|
a.
|
Note: Founder of Hutto, Texas, Williamson County
Hutto, on the highway to Taylor, was named for James Emery Hutto, an early pioneer of Texas.
The man for whom the town of Hutto, Texas, was named was born to John Castleberry and Nancy Holliday Hutto in Greenville, South Carolina, on May 8, 1824. In 1830, the family moved to Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama, where his mother died in 1836, when James Emery was twelve years old.
After a few years, he joined a group of twenty five persons immigrating to Texas which arrived January 16, 1847 and settled at Webber's Prairie near Austin. James Emery Hutto was a very capable and industrious person and immediately became involved in development of the Central Texas area as well as providing for himself and the family he and Margaret Hughes or Alabama had began after their marriage in Texas, and this may indicate she came to Texas at the same time J. E. did. He had helped George Glassock in building the first grist mill in Georgetown and was present when the town was staked off and the first election was held in 1848.
Up on his arrival in Texas in 1847 he engaged in farming and stock raising in Travis county. About 1855 he moved to Williamson County, settling near were Hutto has since been built. This town having been named in honor of him. There, for 20 years, between 1855 and 1875, he was one of the wealthy cattlemen of this section of the country. He was appointed postmaster on June 27, 1877.
Texas was an OPEN RANGE through the mid 1870s. Which meant that If you owned 100 acres of Land, I guess you could run 10,000 head of cattle. You'd just had to chase em down and brand em.
Possible J. E.'s success as a wealthy cattleman was related to the open range. I often wondered how he was so successful with the few acres that the family owned in Hutto, about 700 acres, I think. Then again I don't have any facts validating the statements he was a wealthy cattleman. Possible as time went by, the writers of these article chose to interpret J. E. 's experiences as such. It would be interesting to reserch the cattleman theory in more depth.
The fact that we have it that J. E, was a wealthy cattleman between 1855-75 leads us to the following. 1875 coincides with the Barbed Wiring of Texas. There was the Barbed Wire wars in the early 80s as a result of men wiring up the open range although I have not read much on how that effected the area around Hutto at the time.
Cattle prices in Texas were depressed all through the civil war and there were a bunch of cattle running around. I understand that the Chisom Trail crossed Brushy creek, where the Old Town of Shiloh ( and the cemetery) is located, based on what I have read. J. E. and his sons probably just rounded em up. and sold em to the trail drivers as they passed by. But I don't know that for sure.
Anyway it must have been a different world ...traveling across Texas and not having to open gates to cross different areas. What a concept
Mr. Hutto moved his family to Williamson County in 1854 and whether by foresight or chance he selected land which provided the town site for the town of Hutto when the I. & .G Railroad passed through his property some years later. He was possibly preceded in the immediate vicinity by Adam Orgain, a freed slave of the Orgain family who owned land not far removed. Also soon after James E. Hutto settled in the area, other settlers acquired land for cattle raising and farming cotton and grains, especially in the area to the southeast where the small settlement of Shiloh was in existence. Early settlers in the area near the town to ___* who had considerable acreage were Hugh Goodwin, W. H. Farley, Sr. , and his bachelor brother F. F. Farley.
In 1876, when the railroad came through the area, Mr. Hutto sold fifty acres of land to the Texas Land Co. of New York for a town site, reserving five acres of the tract as a gift for the International and Great Northern Railroad right-of-way through the town.
Mr. Hutto was a very successful operator and a respected civic leader in the community where he was active in church and school activities. When a Post Office was established in 1877, he was appointed Postmaster.
Mr. Hutto and his wife, Margaret had a family of six sons and three daughters, all of whom, except the last child Mary, reached adulthood in the Hutto community. On May 27, 1881, his wife, Margaret, mother of all known descendants, died and was buried along side the youngest daughter, Mary M., in the Shiloh Cemetery some three miles southeast of the town of Hutto, Texas. After about two years, later, Mr. Hutto, then fifty seven years of age, married Mrs. Nancy Jones. In 1885, he sold his holdings in cattle, land and home and moved to Waco where it is understood that the former Mrs. Jones had some relatives and where he planned to go into the Implement business.
It is not clear what interest Mr. Hutto had for the next few years as the Waco City directory of 1830 listed him only as a resident at the corner of North 18th and Barron Streets. The next two years, a partnership of sorts, was listed with a Thomas H. Killingsworth. Then from 1832 through 1897, James E. Hutto Sr., was listed as operating an Agricultural Implement business including carriages, wagons and buggies at 110 South 8th Street.
Mr. Hutto's second wife died February 7, 1892, at approximately the same time that he started his Implement business. On May 5, 1894, he married again. This time to Mrs. Helen A. Wilder who outlived him by some two months after his death April 29, 1914, only nine days short of his ninetieth birthday. Her death came on June 27, 1914. James E. Hutto Sr., his second wife and third wife, are buried on the same lot in Oakwood cemetery in Waco, Texas.
In 1907, James E. Hutto Sr. made an application for a Confederate Pension on the basis that his health and his age, 83 years, prevented him from earning an income and that his finances were very strained. The application for the pension was signed by James Saul and Sterling Orgain who lived in the Hutto community and served with him in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. The pension, however, was turned down on the basis that his wife had a small acreage in East Waco and it was not believed that he was in dire need.
Upon his death, an obituary from a Waco paper was lavish in its remarks regarding Mr. Hutto's character, his activities in church and charities and the caliber of his friends in the Waco area.
James' family moved to Madison County, Alabama where he lived until 1847 when at the age of 23 he moved to Texas.
J.E. joined the 5th St. Church of Waco on 3/17/1889 by letter
The 1850 Census Travis, TX page. 134, Dwell. 15 lists J.E. Hutto and his wife Margaret (an Abner Scott is also listed in the household age 24). He is listed as a 25 year old farmer born in SC and Margaret is listed as a 20 year old born in AL. They are shown as having been married within the year.
1855 Travis County School Census records reflect that a "Emery Hutto" had 4 children and lived in close proximity to his former employer George Glascock. Thomas Glascock, a brother of George possible, was the tax assessor of Travis County. J. E. lived in District 5 of Travis County. Although I have not verified where District 5 is, I'm left with the impression it is close to present day Georgetown, Texas in Northeast Travis County.
1860 census shows J.E. and Margaret born in Ala.
1870 Williamson Co., TX James Hutto 45, driver, AL
Margaret Hutto 37, AL and family
1880 Census, Williamson, County show
Birth Place Father's BP Mother's BP
James E. Hutto 56 SC SC SC
Lu? wife 48 AL TN TN R.B. w/m 22 TX SC AL Genettie w/f 18 TX SC AL Henery E. w/m 13 TX SC AL
C.W. Hutto 25 TX SC AL ( This is James 2 or 3 oldest) M. J. 23 TN TN TN ( This is Mary Jane Flinn, G Grandmother) Hartey 9/ TX TX TN ( My grandfather)
John Flinn 19 Brother in law TN TN Also listed is ( this might be one of James Son, the name and age are right)
James E. Hutto Jr. 28 TX SC AL
Lenora B. 20 TX TN MS HUTTO, TEXAS. Hutto is on the Missouri Pacific Railroad at the intersection of State Highway 79 and Farm Road 1660, near Cottonwood Creek seven miles east of Round Rock in south central Williamson County. The International-Great Northern Railroad, the first railroad in Williamson County, reached the site of Hutto in 1876 and purchased five acres of land for Hutto Station from James Emory Hutto, a local rancher. The following year the community, which soon changed its name to Hutto, had a railroad depot, a post office, a general store, and a lumber business. By 1884 Hutto had 200 inhabitants, a school, three churches, and five gins and shipped cotton and grain. A bank and a hotel opened in the early 1890s, and the population reached 700 in 1896, when Hutto was described as an "important cotton market" by the Texas State Gazetteer. Many of the inhabitants and the local farmers were German, Danish, or Swedish immigrants, and the town had a Swedish church in 1896. In the 1890s Hutto had two weekly papers, the Church Helper and the Hutto Enterprise. After reaching a peak population of 900 in 1928, Hutto was hard-hit by the Great Depression and the decline of the cotton industry. By 1931 the population had fallen to 538. The town was incorporated in 1940, when it had 579 inhabitants. In the 1960s the population dropped to 400, and the town had nine businesses in 1970. The community revived over the next two decades and had 842 inhabitants and seventeen businesses in 1988. In 1990 the population was 630.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: A Williamson County History (Georgetown, Texas: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973).
Mark Odintz
|
