Recorded Conversation with Emmett Robert Shelton Sr.

Oral history with Emmett Robert Shelton Sr. on the land development of Austin, the Brackenridge family, the laws passed in that period, and trading interactions with the Comanche.

Transcribed text

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Shelton, 2obert IEmmett, Jr. -- L-dinling out loud, history of 'r-t LaYe H1...Ls

area, June 1971;

:. ...about the happenings, the history, the d of the area where the Eanes school district covered & mainly in the hr est Lake Hills & the T. J. Chamoer's survey & the other locations u & down the Bee Cave Road & over on Bee Creek ten some of the area over North of Bee Creek back to the river.. ;e will al-Co cover the area which is novi in the city of Austin that runs along Red Bud Trail down to Tom Miller Darn & then in the area around Rocky River Roado This is just thinking out load & some of this I have taken the trouble to dig up the history: facts out of the files I have here in my home. I want to start back with what you might call primitive history, but when you are talking number of years, I'd like t call attention to this & that is: the last major Indian battle that included more whites & more Indians in pitched battle than any other battle fought in Tesas was fought in Lockhart at Plum Creek--on August 11, 1840,. So when you talk about Primitive times, you're not talking but about 140 years from the present date. Also I'd like to call your attention to the fact that the city of Austin was not chartered to be laid out & surveyed until 1839, so there was no city of Austin 135 years ago & so these things when we start back & talk about..I believe it was 1 when Mr. Thomas Jefferson Chambers came to Texas & he was born in Virginia in 1802. I'm going to give you a little of is background because it was his survey that mos of Nest Lake was is laid out on & I once wned. Mr. Cha'er c r to T.exas in 18514 on the business of trying to reorganize the script (?) system for the Texas & Mexican government, ontClovia, I believe it was. & they offered to give him 137,OC O r acres of land in whtt i no'.i a:.es . Travis Counties & a number of counties around there. In the middle of the time he was to got this land, in 1836 we had our revolution. tr. Chambers was right in the middle of that & was a Major General in the army & he took his land & put it up as collatorial to get the money to help fib a oAr-4 the revolution. And for that he was given what is called a bounty certificate. Now they passed a law right after the. republic of Texas was formed in 1836 or 7 whereb: o . all the soldiers who participsated in the main battles were to be given a certain -"r4ahount of land; I believe a married man was to get 1280 acres & 640 to a single ma & it varied all the way down th line. Mr. Cha-bers, it just so happened, although 4- ' he owned around 137,000 acres of land scatCt :d around central Texas all the way down to Chambers county, that h took his bounty certificate for his service to th r area now known as Jest Lake Hiii w ich is the TJ Chambers survey ,504. fow I 'ave in front of me a Zeroxed cory of the patent & the survey, it is dated Dec. 28 1s60, juat 20 years after the battle of Plum Creek0 And all of this area north & west of Zilker Park & Barton ringsg, as late, 1 guess, as 1850 was considered Comr.anche country. They had a right to come into it & tley came in and traded uncle Treaty Oak on West 5th St. The city of sustin did not presume to reach out beyond from WEST LAKE HILLS OLDS COLLECTION

