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The Gunter Family 1869 Thanksgiving Celebration
A festive 1869 Thanksgiving was planned in Sivells Bend, Texas, at the
newly completed mansion of Capt. W. W. Gunter and his wife Rosa Ligon
Gunter. They had married in January 1869 and the elegant house was
constructed with her suggestions and guidance. The autumn colors of the
red oaks, the brilliant yellow chinaberry leaves, and the golds,
oranges, and browns of the foliage brought the guests in buckboard and
buggy from the prairie to the Red River bottom and the Gunters' front
door.
In conjunction with Thanksgiving Day, a much-anticipated
reception would honor thirty-six-year-old A. Y. Gunter and his bride,
nineteen-year-old Elizabeth (Bettie) Ligon, who had been married at
Gainesville ten days before. Addison Yancey Gunter was the brother of
Captain Gunter and Bettie was the sister of Rosa Ligon Gunter. A large
number of friends and family would be enjoying the hospitality and
festivities for several days.
Invitations had been sent to all
the people who lived up and down the river, including the Murrells,
Manions, and Bourlands, who would have to cross the Red River twice from
Horseshoe Bend, Walnut Bend, or Bourland Bend, fifteen or twenty miles
as the crow flies; the Overtons, Loves, Gaineses, and Burneys across the
river in Indian Territory; as well as the neighbors in the Bend, the
Dillards, Stones, Roses, the families on Fish Creek, and a few hardy
friends who would venture the twenty-five mile journey from Gainesville.
Preparations for the celebration and house party had been continuing for days.
Bettie's brother James had killed four bucks for the roasted haunch of
venison and ten wild turkeys were cooked on a spit over a low fire.
There were yams, squash, and greens from the fall garden; dried morel
mushroom stuffing and gravy; special sausage from the shoats recently
butchered; plum jellies and hog plum jam from the thickets; pumpkin and
pecan pies; persimmon pudding, pound cakes, and mincemeat tarts. There
was apple cider, mustang grape wine, and elderberry wine.
The new
house included separate living quarters for the two brothers and their
wives and Captain Gunter's children Julian, Nat, and Margaret. It was
built on the second rise above the Red River, above flood level, but
still afforded a beautiful view of the valley. The quarters were divided
by a fourteen-foot hall but were joined by a wide front verandah. It was
heated by five large stone fireplaces with the kitchen sheds and smoke
houses at the back.
The Ligon sisters had come to the Sivells
Bend area in 1861 with their father, Dr. Samuel Seth Ligon, and sister
and brother, Mary and James. The unsettled pre-war conditions in
Missouri had prompted their move to Texas. Having made a trip to
California in 1849, Dr. Ligon was experienced in overland travel. In the
wagon train were seven wagons, two carriages, and a buggy, and all their
personal belongings to establish a new home. With the Ligon family was
Dr. Pope Long, Mrs. Ligon's widowed brother, who had also purchased land
at Sivells Bend, with his three children, Erskine, Alice, and Ella.
There were eighteen slaves and several wagonmasters and wranglers.
Dr. Ligon built a large house and slave cabins in Sivells Bend bottom near the
Red River. During the latter years of the Civil War the Indian threat
became eminent and Dr. Ligon forted up the homestead with solid poles,
forked at the top, even including room for several other families to
build cabins inside the fort.
The Ligon girls grew to beautiful
young ladies during the war despite the dwindling of purchased
necessities, calico for new dresses, slippers, combs or hairpins. But
their stepmother taught them sewing and housekeeping as well as in their
studies and cultural development.
William Washington Gunter and
Addison Yancey Gunter were of a North Carolina family of eleven children
who had migrated to Georgia about 1850. Both men served in the CSA
military service. W. W. was a captain in the Tenth Texas Cavalry. A. Y.
was a lieutenant in Brown's Battalion on Galveston Island. After the war
they investigated and invested in the mercantile business, shipping
goods from New Orleans. With money from their ventures they purchased
property in Sivells Bend adjacent to the Ligons in 1866. After their
large general store, established in Gainesville, failed in 1872, the
Gunter brothers focused on their farming and ranching businesses.
One can only use the imagination to picture the meeting and the
courtship of these gentlemen and their future wives, perhaps with
special gifts and luxuries from their mercantile experience. A joint
partnership, their plantation was in the fertile Red River Valley and
the two brothers amassed about 7,000 acres which was share-cropped by
many families. Progressive in their farming and ranching enterprise,
their cattle brand was the Diamond Y, well known and respected. They
were also generous in civic endeavors, deeding properties to schools and
churches and building one of the first cotton gins in the county.
Thanksgiving 1869 was a productive and happy time for the persons in
Sivells Bend recovering from the hardships endured during the war years.
The merged families and agricultural endeavors, the fertile fields and
farming improvements were bright omens for a successful future. In 1869
the Sivells Bend Methodist Episcopal Church South was established on
property deeded by the Gunters, and Bettie Gunter's name appears on the
register of members in October 1870. A. Y. Gunter served in the Texas
Legislature in 1885.
Author's note: I moved to Sivells Bend in
1949 and became a friend of Rosa Gunter Beasley, the daughter of A. Y.
and Bettie Gunter. I gathered this information from articles by her
sister Lillian Gunter in the Gunter Papers, Morton Museum, Gainesville,
such as "Recollections of an Early Cooke County Settler by Mrs. A. Y.
Gunter" (1907); an excerpt from Francis White Johnson, A History
of Texas and Texans (New York: American Historical Society, 1914);
marriage records, Cooke County Court House (on GenWeb); the members
register, Sivells Bend Methodist Episcopal Church South; and Cooke
County school records.
Barbara Pybas
Gainesville, Texas
Published:
November 14,
2005
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