Texas State Historical Association - My Texas

Read a story

Tennessee to Texas

In 2005 my husband J. E. (Jay) Pybas and I still farm the same river bottom, for fifty years now, that his ancestors paid off over one hundred years ago, in 1902. We are the only Pybases left in Cooke County, but there is a long row of Pybas gravestones at the far side of Bearhead Cemetery. Jay's great-grandfather and great-grandmother were buried there in 1912 and 1913 as well as many descendants. We are fortunate to have family stories handed down by word of mouth and written record.

The Kenneth Monroe Pybas family arrived in Cooke County, Texas, in the fall of 1881, a whole clan in seven wagons: the father and mother, four married sons and their wives and children, three younger Pybas siblings, and other relatives.

They settled on Nubbin Ridge, west of Sivells Bend, above Warrens Bend and the Red River. The large group arrived in the fall, with little time to put in a crop except for late vegetables. They camped in their wagons and tents, sending some of the wagons to Sherman for lumber for a house and barn. With great effort, a four-room house was completed before winter. Eleanor Pybas was able to bring to her new home her precious items packed carefully in Tennessee: books, pictures, the organ, quilts, and dishes.

There were no trees on the prairie land along the wagon track the elder Pybas chose for his house but a grove of young hackberry trees grew along a ridge several hundred yards to the north. The sons stationed their wagons there for shelter. They then constructed half-dugouts under or near the trees and lived in them the first winter.

A story from one of the sons, John Benjamin Pybas, tells that they managed very poorly that winter. Their money was about gone; they were living on rabbits and squirrels and whatever they could hunt. They heard that a man from Marysville needed some fences built. Will Pybas and Ben took the job although they were only paid in meat. The man that hired them had butchered hogs. Each received a side of pork and he said that the good wives could stretch it with gravy.

At the age of fifty-seven their father, K. M. Pybas, had virtually lived a lifetime before he arrived in Cooke County. A native of Bedford County, Tennessee, he was a respected, responsible citizen. He had acquired, owned, and cleared a farm; was a road overseer; and served as a soldier in the Confederate Army, even as a forty-year-old with a family of six children. In the 1870s he was the tollgate keeper for the S&F Turnpike Company, where five of his sons were also on the payroll. But with the economic hardship and pressures after the Civil War, he sold his property and moved his family to Texas in 1878, near Grapevine and the Trinity River. He purchased a sizeable tract. We have tax receipts for taxes paid in Tarrant County in 1879 on property valued at $530. With land selling for a dollar an acre, he owned as many as five hundred acres.

Little is known of the living arrangements of the Pybas clan in the Grapevine area, but the men must have busied themselves with breaking enough land to put in cotton that spring to ensure a fall harvest. K. M. was the true patriarch and guide for the group, and had money left from the sale of the Tennessee farm to finance their beginning. As an additional enterprise, sons J. C. (Jordan Cain) and J. B. (James Blair) Pybas signed a paper for J. D. Hudgins in 1880 for one-fourth interest in a cotton gin in Grapevine.

Babies were born in 1879 to each of the four daughters-in-law after they arrived in Tarrant County. All four of the women were expecting while on the wagon train to Texas. One can imagine the hardship endured, each in some stage of their pregnancy. A descendant of Ben Pybas told of his recollection of his wife Lillie Dale and the birth of their daughter, Ludie, two weeks after they arrived in Texas. Because of the jouncing in the bumpy wagons the wives chose to walk, he said, and covered most of the miles from Tennessee to Texas on foot.

The summer of 1880 brought tragedy to the family. Four of K. M.'s grandchildren contacted typhoid fever. Three of Blair's children, ages five, three and one, died within one week. Ben and Lillie's Ludie also came down with the fever. She was not expected to live. Emma, Blair's wife, had a nervous breakdown and was put on morphine. The worry and sorrow in Tarrant County was taking its toll.

The elder Pybas made the decision. Quoting his granddaughter, Kenneth M. Clifton, "Grandpa K. M. said, 'We're not going to stay in this unhealthy locality any longer.'" They had heard there were persons from Tennessee settled in Cooke County. Their father sent Jordan C. and Ben to try to find another location.

Riding horseback to Gainesville, still a cowtown, they inquired of Tennessee settlers. Directed to Sivells Bend, they met Mr. Midkiff, who had established a farm as early as the 1860s. He was the postmaster, justice of the peace, self-appointed land man, and a respected citizen. He knew of five hundred acres for sale on Nubbin Ridge, part of it good black land, part of it timberland, a bluff overlooking Warrens Bend and the Red River. Again the family was packed into their wagons heading for the Cooke County destination.

The sons and families began to find their own locations. William E. and family settled in Marysville, where he became a Cooke County commissioner in 1886. John Benjamin and James Blair began their development in Warrens Bend with five hundred acres, built a cotton gin in 1885, a blacksmith shop, and a store to accommodate many families who were sharecroppers in the Red River bottom. John Benjamin was also elected Cooke County commissioner in 1916. They are role models even to this day.

Barbara Pybas
Gainesville, Texas
Published: November 14, 2005