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aftar his death & by th.t tirz:she had married a follow named Cyrus Thompson. But in his dealings, Mr. Ch. mbers had ba u ht script, he had bought headright certificates, h had bought thec bounty certificates from the soldiers who were entitled to them & didn't want to go to the trouble of surveying the land out & they just sluff off the rights to the land to him for a certain amount of money & he would buy themP- come survey them. Me did that with the William Brown survey over north of Bee Creek, which I had the biggest part of at one time, or the north half of it. The reason he got that land was he was selling home sites over around Austin & I noticed he subdivided, or had Mr. Duugal,who had power of attorney on him, subdivide it. And it was probably after Mr. Chamber's death. But he subdivided into 10 acre blocks & those blocks were sold out. The point I am making now is that when Mr. Chambers would sell some land in .ustin, he would sell some timber land to go along with it, 10 acres of timber land over on this side of the river on the Brown survey so that people could get wood to take care of their fires. in the wintertime. They burned, everybody used wood in those days in their fireplace & to cook with. So people w ld buy this land along with the land in the city, & when they had cut all the wood off it, they would abandon it. And I'll tell you that story in a little while. But one of the couple who bought that was A.J. Hamilton who was Governor of Texas right after the Uivil g1ar & ho had a block in the Brown survey, 'probably sent his servants over to haul the wood off. But at that time, & up until 109, you could come across the river in wagons at many points & many people did that. And there was a cedar wall here at one time when they started bringing the railroads into central Texas, & they needed ties for the railroads & they didn't have creosoted ties in those days, they had cedar ties; they cut cedar posts down that would make good ties & they hauled them across the river & sold them to the railroad companies to put the railroads in. T.C. Taylor timbered all the land over north of Bee Creek -- 2 or 3 thousand acres, he cut timber off the land whether he owned it or no>t. Now I'll taM : the more or less history, & I'll .jump through it pretty fast, t of the east 500 acres of the Chambers survey which lies from Dr. Holtz' toward the east end about Where 'iet Lake Drive is. That was conveyed to a fellow named Leonard artsman in 1872 by the widow of Mr. Chambers. Then Mr. Hartsman sold a ten-acre bloci of that land to a >exican named . Nevarro in 1872. That little 10 acres is up where tone: ' is located now, all those beautiful homes, Now when I came out in 1930 or a little before I found the remains of the old Navarro settlement. That was the only person of the people that lived there, the only one that showed any signs of having any life in tis ar.a. At that time .n the whole Chambers survey. Now on Dec. 30, 18' ' Navarro got the deed. & his land was described like this -- & I had to bring a laws' it costed me more t. bring this lawsuit Lthan it did for the whole 500 acres, almost. "Zeing a suoivioA.on on a tract on the suthwr> side of the Colorado river known

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aste hmer;srvyo eeCreet PginrLafg othe stake is on the north side o Little Bee Creek on the top ofthe hill supposed to be about 300 yards from the cr on which a cedar shrub of a tree about 10 feet high,1inchs ,iaetrber certain course & distenCe. "and then it goes on to say this 10 acre block is 237. cuae. nd escibe it o oone in the world could find that, no surveyor cot & I ad o brng - sutaant anyone who had any title to that at all. In 187 Navarro sold his piece to piedro Estara. And in 1890 Piedro Estsra conveyed it to r ~~Now the little 10 acre block where Stoneridge now is & thdarc1ec r i.; You had to fence cattle & stock out of your place. I found a little dug well & a lso a pomegranite tree & also a fig tree & they were on the south tide of whex big oak tree is across from Red Calvins (?).home. 'Jnen I came here that big iock v needed some rock (where Lake Austin Hills is) we hauled 30 or 4D loads of that rc from the fence down there to ~L e austi n Hills a parking area where the lake is, They were not good building stone or we would not have hauled them. They were a ofranteno lin kin ostn.Iclled all the additions up here that I ha< in the Chambers Survey after that old rock wall 1"+tonehedge". Now I had to brin; sui lte o --ths - n fiall fell into the hands of a fellow named StelfOx $ ~ some where after 1921 or somewhere in there. Anyway he got the idea to divide it 30 tot lots & so he had him a little plat with thase 50 foot lots on & he' trade them for groceries or whatever anybody would give him for it. Because he didn't know where the land ws & he hadn't been on it, nobody had been on it fc 4+0 or 50 years. But I had brought suits -gainSt all'tese people, &1many L f ther fiends in Austin & I went to them & asked them if they knew where their lan & they said they had no iea where it was. T he stakeriseenitenerbeeo Mr. Stelfox had given it to them for a old debt & they couldn't be hurt- on it. Well, in the meantime the ownere of the 500 acres in the chambers estate ha by different conveyenCeS to re John T. Breckenidg, he was a banker in Austir. -on wtoi h gv rcknig younger brother of George W- Brackenrige of. an Antni, touan.Antonescibeasothownsone othe richest men ever on the Board of Regeni thenovbrity ofuteas was the one who ave the Brackenridge tract out wh goaf course is now near the Lake Austin. They got that through takngyadnoteto thine & Mr. John T. Breckenridge traded it off to eorge d lireeeruwenl little boy Mr. Brackenridge's wife used to come out & visit my mother. She'd in a horse & surryj I guess about 1912 or 1910. & I remember Mrs. Br:ackenridge was John T's wife, she lived tiere where the Travis County Courthouse is now c Street. Close to where Mike Butler's father's home was. Then somehow George niece Mrs L.D. Mathews. And Mrs. ;thews then left it to her daughter rs. Mc Mrs. I. H. McIntir _ of i an o .rce. I end I bou,;ht it from them. I might as well

