ESTHER AMANDA SHERRILL CULLINS
A PIONEER WOMAN OF THE TEXAS FRONTIER
Esther Amanda Sherrill, born December 21, 1802, at the
plantation home of her parents in Ninety-sixth District, Pendle-
ton County, South Carolina, was the tenth child of Lewis Sher-
rill, Sr., a Revolutionary soldier, and his wife, Mary Mason
Sherrill.
Esther's parents came of pioneering colonial stock. Her fore-
fathers aided in subduing the wilderness, first of Maryland and
then of Virginia. In 1747, lured by rich, cheap lands, the Sher-
rills and the Masons migrated to North Carolina, settling in an
uninhabited forest on the Catawba River. The settlement which
they established is still called Sherrill's Ford.
In 1779, at the age of eighteen, Lewis Sherrill volunteered as
a private in the Burke County Partisan Rangers; he served
throughout the remainder of the Revolution in the North Caro-
lina Militia, chiefly under General Charles McDowell and Colonel
Brevard. Besides numerous skirmishes against the Cherokees,
he participated in the battles of Stono, Ramseur's Mill, King's
Mountain, and the Cowpens. Lewis Sherrill was one of the
mounted infantry, composed of raw, ill-equipped mountaineers,
who were called "the hornets from the Switzerland of Amer-
ica," who, "rode like fox hunters." Surrounding the base of
King's Mountain, they charged up its rocky, wooded slopes to
its smoke-shrouded summit, where they routed from their
vaunted stronghold Major Ferguson's vastly superior force of
well-trained British and Tories--notwithstanding the arrogant
Major's boast that he was king of King's Mountain.
Fighting side by side in this history-making conflict with
Lewis Sherrill were several of his brothers and cousins, under
Colonels McDowell and Sevier; Sevier was the husband of
Lewis' cousin, Catherine Sherrill.
1
During the Revolution, when Esther Sherrill's future mother
was Mary Mason, a girl of sixteen, she and her mother, left
alone but for a few of their negroes, proved themselves espe-
cially cool and courageous in dealing with the Tories, who raided
their premises on different occasions, stealing some of their
slaves.
On January 10,1821, Esther Amanda Sherrill became Esther
Cullins, when she married Daniel Cullins, a South Carolina
planter.
A dozen years or so later, notwithstanding extremely difficult
mail and transportation service, there were being broadcast
throughout the greater part of the United States glowing ac-
counts of the untamed Texas portion of the Mexican State of
Coahuila and Texas. These rumors struck a responsive chord
in the heart of Esther Cullins, in whose veins coursed the blood
of several generations of pioneers. She found herself dreaming
of this faraway El Dorado--a land of better opportunities for
her children than her native state could offer. Daniel, too,
caught the inspiration; he was fascinated by the description
of Texas' fertile soil, the forests of valuable virgin timber, the
numerous waterways, the unexploited mineral resources. He
thrilled to the tales of the abundance of wild turkeys, prairie
chickens, quail, deer, bear, antelope and wild hogs, and of the
immense herds of buffalo, mustang ponies, Black Spanish and
longhorn cattle of the prairies.
Accordingly in 1835 Esther and Daniel Cullins, with their
four small children, Daniel's brother, Aaron Cullins, and their
half dozen negroes, with a few household treasures, embarked
on the tedious and perilous journey to Texas--their "intriguing
Land of Opportunity." From New Orleans they traveled by
steamboat, landing at Washington-on-the-Brazos, whence they
proceeded by wagon, drawn by eight yoke of oxen, to their
destination, Viesca (also called The Falls), at the falls of
the Brazos, on the west side of the river near the present
Marlin. This hamlet, platted the previous year, was the north-
ernmost fort in Texas. Its inhabitants consisted of but six to
eight families, their homes the proverbial log cabin, with the
addition of one or two tents.
On their leisurely trek over the tortuous trail up the Brazos
the Cullins party found entertainment and relaxation in the
natural beauties of the woods and prairies; they admired tine
grey moss-hung live-oaks, the post oaks and mustang grape-
vines
2 festooned from the great tree branches. Esther and the
children gazed, spellbound, at the boundless fields of colorful
wild flowers and the great variety of birds, many of which were
strange to them. The men were deeply interested in the
tall, luxuriant grasses, acre upon acre standing waist-high,
and especially in the wild oats and rye, four feet tall, covering
the alluvial river bottoms, and all were delighted at the sight
of the herds of fat, sleek cattle, deer and buffalo.
