Courtesy of Tom Fulbright

Not long ago, Tom Fulbright in Euless, Texas sent us an article from the book, "A History of the Lorena, Texas Area." Tom writes, "It was written about 1980 by my brother Newton H. Fulbright upon request of the Lorena Historical Committee. I have consulted Mrs. Dorothea Jones, a member of the Committee, and she says "of course you have permission to reprint the story if you so desire."

Tom continues, "About Newton himself, he was a journalist, born 1907, grew up in the Lorena area on the farm, still owned by the family. He did the normal work done by every one on the farm at that time, chopping cotton, pulling corn, shocking oats, and made probably the last cattle drive through Waco in 1931 when he and two of my other brothers drove 35 to 40 head of stock through Waco, across the Brazos on the old suspension bridge, and on northward 15 or so miles to Gholson. He ended up on the editorial staff of the New York Herald Tribune--lived in New York city for over 20 years, earning many awards for his work there including journalist of the year by Columbia University. After the Tribune's demise he took a job with the Veterans Administration as public relations officer for the New York-Pennsylvania region. We lost Newt to a heart attack in 1987. His son is the sports editor of the Pecos, Texas newspaper." (We print the article in its entirely with minor revisions by Tom , made in the interest of historical accuracy.)

Richard Newton Fulbright would recall that when he came to Texas with his brother, Sam, and father Lawson Henderson Fulbright, they crossed the Brazos River at Waco. There was a ford but no bridge. The west bank of the river was of pristine limestone, which always impressed me because when I was a kid there was no limestone visible, only worthless red sand. Visiting Waco today, thanks to Lake Whitney and other expensive but effective catch basins they have constructed upstream, the limestone is revealed, white and clean, as it must have looked to grandfather in 1874. In this way "modernism" has restored a cosmetic imprint to God's own country.

The Fulbright family "put up" at a hotel on Bridge Street. Possibly, it wasn't called Bridge Street, but it was the only street in town. Land agents began descending in droves, soon as word got out that a fellow had arrived with money in his pockets and land on his mind. Negotiations ended with the purchase of two sections of prairie out of Cow Bayou, east of Hubby Hill. From the hill, gazing across a sea of grass, one looked distantly to what would eventually become Lorena.

In that direction the nearest neighbor was "Hoss" Williams, who had staked out a claim to the only year-round water hole in the area. Atop a limestone ridge, looking down on the Williams ranch, was the Hooper place. "Hoss" Williams' water hole on Cow Bayou was an important stop on the Chisolm Trail. The next stop north was "Ten Mile House" on Bull Hide, out southwest of what is now Hewitt, where Tom Connally was born. There were a few trees down around "Hoss" Williams' water hole and some chaparral brush over around Bruceville, the nearest mail station south of Waco. An old timer once told me he remembered grandfather Newt Fulbright sitting on his horse at Bruceville, reading the newspapers to an assembly of neighbors. Things were going on in the old states and people were eager for news of them. In Pennsylvania they had discovered oil, and a fellow named Rockefeller was trying to corner the market for coal oil. My great uncle, Clint McKethan, often recalled that a fellow came to their house in South Alabama after the Civil War, talking about this new stuff, coal oil. "Why," the fellow said, eyes stretching to cover the point, "you could pour a cup full of it on that old stump out there and burn it up to the last vestige of a root!"

Pennsylvania was of interest to my family because our grandsire, Johan Willhelm Volprecht, had arrived there form near Berlin with a group of German immigrants in 1740. They settled at Dutch Cove, Pa., and Johan was naturalized at North Hampton, Pa., in 1762. Later, he married Christiana Halstead, of Long Island, N.Y. (probably Brooklyn.) They changed the name to Fulbright, and had six daughters and five sons, all of whom joined the American Revolution for political independence enlisting under Field Marshal von Blucher (Tom notes, "I have never heard of this. I think it should be deleted.) Three were killed at the Battle of Cowpens, down in the Carolinas. John and Jacob survived. It appears that John and his wife Elizabeth Coalter were childless (I believe this to be an historical error.--DLF), but Jacob and Elizabeth Wisel, of Long Island, N.Y., left two sons, John and Jacob, thus assuring continuation of the Fulbright family that subsequently spread south and westward, and finally, with my great-grandfather, reached Cow Bayou in 1874.

They had gone west, many of them to Missouri before the Civil War, first sending Levi on ahead to scout out land. He was last observed leaving a tavern, in the company of another, man. Next day Levi's horse was found, saddled and with the bridle on cropping grass at the side of the road. Missing was a considerable sum of money from the saddlebags. Nothing was ever heard of Levi, or the man leaving the tavern with him.

