A Minnesota Yankee’s Southern Roots

This month I’m going to get personal. Rather than talk about the Old West, I’d like to share some facts about me and my dad’s family. Daddy hailed from Denison, Texas, the birth place of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He came from a big family. His parents had at least thirteen children. Can you imagine birthing that many babies, let alone raising them? Not me! But times were different then. Families needed to be large to work their land, and to ensure some offspring would survive into adulthood. Several of my dad’s siblings didn’t. 

Nevertheless, I have relatives all over Texas and the South, but I knew next to nothing about them until a few years ago because I grew up in Minnesota, my mother’s home state. My dad traveled a great deal in his youth, especially across the western states. He met my mom in San Francisco, where I was born, but we moved to Minnesota when I was not quite four to be near Mama’s family.

We did visit Grandma Horner (Horner is my maiden name) once when I was about six or seven, but sadly I don’t remember her. That’s Grandma in the photo with my dad behind her and me next to my half-brother Ronnie, who I barely knew. He was adopted by my Uncle Walter and Aunt Jewel after Daddy’s first marriage broke up. (He was a traveling salesman back then and couldn’t care for Ronnie.)

Growing up in the north, I always saw myself as a Yankee even though I knew Daddy came from the south. Even after my husband and I and our two children moved to Texas in the 1980s, thanks to a company job transfer, I considered myself a transplanted northerner. I still do, to be honest, but I can no longer ignore my southern roots.

When I started researching my dad’s ancestors on a whim back in 2009, I wasn’t prepared for some surprising revelations. For one thing, I learned my gr grandfather, James Knox Polk (JKP) Leggett, fought for the Confederacy. He enlisted in 1862 in Bienville Parish, LA, joining the 28^th Regiment, Louisiana Infantry (Gray’s). I eventually received photocopies of his enlistment packet(s) thanks to a Georgia cousin who accessed them on footnote.com. See, I told yuh, relatives all over the south! Sorry the image is so hard to read. It’s very faded.

Another shocking tidbit I unearthed: JKP and his wife Mary were almost certainly first cousins. But I think I’d better back up here. You see, JKP was the son of John D. Leggett, who migrated west from Randolf County, GA, in the late 1840s. He and his family are listed on the 1850 census from Barbour County, Alabama. By 1860, John D. shows up in Bienville Parish, LA. At the Dallas Public Library, I discovered a parish map showing his parcel of land. Boy, was that exciting!

Meanwhile, John D’s younger brother, Wiley S. Leggett, had become a preacher back in Georgia. He migrated west to Louisiana around the same time as his brother, turning up on the 1860 census from Bossier Parish, LA, where he founded more than one church. Wiley had a daughter named Mary, born in 1848, in GA. She, I believe, was my great grandmother Mary. Gr Granny had Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a neuromuscular disorder that runs in my dad’s family. He had it, his mother had it, and her mother, Mary Leggett had it. (So do I and my daughter.) It’s a known fact that Rev. Wiley S. Leggett’s oldest daughter, Elizabeth Gertrude Leggett, also had CMT. Like Mary, she has living descendants who inherited the disorder. For me, that clinches my belief that Mary and Elizabeth were sisters who inherited the faulty CMT gene from one of their parents and that Mary and JKP were indeed first cousins.

Marion inviting a British officer to share his meal (from Wikipedia Commons) 

A third astonishing suspicion: Jeremiah Leggett, father of John D. and Wiley S. Leggett, may have fought in the Revolutionary War under the command of Colonel Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox. Do you remember reading about him in history class? Mel Gibson’s character in The Patriot is loosely based upon Col. Marion. The Swamp Fox and his men fought the British in South Carolina, and there happens to be a Jeremiah Leggett listed in A Roster of Patriots Who Served with Francis Marion by John M. Gregg. A few years after the war, my gr gr gr granddad Jeremiah shows up in records from the northern part of Georgia, which was being settled (the indigenous Cherokees would say invaded) by whites from the Carolinas and Virginia. See how I came by my suspicion? Just wish I could prove it.

Getting back to Mary and JKP Leggett, they wed on October 15, 1865, only a few months after the Civil War ended – in Bossier Parish, LA. I wonder if Rev. Wiley S. Leggett conducted the ceremony.

Eventually, Mary and JKP moved to Van Zandt County,Texas, where they raised their family. My Grandma Bessie Mae was the ninth of their eleven children. JKP died in 1888 in the state hospital in Terrell, Koffman County, TX. Mary remarried, had another son and lived to the venerable age of ninety-one. She spent her last few years with my grandparents in Denison. A cousin of mine, the daughter of my dad’s oldest brother, told me her father recalled his Granny Mary sitting and rocking the little ones (my dad possibly among them.) He also said she had long dark braids and looked like a squaw. His word, not mine. She was either half Cherokee or half Choctaw, depending upon which family story I choose to believe.

It’s amazing what we can learn about ourselves from ancestry research. For sure, those southern roots of mine go deep, deeper than I ever would have guessed.

If you’re in the mood for western romance with a touch of the Irish, or a photo illustrated memoir about cats, kids and life with a disability, I invite you to stop by my Amazon author page for a complete list of my books. My novels are also available for Nook on Barnes & Noble.

http://www.amazon.com/author/lyn.horner.award-winning.books

Weapons that Won the Wild West, by @JacquieRogers #western #OldWest

Not all weapons that won the Old West for the East Coast immigrants were firearms. Bottom line: Technology won the west. And yes, firearms were an important part of it. Here are thirteen technological weapons without which settling the West would have been much more difficult.

