This article is reprinted as first published in the Beaumont Enterprise, Beaumont, Texas  Sunday, October 2, 1932

THE SUNDAY ENTERPRISE

James Barnes One of East
Texas Famous Pioneers

Discoverer of Tyler County
Black Lands 100 Years Ago
Called 'Panther' After Hunt

Great Grandfather of J. Austin Barnes,
Beaumont, is Founder of Methodist Church
Which Stands Today at Mt. Hope

By DEAN TEVIS

Early in 1836, when thousands in the old states were (first) speaking the name of Texas, James Barnes of Mississippi, who had been born in an American fort in North Carolina during the Revolution, struck the immigrant trail to Texas. He was a man who felt it almost a sacred duty to follow the American frontier as it moved westward. With him were 11 black slaves. His trail end for a little while was in Angelina county where he built his cabin between Buck and Biloxi creeks. There, in one hunting expedition, he killed 14 panthers and won the name of "Panther Barnes," which remained with him until he died.

In thirty-seven, following the Texas revolution and the eviction of Mexicans from between the rivers of east Texas, he discovered the black lands of northern Tyler county--Cauble Prairie--and there he settled. He founded Mount Hope Methodist church, which was among the first few Methodist churches in Texas, and about which grew the present peaceful, sleepy little community of Mount Hope. James Barnes' story, rich in detail, mellowed by almost a century bring him out as one of the great east Texas pioneers--of the company of men who built a country--dauntless, sturdy, God-fearing, the pathfinder.

Mount Hope lies but a mile or two from Peach Tree Village, the birthplace of the Kirbys, once the home of Governor Ross Sterling's forebears, and famous as the camping ground of the Alabama Indians--Texas' last redmen--who now live on a reservation in Polk county. Both are near the sunny village of Chester, on the highway from Woodville to Nacogdoches, and the three communities in reality form one.

It is a charming oasis of east Texas, with charming people, descendants of the early Barnes, Barclays, and other pioneer families. It bears perhaps more of the true flavor of old east Texas than any other spot. Anderson Barclay left here to join Deaf Smith at San Jacinto. The Barnes stood ready with sturdy rifles in sturdy hands to defend their newfound homeland.

Wishing Rock

Here you drink from Barnes Spring, near the site of one of the first homes in northern Tyler, which has been flowing and quenching thirst for nearly a hundred years. Here you are intrigued to let your feet tarry a while at Wishing Rock, where the ladies of the early Barnes generations sat, on the narrow woods road from Peach Tree to Mount Hope, and wept silently with homesickness for their friends in old Mississippi--far, far to the east. Here you find the old log schoolhouse where Bob Barnes went to school with John Henry Kirby, and they spat tobacco between the cracks in the logs.

Here you see four or five of the most interesting pioneer graveyards in Texas. Here you cross and re-cross the famous old Beef Trail--the only east and west road through east Texas, which ran from San Antonio to far east of the Sabine.

And here your drink from old cups, and old wells, while you hear, from the lips of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who cherish the stories, and repeat them with solemn accuracy, tales of the very beginnings of east Texas. Redbud blooms in early spring, as calendars come and go, yet Chester, Mount Hope, and Peach Tree remain with all their old-timey sweetness through the years.

James Barnes, great-grandfather of Malcolm Barnes of Chester, his sisters, and J. Austin Barnes of Beaumont, was a figure to conjure with. He was the father of nine children, whom he had left, with their mother, Tabiatha Hough Barnes, in Mississippi. A man who loved the edges of the wilderness, he left them in an out-of-the-way, wild part of the state. Tabiatha was captured by Indians while James was on a long trading expedition, just before he came to Texas. She was made to dance in a scene very reminiscent of a Leather Stocking tale.

Bill Rides Back

The head of the family established himself in Tyler county and sent for his wife and children. At the head of the caravan was Bill, an older son. They carried, #3600 all in gold. It was while they were camped west of the Mississippi in Louisiana that they discovered they had lost the money. The tale is one of the favorites of the family at Chester. They recalled they had laid it on a stump in one of the camps they had made in Mississippi. So Bill sent his mother and the children on along the trail to the Sabine while he began a fast ride back to look for the lost gold.