Undaunted, members of the family loaded belongings and headed west in their wagons, reaching Missouri shortly before the war and settling around what is now Springfield. Lawson Henderson, a man not given greatly to farming, was soon down in Arkansas operating a sawmill, on the Arkansas River, at Pine Bluff. Meanwhile, as hostilities broke out and the weight of Union numbers began to overcome Confederate resistance, some of the family retreated to Arkansas. A Mr. Scott, for many years a county jailer at Waco, used to relate to me how, as a kid working for the Fulbright family in Missouri, he took part in the southward trek, helping herd cattle and slaves down the road to Arkansas.

It was largely the custom for slaves to adopt the name of the family that owned them, and after the war some freed Fulbright negroes settled east of Lorena. In 1948, as a New York Herald Tribune reporter, I found myself at Fort Benning, Georgia, waiting to accompany the Fourth Division to Germany, as the first U.S. military unit assigned to post-war occupation. Thumbing through the station telephone book, I came across the name of Sergeant Fulbright. dialed a number, and a woman, a negro from her voice, answered. Sergeant Fulbright she said was in Korea and after a moment, she added: "You are white." I said I was and told her, "You come from Arkansas." "I don't," she said. "But my husband does."

A brother of my great-grandfather remained in Missouri and headed an aggressive force of Confederate irregulars. A price was put on his head and he was murdered one night, betrayed in a visit to his home.

When Union forces arrived at Pine Bluff, Lawson Henderson was impressed into service as a guide and scout. For the remainder of the war he and his family were "guests" of the Union Army, living inside the Federal compound. After the war, free to resume his business, he added a cotton gin to his lumber operations. Apparently he prospered and lived a busy, happy life until the death of his only daughter. When his wife died a short time later, he sold out, gave his eldest married son a liberal patrimony, and with Sam, who was 11 or 12, and grandfather, who was about 17, headed for Texas. The son-in-law of his deceased daughter, William Stanford, was in Texas, writing glowing accounts of the new, virgin country.

On the way to Texas great-grandfather spotted a comely widow and promptly married her. She had two small boys. Thus encumbered, he arrived at Waco and lived for a time in a hotel. Grandfather was sent to Houston with the wagons, for lumber and other supplies, and the family built a house on Cow Bayou. The Huntsinger family lived in the house for many years. I believe it still stands.

Grandfather and Sam, employing a new gadget on the market, a moldboard plow, began breaking sod ("it sounded like somebody ripping a piece of ducking"), and planted cotton, corn and other crops. A cotton planter was improvised by drilling holes in the mid-section of a whiskey keg, driving an axle through the ends and having it pulled along a furrow behind a mule. A man followed with a brush harrow to cover the distributed cotton seed. Each year the wagons made a trip to Houston for supplies, a community undertaking joined in by the Caufield boys, some of the Westbrooks and others. A delight on the return trip, grandfather recalled, was to knock in the bung of a whiskey keg and sip liquor through a prairie straw. the undulating prairie grass, grandfather recalled, rose to the stirrups of a man on horseback.

Mindful of the abundant, all-round farm life he had know in North Carolina, great-grandfather, as a first priority, ordered fruit trees and put out an extensive orchard. Sam was assigned to carry water and pour it on the infant trees, to nurse them through the hot, dry summer. Life took on the aspects of home. Great-grandfather, a man of commerce and social permutation, purchased a buggy, and behind a spirited but dependable mare began making calls on his neighbors.

Life became more exciting when there arrived one day a letter from Miss Susan McKethean, niece of great-grandfather's new wife. She was living with a aunt and uncle over at Madisonville, and sounded quite unhappy. Her uncle had spanked Clint. He was the kid brother she had brought with her from south Alabama, following the death of her parents. It seemed that Clint was accused of slipping into the watermelon patch and with a new pocketknife cut an inspection hole in the largest melon in the field. It was gourd green. When the melon started to sour and rot, Clint was confronted and thoroughly spanked, much to the distress of his protective older sister. She wanted to know if she might join the Fulbright family and bring Clint with her. "Tell her to come on," said great-grandfather, glancing over his paper at his wife. "I hear she is a good looking girl. Tell her to come on: she will make a good wife for Newt."

She arrived and was about 16, blonde and beautiful as gossip would have her. Clint was wiry and lank; he was about nine. The Fulbright family that set out from Pine Bluff, numbering father and two sons, now included a wife, her two small boys, and the two orphans.

Time moved to the fourth or fifth year. The young orchard was in full bloom, promising a first bountiful crop of fruit. Suddenly, in the late afternoon of a warm April day, a cloud came rolling up from the northwest. It came on, a howler, a delayed Texas norther. It destroyed young corn and froze blossoms in the bud. The promise of a fruit crop went with the wind.

