names, created to assist the U. S. Postal Service with establishing a reliable delivery system. Granbury was not alone in the controversy of the spelling over city or county names. Several in the immediate area were: Stevenville, Stevensville, or Stephenville; Thorp Spring or Thorp’s Spring; Comanche Peak or Camanche Peak; and Somervell versus Somerville.

In 1875, the Texas General Land Office published a map with the name of the city spelled Granberry; however the “ER” was crossed out and replaced with “U”, suggesting that by 1875 the State of Texas had accepted Granbury as the correct spelling of the City’s name regardless of the spelling of the name in the enabling legislation that created the city..xiv

Figure 2: 1875 Hood County Mapxv The confusion over the spelling of the name of the City was caused in part by the dual spelling of General Hiram B. Granberry/Granbury’s name. Hiram Bronson Granberry was born March 1, 1831 in Copiah County, Mississippi. He attended Oakland College under the name of Granberry. In 1852, after graduating from college, he moved to Texas and changed the spelling of his last name to Granbury.xvi Why he changed the spelling of his name is unknown. His sister, Mrs. Nautie Granberry Moss, stated that he changed the spelling of his last name based on some peculiar whim.xvii The official records and correspondence of the Civil War show his name spelled as Granbury, although many Texas newspaper articles during the Civil War referred to him as General Granberry.xviii Relatives, who also lived in Texas, continued to spell the family name as “Granberry.”xix When he was killed at the Battle of Franklin and buried in Tennessee, the name on his tombstone was spelled Granberry, perhaps because that was the spelling of the family name known in the area. When he was exhumed and reburied in Granbury in 1893, the name on the tombstone was spelled Granberry. Apparently the reinterment of General Granbury restarted the debate on the proper spelling of his namesake city and J. N. Doyle reviewed the history of the debate in a letter to the Dallas Morning News, concluding with a note that the land deeds for lots in the city spell the city name as Granbury; that veterans that served with General Granbury said he spelled it Granbury; and the local citizens spelled it Granbury.xx

In 1913, when his statue was erected on the Hood County Courthouse Square, his name was spelled Granbury. In 1996, a new tombstone with his name spelled as Granbury replaced the 1893 tombstone and after almost 150 years, the spelling of his name on his tombstone, statue, and namesake city became uniform as Granbury.

In his 1895 History of Hood County, T. T. Ewell mentioned the controversy over the spelling of the name of the city and dispensed with the issue with the statement: [The name “Granbury” given the County Site was in honor of General H. B. Granberry, and by custom the orthography was changed to Granbury. Some controversy has since arisen as to the correct orthography of the original name which is a matter of little importance, since the latter form invariably prevails.]xxi Orthography is “the art of writing words with the proper letters according to standard usage.”xxii It is not clear what Ewell meant by “custom” other than to say that is the way the people in Granbury spelled the name.

This still leaves the question of why did the Texas Legislature spell the name of the city as Granberry when Hood County was created (1866) and again when the city was incorporated (1873) and later on a map of Hood County. Several possibilities exist, including a typesetting error by the printer caused by the unintelligible cursive script used by the petitioners. A review of a number of documents written with quill and ink demonstrate that it is a difficult task to distinguish “berry” from “bury” when written in the cursive style of the times. The bill which created the county was introduced into the House and Senate by Thomas Reuben Bonner of Tyler and William Shannon of Parker County. Although both men served in the Confederate Army, they did not serve under General Granbury and apparently they accepted the spelling of his name as Granberry in the enabling legislation.xxiii END NOTES i Frequently attributed to either Andrew Jackson or Mark Twain. ii The Southern Intelligencer (Austin, Texas), November 8, 1866. iii H. P. N. Gammel, 1898, The Laws of Texas 1882-1897, Chapter LXXXV, “An Act Creating the County of Hood and Naming the County Site Thereof”, Vol. V., Austin: The Gammel Book Company, p 83-84. iv T. T. Ewell, History of Hood County, republished in Hood County History in Picture and Story, (Fort Worth: Historical Publishers, 1978). v The donated town site was actually located on land granted to Milam County as school lands and a 20 year legal battle between Hood County residents and Milam County was ultimately settled in favor of Milam County. See Bob Kent, 2012, The Great Granbury Land Title Dispute: The History T. T. Ewell Did Not Discuss,” (Granbury: Hood County Genealogical and Historical Society). vi The Houston Telegraph, August 12, 1869. vii The Dallas Herald, March 7, 1868 viii Post Office Reports of Site Locations 1837-1950, Microfilm collection M1126, Roll 578, Hood County, National Archives Records Administration Fort Worth, Texas. ix Ibid. x H. P. N. Gammel, The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, Chapter CCXXXII, “An Act to Incorporate the Town of Granberry in Hood County, State of Texas”, Vol. 7, Austin: The Gammel Book Company, p 648-650. Also see The Galveston Daily News, May 28, 1873. xi The Texas Almanac for 1873 and Emigrant’s Guide to Texas, Portal to Texas History. xii Spelling for Genealogists, www.dgmweb.net/Ancillary/OnE/Spelling.html, downloaded November 17, 2013. xiii See The Galveston Daily News, December 22, 1869; November 30, 1869 and July 13, 1871 and October 9, 1873; The Houston Telegraph, October 24, 1872; November 28, 1872; February 20, 1873 and May 8, 1873; The Dallas Herald, June 15, 1873. and The Eagle (Bryan, Texas) March 19, 1871. xiv George J. Thielepape, Map of Hood County, General Land Office, June 1875 (Portal to Texas History) xv 1875 Hood County Map, Portal to Texas History xvi Tom Holder, Family History: Hiram B. Granbury, www.battleofraymond.org/holder.htm. Also see The Brazos Statesman, January 2, 1857 xvii Vircenoy B. MaCatee, Our hero, General Hiram Brinson (sic) Granbury, June 25, 1966, www.granburydepot.org/z/biog/gby2.htm. xviii The Bellville Countryman, November 13, 1861; The Weekly State Gazette, December 21, 1864 and January 18, 1865; and The Dallas Herald, March 30, 1865. xix Tom Holder, 2002, Family History: Hiram B. Granbury, (http://battleofraymond.org/holder./htm, downloaded August 16, 2013. xx The Dallas Morning News, December 5, 1893. xxi T. T. Ewell, 1895, Hood County History. Originally published by the Granbury News and reprinted in Hood County History in Picture and Story, 1978, Fort Worth: Historical Publisher. xxii Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 1991, Merriam-Webster, Inc Publishers, Springfield, Mass. xxiii The Dallas Morning News, December 5, 1893.