COLLINSVILLE TIMES
18 February 1932
Collinsville, Grayson Co., Texas
A.S.Noble,
county judge, was born in Collin County, Sept. 22, 1870. His parents
were John S. and Lucy Noble. His father was a Methodist minister and
came to Texas from Kentucky in 1852, as a missionary to all northern
Texas.
Judge
Noble came with his parents, as a boy of eight years to Pilot Point,
where he received his education, attending the old Pilot Point
Seminary. He moved to Preston in Grayson County in 1892, where he lived
until 18 years ago. He then came to Sherman when he was appointed
county auditor, in which capacity he served for 15 years. He was then
elected to the position of county judge which he now holds.
He married Annie Steel Dec. 25, 1892. They have four children living.
Judge
Noble has been a teacher of the Noble Bible Class at the Travis Street
Methodist Church for the past 15 years. This class is the largest Men's
Bible Class in the city of Sherman, having an average of 100 in
attendance every Sunday for the past year.
Judge Noble is a member of the Kiwanis Club, W.O.W., Elks, Odd Fellows and Rebekahs and he is a Mason. |
W.P
(Uncle Bill) Strickland, 82 year old resident of Collinsville, was one
of the first aldermen when the town was incorporated back in the
nineties. It was he who helped name every street in the town, and it is
he who is otherwise closely identified with the growth and development
of Collinsville.
His
life is rich in experience and color. In December 1884, Bill Strickland
moved to Collinsville. Prior to that time he had lived in Georgia,
Louisiana and Macomb community near Whitesboro, Texas. He was born in
Campbell County, Georgia Sept. 10, 1860. It was in 1856 that he came
with his parents to Clayborn Parish, La., it required 13 weeks for them
to make the trip. In those days when families lived in scattered
settlements or in segregated farm houses, educational facilities were
slight. If a farmer wanted his children to have an education it
behooved them to create the facilities himself. This Bill Strickland's
father set about to do. He met with some of their neighbors and
together they started splitting rails and began to erect a log school
house. They had hardly started this work when the Civil War broke out
and the head of the Strickland family had to exchange his hammer and
saw for a gun and bayonet in defense of the South. Thus, one brunt of
the burden of providing for the family fell upon Bill, who was the next
to the oldest. He had one older sister. At 12 years, it was no small
undertaking for him to take up the task of providing for his mother and
13 sisters and a brother. Boys of pioneer days were made of sterner
stuff than they are nowadays. They had to be in order to carry on in
the face of the numerous adversities which confronted them. Thus the
boy Bill had to do the work of a grown man to support the family.
In
Louisiana, following the Civil War there were 10 negroes to every
white, Mr. Strickland relates. They had a negro lieutenant governor,
negro sheriff and negro judge. The white men stood the oppression
necessarily for a short while, but matters came to a crisis when
Captain Hadnott, who survived the fighting between the Grays and the
Blues, was brutally murdered by the negro element in power. The riot
which was known as the Colfax; Grant Parish Riot, ensued in which the
white men killed 169 negroes one Sunday morning. One might as well have
tried to control the Texas wind, says Mr. Strickland, as to have tried
to control the whites then after they had been aroused. The
carpetbaggers had to be wiped out. They had done their despicable work
well and had succeeded in poisoning the minds of the negroes,
persuading them to agree to plans which included the killing off of all
the white men, stealing their wives and confiscating their property.
But these plans never materialized. The whites rose up in defense of
their rights and banished carpet bagging with its shameful atrocities.
The Democrats finally regained possession of the political situation in
Louisiana in 1876, thus ending the regime of the carpet baggers which
started at the close of the War in 1865 and lasted those 11 years. The
rebel whites were forced to lie in hiding out in the swamps, in the
woods, and some of them fled to Texas before this end was literally
accomplished.
At
this time the "Salt and Pepper Brigade" sprang into existence. The
white man organized a cavalcade consisting of one white man and one
negro riding abreast. The when the white men were outnumbers the
negroes were placed two abreact following them, They used these and
other methods to induce the negroes to vote the democratic ticket.
