Reminiscences Of

Judge P. A. Martin

My first visit to Wichita Falls occurred during the great drought of 1886-7, when the only available water for man or beast between Graham, where I then lived and Wichita Falls was at Archer City where I secured water for my team at 25 cents per bucketful. This water was hauled to town from water holes in the little Wichita river. Drinking water was secured from some wells in town and was, as I remember, free.

At Wichita Falls, the principal watering place seemed to be a well in the middle of 7th street in front of where the Cream Bakery now stands; a number of people were around this well all the time drawing water and carrying it to their residences and business places. There was some water however for livestock in the lake just west of the courthouse. (This lake has long since been drained and the section where it was is now thickly populated).

At this visit to this place, I had my first court-room experience in this county. A seedy-looking individual had been arrested for vagrancy, the exact charge being that he was exhibiting, in public places, tricks of sleight-of-hand and legerdemain "not licensed by law." The county attorney, Mr. Boyd, as I remember, was prosecuting. The defendant had no lawyer but had demanded a jury and was defending himself. In making his defense he said he had been told somewhere that his "tricks" were licensed by law, but he did not know where to find the law, and, in his dilemma he asked if anyone in the court-room would tell him where this law was. It was then that I "broke into the case" and told him to look on page 12 of the acts of 1882 and he would find what he wanted. A hurried search for the book around the court-room was make, but the book was not found and the Justice ordered the jury to retire and consider their verdict. Later, they came back into court and said they would not render a verdict until they had seen the Acts of 1882, so that volume was gotten from some lawyer’s office and the jury found the law as I had stated and acquitted the defendant at once. I had left the court but he at once hunted me up and held out a quarter and said "stranger, this is the only thing I have got in the world, but I want you to take it." Of course I refused to take his money and then he said "If you positively will not take it then come with me into Billy Key’s place and we will both have a drink on it." It is no part of this story to relate the result of this invitation.

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When I next came to Wichita Falls, it was with a party of U.S. Marshals as a posseman. "Old Tige" Cabell, was the U.S. Marshal; his son, Ben. E. was his chief field Deputy. Ed. W. Johnson was Deputy in charge of the Graham office. I was Johnson’s posseman. Lon Burson, a deputy sheriff of Clay County was Ben Cabell’s posseman. I was then just twenty-one years of age, lately come out of the east and wanted adventure and especially wanted to se the Indians and the Indian country; so I had persuaded Johnson to take me along. We came to this place first, as the understanding was that the party would "outfit" here, but we found that Cabell had understood that we would start from Henrietta, so, after spending a day here, Johnson and I started out for Henrietta. We drove the tam into a water hole below the Denver Lake to give them water and got stuck, so that we both had to disrobe and work for some time getting it out. While we were this engaged and thus unattired a party of young people came to the lake with fishing tackle and we huddled down in the cold water and promptly disappeared below the dam ad except for a few passers by on the road we were not further disturbed. How we four men, after outfitting at Henrietta, crossed Red River at old Benvanue and how after six weeks raid in the Indian country, using the guard house at Fort Sill, as a concentration prison, we finally brought back thirty-six Federal prisoners, belongs rather to the history of the Federal Court at Graham than to the annals of Wichita Falls.

Ed. Johnson was the quickest man "on the draw" that I ever saw handling a six-gun. A year after the raid I have just mentioned he came through this place again and in a gun-fight with a cowboy named Frank James, in which James used a Winchester rifle, both fired simultaneously. James lost his life while Johnson lost his right arm. He was duly tried and acquitted in the district court of Wichita County. Driven to the use of his left arm, he soon became a deadly left-handed shot and I have seen him do some marvelous shooting with his left hand. He went to California and was for many years a deputy-sheriff in Los Angeles, dying there a few years ago.

Ben Cabell was afterward Mayor of Dallas, and sheriff of Dallas County for several terms. Burson, I believe moved to Hall County and served a term or more as sheriff of that county.

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One of my first visits to Wichita Falls was with a client who had a settlement to make with J.A. Kemp, of the Kemp Grocery Co. and I began then an acquaintance with and a friendship for this princely gentleman that lasted to his death. About that time I also met here a lawyer named Ashby James, who it seems, was not only a lawyer of ability, but was also engaged to some extent in farming; at least he told me that he was making good money at the bar but was unfortunately spending it all on the farm.

Another character I shall always remember, was a lawyer named Flood, whose flow of plain and fancy "cuss-words" was out of the ordinary, even in those days. I never saw him in action in court, but I have gathered from the older members of the bar that he was a good lawyer. Another of the early lawyers I loved to meet was Major Robert Cobb; a gentleman of the old school, a gallant southern soldier, an eloquent speaker and a kindly, manly man.

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It was in Wichita Falls that I received the first good fee I ever received as a practicing lawyer. I had been employed by a banker in Nebraska to collect some notes from a cattleman. So I filed suit in the Federal Court at Graham and attached a brand of cattle in Archer County and Baylor County. After directing the attachment the cattleman came with the banker and me to Wichita Falls and got the money from a bank here to pay off; so my client was very happy. When he asked me my fee, I just happened to have sense enough to let him fix the fee and to my astonishment he handed me five hundred dollars in cash. I had never received a fee of more than fifty dollars up to that time. I felt that I was getting up in the profession right along.

