February 18, 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. 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.  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.  BOOK INDEX Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson County TXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |
