When William M. bought the 240 acre farm at Dimple, he had been growing cotton on the leased farm at Cherry for four years and was pretty well hooked up financially. (I am using place names like Dimple, Negley, Cherry, etc. as if they existed at the time. They did not. It helps the reader understand the locality.) I have mentioned that William M. formed up his own wagon train each year and hauled his cotton to Jefferson where it could be sold at the Boat Docks for top price. There were cotton buyers in Clarksville, but their customers were ill-advised people who were willing to sell for quick money. 

At this time (Middle 1850s) "The Great Raft" still existed on Red River near Shreveport. The Raft was a great mass of floating river debris which had collected around a small island and had been there long enough that large timber grew on it. The raft kept water backed up along the Red to the degree that it caused the level of Caddo Lake and it's tributaries such as Big Cypress Bayou to run deep enough to give Jefferson, Texas an outlet to the sea. Unfortunately the raft was far enough downstream that the river was not navigable to Clarksville. (for more see "Red River Dust" by Eugene Bowers) 

Clarksville had horse drawn, mule drawn and ox drawn wagons for commercial transportation. The railroad didn't come until 1873. There was a stagecoach which ran to Hughes Springs with connections to Jefferson and Nacogdoches. Some folk took the stage to Jefferson and boarded a steamboat to New Orleans. The cotton farmers dealt with wagon masters who owned several heavy duty Conestoga Style wagons and enough oxen to make a five yoke hitch to each wagon. Oxen were used because they were stronger, less hyper and mope skilled at pulling heavy loads through the bogs, of which there were plenty. The one great disadvantage of using oxen was their slow gait. An average day's travel with twenty-five hundred pounds of baled cotton on board was ten miles. Jefferson is about 90 miles from Clarksville. The most important part of an ox drawn rig was a man called "the drover." He was an even tempered man who could cuss and cajole past a man sized wad of chew tobacco while exhibiting an unbelievable wizardry with the bullwhip. Most drovers grew up playing with a bullwhip. 

Such a man was Sid Sappington, who was inducted into the Raulston Clan when the two eldest Raulston boys, John and William G., married the Sappington sisters, Laura and Lizzy, in 1877. My daddy told me that Sid would often get a group of people together outside the house and have them form a circle about fifty feet across with Sid in the center. He then started popping his whip fore and aft at first then mix in a few side licks and when he got it going just right he commenced to make a noise with his mouth which sounded like someone blowing in a jug with a rhythm that ran about eight beats to the bar, he then started to dance to his self-made music with whip still cracking and the young folk in the circle began to clap and jiggle to the beat until Sid started to loose his balance, from exhaustion and dizziness, and collapsed amid gales of laughter. He could lift a horsefly from the ear of a lead oxen without raising a hair. The bullwhip was used as a device for communication between the drover and his oxen, never as a tool for punishment. 

Most of the oxen in an average team were 1800 pound bulls. If the drover were to, accidentally or otherwise, strike one of them a painful pop with the whip he would suddenly be confronted by 1800 pounds of angry beef. If a turn to the left was needed, while under way, the drover popped his whip near the ear of the lead ox while yelling in a very loud voice, HAW ZEKE, COME HAW YOU (lots of cuss words go here) causing Zeke to move to the left and since they were tied together at the neck by heavy oak timbers called yokes, the teammate had no option but to move to the left. Another signal was transmitted when the drover did an underhanded toss of the whip allowing it to fall gently across the rump of a lazy ox then gently remove it. The ox would usually step up into the yoke and start pulling his share of the load again. If the ox did not respond, the procedure was repeated, accompanied by a string of cuss words which were poetic in their very own snytax. Many writers with greater expertise have addressed this subject. My purpose is to pass along the information that the bullwhip was used as a steering wheel, an accelerator and a flyswatter more than for inflicting pain. As mentioned earlier, the Jonesboro Road entered Hughes Springs from the West where it joined two other roads, one from the North and the second from the Northeast. All the cotton wagons followed a road out of Hughes Springs going South-southeast to Jefferson, called the Jefferson Road, which was very crowded during cotton season. 

William M. passed down the story, that one year when the lead wagon in his train reached the point where they had to line up on one side of the road and await their turn on the scales at the docks, that wagon was five miles from the docks. The line grew shorter at the rate of one mile per day. He also said wagons from Red River County had no trouble finding buyers because growers from our county had the reputation of growing the cleanest and longest staple cotton in the market area. The buyers came out by buggy or on horseback each morning to negotiate with new arrivals to the waiting line and with some who had been there a day or so but had not yet sold their cotton. When a deal was struck, the buyer handed a batch of his tags to each drover who attached them to the ends of each bale of cotton on his wagon. When the cotton was weighed, the Weigher handed the weight ticket to the drover who passed it to the grower. After the grower had collected all his weight tickets, he presented them to the buyer who made out a voucher for each ticket which the grower took to a nearby bank where he withdrew enough money, usually gold, to pay for the wagonmaster plus enough for a hotel room, a barber shop and bath. The wagonboss paid the drovers and there was a hot time in the old town that night! 

While the wagons were tied up in the long waiting lines, the wagonboss and the grower were busy scouting the town for things which were needed back home and the wagonboss looked for things which could be sold at a profit. William M. bought fancy lumber, to dress up the front of his new house. He put redwood shingles on the roof, a dressed and molded siding for the front side of the house and 1/2"x12", knot free, dressed yellow pine with 3" batten strips of the same material for the living room ceiling. This house, when completed, did not have one single closet in it. This absence of closet space necessitated the purchase of several Chests of Drawers, some of which had tilting mirrors on top and were called Bureaus. He also bought various pieces of fine furniture for Fannie and to help his houseful of beautiful daughters in their quest for husbands. 

During my tour of duty at Fort Sam Houston in the summer of '42, I was at San Pedro Park on a late Saturday afternoon watching the beautiful girls do their thing on the diving boards when an old dobber, who looked to be about three days older than Moses, shuffled over and sat on the bench beside me and upon learning my name and where I was from exclaimed, "My gosh boy, I knew your folks way back when I was just a boy and there is one thing you can paste in your hat and remember as truth, the Raulston girls were the best lookers and the best dancers in the County". (Still are LOL!! psd) His name was Giles or Gist or Giddens or some such moniker. When I told my father the story he had no idea who the old man might have been. The last piece of this furniture that I know anything about is in the home of Gloria Raulston Hale in Lubbock. Her husband is Bill Hale and she is descended from John Calhoun Raulston. The piece of furniture is a medium size table which could be used as a lamp table or small library table. It is very beautiful. William M. paid the wagonboss to freight this stuff back home for him.

E-mail Paula Duchesne

All of this scouting around and shopping was made easier by the fact that the grower and the wagonboss traveled on horseback. After the wagons were loaded and on their way home, William M. withdrew the remainder of his gold from the bank and transported it home in saddle bags. It was reported he kept his gold in a wine cask in the cellar.  Now before you excitable young people come running up here with your deep-dish metal detectors and start digging up my patio and garage floor, let me hasten to add it was reported by reliable sources that the old man lost his gold in an unsuccessful saloon venture in the Albion Area. 

After Fannie and her daughters had finished furnishing the East room (the girls' room) it contained a double bed in the northeast corner and one in the southeast corner with a single window between. There was also a single window in the north wall near the foot of one bed and another in the south wall at the foot of the second bed. There was a small woodburning heater between the beds near the foot which presented no fire hazard because the beds were over six feet apart. About three inches out from the west wall, near the southwest corner of the room was a freestanding Golden Oak Murphy Bed which served as a spare bed for women only. If there were men guests they slept in the hallway in the summer months and in winter they were issued heavy quilts and directed to the cottonseed bins in the seedhouse. If the weather was very cold, they were invited to use the spare bed in the living room where William and Fannie had their bed. In the girls' room there was a lamp table in front of the window halfway between the front (north) door and the west wall. There were two or three chests of drawers on the north wall and on the west wall near the northwest corner. There was a quilt chest (quilt box) at the foot of each of the two double beds.

From Gloria Raulston Hale, the owner of the table shown above:  As you requested,  I am sending you pictures of the old table. One has family pictures on it as I have them displayed day to day. The black and white baby picture is of me at about 15-18 months of age. The picture in front of that is of my siblings taken in 1981 (back left to right Douglas Maril Raulston, Jimmy Ray Raulston front left to right Gloria Junell Raulston Hale, Geraldine Elaine Raulston Haag. The picture beside this one is of my Dad and Stepmom, Cleburne Texas Raulston, Eva Lee Raulston. The picture to the right and back is of my family some years back. My husband-Bill, son-Bryan, daughter-Traci and myself. My daughter is now 23 and my son is 29 so that gives you an idea how old the picture is. The second picture is of the table without anything on it. 

In the time of William M., the Raulston place was a rest stop for most travelers on the Jonesborough Road. The excellent well of cold water was near the front yard fence which was near the road. A wine keg was mounted near the side of the well with a wood trough, or conduit, rigged from the keg to a dugout Oak watering trough outside the yard fence where people watered their workstock while refreshing themselves at the well. Those who found themselves at the well in the late afternoon often camped overnight in the open area north of the road. If an unexpected rainstorm or other bad weather blew in, there was a log house near the front fence not far from the present cattleguard which could provide shelter. That log house was the first Raulston School. Sam Houston and Davie Crocket both traveled this road at separate times on their way South in the days before The Texas Revolution, but that was before the time of William M. 