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It was a long and lonesome road from Graham to Wichita Falls in the 80’s and 90’s. From the "drift fence" of the Loving Cattle Co. six miles north of Graham to the "top of the hill" at Wichita Falls, one traveled through an almost continuous prairie-dog town, not excepting the metropolis of Archer County. In fact on one of my first visits to Archer City I sat on the court-house steps with Sheriff Joe Powell and we shot prairie dogs on the public square. It took a good team to make it with a Spaulding buggy from Graham to Wichita Falls in a day. When I traveled the road I usually carried a shotgun along and ordinarily bagged some prairie chicken, quail or plover along the way. I remember on one occasion I got six prairie chickens out of bunch of seven at a single shot a few miles south of Archer City.

One of the most remarkable characters of the early days here was Tom Pickett, who died last year a citizen of King County. When I first knew him he was a peace officer of this city. He had the detective instinct; knew the ways and the habits of criminals; was thoroughly dependable and was a terror to violators of the law. I saw him once at the station, covertly watching the incoming passengers as they emerged from a Ft. Worth & Denver train. I asked him who he was looking for and named some New York gangsters who had recently committed a sensational murder there. I said, "Have you got a tip that they are on this train?" He promptly answered, "No, Martin, but you know all bad men come to Wichita Falls sooner or later and if they happen to be on this train I’ll spot ‘em and get ‘em as they get off."

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One of the most lovable men I have ever known was "Uncle Tom" Corridon of Iowa Park, an early settler in this county and, at the time I first met him, he was the proprietor of a hotel south of the railway at Iowa Park, where, for a day or so, during one of my political campaigns, I was a transient guest. He told me many good stories, but one that lingers in my memory was on a certain "Saint Patrick’s day" he had sung himself into jail and sung himself out again as he expressed it. I cannot repeat it in the rich brogue he used, but it seems that he was celebrating the day of this patron Saint in Wichita Falls and sang "The Wearin’ of the Green" in the hearing of some new policeman who thought it a disturbance of the peace and arrested the singer. He took him before Judge Edgar Rye and the crowd followed to see what the City Judge would do. After the officer made his complaint, and Uncle Tom reminded the Judge that it was "Saint Patrick’s Day in the mornin’", the Judge sentenced him to sing the song again in the court-room which the prisoner proceeded to do and was promptly discharged amid the applause of the audience. He was my good friend to the day of his death. When I left his hotel on this first occasion he said to me, "I can promise you the entire Irish vote of the precinct, which is myself."

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One of the first automobiles to reach Wichita Falls was a "White Steamer" owned and driven by my friend Albert Fonville and shortly after its purchase he invited Judge Carrigan, then Judge of the 30th District, Judge J.T. Montgomery and Lon Mathis to ride with him to the opening of the district court at Archer City. I was then district attorney, residing at Graham, and, in order to be on hand I had come from home the day before court opened. At nine a.m. the regular hour for opening court there was no Judge present’ noon came and yet no Judge. The grand jurors, petit jurors, witnesses and attorneys present, all went to lunch; then back to the court-house where we congregated in the upper story and watched the Wichita road. At that time we could see the road for two or three miles out. Along about the middle of the afternoon we saw a smoke in the distant north; then the form of some sort of vehicle; then it stopped and four men "piled out" and we could see them examine it closely; then they would push and pull and it would start again and the men would spring in and come along a few hundred yards and history would repeat itself. They were at least an hour getting to the courthouse. All four seemed satisfied with the White Steamer. I don’t think Albert had any company going back to Wichita Falls, Judge Carrigan’s charge to the Grand Jury late that afternoon was short and crisp, and, as I remember now he recommended that a petition be drawn by that body, asking the legislature to prohibit the use of the public roads by any but "hoss-drawn vehicles."

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Among the interesting court proceedings of early days, this one happened one very hot day in August. Constable Pete Randolph, (afterward sheriff), was on duty in the down-town section, when a young negro man seeing the officer coming in his direction took his hat in hand and broke into a run for the timber down on the river. Constable Randolph pursued, summoning help as he ran and, after about an hours chase the negro was caught about a mile from town and was brought safely into Judge Rye’s city court as the corner of Indiana and 7th streets. Quite a crowd collected in the small court room and around the doors and windows, thinking a desperate criminal had been apprehended. When the trembling prisoner was brought in, Judge Rye adjusted his spectacles, took his pen in hand, opened his docket and said to the Constable "What charge Mr. Officer?" The question was a stumper to Pete for an instant, but he soon recovered his urbanity and answered "Running from an officer, your honor, running from an officer."

A diligent search of the statutes and ordinances "in such case made and provided" ensued but finding that no penalty had ever been prescribed for flight from an officer, the prisoner was discharged and the joke was not only on the Constable but also on all who had taken part in the race that August day, including the negro himself.

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The public regard for Judge Carrigan was never better illustrated than in his dispersion of an embryo mob one night in the early days. There had been a shooting at the brickyard between two negroes and one white man and the white man was in the hospital with a bullet in his back while the two negroes were in jail. That night a mob collected down town and moved toward the jail greatly excited by the report of the ever-present trouble-maker who said it "was a financial certainty" that the white man would die before morning. It happened that Mrs. Carrigan had undergone an operation at Burnside & Walker’s hospital that day and the judge was there with her when the mob was forming to lynch the negroes. He went out and spoke to them, telling them that Mrs. Carrigan was in the hospital and that any undue excitement might be of serious consequence to her and asked them kindly to disperse and go home. They immediately complied with his request and in less than ten days the white man was well. One of the negroes was never indicted and the other got off with a two-year penalty. I doubt if the "financial certainty" of a lynching bee could have been averted in any other way that night.