Dugan Family

The Sherman Courier
Wednesday, August 15, 1917
pg. 15 & 19
Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

 Dan D. Dugan Relates Family Experience as Far Back as 1836
One of the first families to settle in Grayson county were the Dugans, and there are many descendants of these pioneers in the county at this time.  The following interview was given to a Courier reporter by Dan D. Dugan of Sherman:

"My grandfather, Daniel Dugan, came to Grayson county in 1836 and located his headright down here just below where Whitewright now is.  That was when Texas was a Republic, and the Republic gave to every head of a family who settled here a league and labor of land which was 4,588 acres.  Each single man got one-third of a league which was 1,476 acres and my father got that much and he located down here near where Bells is now located.
"Grandfather first located his land over on bois d'arc near where Whitewright is, but the first year he was over there was a very dry year and water got scarce, so he began to look about for water and found a fine spring and plenty of water over near where Norton now is, so he lifted his certificate from where he had located and took up his land over northeast of Sherman about twelve miles.  Wood and water was a great thing with the old timers and especially water.  The reason that Sherman was moved from where it first was out here....miles west was this Odneal spring down here and some other springs that used to be along these creeks and branches.
My father was one of the first men in this county to try to make money farming.  I think he had as much as fifty to sixty acres in cultivation down on the old home place near Bells as early as 1850 and by the time the war came on I think he must have had 400 to 500 acres in cultivation.  He raised a lot of wheat and I remember he sometimes raised as high as 30 to 35 busheld of wheat to the acre.  He raised lots of corn too.  I remember seeing them break a lot of the land he put in cultivation in those early days.  The grass was then lots of it waist high and higher and the worst turf a man ever saw, and to break the sod they would hitch five or six yoke of cattle to a big plow and one man would hold the plow and another drive the steers.  They did not feed the steers but would round them up of a morning and hitch them up and when they quit at night they would turn them loose on the grass.
When my Grandfather first came here and for several years after there were Indians in this county and plenty of buffalo.  My father killed a buffalo calf down here right about where the compress in Sherman is and that creek down there called Calf Creek was so named because he killed that buffalo calf on it.  The Indian depredations in this county were serious in 1838 to 1841.  Josiah Washburn, a brother of J.D. Washburn who lives near Bells and who was one of the commissioners of this county a few years ago was killed by the Indians in 1838 not far from where Whitewright now is and an uncle of mine, Daniel V. Dugan and a young man by the name of Kitchen was killed by the Indians in 1841, down here near Wharton, which is about twelve miles north east of Sherman.  You talk about a hard time, those old early settlers had it and people of today don't realize half the hardships those old pioneer went through with, not only my family but several others who were here then."

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