Of course they had to frequently pay for their lodgings, and so Bill Barnes told his mother, "You tell them that in a few days a tall red-faced fellow on a horse will come along and pay your bills."

She did, and Bill, several days behind, did follow her trail and pay the bills. He had to use the same procedure at every house he stopped on his way back to Mississippi, where he didn't find the money, but where he borrowed enough to get the family west of the Neches, where they were to establish a home and the names of Barnes.

A Visit to Texas

A little while after that, Sam Barnes, the oldest of the flock, and who had just taken unto himself a wife, hitched an ox and a mule to a covered wagon in Neshoba county, Mississippi, and started west to pay his mother and father a visit.

This chapter of the story brought the establishing of Mount Hope church.

The day Sam and his bride arrived there was in progress an old-time revival, or Methodist camp meeting. Camp meetings were then in their day of glory in Georgia and Alabama. It seems that two Englishmen, Methodists, were conducting it at the Barnes pioneer cabin, and the event was in full swing. There steps into the picture here one Aunt Mary, a venerable negro slave, favorite of the family, who was preparing and serving cornbread and collards to the revival congregation. With all the aplomb of an old, white-haired negress of antebellum days, she was officiating.

There, in the wilderness, was laid the foundations of the present historic Mount Hope church. Two, three, or four buildings followed the first little structure of logs, and, for the meager community, the present building is indeed a credit, but they will never forget the first one. Sam and his wife drove back to Mississippi, reared a family, but always remembered Texas. The memory was so strong that in 1845 they left never to return, coming to Tyler to live with the others of the Barnes families.

Sturdy Relics Left

Sam Barnes, whose middle name was Hough, was the grandfather of Malcolm Barnes of Chester. He is a member of the fourth generation in Texas. Each generation, down to the fifth, has in it a James.

One compelling fact is that you may find today, so many of the old buildings--not those erected in those mid-thirties of the first James Barnes, but those of the mid and late forties and the fifties. The finest, perhaps, is one near the larger of the Barnes burial grounds, where the first Barnes to die in Texas was laid, near the corner of the original log house, under quaint crepe myrtle. From the grave, surrounded by others of succeeding generations--about all of whom there are cherished stories--the visitor walks up a slight slope across a little, to one of the sturdiest log cabins a pioneer ever built in east Texas.

It lies today on the land of John Henry Kirby. It was built of the most solid, and the largest logs, as solid, as perfect today as it was 85 years ago.

The house, where the early Barnes lived, should be preserved, and marked, as should other keepsakes of that charmed little valley of Russell creek near Cauble prairie. For these houses and revered spots give to this generation clearly the story of how their forebears lived--how the pioneer struggled for an existence on the roads which today we travel by motor. Not far away are the sites of the old Sterling and Barnes grist and sawmills.

They are not far from the home of Uncle Tom Seamens, sage of the delightful valley, who goes back a little farther than any other living person there, and who has a rich store of accurate pioneer lore.

Old Peter Cauble

One of the first to come into that part of Tyler was Peter Cauble. Great tales are told of Peter. The land of Cauble prairie was a grant, originally from Mexico to a Spaniard, one G. Arranjo. It lay in the colony of the Impresario Edwards. Here, in a grand old log house still standing and doing duty, one of the Barnes courted a girl of one of the Cauble generations. It is intriguing to find a water-jug of ancient design and kilning, on the gallery, still serving, as it has through moons and years upon years. Many of the old dwellings, perhaps a little finer, and a little larger log houses than you will find in other communities of east Texas, were built more often than not with slave labor. That was the case with the homes of the Barnes.

In the same cemeteries with their masters, the slaves were buried. That was done then, it is explained to you. And you come to realize that the slave was more slave in name than otherwise. He, too, was the pioneer, for he came down the trail, crossed the rivers and cut a way often through the forests, with the white families whose names he bore. He loved them, and they loved him. So he sleeps with them for all time -- sharing their burial ground as he shared their graciousness in life. The negroes of northern Tyler are descendants of the Barnes and other family slaves. There was a sort of aristocracy among them. Often they fought with their masters in the Civil war. Among the names you will find in the little communities centered by the village of Chester are Hendrix, Barnes, McQueen, Burch, Buxton, Seamens and Barclay, all pioneer names. Add to this, of course, the Kirbys.

The East Texas Code

Until about 1870, following the reconstruction, when northern troops were encamped at Woodville, as well as every other established county seat in Texas, there was little or no law, save that of the rifle. And so Peachtree and Mt. (Hope), have had their tragic chapters. Horse thieves! There were lynchings. A good many were saddened by these. The communities were isolated, as they are delightfully isolated today, and the people formed a sort of little government of their own--with a code pretty identical with that of virtually every early east Texas community.

They grew cotton and corn and traded with the river communities on the Trinity, to the west, rather than with the Neches. Steamboats came up both streams. Save by painfully slow wagon, the rivers were the only channels of communication. Northern Tyler did not get its railroad, the Katy "orphan," running between Colmesneil and Trinity, until 1881. They tell you the story of James Jasper Barnes and his brother Sam supplying the venison for the construction crew while the road built through. Its story is picturesque. The forest were in virgin pine then. Game, including black bear, was still plentiful.

Chester lies on a dirt road today, but that will not maintain for long, for the state will soon pave it ... and then, even if it is more comfortable traveling, a certain part of the old charm, the pioneer setting of the territory, will have gone. Chester and Peach Tree and Mt. Hope realize that, but they want a hard all-weather highway to the county seat at Woodville. It is a rich territory to be opened, with great possibilities and it will build rapidly. Chester is a most hospitable and progressive town.

The Kirby Baptism

It is best to set aside an entire day to visit Mt. Hope and Peach Tree. The latter is fascinating. In the community hall built there, hanging above the speaker's platform is a great painting of the baptism of John Henry Kirby's father. He was a Methodist, but was baptized by a Baptist minister. There followed something of a conflict in the Methodist church over that. Kirby was born there, and you find the log school where he and Bob Barnes, cousin of Malcolm, went to school.

"There," as Malcolm Barnes will tell you the tale, "they learned to chew tobacco, and so the cracks between the logs in the one-room school were handy."

Their teacher's name was Waldrup--Professor Waldrup. The story is especially fascinating to A. D. Rawlinson, superintendent of the Chester schools.

Jumbled School Books

Those were the days when each pupil brought his own books. They were selected by his father and mother, or they might have been his father's or mother's in their school days. The teacher, it seems, had little to say about the text books--he was supposed to be able to teach from any of them, and there might be a half dozen different ones among the students.

That was the era, as Prof. Rawlinson tells you, of the famous Blue Black speller, Science was taught from Peterman's Familiar Science. They taught Barnes' U. S. History, and Monteith's Geography. That was the day of the McGuffy's Reader. There was no adopted text.

Days of Courting

The old Cauble home lies not far from the site of the log school. Here, James Jasper Barnes paid attention and made love to a Cauble lassie. The Burch graveyard, near the home, has the bodies of Peter Cauble, born in 1776; his daughter, Helene Cauble, born in 1819; Mary Rotan, his wife, born in 1794; and Valentine Burch, born in 1813.

Nearby lives Frank Mehan, 83, a sparkling tongued Irishman, who lived on the Bowery in New York City, and who left there at about the age of 15, when, as he will gladly tell you, New York City's tallest building was of four full stories.

The 121st Masonic lodge of Texas was in the second story of the Mt. Hope church. Here Sam Barnes was entered an apprentice Mason.

If you seek the best portrait of east Texas, from the sons of some of its finest pioneers; if you seek some of the best east Texas lore to be found between the Trinity and the Sabine, or if you seek grand old log houses and burial grounds of the first people in the territory, among them men who fought for Texas' freedom from the thralldom of Mexico, then take the highway from Woodville, and visit Chester, Mt. Hope, and Peach Tree village.

Note: This articles appears just as it did when first published as a Sunday Enterprise feature, except for two words which could not exactly be determined from the aged copy. These are placed in parentheses. Though years of genealogical research have pointed to some inaccuracies, these have not been changed. Nor has the language been changed to reflect modern correctness.