Bishop's First Families - Felder and Butts

May 14 - 16, 2010

[The following is from the Bishop News of 1960 in a series written by Mrs. Gail Tubbs for Bishop's

then upcoming Golden Jubilee celebration.]

Note: The first farm families in Bishop in 1910 were the Gus Felders and the J. B. Butts, and

members of both families are still farming here. Fred Felder and Bascom Butts probably rate the

honors for the longest continuous residence in the Bishop community.

* * *

~~Felder Family~~

Members of the Felder family who arrived in 1910 were: Mr. and Mrs. Gus Felder, sons Fred and

Max, and daughters, Alice (deceased) and Alvina (Mrs. A. P. Moerbe).

Mr. Felder with his son, Max and Willie Hess and Bill Morgan, the cook, arrived here Nov. 5,

1910. Fred came with the immigrant car carrying the mules, implements and feed, which was

switched out to the Bishop siding at 4 a.m., Nov. 7, 1910.

This was Sunday, so the men had breakfast and dinner at the stock pens then walked out to the

farm, five and a half miles, to choose a camp site, got back about 5 p.m. and unloaded the

wagons. Next morning they started moving and built a "house"--two rooms, kitchen and bedroom,

of baled cane hay piled bale on bale, and roofed with tarpaulins.

"The first night we slept outside next to a big bunch of prickly pear," Fred Felder says. "After

breakfast we went to take up our bed rolls and there was a big rattlesnake about two feet from

where our heads had been.

"The second Sunday we were here,

Max was bitten by a rattler," Fred

tells. "We had gone out to shoot quail,

and watching the big covey of quail

Max stepped practically on the snake

and was struck on the knee."

The first thing the Felders built on the

farm was a buggy house. They got

enough lumber for walls and rafters

from the Bishop Lumber Yard, but

could buy no shingles so wagon

sheets served as the roof.

Later they built a sheet iron barn, had trouble getting material to finish it, but it really shined up

across the prairie, could be seen for miles. Getting material out to the place was a problem. One

time Hess got lost in a heavy fog while hauling out a load of lumber. The horses hadn't been here

long enough to know the way home, and when the fog lifted next morning Hess found he was

clear out at Buzzard's Roost.

"We had to go to Kingsville with wagon or buggy those first months to get groceries," Fred tells.

"Sometimes Charlie Jones brought out our groceries and mail when he went after supplies for his

commissary (located where Ruben A. Felder now serves as Postmaster in the Bishop Post

Office). We had to haul water for the stock and house from a flowing well until our well was

drilled.

"In those days a man could get a haircut in Bishop only on Sunday. The only barber worked on a

steam plow during the week and set up shop west of the tracks on Sunday. Haircuts were 25

cents and a shave 10 cents.

"When election time came around, we drove down to Kingsville to vote, as that was the only

polling place in this part of Nueces County--Kleberg County wasn't organized until about four

years later.

~~Butts Family~~

Person-to-person advertising brought the J. B. Butts

family to Bishop. A Baptist preacher friend, Bennie F.

Goodwin, while holding a revival in Corpus Christi,

became interested in the new farm area being

developed by F. Z. Bishop.

"You can make as much in one year on that Nueces

County black land as you can in five years in Falls

County," he told Bruce Butts when he returned to

Rosebud.

Mr. Butts came down in August, 1910 to look things

over and bought his first half-section seven miles east

of the townsite. He started breaking his first land with

moldboard plow and mules, later Hugh and Norman

(Joe) Price broke a larger acreage with steam plows.

By October, 1910 operations were well underway at

the Butts Farm. Several colored families had been brought down from Rosebud, a barn had been

built, labor houses and a four-room house put up. In town a home had been started for the family.

When Mr. Butts went back to Rosebud to finish his crop he sent his teenage son, Zelma L. Butts,

down to oversee operations.

"There were about seven houses in town and a lot of building going up," Zelma reports, and the

first thing he did when he got off the train was to walk out to watch a steam plow break one of the

first tracts northwest of the city limits.

Mrs. Butts and the rest of the family came down by train in mid-November. This included Mattie

Collins (Mrs. R. B. Hamilton of Harlingen), Ruby,

(Mrs. J. L. Cady of Kingsville), Bascom, Lovie

(deceased) and Brucie (Mrs. W. M. Stuart).

Little Brucie, who was just learning to talk, and

according to her brothers, did a lot of it, elected

herself the town greeter. She ran off every chance

she got, and when found on the Bishop Hotel steps

or backed up against the wall of the one store, she

would insist, "I'm just sayn' 'How-do-you-do' to

ev'ybody."

All the family had good riding horses, and Mattie

and Ruby had side saddles and modish riding

habits as became young ladies of 1910. The boys

rode cross-country to the farm, and horses

remained the best mode of transportation for many

years to come. Up until past the 20s Mr. Butts

insisted he could get to town faster behind a horse

or mule than in a car--no flat tires to fix and they

didn't get stuck in the mud on the unpaved roads.

Water for stock at the farm, there were 26 head of

mules alone, for the families was hauled from Buzzard's Roost, where there had been three wells,

one with windmill and cistern.

There was plenty of "music" around the farm at night, coyotes yowled and yowled. The tale is told

that the two youngsters, when left alone at the farm, didn't relish the way wolves edged close and

yowled right at the door, so they gave one of the little colored boys a pallet across that doorway.

Many of the farm hands remained at the Butts farm for years, and one of these, Pedro Jiminez,

stayed until the Butts estate was broken up and the home place sold after Mr. Butts death.

Bascom Butts tells of earning his first money after moving here in Mr. Bishop's irrigated field

along present Sixth Street.

"Another kid and I got 10 cents a row for pulling weeds and cotton instead of chopping," he tells,

"we thought we'd get rich, but the deep-rooted cotton was hard pulling."

After things got started it was Bascom's job to deliver cans of cream to the creamery in Kingsville.

It was an all day trip in muddy weather, the mules were worn out by the time they reached Caesar

Creek, and from there the road curved around through deep sand. After unloading the cream

cans the mules had to be rested a couple of hours, then he'd pull back in at the farm about dark.

Mr. and Mrs. Butts were most hospitable, and took in friends to stay with them until houses could

be built. At times their hospitality was stretched pretty far. There was one Sunday afternoon when

the girls came in from kodaking to find a family of seven draped over the parlor sofa and chairs.

The uninvited "guests" began to complain about the service at "Butts Boarding House" and were

sent packing over to the Bloxom Hotel west of the tracks.

Before long Zelma decided he liked staying in town better than farming, so he got a job in the

local store, and is credited with starting Bishop's first post office.

"Charlie Jones would bring the mail over from Kingsville when he went after supplies, and letters

would stick around a week or two until men came in from the plow camps," Zelma tells, "so we

got a big box, put in partitions and lettered people's names on them and started sorting the mail in

an orderly way--and that was the 1910 post office."

Bishop, Nueces County, Texas 1910 - 2010 One Hundred Years of South Texas Heritage!

Swimming Pool and Bath House at City Park

Triangle at Main St. and Ash

Hwy 77 Bishop, Texas

Mr. Bishop’s steam tractors

breaking new ground.