In
1878, Mr. Strickland came to Sherman and Collinsville, where he had
acquaintances and then back to Macomb, where he settled. These friends
he had in Collinsville are now all dead. They were Billy McWilliams,
Billy Moore and Calvin Butler, names with which the older inhabitants
of Collinsville are familiar. He remained at Macomb for seven years,
being occupied in farming, and in 1884 he came to Collinsville to live.
With Joe Dishman he formed the firm of Dishman and Strickland, dealers
in lumber and groceries this firm existing until 1898, when the store
was sold to the Younger Brothers. This sale took place at the time the
town of Collinsville was moved from its eastern location to its present
site. Mr. Strickland was next made manager of the Alliance People, a
place which he held for four years when ill health forced him to give
up this work. The Alliance People reluctantly accepted his resignation
and rather than attempt the useless task of trying to get someone (text
missing) .. petently, they sold out the general store to P.P.Robinson.
"When
I first came to Collinsville, business conditions were good. Of course
we had to go everywhere in wagons and on horseback and it took us
longer to go places than it does today. People were more closely held
together because of this. I remember it use to take me all day to go to
Sherman and back to buy supplies for our store when now You can go and
come in an hour, Mr. Strickland said.
"There
are only four of us left today among those who lived in Collinsville in
those days.: Mr. Strickland continued. "They are John Lishman, Noah
Miller, Tom Gordon and myself."
"It
seems to me that people were more honest then than they are today.
There were no mortgages - not so many worries and troubles. A man's
word was as good as gold," explained Mr. Strickland.
Mr.
Strickland was Grayson County tax collector from 1898 to 1902. He
always served his town and community in all of his worthy undertakings.
Although,
Mr. Strickland's own education was meager, he is a staunch advocate of
higher education. He and Mrs. Strickland moved to Denton in 1905
to give their six daughters a college education. AS soon as this was
accomplished, they moved back to Collinsville. Their six daughters are
Eula Gertrude, Emma, Mabel (text missing)..Corvallis, Oregon, one in
Pampa, another in Mineola and another in West Texas. Mr. and Mrs.
Strickland had two other daughters, who died.
Now
at a ripe old age, Mr. Strickland is a rugged example of honesty and
uprightness, a true grand old man who has weathered the storms of many
crises in the history of our South. |
J.J.Sandlin,
a new comer to Collinsville, operates a shoe repair shop here.
Mr.Sandlin came here February from Gainesville, at which place he has
been connected with the shoe repair business for the last 15 years.
Mr. Sandlin was born in
Cooke County, Texas April 18, 1897 and has lived in and around
Gainesville most of his life. He later moved about 6 miles west of
Collinsville and lived at this place some time. Mr. Sandlin has been
married for the past nine years and is the father of two children, one
6 and the other 2 years old.
J.N.Vann,
one of the oldest residents of this community, was born in South
Carolina during the early forties. Mr. Vann moved to Georgia when about
13 years old, and later to Alabama where he lived for a number of
years. Mr. Vann served in the Civil War for two years, after which time
he married in his early twenties. He and his wife lived in Alabama and
Georgia until Mr. Vann was around 60 years old then came to
Collinsville, Texas. They have resided here for the past 38 years and
are well known throughout this entire section of the state.
Mr.
and Mrs. Vann have been married for over 80 years and have two
daughters living with them that are well over fifty years old. Mary,
one of the girls, is 64 years old, and Lula is past 55. They have one
boy who lives in Oklahoma and two children deceased.
In
recalling the early days during the war, Mr. Vann stated that the
people in the South had a mighty hard time in this struggle. He joined
forces with the Southern Confederates and served with that army for two
years. After the war, Mr. Vann, at that time in his early twenties,
married, and has been living with his wife since that time. They came
to Texas after both were well up in years. Mrs. Vann being a number of
years older than her husband. In his early years, Mr. Vann farmed in
and around this community and has followed this vocation the greater
part of his life.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Vann are very active for their age, though they are not able to do strenuous work.
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