Viesca was headquarters for Sterling C. Robertson's colony,
also called the Nashville Company's colony, a vast domain lying
north of the San Antonio road, west of the Brazos and east of
the Colorado, which extended almost to the northern boundary
of Texas. This grant, like its capital, briefly called Viesca, be-
came by an act of the Provisional Government in December,
1835, successively the Milam Land Grant, the Municipality of
Milam, and in 1837 Milam County, one of the twenty-three
original Texas counties. Nashville served for a few years as
the seat of government; but gradually, by 1846, the colony's
40,000 square miles had been carved into thirty-two counties,
including the present Milam County, of which the infant village
of Cameron was voted the county seat.
After a brief stay at Milam
3 the Cullins family removed to
the new capital of Nashville,
4 some thirty-five miles down the
Brazos, located on the west side of the stream adjacent to the
place where the International & Great Northern Railway bridge
and that of U. S. Highway 79 span the river, between the towns
of Gause and Hearne. In addition to the empresario's office,
where all matters pertaining to the colony were transacted, the
hamlet consisted of a blockhouse with portholes and a few log
and frame houses. A group of patriotic women of Nashville,
Tennessee, for which town this vigorous frontier hamlet was
named, donated a cannon for the protection of the settlers, who
gathered in the blockhouse (during the frequent Indian raids.
A supply depot was erected, and the town served as general
headquarters and distributing point for the colonists for miles
around. In 1889, when Congress established a commission to
locate a permanent capital site, Nashville was an aspirant but
lost to Austin in the final decision.
Nashville early showed indications of becoming a place of
historic interest in this frontier country. Among its shifting
population were many outstanding men, some of whom were
to play a noteworthy part in shaping the destiny of the future
commonwealth.. Among these was the empresario of the colony,
Sterling C. Robertson, who had been a major of the Tennessee
troops in the War of 1812, and who organized a militia company
for service in the Texas Revolution; he was a signer of the
Texas Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of
the Republic, and served as a senator in its First and Second
Congresses. There were also his nephew, George Campbell
Childress, credited with the main authorship of the Declaration
of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson Chambers, a member of
the session of 1834 of the Legislature of Coahuila and Texas,
who in 1835 hypothecated a vast tract of land to raise $10,000
for the equipment of Texas soldiers. Others were George Ber-
nard Erath, captain of a company of Rangers, a member of the
Eighth and Ninth Congresses of the Republic, three times a
Texas Senator, who in 1857 raised and commanded a company
of infantry; Orville T. Tyler, first Chief Justice of Coryell
County and a member of the Legislature; E. S. C. Robertson,
then a youth, a future Confederate general; Benjamin Franklin
Bryant, captain of a company of volunteers which he recruited
in March, 1836, who built the fort of Bryant Station on Little
River, in Milam County, and served as colonel of his own
ranger company in the Indian fight at Milam; Robert M. Cole-
man, captain of the first ranger company in 1835, a signer of the
Texas Declaration of Independence, a member of General Hous-
ton's staff at San Jacinto, and colonel of a ranger company in
1836; Ben McCulloch, commander of a cannon, one of the "Twin
Sisters," at San Jacinto, a member of the Texas Congress of
1839, a legislator, a captain of a company of rangers in the War
with Mexico, and a brigadier general in the Army of the Con-
federacy; and last but not by any means least, the redoubtable
Lawrence Sullivan Ross, "hero of two hundred and thirty bat-
tles, a brigadier-general in the Army of the Confederacy, who
served two terms as governor of Texas. And in addition to
these many other history-makers, too numerous to mention, lived
for a time at Nashville.
For the convenience of the settlers on both sides of the Brazos,
William D. Thomson (son of the Alexander Thomson who set-
tled there in 1831) owned and operated a small ferry-boat He
was Nashville's first postmaster, first hotel keeper and Milam
County's first county clerk.
