Читать книгу The Bravest Hunter - Michael Newell - Страница 7

Gordon Graves grew up in Crowell, Texas, a small North Texas town of fewer than 2,000 people. Graves was an honor student in high school. Exceptionally gifted in mathematics, Graves decided to become an engineer, graduating from the University of Texas as an electrical engineer in 1959. He then went to work for Litton Industries in California, designing computers for military aircraft.

Graves’s parents were both schoolteachers, along with his grandfather and four of his uncles. Education was of paramount importance to all of Graves’s ancestors.

Graves’s ancestors migrated to Texas in the late 1840s shortly after Texas became a state. Graves’s paternal grandmother, May Roberts Graves, the daughter of Ike Roberts and Portia McCormick, made the trip from West Virginia to Texas with her parents when she was a teenager.

The intriguing Roberts-McCormick family relationship is chronicled here by Retired Colonel Roger Graves, who is Gordon Graves’s first cousin.

According to Col. Graves, the McCormick’s received their land in western Virginia as a reward grant for the service of James McCormick Sr., an English soldier during the French and Indian War under the command of Lt. Savage, who was under the command of Col. George Washington himself during an expedition in 1758 against the French stronghold of Fort Duquesne, which is the site of present-day Pittsburgh.

A superior French force successfully blocked American troops, and the expedition had to withdraw to a place called Great Meadows, where the Americans hastily built a fortification, which they named, Fort Necessity. The French put the fort under siege, and Washington negotiated a surrender, which allowed his troops to return to Virginia. As a reward for the effort, large tracts of land in the western part of the colony became tract grants under the names of the company commanders. As a member of the company commanded by Lt. Savage, James McCormick received one of the sixty-acre tracts within the 28,627-acre allotment known as “Savage Grant.” McCormick purchased additional tracts from other members of his company. James McCormick, a friend of George Washington, and his father, Dr. John McCormick, owned property adjacent to Washington’s estate in what was then Frederick County, Virginia, now located in Maryland. Washington, in fact, mentions in his diary that James McCormick spent the night at Mount Vernon.

James McCormick Sr. never moved to the granted property in western Virginia, but his son James McCormick Jr. moved there in 1810. James Jr. married Jemima Violet, the granddaughter of Edward Violet Sr. (Gordon’s fifth great-grandfather), who was George Washington’s overseer. James and Jemima McCormick had fourteen children, the youngest of whom was Gordon’s great-great-grandfather, George McCormick, born in 1810 and later married to Virginia Terril.

George McCormick owned and operated a ferry on the Little Sandy River, which formed the border between West Virginia and Kentucky. At the same location, he also ran a ferry-boat from West Virginia across the Ohio River and into the state of Ohio. John and Mary Roberts moved to the same area around 1816. Their youngest son was Gordon’s great-great-grandfather, John Henry Roberts, born in 1814. As a result, Roberts owned and operated a tavern, which was like a modern-day bed-and-breakfast.

George McCormick and John H. Roberts were next-door neighbors on Twelve Pole Creek, which empties into the Ohio River. In 1857, a new town called Ceredo came to be at the confluence of the Little Sandy and Ohio rivers. The first house built in Ceredo was for John H. Roberts and George McCormick. Both men became wealthy, although a national economic depression occurred around that time, and many businesses failed, which could have influenced the men’s migration to Texas the next year. John H. Roberts’s sister, Elizabeth Salmon and her husband, Joseph, had moved to Texas when it was still a republic and settled on the Bosque River in what eventually would become Erath County. In early 1858, John Roberts and George McCormick traveled to Texas and arranged the purchase of land on which they would settle their families. John H. Roberts bought the property from his brother-in-law, Joseph Salmon.

When they returned to Virginia, Roberts and McCormick built two sixty-foot flatboats on Twelve Pole Creek…one for their two families, and the other for their belongings, provisions and a few animals. On October 8, 1858, they pushed off from Twelve Pole Creek and floated into the Ohio River. Before setting out, George McCormick had freed his slaves, but the slaves were so dependent on the family for their well-being, they ran along the riverbank crying and pleading to go with them. Having been cared for all their lives, it was probably frightening to realize that they were now entirely on their own and without prospects.