This is the place to record a brief genealogy. Elsewhere I laid out a listing of the family of George W. Rolston but the format was poor and hard to follow. I therefore repeat it here in better form. 

George W. Rolston 
Born TN. about 1792 
Died Red River County, TX Oct. 1859 
Married TN. about 1815, wife unknown 

HIS CHILDREN 

Mary Ann b. 1816 d. 1898
Married: Brinton Coffee 
Settled near Cookville, Titus Co. Tx 

William M. 
b.,1818 d. 1890 
Married: Frances Ousley 
Settled Dimple, Red River Co. TX 

Cassandra b. 1825 d. ca. 1868
1st marriage: ? Hastings 
2nd marriage: Robert A. Nicks 
Halesboro, Red River Co. TX 

Sallie 
b. 1826 d. 1878 
Married: Daniel Chesshire 

Butler
b. ? died 1965
Married: Mary Jane Burkes


I feel compelled to record a family legend here. All that follows is legend - 

There was a sister to William M. called Elizabeth who married a man called W. C. Cotton and they came to Dimple in about 1855 and settled the tract that I knew as a boy as the Bassie Prewitt place. This place was bounded on the North by the south bank of Whiteoak Creek and on the East by The Old Albion Road. There was a road which ran from the Northeast corner of the William M. 240 acre tract to intersect the Albion Rd. in front of the W.L. Rice store site. It was on this second road near the Southwest corner of their tract that W.C. Cotton and Elizabeth built their log house. The road was later rerouted to pursue a more easterly course which left the old house isolated. My father did not remember these people but he did remember, as a very young boy, driving past the old abandoned cabin with his father. It is a fact that in the deed records in Red River Co. courthouse annex there is a deed to the above tract with W.C. Cotton named as Grantee. It is a fact that in 1979 or 1980, I visited with Mr. H.T. (Ike) Thompson (1892-1982) and the following conversation occurred. I said, "Uncle Ike, Kent thinks he wants to be buried in our cemetery on the East side of that big postoak in the Southeast section." Uncle Ike turned to me with a touch of anger and said, "You can't bury anybody there! That's where old man Cotton and his wife and three babies are buried!" "Which old man Cotton?," I inquired. "The one that was married to one of the older set of Raulston women." he replied. 'I don't know who she was, but she was close kin to your daddy's family." It is a fact that in the middle 1930s when my brother Garland and I became old enough to accompany our father to town on the watermelon wagon, a Mr. J.I. Cotton, who lived in the city, always stopped at our wagon for a visit. He would occasionally inquire,
"Clarence, you figure out yet how it is that we are kin?"  "No, J.I., I don't know any more'n I ever did, and that is I was told that before I was borned a man name of Cotton lived at Dimple and his wife was a Raulston." 

It is a fact that there is a deed dated May 6, 1859 Granting 2.75 acres of land where The New Haven Cemetery now lies, to the community. The trustees named in that document were William Raulston, Elias Rhoden and W.C. Cotton. 

People who lend no credence to family legends should talk to an American Indian, an Olmec or other Central and South American tribes, or to the people whom Alex Hailey was writing about in his great work called ROOTS. For the sake of all that is good in the field of communications never call a legend, a TRADITION!! A tradition is a custom or a practice. A legend is a story passed down from one generation to the next. It has little to do with myth. In my best dictionary, the word myth is listed about number 20 in a long list of synonyms for the word LEGEND. Please note that before myth comes the word R-E-C-0-R-D. 

There is a gap in the birth record of the family tree of George, between William M. and Cassandra. Elizabeth probably belongs there. There is a book called "The Raulstons of Red River County" by C.M. Raulston Jr., Published by Historical Publishers, Inc. Fort Worth May 1 973.

Those of you who managed to hang onto a copy should record your own family tree on the pages in the back of that book. Then you should generate, on your printshop program, a small greeting card style booklet for each of your children. 

Start with the family tree of George W.; then copy from the above source starting with William M. and Fannie; then pick up their child that you or your spouse are descended from and come right on down and include what you wrote in the back of the above book. Those of you who do not have a copy, check the genealogy department of your big city library. I sent copies all across the country. WHAT A LEGACY! Of course, most of them will not appreciate it until they pass their 45th birthday, but that's ok, I predict that most of you will live a long long time.