There were no bridges, and ordinarily streams were crossed
on rafts made of logs held together with rawhide ropes and
grapevines. Traveling was principally on horseback, except
when heavy wagons were used, and even horseback travel was
difficult when the river bottoms were muddy. Roads were no
more than the trails made by cattle, buffalo, or Indians, and
it was several years before family carriages were seen in this
part of the Republic. It is a far cry from the cumbersome
wooden-axle ox-wagon of that period, snailing over trackless
prairies, to the swift streamlined motor vehicle of the present,
skimming along smooth paved highways, to say nothing of our
modern airliners rocketing through the air.
Since there were no screens to retard them—not even glass
windowpanes--swarms of mosquitoes streamed through the
cabins, bringing discomfort and malaria to the settlers, greatly
handicapping their endeavors.
In 1846 Nashville boasted a small, short-term private school,
probably the only school in this entire municipality for several
fears. Throughout the Republic schools were rare, and gen-
erally the only educational qualification required of a teacher
was an acquaintance with the Three R's. It appears that other
affairs occupied the time and interest of the few well-educated
colonists--they were more than busy with the maintenance of
existence, fighting Indians or Mexicans, or otherwise making
history.
Corn and cotton were the prevailing crops, as they still are,
but to these were soon added sugar cane and tobacco. Until
land matters were adjusted and the colonists had settled on
their land allotments, small patches were the rule, ranging from
four to ten, or twenty-five acres at the most. Farming imple-
ments were imported from New Orleans, but there were some
who could barely afford a hoe. These, after burning away
the brush and canebrakes, without the aid of plow, harrow or
cultivator, horses, mules or oxen, planted and cultivated their
crops. According to a diary written at Nashville in 1846, so
rich was the virgin soil that even with such primitive methods
the pioneers often made forty to fifty bushels of corn and five
hundred pounds of clean, marketable cotton to the acre.
The small patches of cotton were as a rule grown by the
women and children, to whom fell the task of handpicking it
from the seed, after which the women carded, spun and wove
it into cloth. They glorified their clothing with dyes from
berries, indigo and other native plants, from the bark of trees,
and from the cochineal.
Fortunately for the Cullins family, their negroes, farm-
trained, faithfully attended to their farming duties, leaving the
family free to pursue more urgent matters.
Some of the early settlers ground corn coarsely on steel hand-
mills ; others, lacking even this device, had to resort to grating
it on a piece of tin in which holes had been pierced or to pound-
ing the grain into meal with a wooden pestle in a mortar made
of a log or stump. Gristmills had not arrived as yet. The usual
minimum selling price of flour was $25 per barrel, but there
are records of its having brought $100 per barrel in this com-
munity! A much-prized household implement was the candle
mold which shaped the beeswax and beef-tallow candles.
Imported clothing was somewhat of a rarity. Throughout
the 1830's many depended largely upon the skins of animals
for their wearing apparel, and the shoes especially were often
crude affairs. Gradually, however, when sufficient cotton was
produced, homespun became the popular dress material for
the entire family, and a little later some of the more enter-
prising colonists raised sheep, thus enabling them to indulge
in the luxury of woolen clothing. A calico dress was reserved
for best wear and cost about the same as does a silk dress now.
For several years New Orleans was the only market; the
Milam settlers, on horseback or in an ox-wagon, would meet
the schooner or steamboat at the nearest Brazos port--usually
Richmond, but under favorable river conditions boats ran
farther up the Brazos. Later supplies were brought on horse-
back from Natchitoches, three hundred miles distant, and be-
ginning early in 1837, from Houston, then a village of perhaps
a hundred log and frame houses and a few tents.
The Cullins family, somewhat disillusioned, now viewed the
other side of the formerly glamorous picture. They now saw
their adopted home as not only a sun-kissed land of romance
and adventure, fanned by gentle southern zephyrs, teeming
with wild game, cattle and horses; they recognized it as a
veritable wilderness, in whose dense thickets and on whose
broad plains lurked danger from Indians and predatory beasts.
Moreover, Texas was chafing under military rule and its esti-
mated thirty thousand colonists were in incipient revolt against
Mexico; the Texas Revolution was beginning. Indians were a
constant source of terror, and it was necessary to be particular-
ly wary on moonlit nights, since the full of the moon was their
favorite time for raiding. It was then that they came to steal
the frontiersmen's stock, burn their homes, perhaps murder or
kidnap their families.
