Issue 2 Volume 3 Grimes County Historical Commission February 2017 Meetings of the Grimes County Historical Commission are held on the Second Monday of the Month at 7:00 pm in the Courthouse Annex in Anderson, Texas Contact Information Joe King Fultz [email protected] Visit us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Grim esCountyHistoricalCommission Grimes County Historical Commission Executive Board Photo of the Month Chairman Joe King Fultz Vice Chairman Vacant Secretary Vanessa Burzynski Treasurer Joe King Fultz COMMITTEES Historical Markers Denise Upchurch Historic Preservation Sarah Nash Newsletter & Publicity Vanessa Burzynski W. W. Meachum Law Office Anderson, Texas GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2017 PAGE 2 History of the Town of Richards Richards is located on the Allen Vince one-half league RICHARDS, TEXAS. Richards is on Farm roads 1486 survey which the Mexican government granted him and 149 and the Burlington-Rock Island line in east on May 30, 1831. Vince, with his three brothers, central Grimes County. It was founded in 1907, when came to Texas in 1822 and settled on Sims Bayou in the residents of several communities in the vicinity present Harris County. His brothers settled along of Lake Creek moved to a newly constructed line of Vince’s Bayou and it was formerly thought the bridge the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway where it across the Bayou was the one Sam Houston ordered crossed the road between Fairview (or Dolph) and destroyed before the Battle of San Jacinto, but today Longstreet. The area had been settled by Anglo- it has been proved to be the bridge over Sim’s Bayou American immigrants in the early 1830s, but no that had been built by Allen Vince. After his defeat, community was established until the coming of the General Santa Anna escaped the battlefield on Allen railroad. Residents of Fairview and Longstreet led Vince’s black stallion and was captured on Vince’s the migration to Richards; some employed log rollers property. to shift homes and businesses intact to the new town site. On February 28, 1844 Vince and his wife Ann sold to Seabron J. Hendrick of Coosa County. Alabama, the Richards was named by railway officials for W. E. one-half league on Lake Creek in then Montgomery Richards, prominent South Texas banker and County where Richards was later located. The one- organizer of the Valley Route and Townsite Loan half league contained twenty-two hundred and Company. Soon after the founding of Richards, the twenty acres and the sale was for twenty-two Longstreet post office was transferred there, with hundred and twenty dollars. Hendrick never moved Jim Lieb as first postmaster. The Richards State Bank to Texas and it is doubtful that he ever saw his was organized by Green Davis and O. A. Hamilton. purchase because he was still l living in Coosa The early settlement had a drugstore, a hotel, a County, Alabama when on October 4, 1847 he sold barbershop, a shoe shop, several general stores, and the property at a loss to James Scott who paid him a weekly newspaper called the Richards Rustler. only two thousand dollars. The Richards Methodist Church was established in James Scott was born in Georgia in 1799 and as a 1914, when a meetinghouse was transported to the young man moved to near the town of Vernon in community from Fairview. In 1910 Richards had a Hickman County, Tennessee. There he married population of 450, and in 1936 it had a 500 residents Sarah Lane by whom he had two children before they and eighteen businesses. After World War II its moved to Raymond in Hinds County, Mississippi. population declined to an estimated 425 by 1948 and There he studied law and served as district judge for to an estimated 305 by 1969, when it had four several years. He resigned that position and moved businesses. In 1990 Richards had an estimated 296 his family to the Republic of Texas in March 1839. He residents and three businesses. The population spent one year in Houston before moving to then remained the same in 2000. Montgomery County where he established a large plantation about three miles east of Fanthorp BIBLIOGRAPHY: (Anderson). Scott became a wealthy man dealing in Grimes County Historical Commission, History of slaves and farming hundreds of acres of land. He Grimes County, Land of Heritage and Progress represented his district at the Constitutional (Dallas: Taylor, 1982). Fred I. Massengill, Texas Convention in 1845. On the eighth day of August, Towns: Origin of Name and Location of Each of the 1856 James Scott embarked on the steamer Nautilus 2,148 Post Offices in Texas (Terrell, Texas, 1936). from Galveston to New Orleans on business matters. The ship sank leaving no survivors. GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2017 PAGE 3 The large Scott estate was divided among his wife Texas against the invading Mexicans. In 1863 he Sarah and the children: John N. Scott, Elizabeth Scott enlisted in Colonel Elmore’s regiment to serve in the Neblett (wife of William Henry Neblett), James L. Civil War. He was a farmer on a large scale at Scott, Garrett Scott, Walter Scott, Sarah Scott and Longstreet and Richards, and was postmaster at Alice Scott. The town site of Richards fell to Longstreet. His wife Susan E. Womack Scott, Elizabeth, Walter and their mother Sarah. Walter daughter of Abram Womack, died August 27, 1905. died in 1859 and his part of land as well as the Then his youngest daughter Mrs. Cornelia Scott Noblett’s was leased and farmed by John N. Scott Kelley and family lived with him until his death on who lived at Longstreet. The slave quarters later the night of December 30, 1912. He and Susan had tenant houses on the western edge of Richards were six sons and six daughters and left the following the first dwellings in Richards. Three of these houses behind. John Henry Scott of San Antonio, James D. were still standing in 1920. Garfield McGill lived in Scott of Dallas, Mrs. Sue Winn of Huntsville, Mrs. the last of these houses which was located behind Hettie Scott Rhodes of Humble, Mrs. Mettie Scott the present home of Charlie Hinds, but the oldest Rhodes of Dallas, and Mrs. Cornelia Scott Kelley of looking of the three stood near where Jonnie Longstreet. Baranowski has his home today. The first settler at Fairview was Thomas Gilmore who William Henry Neblett died in 187 and his son William married Caroline Pinson Hill on January 7, 1830 and Teel Neblett, after finishing Trinity University, in 1831 brought his bride from Marengo County, became a farmer and statesman in DeWitt County Alabama to present Longstreet. A few years later for four years before returning to Grimes County in they moved to Fairview where he obtained on April 1884 to the land inherited from his parents. He lived 18, 1848 a patent for a league of land. He had already in Anderson but farmed his land and raised cattle. received 320 acres of land in Victoria County on April His son William Teel Neblett, Jr., a lawyer in Laredo, 7, 1838 for his services from June 30 to September sold 96 acres of Richards town site in 1936 to John 1836 in the Texas army after the Battle of San Jacinto. Lee Montgomery who broke it into lots. Many homes He and Caroline had seven children which prompted are on these lots today including the Richards him to build an “Old Field” school which was one of School. the earliest in Texas. During the many years, the Scotts and Nebletts One mile north of Richards on the old Ben Kroll Hill farmed the Richards town site two communities between Fairview and Longstreet lived the William grew up on either side of the future village. Oliver family. William Oliver was born near Longstreet, one of the toughest communities in Knoxville, Tennessee February 18, 1826. He came to Texas, came into being two miles east and the Texas, enlisted in the Texas Mounted Volunteer and peaceful community of Fairview (or Dolph) rose fought as a private in the Mexican War of 1846. He about three miles west. Longstreet had two saloons, returned to Tennessee where he taught school for a several stores, a race track, two gins, two sawmills, couple of years. On January 18, 1849 he married and some bad characters who from time to time Margaret Matthews of Memphis, Tennessee, and faced each other at high noon with six shooters together they came to Texas. William Oliver (called blazing. “White Bill” ran a plantation worked by slaves under the supervision of “Black Bill” Oliver. Black Bill has There were some solid citizens there also among many descendants around Richards today. William whom was John Newton Scott, the second child of Oliver and his wife Margaret and six of their children James and Sarah Lane Scott. He lived with his are buried on the small family cemetery just north of grandfather Garrett Lane Scott in Tennessee while Richards. he attended Columbia College in that state. In April 1841 he became inspired with a boy’s love of Between Thomas Gilmore and William Oliver was the adventure and came to his father’s home near farm of James Lawrence Collins and his wife Mary Anderson. In 1843 then about eighteen, he enlisted (Nettles) Gillespie. They had five children before in a company going into service for the Republic of Mary died. Her husband later married Elizabeth GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 2017 PAGE 4 Doughtie who bore him seven more children., one of Dallas.