The two families floated into the Mississippi, and finally up the Bayou Catawba to Port Washington in Louisiana. There, they sold their flatboats and bought covered wagons. Then they traveled, probably on the Natchez Trace of East Texas, until reaching the Trinity River, which was at flood stage. They had to wait a couple of weeks for it to recede once more. Here, the families split up. The McCormick’s went to Denton County and arrived there on March 10, 1859. The Roberts went to Erath County and arrived there on March 12, 1859, a little more than five months after they had left Virginia.

The Roberts and McCormick children were next-door neighbors all their lives until they got to Texas, and Ike Roberts and Portia McCormick were childhood sweethearts, with Ike being two and a half years older than Portia. When they got to Texas, Ike was eighteen and Portia fifteen. In 1860, Ike’s oldest brother James Henry Roberts (Uncle Jimmy), married Portia McCormick’s older sister Sarah McCormick (Aunt Sack). In 1864, Ike Roberts went to Denton County and married his childhood sweetheart, Portia McCormick. Their daughter, Mary Beatrice Roberts, married William Thomas Graves, and they became Gordon’s grandparents.

Gordon’s parents were schoolteachers. His father, Grady Graves, was a high school football and basketball coach and was always a player of competitive games. Grady taught his son the fun of competing and the pleasure of winning. Graves’s father was active until his death in 2005 at the age of 101. He died on a Wednesday and had a bridge game scheduled for the next Saturday. He loved to win, and if he couldn’t win, he derived pleasure from watching someone else do so…even if it was his opponent.

Of his lineage, Gordon said: “I am a fifth-generation Texan. Like most families that have been in Texas that long, my ancestors were mostly younger siblings, and being younger meant they did not inherit the farm and instead migrated west. My father’s people were of English, Irish and German descent.”

Gordon also spoke about his mother’s lineage. “My mother’s people were French Huguenots. My great-to-the-sixth-power Grandfather Pegus came to Charleston from London as a teenager in 1749 and later became an extremely successful merchant and community leader. Grandfather Pegus served in the Revolutionary Army, and his plantation house is still a preserved landmark outside Charleston. When I was young, a member of my family said I looked and acted like my great-grandfather Benjamin Franklin Pegus. Dannie Pegus’s maternal grandfather, Alfred, was a Dallas policeman.”

Both of Gordon’s maternal great-grandfathers died of a common Texas malady: lead poisoning.

While on duty in Dallas, Alfred was chasing a suspect who jumped on a streetcar. Alfred likewise leaped onto the same streetcar with a cocked gun in hand but dropped it during the jump. The weapon discharged when it hit the floor, and the errant bullet struck Alfred in the chest. He died from the wound within a couple of days.

Gordon’s mother’s paternal grandfather was Benjamin Franklin Pegus. He was a Mississippi River gambler, a U.S. marshal, a businessman and a railroad detective, among other things.

While serving as a marshal, three different railroad companies were laying track to the town of Mineola, Texas (about 200 miles east of Dallas), where Ben resided. He saw the opportunity to make more money there as a marshal, so he resigned from his position and negotiated contracts with all three railroad companies to provide them with crossties. The price Ben worked out included the cost of transporting the ties from Mineola to work sites. As the tracks drew closer to Mineola, Ben’s shipping costs decreased, and his profits soared, making him a small fortune.

When the project ended, Ben became a railroad detective. One day, Ben confronted a man in a bar who had painted a dirty word on a boxcar. Neither man carried a sidearm due to an ordinance prohibiting guns in bars that Ben had enacted while he was a marshal. Patrons had to check their weapons at the door, and a man posted at the door collected weapons. A confrontation over the matter ensued, and Ben knocked the man down. The man fell behind the edge of the bar, where he saw a shotgun the barkeeper kept there. The man grabbed the gun and killed Gordon’s great-grandfather.

About his father’s grandfathers, who were both Texas Rangers, Gordon had this to say: “My maternal grandfather, Isaac Newton Roberts (known in the family as Uncle Ike), came to Stephenville, Texas in 1850 when he was about eighteen. The Frontier Rangers formed in 1861. Ike was about thirty then and had a family. The Rangers did not expect Ike to be a fighting man, so his assignment was as quartermaster. My other great-grandfather, William Mitt Graves, was a Texas Ranger, and there was a good reason for the group to exist. Shortly before the Rangers formed, Mitt was away from the homestead, and my grandmother heard a ruckus outside and opened the door. A Comanche Indian then shot an arrow into the door’s jamb. My grandmother locked the door and got her rifle. The Indians took what they could and left.

“In August 1864, William Mitt Graves was probably one of the twelve Rangers that intercepted thirty Comanche Indians. Three Rangers died during the encounter, and the Indians got away with fifty horses. Uncle Ike and the rest of the men got reinforcements and pursued the Indians to the San Saba Mountains, eventually recovering eighteen of the horses.”

Gordon recounted, “I believe my ancestors went home then, but a few days later, remaining men near Coleman, Texas were able to confront the Indians and recover all the horses.”

The Comanches were probably the best-mounted cavalry, ever. They fought with bow and arrow while many of the Rangers carried the Walker Colt revolver. It was a .44 caliber, black-powder, six-shooter, and at the time was the most powerful handgun in the world. Some Rangers carried two Walkers. The powerful weapon came to be in 1846 as a collaborative effort between Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker, a Texas Ranger, and American firearms inventor Samuel Colt. While the gun was powerful, it had a nasty reputation of sometimes blowing up in the hand of the shooter, and production soon ceased.

It was likely Quanah Parker (a renowned Comanche leader in later years) was with the Indians the Rangers encountered. He was about nineteen then, and a member of the Nocona (which means wanderers) tribe. His mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, became a captive of the Comanches when she was taken from Parker County near Fort Worth in May of 1826 when she was nine years old. The Comanche assimilated her into the tribe, and she married the chief, Peta Nacona, when she came of age.

About his Grandfather Graves, Gordon said: “Grandfather Graves had four brothers. He was the youngest. He had no relationship with his siblings that I know of. They were dirt farmers at a time when plows were mule-driven, and farmers suffered the sentence of hard labor for life. Grandfather did not work in the field. When he was a teenager, his mother was an invalid. Others in the family designated Grandfather to care for her rather than work in the field. This was fortuitous as his mother taught him to read and motivated him to become a teacher. His brothers were likely frustrated that they were destined to live out their lives in near poverty as dirt farmers.”

Gordon commented, “Grandfather was a schoolteacher and a Baptist preacher. Following his teaching career, he became a county judge and later a Texas state legislator. I never met a man who didn’t like hearing the title of judge, especially if he had been one. My grandfather, William Thomas Graves (known to many as W.T.), preferred the handle of Uncle Billy by his relatives but preferred the children to call him Pappy. Even then, I knew and could tell that W.T. enjoyed hearing the Judge Graves moniker; it gave him special pride. The title has a particular gravitas because the people have chosen this person to make decisions that will immediately change people’s lives for better or worse.”

May Beatrice Roberts, Gordon’s grandmother, was born and lived practically her entire life in Valley Grove just south of Stephenville, Texas. She and W.T. lived in Pony Creek when he taught school in that community around 1942, but it wasn’t long before they were back in Valley Grove. They bought a piece of property just west of Uncle John Roberts’s farm and east of the Valley Grove Baptist Church. That’s where they lived when Gordon was growing up. Gordon recalled, “My brother Robert and I stayed with them during the summer of 1946. Granddad was in his mid-seventies then, and they knew how to tend to the kids. We had a great time feeding chickens, gathering eggs, picking corn and digging up potatoes. We visited with relatives, who were mostly grandmother’s nieces and nephews. We called them Uncle Billy and Aunt May. We went to church a lot.”

Gordon continued, “I got to know William Thomas Graves very well. After he had a stroke in 1956, it became my responsibility to take care of him. I took him out of bed, carried him to the toilet, and cleaned him up. Our relationship changed, and he talked to me about many things. He said to me one day, ‘You hate doing this, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do hate it. You have always been my hero.’ He recovered from that stroke and lived to the age of ninety-one.”

I spoke with Bill Graves, Gordon’s younger brother, five years his junior, who related to me how his dad, Grady Graves, strongly influenced his life. Following his father’s career path, Bill Graves became a schoolteacher and then a school superintendent and held that position in San Angelo, Texas, for sixteen years.

Bill Graves had this to say about his older brother: “Gordon was always highly competitive, and not just in sports, but in everything, and he was a high achiever in most everything he did. When we were young, we were a close family and played lots of games, including dominoes and bridge. I could tell Gordon loved playing bridge for its challenge and need for determining a winning strategy, which also made him a good poker player. I believe my brother’s strongest traits, and I know this comes from our parents, are his sense of fairness, honesty and strong Christian ethic.”