Overcome by the multitude of trials, many gave up the
struggle and returned to their former homes. Undaunted,
Esther Cullins and her family, endowed as they were with
qualities of which true pioneers are made, firmly resolved to
play the dangerous game to the very end.
Daniel Cullins, and his brother, Aaron Cullins, immediately
adopted Texas as their homeland. Both enlisted in Captain
Barron's First Regiment of Texas Rangers, under the command
of Colonel Coleman, and each also served one year as a private
in the militia. Land grants were awarded to both for their
army services, Aaron Cullins' award being made posthumously,
he having been killed on ranger service.
Early in 1836, eager to become permanently settled, the Daniel
Cullins family left their small farm at Nashville to improve
a homesite of larger acreage on their eleven-league grant near
Indian Creek,
5 seven miles northeast of the present Cameron.
Here from cedar logs felled and hewn in the brakes near Nash-
ville they erected fairly comfortable quarters.
In the Cullins neighborhood were three other families: that
of Captain Daniel Monroe, who the following year at the head
of a battalion was stationed at Three Forks (a fort in the pres-
ent Bell County), and later at Milam, subsequently serving as
one of the first commissioners of the present Milam County;
that of William Berry Smith, a famous and fearless Indian
fighter and gunsmith; and that of William Henry Walker, who
later served as County Judge of Milam County. The four fam-
ilies took the wise precaution of building their cabins within
a radius of about one hundred yards as a safeguard against
a possible Indian attack.
In June of 1836 the Cullins family and their neighbors were
rejoicing over the recent hard-won civil and religious liberty
of the independent Lone Star Republic of Texas achieved at
San Jacinto. With renewed hope and a feeling of greater se-
curity, all were happily pursuing the improvement of their
homesteads and the laying-by of their small but vitally im-
portant corn corps.
Their roseate outlook was doomed to be sadly interrupted.
Mounted couriers galloped through the outpost settlements,
including the Cullins community, bringing the news of the
Indian assault of May 19 on Parker's Fort, and at the same
time warning the settlers to gather at Nashville for sanctuary,
since hostile Indians were known to be raiding the country.
It so happened that Daniel and Esther Cullins, with three of
their children, Mary Ann, Clarissa Amanda and Alfred Wash-
ington Cullins, and some of the negroes, had gone to Nashville
for supplies, where Daniel was to attend to some governmental
business as well. The parents had ridden on horseback, while
the children had gone in the wagon in care of their "black
mammy." The Cullins' elder son, John, well past his tenth
birthday, they had left with their special friends, the Walkers.
The Walker's baby daughter, Mary Ann, little John Cullins'
future wife, was then less than two years old.
The three terrified families remaining in the Cullins neigh-
borhood began preparations to go to Nashville. The Monroes
and Smiths went to the Walker cabin, their wagon packed,
ready to join the refugees. From Three Forks came Captain
Gouldsby Childers, a famous Indian fighter, a soldier in the War
of 1812 and in the Black Hawk War of 1832; with him were
his wife and seven children, two of his sons being nineteen and
seventeen years old, respectively. A Mr. Rhoads, old and unable
to fight, and five additional able-bodied colonists, the Reverend
Isaac Crouch, Dr. Robert Davidson, Orville T. Tyler, Ezekiel
Robinson, and a Mr. Shackleford were also of his party. All
had been in the Childers community building cabins, planting
and cultivating crops. The Childers party camped overnight
at a spring in the Walker grounds.
On the following morning, June 4, since no immediate danger
was apprehended, the Walker party declined to join the Childers
party, explaining that they must wait a few hours to brand
some cattle before leaving for the fort.
When the Childers caravan had advanced some two or three
miles and had reached open prairie, hearing in the distance the
thud of hoofbeats, they looked back and they saw what at first
appeared to be a herd of stampeding buffalo; soon, however,
it became apparent that they were being pursued by a band of
about two hundred mounted Comanches, who stooped on their
horses in such a manner as to simulate the hump on the
shoulder of the buffalo.
The alarm was sounded; the men traveling some two hundred
yards in front, and those a hundred or two yards in the rear
scurried to the wagon, and stood behind their horses with guns
drawn, with instructions to reserve their fire until ordered to
shoot. The savages charged to a distance of about a hundred
yards, a deluge of ineffectual shots pouring from their guns.
