True Grit

 

Article from The Gainesville Daily Hesperian

Richard Robert Creech

Richard left Sylvan Grove, Alabama, near Dothan, headed for Texas when he was only twenty-three. His father, David, had moved his family to Alabama from Georgia when Richard was a five-year-old and had settled into farming before being elected to the state legislature, and ultimately serving on the state’s secession committee, helping to form the Confederacy. David died during the Civil War in 1863, when Richard was still a young teenager. Richard’s eldest brother, Joshua, was killed the next year in the battle of Chickamauga, a conflict second only to Gettysburg in the number of casualties. Another older brother, Kenneth also served in the Confederate Army. Richard was too young for war.

So, in 1873, like his father before him, Richard determined to move westward. He settled in Wilson County, Texas, south of San Antonio, taking up, like his father, both farming and public service. Within a year after settling down in Texas, Richard married Emma M. Cocke, and they began their family. They would have ten children over the next twenty years, losing two of them as infants. At one point Richard and Emma owned four-hundred fifty acres of farmland in the county.

Emma M. Cocke Creech

Richard left farming to turn to merchandizing in the settlement called Union Valley, about twenty-two miles northeast of Floresville. In 1885 he was appointed Sheriff of Wilson County. He would be elected again in 1888 and 1890 and would serve several terms as Tax Assessor as well. In 1887 the county built a new jailhouse next to the courthouse and the Sheriff and his family took up residence on the first floor of the new facility. 

Snow on Wilson County Jailhouse 1926

This was life in the still wild west, as the incidents that follow will illustrate.
On May 30, 1889, Mrs. Lou Bryan, the wife of one of Richard’s deputies, claimed that a black man had assaulted and attempted to rape her at about 9:00 that evening. Investigation showed tracks leading to the home of Monroe Toodles, about 300 yards away. Toodles had already experienced some conflicts with the law in his past. Mrs. Bryan identified Toodles as her assailant and he was arrested.

A crowd of infuriated citizens gathered as word spread about what had taken place that night. A lynching was imminent. The Sheriff closely guarded the prisoner, and then, accompanied by a “strong guard of men armed and prepared to resist the would-be lynchers,” he whisked him off to the depot on horseback at full gallop when the train bound for San Antonio arrived. Toodles was rushed onboard the train with his armed guards. Passengers were frightened and thought they were about to be robbed in broad daylight. But Toodle's life was saved from the mob. For now.

Toodles was scheduled to appear before a grand jury in Floresville on June 17, 1889. When the Sheriff arrived at the depot with the accused, a threatening crowd met them. A large posse was required to escort the prisoner to the courthouse. While the hearing was taking place, the crowd grew “larger, more threatening, and angry.” They prepared to take Toodles away from the officers and hang him.

Meanwhile, a train arrived from Galveston, bound for San Antonio. Aboard were members of the Belknap and Maverick Rifles, returning from the Interstate Drill, where they had scored the highest scores ever made in competition. The Sheriff pressed these young militiamen into service to keep the mob at bay until Toodles could be taken back to the depot and transported to San Antonio for safety. After the grand jury’s indictment, the venue of the trial was moved to Galveston, and the trial was set for January 1890.

That very night the racial tension in the town grew even more. Dr. W. Watkins and Dr. H. B. Rabensberg (some accounts have Rosenberg) determined to ride out to the “colored colony” and seek vengeance on a black man, Abe Jefferson, with whom Watkins had a dispute. When they rode into the colony, Watkins spotted a man on horseback he believed to have been Jefferson, thinking he recognized the man’s horse. Watkins shot and killed the man, leaving his body in the street. As it turned out, he did not kill Jefferson, but Dr. Fouts, his own partner, who had been out on a medical call and was returning home.

Early the next morning, the Sheriff was informed of Fout’s murder and went to investigate. The doctor’s body had been lying in the street in the black community for several hours. Many immediately assumed that he had been killed by blacks in retaliation for the attempted lynching of Monroe Toodles, and Charles Whipper, a black man, was arrested on suspicion of the crime.

By mid-day an angry crowd of more than two-hundred armed men assembled in Floresville, ready to avenge the doctor’s death. Newspaper reports indicate that the crowd was from all portions of the county and included some of its best citizens. Strenuous efforts were required to persuade this mob to wait for the results of an investigation.

The Sheriff found Justice Jennings and a secret inquest was begun at noon and continued until 2:00 PM the next day. Charles Whipper was released and Drs. W. Watkins and H. Rabensberg were made to answer for the crime.

Not everyone was pleased with the decision, but according to reports, those who were able to hear the evidence were persuaded that the Justice made the right call. 

On January 15, 1890, in Galveston, Texas, Toodles’ trial was held. He pled not guilty. Mrs. Lou Bryan testified of her experience. By the end of the day, the trial was in the hands of the jury, who deliberated for five days before returning a verdict of guilty. Reports were that the panel was split 9-3 in favor of a guilty verdict for several days. Toodles was sentenced to serve two years in the state penitentiary. He died in the prison before completing his sentence. The cause of death is not known.

The 39-year-old Sheriff who faced down mobs of people who had elected him to serve, and who would eventually elect him to another term and to four terms as their Tax Assessor, who protected the rights of a black man accused of assaulting the wife of one of his own deputies, was Richard Robert Creech. He was my great-grandfather. 

Details about the incident described are taken from accounts in the Galveston Daily News and the Gainesville Daily Hesperian.

Wilson County Jailhouse Museum, Floresville, TX

Cousins

 Here's another older piece of writing that belongs on this blog. I wrote it on October 28, 2009, the day after attending Kay Loraine's funeral in San Antonio.

By definition, “cousins” are people who share a common set of grandparents. But the cousins in my life have shared much more than that. 

I grew up across the street from four of my cousins – Joy, Raina, Kathie, and Kip, offspring of my dad’s sister, Loraine. Joy was older than us all – a high school student, and not so directly involved with us then. Raina was just older than me and Kathie, just younger. My sister was just younger than Kathie, and Kip, just younger than her. The five of us were for about ten years a troop of friends who enjoyed just about everything together, until they moved across town. Even then, Raina and I talked on the phone often and we would spend a week at each others houses in the summer. We shared books and adventures and long conversations. In high school, both Raina and I were on the debate squad at our respective schools and would run into each other at tournaments.

Mike, David, and Gary lived in Angleton. They were sons of my dad’s younger brother, Richard. Mike and David were just older than me and Gary just younger. Their house was on the way to the beach at Freeport, and when we visited them it usually mean a day at Surfside.

The other cousins on the Creech side were not so accessible, but sharing common grandparents meant that often on Easter, Father’s Day, Grandad’s birthday, and at Christmas we would all be together. In addition, we shared a week (sometimes two) staying with my grandparents on the farm while our parents enjoyed our absence.

That meant that in addition to the nine cousins above, Donna and Leslie and Royce and Dean would join the mix. They were all part of the group around my age. We had some older cousins, too. Richard Earl, who was much older, and off doing exotic things with the U.S. embassies in Addis Ababa, Johannesburg, and Paris. Occasionally he and his family would join us. Kay Loraine and Johnnie Ruth were the older sisters of Donna and Leslie. Like Joy, they were more people we looked up to, but did not grow up with. Altogether, there were sixteen of us on the Creech side of things.

Today I attended Kay Loraine’s funeral.  She fought with brain cancer for the past four years. She was the epitome of kindness and grace and her family loved her so much. She was 68. In 1981 we buried Kip, who was only 26. Fourteen of us Creech cousins survive. And ten of us were there to say goodbye to Kay.  One came from Colorado. One brought his wife from Kansas. Five drove three hours across Texas. It is clear that we share more than grandparents. [We have now said goodbye to Richard Earl Masters (2022), Michael (2023), and now Royce (2024).]

Last Sunday Melinda and I hosted our sons, their wives, and the three Creech cousins of their generation. Austin is still too little to get engaged in the play, but Ava and Madison seem to share more than a couple of grandparents. I hope that remains their experience as long as they live.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night . . .

To get this blog started, I thought I'd repost something I wrote for the Wilson County News in 2020, during the COVID crisis, when the U. S. Postal Service was getting a lot of negative attention. Irvin David Creech was grandfather to me and fifteen of my cousins. He was "Grandad" to me. I'll offer more details of his life along the way. 

I visited the Wilson County Hardware store on the town square in Floresville a couple of years ago to pick up an item for a small plumbing repair. I like to patronize these local businesses when I can. A tall, lean man in his 90s ran the store. It’s one of those places where you can’t find anything on your own, but the proprietor can take you straight to it. I’m sure much of his stock had sat in those bins for decades.

When I handed him my debit card he squinted at it, holding it at arm’s length. “Creech,” he said. “Any relation to Lillie Creech?”

 “She was my grandmother,” I told him.

 

“Well, I knew your grandfather. He was our mail carrier out in the country near Falls City when I was a boy. You could set your watch by him. We used to go out every day and wait by the mailbox on the road for him to show up.  When we had hard rains, the roads would get torn up by the oil trucks and he couldn’t get his Model A down those roads for several days. I remember once that my mother had ordered some baby chicks by mail. Your grandfather could not deliver them, so he got a starter kit at the feed store and took care of them himself until the roads dried up.”

 

You don’t get stories like that checking out at Wal-Mart.

 

Irvin David Creech, my grandfather was a rural mail carrier in the Falls City, Texas area for forty years and one month. He carried his first load of mail on 3 June 1924 and his last on 30 June 1964. That postal job took him and his extended family through the Great Depression. The photo was taken November 7, 1949, on his fifty-fifth birthday. He died 49 years ago next week. 

I recall as a kid that when we visited, he’d usually be gone from the house before I woke up and I’d wait for him to return from his route around noon, in his blue Chevy pickup.

 

When Irvin retired, his postmaster sent a request for a commendation letter to the Postmaster General that included this comment:

 

Carrier had worked a number of times when others would have stayed home in bed, because of high fever and being sick. Having many miles of dirt road, required driving in deep mud and making deliveries on foot, but he always delivered the mail to his patrons regardless of the weather condition. One time this carrier went on foot a mile to deliver a package, which he thought was medicine and later found out different, but did not mind –– making this trip in mud and ice.

On 30 November 1974, three years after Irvin’s death, Falls City opened and dedicated a new post office. The local high school band performed, and the Falls City postmaster presided at the ceremonies. A parish priest led in prayer. A member of the county historical society recited the story of the mail service in the area that had begun in 1860. Included in his remark was this word about Irvin:

 

In the year 1924, because of a growing need for service between Falls City and Poth and west of Poth to Three Oaks, Deweesville and the Butler school community, Rural Route No. 2 was established. The first appointment for the carrier for rural route 2 was Irvin Creech. He served continuously until his retirement in 1964, with a total of 40 years. (From the Karnes City Citation, December 12, 1974, p. 1-A)

 

The street in front of the new post office was renamed “Irvin Street.”

 

With all the talk about the U. S. Postal Service these days, I was reminded of my grandfather’s service. I’m also reminded that thousands of others work as faithfully on our behalf for service we regularly take for granted.

Irvin's Mail Satchel