Great-grandfather went out of his mind. He became insane. He had never seen anything like this. Increasingly, he had felt ill at home here. This flat, level country of grass and sky was totally different from anything he had known in North Carolina where there were wooded mountains and pleasant, fruitful valleys. The Missouri Ozarks hadn't been too different--not too different down around Pine Bluff, where the land flattened out. There were trees. He longed for pine trees.

He got in his buggy and drove around the country, selling land by the parcel. "How about buying some land?" "Land!" I can't buy any land. I haven't got any money." "How much money do you have?" "A hundred dollars." "I'll give you a hundred acres of land for a hundred dollars." The Barnes family bought a strip along the west end. The Standfords bought some, including his former son-in-law William, living now on the limestone ridge above the valley. One way and another, through land agents and the neighbors he got rid of the entire two sections, 1,280 acres, and moved with his wife and her two sons to Palestine. He bought a good house and 14 acres and purchased a section of sand and woods out beyond town.

In the early 1930's, when the East Texas oil boom was the hottest, my father and Uncle Joe Fulbright decided to drive over to Palestine and look into the ownership. They discovered that the section of sand and woods had been sold on installment to three men in the 1890's. There was no family record of completed payments. They drove out and looked at the land. "Lawson," said Uncle Joe, "let's get on back home. Anybody who has lived over here all these years is entitled to anything they find under the ground because there's nothing on top of it worth a dime."

My memory of Lorena has rivers of black smoke rising against the sky. Cotton gins. From the position of the smoke you learned to spot the various gins. There was Westbrook and Evans down to the south, the two Williams gins in between, and the new Farmers Union gin to the north, on the flat above the creek that came down along the Katy tracks, west of town. Grandfather had been chosen to manage the new Farmers gin. He had recently completed a term as County Commissioner for the northwest quarter of McLennan County, and was living nearer Lorena now on a place he had purchased, part of it on "white rock" (limestone) with a hidden picket of the only woods in the area and the rest flat land sloping down to the Spring Valley-South Bosque road.

My disgruntled great-grandfather, departing for Palestine had told Newt and Sam--"Shift for yourselves." Poor Sam. He was only 16. He joined the Army and served in Utah. Later, living in California, he survived the San Francisco earthquake. In a last letter to grandfather, in 1906, he told about it, in precise, lucid prose. He described the wreckage of the city. Much of the letter was devoted to the geology of California, explaining how and why the earthquake occurred. When I read the letter on yellow paper smelling of tobacco in a drawer of Grandfather's desk, it was the first I had heard of the San Andreas Fault.

Miss Susan McKethan chose to stay; she married grandfather and made him a good wife. They began life in a house they both built, with Clint and the neighbors helping, on the Bell farm, over on the west slope of Hubby Hill. Grandfather "busted up" the prairie and planted cotton, corn, wheat, and oats. The rich earth yielded abundantly, and despite a money crunch galling the entire country, he was able to buy more mules and equipment and undertook to bring into cultivation some 400 acres owned by an eccentric old Englishman living in Houston named Tinsley. The farm was over toward the Bosque, adjoining the Caufield Ranch and the Brank Barnes place.

Cline made his home with Newt and Sue, helping with the farming and hiring out of the neighbors. All his life he would relate stories about these neighbors. One was an old bachelor of romantic inclination named "Colonel" Anderson. He went to Moody one Saturday and bought himself a suit of clothes. He wore the suit to church that Sunday night and next day, out in the fields he came over to Clint and inquired, "You hear them say anything about me last night, Clint?" "No I didn't," Clint said. "Hell, I don't think anybody saw you." Without a word, "Colonel" Anderson turned and went to the house. He saddled up and lit our for Moody with the new suit in a bundle under his arm. If nobody had noticed him, especially the girls, he had no need for a new suit of clothes.

One cold night, with a northerner howling, Clint slipped out of his boots and went to bed early. Grandfather, before retiring, tilted one of the boots and poured a glass of water in the toe. Next morning, coming shivering to the fire to put on his boots, Clint tugged and tusseled. Grandfather watched, concealing his interest. He saw Clint feel inside, then turn up the boot and dump a big piece of ice out on the floor. He said nothing, but in the kitchen, talking to grandmother, grandfather heard him say, "Sue, that damned man you married is worse than any kid."

One autumn day, pulling corn, grandfather was astonished at the sudden, frantic acrobatics displayed by Clint in scrambling out of his trousers. A stinging lizard! Grandfather laughed, and come out of my britches in a stinging lizard got in them, even if Grover Cleveland's wife was present.

People read the newspaper in those days. Grover Cleveland, a bachelor President, had gotten married while in office to a lovely young lady displayed in all the papers. The marriage brought romantic relief to a country beset by money problem.

But things got better on the farm. The dollar was put on the gold standard; paper currency had value once more, and people prospered. The Katy Railroad came through Lorena, establishing it, and the Santa Fe pushed up through Moody and McGregor. The country was a patchwork reticule of cotton and corn fields and oats and wheat, golden in the sun.

Great-grandfather Fulbright paid one last visit. Standing on Hubby Hill and looking out across the acres he once owned, he refused to see anything of value.

"I wouldn't give my little place over there at Palestine," he said, "for this entire country."

He died shortly after that, and lies buried in Harris Creek Cemetery, over at South Bosque. His wife had died some years before. My father, Lawson W. Fulbright, had spent a winter with him, attending a business school at Palestine.

The next year, in 1906, father and mother were married and made their home at Merkel, in West Texas. Mother was Emma Hester Taylor, daughter of John D. and Frances Stephens Taylor. They came to Texas from near Gladen, Alabama, where grandfather Taylor operated a sawmill, arriving at Lorena on the new Katy Railroad and staying at a hotel before moving out to Spring Valley, to a farm owned by grandfather's aunt and uncle, the Tilmond Knights. Grandmother's family had come from England to Virginia, thence to Kentucky and Northern Alabama.

Mother's family, when I was big enough to take note, lived in an old two-story house on a farm about three miles northwest of Lorena. They tore the house down during World War I and erected a magnificent new home. It was a delight to spend the night there. My brother Harold and I would listen to the rhythmical beat of horses hoofs and the steady grind of wheels, long after bedtime, on the "white rock" road churned to dust by cotton wagons that passed, one after another, during the day and returned empty in the dead of night. Occasionally, a train would whistle. We would rush to a window, and if we were lucky, we would see the red, green, and white lights of a passenger train pushing its way mysteriously across the distant fields.

John Fulbright, a cousin, had come to Lorena. His wife Molly was kin to the McBrayers. He was mechanically bent, and worked at the cotton gins. George Fulbright, a bachelor, came from Missouri about the time great-grandfather fled to the piney woods. George lived with and worked for grandfather and the neighbors before going to California and engaging eventually in rice farming in the Sacramento River Valley. He came back for a visit in 1922. He was a man of total recall. He could name names and cite the circumstances of how people we knew came to Texas, some of them a jump ahead of a posse. It was fascinating listening to him and grandfather talk about old times. John Fulbright lived at Lorena until World War I, in the first house up the hill, beyond the creek, in the west end of town. He engaged later in farming over toward Moody and moved with his family to Amarillo when the Panhandle oil field blew in . His life ended out there.

I was born at Merkel but of course have no recollection of it. My family returned when I was about two, and we lived for a year on the Whittenburg place grandfather had purchased. When he left the Tinsley farm to move there himself, we changed places with him. From then until 1931 we lived on Salt Creek and most of my 10 brothers and sisters were born there. We attended school at Spring Valley, wading three miles through mud up to our knees to get there. The school boasted three academic instructors and a music teacher; it carried a student through the ninth grade. The curriculum was long on Latin, math, history, geography, and English literature. We all, one way and another, finished school at Lorena.

When I was in school there, people were surprised to learn that Lorena High School had once had a band. John and Loys Taylor, my uncles, played in it. I remembered, when I was very young, attending in a grove down on the creek a Lorena picnic that featured the school band. John, I remember, looked quite important behind an immense horn. I have no way here in Washington of checking names and dates, but the school principal was a Miss Moore, who apparently ran things with the same steady hand evidenced by Miss Myrtle L. Tanner when I was there. She exerted a great influence on my life. She was a graduate, I seem to recall of the University of Chicago, and took extensive post-graduate work at Texas University. I saw her last at El Paso, she serving in some executive capacity with the State Department of Education and I as a reporter for the El Paso Times.

There is more, much more. One could go on. Columbia University has launched a most rewarding experiment, an "Oral History" library of taped interviews. It is about the only way to preserve the flavor and dimensions of history, those ephemeral impressions that last through the mind and elude mechanical arts of writing. It all fades away like dust against the evening sun.

The thing I remember especially is that Lorena people--and it seems to have been a characteristic of the times--were readers of newspapers, magazines, and books. I see my grandfather best, peering through his glasses over the top of a newspaper to acknowledge some observation by my grandmother. In presidential election years he subscribed to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the Brooklyn Eagle, one Republican and the other an important Democrat organ, in order that he might be better informed. He knew pretty well what was going on. Among his books was Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." I read and re-read it because there was not a great deal otherwise for a boy to do. And I remember Mr. John Hollis of precise English and specific definition. One misses the sound of their voices."