The whites, having no ammunition to waste, did not fire a
single shot. Isaac Crouch and Dr. Davidson, anxious to reach
their families in Nashville, had ridden some distance ahead.
Hearing the shots, they raced back, hoping to aid their com-
rades. The Comanches, keeping their former distance, divided
into two columns and passing full speed around the wagon,
firing without effect as they ran, succeeded in getting between
the two horsemen and the wagon. When the two attempted
to outrun their assailants, the Comanches, with fleeter horses,
overtook them and murdered both, in full view of their friends.
While the savages stopped to quarrel over the scalps and booty,
the Childers party left the trail and hurried to a nearby clump
of timber. Leaving the wagon and the small herd of cattle, which
they had been driving, to the mercy of the enemy they resumed
their journey--some on horseback, some on foot.
The Comanches had transferred their attention to the Walker
cabin, where the Monroes, Smiths, Walkers and little John
Cullins were barricaded.
6 Their supply of powder and lead had
been left in the wagon; upon the instant Mrs. William Berry
Smith (née Mary Ann Ashmore), at the risk of her life, dashed
out and got the ammunition. The assault lasted several hours.
The colonists, making good use of the portholes, returned the
fire with discretion. Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Smith, assisted by
the older children, took turns in molding- bullets, they and Mrs.
Monroe now and then relieving the men behind the guns. In
the meantime the Indians plundered the wagon, appropriated
the food supplies, ripped open feather beds and strewed the
feathers and a barrel or two of precious flour over the prairie.
About twilight, after butchering some cattle, the Indians re-
tired. None of the whites had been injured but several of the
Comanches had been wounded, and it was said that there was
one good
Indian, the victim of Mrs. Walker's marksmanship.
The Walker party, well mounted, joined that of Childers at
Nashville on the following day.
Because of the Indian invasion and increased Indian hostili-
ties of 1836, all the scattered settlers north of Nashville de-
serted their cabins and took refuge at Nashville and at Tenoch-
titlán, ten miles farther down the river. It appears that the
other forts were now used almost entirely as headquarters for
the Indian fighters. In view of these conditions, coupled with
the fact that the Cullins' men were away from home most of
the time in their capacity of rangers, Esther, the children and
the negroes remained at Nashville for several years before re-
turning to Indian Creek. The men of that neighborhood would
go back in groups to look after their interests, but for a time
it was not considered safe to live so far from the fort. The
Cullins' resumed and continued their farming activities at Nash-
ville through 1846.
A Texan who lived at Nashville at that time, in writing his
reminiscences sixty years later, recalls having been among a
crew of boys "hoeing cotton on the banks of the Brazos for Mr.
Cullins" on the occasion of the arrival of the first steamboat
at Nashville. He is inclined to disgree with a writer who states
that the date was 1846; he thinks it may have been 1849.
7 This
old resident remembers the excitement which prevailed on this
occasion; the settlers came in from ten miles around to see the
sight. After a brief stop, the boat went on to near-by Port Sul-
livan, where it took on cargo and returned down the Brazos.
Exports, such as there were, consisted of corn, cotton, sugar-
cane and hides, but it is doubtful if very much exportation had
been carried on from that immediate vicinity to that date. The
next time for a steamboat to take advantage of high water and
reach a point so far up the Brazos was in 1850, when a boat
entered the mouth of Little River, two miles beyond Nashville,
and went on to Cameron.
The Walker cabin fight was not the last encounter which the
Cullins family were to have with the Indians. While serving as
rangers, both Daniel and Aaron Cullins had several brushes
with them, and Aaron Cullins met his death at their hands.
In May or June, 1837, preparatory to withdrawing his
rangers from Little River Fort, Captain George B. Erath sent
five of his men, consisting of Aaron Cullins, Caleb Neill, David
Farmer, Sterritt Smith and Jesse Bailey» to Nashville for
wagons and teams with which to remove the two or three re-
maining families to Nashville. On their return trip when they
were nearing Postoak Springs,
8 five miles north of the present
Cameron, a gang of Comanches, crashing from a post oak grove,
attacked and murdered the entire group.
The Indians now and then made expeditions to Nashville and
its vicinity. Dr. Z. N. Morrell, that brave pioneer Baptist divine,
in his Flowers
and
Fruits
in
the
Wilderness,
tells of preaching
in that village in February, 1837, in a log cabin with dirt floor.
A light snow had fallen. Just at the close of the service the
savages swooped down upon the congregation, killing two of
the men. Exchanging their Bibles for guns, the men of the con-
gregation, including the preacher, went in hot pursuit, but the
redskins escaped up Little River. The Cullins family were
among the worshippers on this occasion.
In 1840, the Cullins' elder son, John, then a lad of fifteen,
accompanied John McLennan, Sr., on a cattle-hunting trip in
the timber around Sugar Loaf--a small mound which still bears
that name—half a dozen miles from Nashville; they were at-
tacked by Indians, who killed and scalped his companion, while
John Cullins, by the aid of a heavy fog, eluded them and re-
turned to the fort.
In 1846 John Cullins, at the edge of the prairie on his par-
ents' Indian Creek land, was engaged in skinning a young
buffalo, when his horse's uneasy behavior in unmistakable
terms announced the approach of Indians. Hastily cutting off
the quarter which he had finished skinning and throwing it on
his horse, he mounted and raced to the heavily wooded creek
bottoms, where, luckily, the savages again passed him by.
After an absence of ten years, the Indian danger having to
a great extent abated, the Cullins family returned to their
Indian Creek farm. From Nashville they had hauled many
loads of cedar logs, including those used in their Nashville
home, with which to supplement their interrupted improvements
of 1836. Soon they enjoyed a commodious double (i. e., divided
by a hall) "big-house," as the darkies called it, ample cabins
for the latter, spacious barns, and certainly, a smoke house.
There were wide, open fireplaces, one of which was in the
kitchen, where faithful black Harriet capably presided over a
much-prized collection of pots and kettles--South Carolina
treasures--hung, of course, from a crane, to say nothing of
heavy, covered iron skillets for baking. True, her then up-to-
the-minute equipment bore no "certified performance" seal, and
would hardly appeal to the modern cook, but skillful Harriet
possessed just the proper magic to prepare her wood-coals for
the exact temperature desired, and felt no need for such gadgets
as heat control, automatic timers, or any other such undreamed-
of trivialities.
The Cullins' new home, built of hewn cedar logs, was roofed
with hand-riven boards; the floors in the main were of
smooth split logs--"puncheon" floors--except those in the front
rooms, which were the pride of the entire family, being hard-
wood, the flooring brought from a sawmill at Harrisburg.
Though her frontier home could not compare with her home
in the Palmetto State, it was indeed a proud day in Esther
Cullins' life when she stepped across its welcoming threshold—
a home destined to be a haven for many a wayworn traveler,
as well as a happy social center for a wide area.
Amusements consisted, for the men, of fishing, hunting,
shooting matches, bee hunting, horse racing, hunting wild cattle
and breaking wild horses; for the women, entertainment was
less exciting—besides quilting parties, there were "spend-the-
day" parties, in which they engaged in sewing, spinning or
weaving. Barbecues and "candy pullings" were popular diver-
sions, and young belles and their beaux, and some not so young,
rode many miles on horseback to attend weddings and dances
It was the custom to dance until dawn, or even sunrise, the
following morning.
The first church in this county, the Little River Baptist, a
flourishing country church today, was established in 1847. Prior
to that time itinerant preachers often stopped for a visit in the
Cullins home and would hold services there.
Indians continued to make forays at intervals in the Cullins
community, and on three different occasions attempted to burn
the Cullins home. On one such occasion, no water being at hand,
Esther quenched the flames with milk. And at that time she
literally heaped coals of fire on an old chief's head—that is,
she threw a shovelful of embers in his face.
Esther looked well to the ways of her household and ate not
the bread of idleness." Tradition says that each man, woman
and child, white or black, was expected to keep reasonably busy
when there was work to be done. Assisted by the negroes, the
women made good use of the spinning wheel and loom, keeping
the family and the darkies comfortably, if not smartly, clad.
Her year-around garden contributed to their health and well-
being, though the word "vitamin" was not in their vocabulary.
Farming, stock-raising and "freighting" (by wagon, ox- or
mule-drawn) constituted the principal industries over a period
of years. Daniel Cullins and his two sons engaged in all three
enterprises. After they were well established, their activities
included the raising of thoroughbred horses. Their sheep and
long-staple cotton furnished material for their clothing.
What need had they for sugar, when bee-trees were plentiful;
what need for ice, when near their door gurgled a cold spring
in which pails of milk and cream and crocks of golden butter
could be kept sweet and cool? And as to meat, hams of deer and
of the wild hog--until domestic hogs were raised--were cured
and smoked, and steaks of beef, buffalo, and venison were hung
on hide ropes and dried for such times as fresh game might be
lacking. To this extent at least was "dehydration" practiced at
that early day.
Nature, that inimitable landscape architect, had planned and
arranged Esther Cullins' grounds. In the spring and early
summer her door-yard and the hills and meadows roundabout
presented a panorama in breath-taking colors. Against an emerald
background blossomed acres of sparkling, fragrant flowers,
ranging from pink to carmine, gold to orange, lilac to intense
purple, the heaven-blue of the lupine predominating:—"made of
strips of Texas skies at their brightest, tipped with white cloud-
mist," a beloved Texas poet has declared; the fairies, we are
told, patterned them after the headgear of our Texas pioneer
women and proudly called them bluebonnets!
Near this home a serpentine spring creek laughed and glis-
tened, and the birds sang in the thickets, its banks adorned with
a variety of trees, shrubs and vines, many of them flower- or
fruit-bearing. In summer, beneath an azure sky and against a
foil of green, appeared first the orchid rose of the redbud, then
the snowy dogwood, hawthorn and plum, followed by the
trumpet flower's bell of scarlet, brushed with sunset glow. In
the autumn the yaupon's radiant ruby berries, the sumac's
flaming fruit and foliage, intermixed with nature's shades of
rose, russet, copper, magenta, and the green of cedars trans-
formed the Cullins' woodlands into a terrestrial paradise.
Native here were lush dewberries, blackberries, blue-black
haws, ruddy apple haws, purple grapes, frosty plums, and rosy
persimmons, besides pecans, hickory nuts and walnuts.
Add to all this a sandy-beached wading pool and deeper blue
holes in which to fish or swim--is it surprising that the Cullins
farm was the favorite rendezvous of the children, and especially
the older boys, of the entire neighborhood!
Esther and Daniel Cullins' two daughters and two sons, all
born in South Carolina, grew up in Texas, where they married
and reared their families. They and the succeeding generation
inter-married with the following Texas families, some of whose
names are well known: Beal, Walker, Hubby, Kennedy, Dob-
bins, Sneed, Logan, Tyson, Batte, and Oxsheer.
The year 1861 dawned with overcast skies. Texas, in line
with the other Southern States, resentful that her rights were
being trampled upon, sought to remedy her condition by with-
drawal from the Union. On March 2, she celebrated the birth-
day of her own independence by joining the Southern Confed-
eracy. Texans responded promptly and enthusiastically to Pres-
ident Davis' call for volunteers.
Daniel Cullins and his two sons, John and Alfred, volunteered
and joined the Army of the Confederacy. Each enrolled in
Captain Ben McCulloch's Company for Milam County, 27th
Brigade, Texas Militia, General E. S. C. Robertson command-
ing, in which John was a corporal. In 1863 each of them re-
enlisted in Company G, 33rd Regiment, Texas Cavalry (Buff's
Partisan Rangers, 14th Battalion), in which Alfred was a
sergeant.
Daniel Cullins, no longer young, was appointed a cattle buyer.
His sons served on the border patrol, but during the time of
the cotton movement they freighted cotton to the Rio Grande.
The most difficult part of the long, laborious cotton trek lay
between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, over a vast deep
sand embayment. From Rancho Las Animas, just below old
San Patricio, several roads diverged to the Rio Grande. While
the greater portion of the cotton went direct from Las Animas
almost on a straight line to Brownsville, a certain amount of
the traffic swung westward and reached the Rio Grande at Rio
Grande City (which the old ranchero Mexicans continue to call
"Rancho Davis"), thence down the river by the old road which
parallels the river bank. After the capture of Brownsville by
the Federals, and until it was retaken by the Confederates, the
bulk of the cotton went, necessarily, by the old Presidio road
from San Antonio to the vicinity of Eagle Pass, subsequently
resuming the Rio Grande City route.
As though these difficulties were not enough, there were fre-
quent Indian assaults upon the wagon trains in the lower coun-
try, mule teams being especially appealing to them.
