Drizzt
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Settlers emphasized the importance of schooling
By Bill Fairley
Special to the Star-Telegram
Young Tom Taylor was playing outdoors with one of the Heffington boys when they suddenly looked up and then took off running for the Heffingtons' cabin to find a place to hide.
From a hill top near their homes in the Bear Creek settlement in southeastern Parker County, a band of Indians was watching them.
It was 1860, and the Civil War was about to erupt. While settlers were distracted by tensions involving slaveholding and secession, Plains Indians, primarily Kiowas and Comanches, were raiding farms and ranches, killing adults and often kidnapping small children and stealing horses.
The Bear Creek settlement was a cluster of homesteads near today's Pate Museum of Transportation on U.S. 377, about 8 miles south of where Aledo sits today, and 20 miles southwest of the new town of Fort Worth.
Thomas Ulvan Taylor would survive the Indian raids to become a leading Texas educator.
He was born Jan. 2, 1858, in a one-room log cabin near the fork of North and South Bear Creeks, where his parents, John Henry and Louisa Taylor, had settled in 1855.
The young state of Texas did not provide for public schools, but the settlers were determined for their children to get some education. They picked a site for classes under the leafy protection of a huge live oak near the cabin of the George Washington Pratt family, neighbors of the Taylors.
The settlers asked Stephen Heffington, the best educated person in the community, to be the teacher. In exchange, his neighbors cultivated and harvested his crops.
Few books were available for the nine prospective students, ages 6 to 20, but a handful of reading, writing and arithmetic books were found. For current history and events, Heffington taught from settlers' letters and old newspapers.
Trees were felled from which the settlers sawed benches. Slates and chalk were found among rocks in the creek bed.
School was from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., with an hour for lunch and two short recesses. Two long "holiday breaks" came in the spring and fall planting and harvest seasons so children could work on their parents' land. School continued in the summer and winter, weather permitting.
All male students 12 or older were required to carry a rifle to school in case of an Indian raid. The school was never attacked, but Indians raided the settlement on July 24, 1863. The raiders were driven off before major damage was done, although horses were stolen.
Tom Taylor later wrote that turning 12 and being responsible for taking a rifle to school -- and knowing how to use it -- "was a badge of manhood."
The Civil War ended in April 1865 (edited to correct the year - Gary). Within a few years, the community built a real one-room log schoolhouse two miles down the creek at the confluence of North and South Bear Creeks, near the Tarrant County line. The Taylor and Heffington children had to walk two miles to school.
Each student now had Webster Blue Book Spellers, McGuffey Readers and Ray Arithmetic books.
When Tom Taylor was 9, his father died. An older brother died the next year. To help support the family, Tom went to work as a cowboy for a nearby cattleman named John Durkee. He worked after school, during school vacation days and other times off.
But he profited from his rudimentary education, later graduating as an engineer from Sam Houston Normal School in Huntsville. He became Texas' first registered engineer and later became dean of engineering at the University of Texas.
Tom Taylor died at 83 in 1941.
There is no historical marker on U.S. 377 near the South Bear Creek crossing to mark the location of "The School Under the Live Oak Tree."
Sources: the School Under the Live Oak Tree by Doyle Marshall of Aledo and Interview With Marshall. the Book Is Available at Some Bookstores and at the Tackett Pharmacy in Willow Park or Can Be Ordered by Calling (817) 441-8961.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/5696355.htm
By Bill Fairley
Special to the Star-Telegram
Young Tom Taylor was playing outdoors with one of the Heffington boys when they suddenly looked up and then took off running for the Heffingtons' cabin to find a place to hide.
From a hill top near their homes in the Bear Creek settlement in southeastern Parker County, a band of Indians was watching them.
It was 1860, and the Civil War was about to erupt. While settlers were distracted by tensions involving slaveholding and secession, Plains Indians, primarily Kiowas and Comanches, were raiding farms and ranches, killing adults and often kidnapping small children and stealing horses.
The Bear Creek settlement was a cluster of homesteads near today's Pate Museum of Transportation on U.S. 377, about 8 miles south of where Aledo sits today, and 20 miles southwest of the new town of Fort Worth.
Thomas Ulvan Taylor would survive the Indian raids to become a leading Texas educator.
He was born Jan. 2, 1858, in a one-room log cabin near the fork of North and South Bear Creeks, where his parents, John Henry and Louisa Taylor, had settled in 1855.
The young state of Texas did not provide for public schools, but the settlers were determined for their children to get some education. They picked a site for classes under the leafy protection of a huge live oak near the cabin of the George Washington Pratt family, neighbors of the Taylors.
The settlers asked Stephen Heffington, the best educated person in the community, to be the teacher. In exchange, his neighbors cultivated and harvested his crops.
Few books were available for the nine prospective students, ages 6 to 20, but a handful of reading, writing and arithmetic books were found. For current history and events, Heffington taught from settlers' letters and old newspapers.
Trees were felled from which the settlers sawed benches. Slates and chalk were found among rocks in the creek bed.
School was from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., with an hour for lunch and two short recesses. Two long "holiday breaks" came in the spring and fall planting and harvest seasons so children could work on their parents' land. School continued in the summer and winter, weather permitting.
All male students 12 or older were required to carry a rifle to school in case of an Indian raid. The school was never attacked, but Indians raided the settlement on July 24, 1863. The raiders were driven off before major damage was done, although horses were stolen.
Tom Taylor later wrote that turning 12 and being responsible for taking a rifle to school -- and knowing how to use it -- "was a badge of manhood."
The Civil War ended in April 1865 (edited to correct the year - Gary). Within a few years, the community built a real one-room log schoolhouse two miles down the creek at the confluence of North and South Bear Creeks, near the Tarrant County line. The Taylor and Heffington children had to walk two miles to school.
Each student now had Webster Blue Book Spellers, McGuffey Readers and Ray Arithmetic books.
When Tom Taylor was 9, his father died. An older brother died the next year. To help support the family, Tom went to work as a cowboy for a nearby cattleman named John Durkee. He worked after school, during school vacation days and other times off.
But he profited from his rudimentary education, later graduating as an engineer from Sam Houston Normal School in Huntsville. He became Texas' first registered engineer and later became dean of engineering at the University of Texas.
Tom Taylor died at 83 in 1941.
There is no historical marker on U.S. 377 near the South Bear Creek crossing to mark the location of "The School Under the Live Oak Tree."
Sources: the School Under the Live Oak Tree by Doyle Marshall of Aledo and Interview With Marshall. the Book Is Available at Some Bookstores and at the Tackett Pharmacy in Willow Park or Can Be Ordered by Calling (817) 441-8961.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/5696355.htm
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