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In 1935 If discovered this oLd 1- Ad here, and found out who owned it, and bac; tracked it and witr my (J'c ) und out information about it. I knew Mrs. ..cIiiit i "re and I nu h.: chw n hen I wont to school in San Marcos in 1921 or 1925, so I contacted her to see if she wanted to sell her land. i was prepared to ray a few dollars an acro for the five hundred acres she had. And uh... she tried ?. Well we : ot dow; :there ..nd I tried to play, well I was broke, all I had was 500 :collars that could invest in everything I had, so we got down to the bank, .so the banker, i told him that I could pay him two dollars an acre on it, and that's all it was v. Drth. They didn't know where it was and all .they w-re doing was just paying taxes on it and there wasn't any fences around it. They said no, he said we couldn't let you have it atawl for less than four j. dollars an acre. And then Mrs. McTn'ire butted in and 'said now listen here Mr. ? last year we had a sucker down here tilling to give us 2,000 dollars for that land and you uh or 1,000 dollars for that land and you talked him out of it and lost it. Now I could take that 1,000 dollars that Mr. Shelton payed to me today and I could take it downtown and make 10,000 dollars before dark. Mr. ? said yea now Mrs. McIntire that's the reason it's cited in the will instead of you. Well, anyway I made a deal and 1 bou'it that 500 acres in September of 1936. I think that story would be very int'resting, and it was to me at least. How I paid the other 500 dollars, I mean the.other 1500 all that's left is a hard go. ow in the meantime before I trot up to buying it, the McCullochs who lived who lived.down right on where the Floral valley road is now I guess used to be where the tank is over in the edge of the sports survey (?). Mr. N .B. McCulloch had his home out there, and his daughter and son lived there with him, his daughter was Willy Bradshaw later on. Mr. Bradshaw was one of the first city-council members of ;test Lake Hills and lived up on Mount '.(?) . oterthere. Very dear friend of mine and he worked with me on all these things. And when he found out I was interested in the Chambers land he got interested in his wife's inheritance in the Bradshaw land and they came out and helped a whole lot on the thing. (.ll, anyway the McCulloch Land and Cat tle Company was organized by Mrs. Willy NcCulioch Bracahaw,'s father. nd they leased this Crnhbers: survey from the Brackenrid es or whoever owned it at that time, I'm sure it was the Brackenridge chain. And they also leaked "that wr 1n "'an'as the James tract over east of little "=e Creek now, runs uP ong where the plant belongs to the City of Austin whore Bodhud 'Trai.l runs throu Lh it. "r then they had other land leased and of course it just wasn't cattle country' and thee wasn't any way to ,ake a go of it, and they finally let it all go. hui 'a r. ot to uh.. I had to bail out a law suit on the James tract of ter I bought that for the City of Austin. I'll tell about that later.

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But after' we uh. t Mr. Bradshaw'5 old hom3 wa~s dowrn there and I remember when I, irst came out hre I found the old +e'Y. No one was living there in '35 or '36, they had moved to Austin. And the >ccullochi boy w;as working in the post office and Mrs. 'illy VcCulloch was working for the Carl ? and she had , .arried !Mr. L.L. TBradshawr. And so the Old hose place over there you could find they had a well, an old ell right 5n the edge of little Bee Creek. Didn't have to go but about twenty feet and they had xwater and an old spring there. And I have found some springs on ry side of the Chambers survey, theyajust about fifty yards on the east side of the Chonibers survey line and there were some old fences in there and an old fig tree and maybe a pormegran-ate they had in those days. But that was where the McCullochs lived.; Now I did have some signs, some-evi- dence of someone having lived at one time way back up where Flintrich road runs S into edbud Trail, there was an old,.. when I first came up there, there was an old well. There was a piece of pipe down in the ground where somebody had drilled a well at that point and I presumed lived there at one time. I don't know of any other habitations anywhere on the CO --ogsurvey than those and the nearest next one would be off down and it might have been on part of the Chambers survey * or it was on Bee Creek where the Skannons, :Kr. Skannon now owns

Original record: metapth1065546 on the Portal to Texas History.