Throughout the four long cruel years of the War, the singing
of the spindle and the humming of the shuttle constituted the
chief music in Esther Cullins' home, as the busy women made
clothing and blankets for the tattered Confederate soldiers.
The sagacious Esther did not, however, believe in "all work
and no play." She sensed the need for keeping up morale, and
though seldom were any of the mature men of the neighborhood
at home, her available neighbors often were invited to her home
for such modest entertainment as she could offer. She would
sometimes don her son's best suit and dance with her daughters
and the other girls as though she were a man.
Though famed for her sunny, optimistic nature, Esther,
through declining health, now had hours of enforced rest and
meditation. Musing perhaps on familiar scenes and associations
of her youth, mourning the loss of dear ones who had passed on,
and especially the deaths of her parents, which came only six
days apart, and more recently sorrowing for several beloved
nephews who made the supreme sacrifice at Gettysburg and on
other grim battlefields—perhaps at such times the brave Esther
was wont to water her cherished prairie flowers with her tears!
Esther Cullins and her family had lived in Texas under four
of her six flags. Arriving on a scene of turmoil and strife, and
finding the country in rebellion against Mexico, their hearts had
bled over the tragic fall of the Alamo, the horrible slaughter
at Goliad, and they had hailed those precious eighteen minutes
at San Jacinto, when a new nation was born. They had shared
in the ten momentous years under the Lone Star of the Re-
public, years brimful of stirring, thrilling events. They had
endorsed the entry of the new State into the then peaceful firma-
ment of the Red, White and Blue, and, subsequently, confident
in the South's justification, they had sanctioned its secession
from the Union. They survived the heartbreaking news of
General Lee's surrender, but before the expiration of the har-
rowing period of reconstruction both Esther and Daniel Cullins
had died.
In the old Beal family cemetery, on the farm of their daugh-
ter's family, adjoining their own farm home, they lie side by
side. In addition to a joint family marker, there is on the grave
of Esther Amanda Sherrill Cullins a bronze tablet placed by the
Sarah McCalla Chapter of the D. A. R., honoring her as a real
Daughter of the American Revolution. On March 4, 1868, within
less than five months after the death of her husband, this heroine
unsung "lay down to that long dreamless sleep that separates
Time's evening from Eternity's fair morn."
FOOTNOTES:
day declared that "she could outrun, outjump, walk more erectly, and ride
more gracefully than any other female in the mountains roundabout or
on the continent at large." It might be added that on a fateful June day
of 1776, "Bonny Kate" made an auspicious "home-run." Wandering from
the security of Fort Watauga to pick flowers on her father's near-by estate,
Daisy Fields, on the scenic Nollichucky, surprised by "Old Abraham" and
his band of Cherokees, she outran them to the stockade, and leaping over
the palisades, literally fell into the arms of her future husband, Colonel
John Sevier. History has accorded her much credit as the helpmate and
inspiration of her illustrious husband.
manche."
Revolution, aided by Milam County, bought seven acres of the old Nash-
ville grounds (the town gradually faded away after the Civil War)
which they deeded to the State of Texas for a park. They induced the State
to place a historic marker on the site, where, besides marking the grounds,
the D. A. R. chapter also placed a marker, memorializing the gallant men
and women who endured hardship and privation to pave the way for our
present civilization.
was over a long period--beginning several years after the Walker cabin
fight--closely associated with her aunt and her family, as was the writer's
father, Robert Todd, of Cameron, now (in 1943) past his ninety-first birth-
day. To them and to Esther and Daniel Cullins' granddaughters, the late
Mrs. Tyra Sneed, née Lillian Beal, of Georgetown, Mrs. Will Cullins, née
Minnie Cullins, of Brownfield, and Mrs. J. P. McBride, née Julia Cullins, of
Ft. Worth, is the writer indebted for much of the data recorded herein. The
family's version of the Walker cabin fight does not vary materially from
the versions given by some of the historians.
the date of the steamboat's arrival.
Pettibone, on the Santa Fe Railroad.
How to cite:
Olive Todd Walker, "Esther Amanda Sherrill Cullins", Volume 47, Number 3, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v047/n3/contrib_DIVL4263.html
[Accessed Thu Dec 4 12:55:48 CST 2008]