1. Communications (Pony Express, then the Telegraph)
2. Barbed wire
3. Stagecoach and freight system
4. The Homestead Act
5. Transcontinental Railroad
6. Square-set timbering (deep mine structure)
7. Colt Peacemaker
8. Henry Repeating Rifle
9. Deringer Handgun (palm pistol)
10. Gatling Gun
11. Sharps Rifles (buffalo guns, 50-90 calibre)
12. Model 1873 Winchester Rifle

And the ultimate weapon the won the west:
13. Harvey Girls

♥ Hearts of Owyhee ♥
Where the Old West really happened!

Much Ado About Marshals

Much Ado About Madams

Much Ado About Mavericks

Mangas Coloradas

More than a decade ago, I had a subscription to a magazine dedicated to the Wild West. Truthful articles filled the pages regarding almost every subject related to the era; the Gold Rush, famous shoot-outs, notorious and never-heard-of towns, cattle drives, and colorful characters on both sides of the law. Some of these people, such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, stick in a person's mind. For me, it's Apache War Chief, Mangas Coloradas.

 

Mangas was born in New Mexico to an Apache father and a Mexican mother in the early 1790's. The exact date and year are unknown, as is his birth name. Since the Apache language was difficult to learn and speak, the Apache people and their locales were given Spanish names. Mangas Coloradas roughly translates to 'Red Sleeves' or to 'Roan Shirt', either because Mangas wore sleeves of red cloth or because he wore the blood of his victims on his skin. He was tall for an Apache, over 6ft, with wide shoulders and what is described as a broad head and chin, though his eyes were small. Ruthless, cunning and known to leave behind trails of carnage, some historians believe Mangas was the greatest Apache War Chief to have ever lived. Others dispute that, insisting he was never recognized as their chief. Regardless, his skills as a warrior and a Chief weren't what led me relate to him. Mangas had a peaceful side.       

 

Red Sleeves grew up in a time when his people were at odds with the Spanish. Raiding, looting, killings, broken treaties; what he wanted most was for his people and his ancestral lands to be safe. When the United States finally drove the Spanish out of New Mexico and off Apache lands, Mangas formed a peace treaty with the U.S. and pledged his alliance with Brig. General Stephen Kearny should Kearny want to invade Mexico. The General declined. After this, Mangas was quiet for a spell. (If memory serves me correct, this is the part of his life that I had read about where he made friends with some white people, and in Colorado Territory; hence the reason he's briefly mentioned in my novel, Lady Luck.)  

The peace he found with the U.S. was short-lived. The boom in the gold rush brought whites to the Apache lands in search of the shiny rocks. Mangas tried to peacefully remove the miners from his land, promising to take them to more lucrative spots, but the miners didn't trust him. They stayed put, and eventually their polluting Apache waters and driving off Apache game led Mangas to unite the Apache bands. His daughters were given to other leaders in marriage, one most notably to Cochise. Known for his wisdom, Mangas was a firm believer the Apache bands must stick together to dismantle the threat of the U.S. or Mexico overtaking the Apache way of life.

Mangas and Cochise joined forces and led the way for what is now known as the Apache wars. Their intent was to drive all Americans off Apache lands. Mangas was captured in January of 1863 by captain Edmond Shirland's First California Volunteer Cavalry. He was taken to Fort McLean in Arizona and later killed by his guards. Most of his remains were destroyed by the white man. Among his people in today's society, he is remembered as a great leader who strove for peace.     

www.julielence.com

julie@julielence.com

 

The Original Singing Cowboy

 www.ciaragold.com

The first cattle drives began around 1836 when ranchers needed a way to transport their cows to railheads so they could be shipped east and north. When the war broke out between the states, the Union army blocked the cattle trade and the east saw a shortage of beef. During this time, cattle in Texas multiplied and after the war, ranchers could get top dollar a head for their cattle.

Because of a law banning Texas cattle from crossing into Missouri, Abilene and Dodge City Kansas became the favored delivery spots.  Cowboys would drive herds along the Chisholm or Western Trail to railheads in Abilene or Dodge City. There were other smaller trails but these were the most used. During its peak use, the Western Trail would be five miles wide with trailing cattle.

Find his collection at All Music

To keep the milling bovines calm, especially at night, cowboys would sing to them. It’s said there are at least 1000 different verses to the song, “The Old Chisholm Trail” due in part to the amount of time a cowboy had to himself. Boredom often breeds creativity and so verses were drafted by a number of cowboys. Many songs were written by serenading cowboys under the blanket of stars and to an audience of grazing stock. It can be said that these ballads influenced many country western songs.

I would like to introduce you to one of our local heroes, a man who is often called “the original singing cowboy” for being one of the first to record traditional cowboy ballads. Carl T. “Doc” Sprague grew up in a small town outside of Houston but he went to school at TAMU and eventually settled in Bryan, Texas. His Uncle Booth had been a working cowboy and had taught Carl songs he’d sung when working the cattle. Carl, himself, had been on cattle drives and could relate to the varied lyrics.

Carl graduated from TAMU in 1922 with a degree in husbandry, and he was hired as an athletic trainer for TAMU. His experience conducting a weekly radio show for the campus helped land him occasional singing spots of the radio, which in turn helped him get his first contract with Victor in 1925. His debut song, "When theWork's All Done This Fall" sold over 900,000 copies.  In fact, it was the first cowboy song to achieve hit status. He quit his job for TAMU in 1937 to operate a filling station/grocery story and work as an insurance agent until joining his comrades in arms during WWII.

In addition to singing only traditional western songs, he dressed in long-established cowboy gear, complete with hat, shirt, belt, chaps, boots, and even spurs. He basically introduced America to the sounds and images of the traditional cowboy, with his haunting, rustic renditions of music that might have otherwise been lost to us.

He recorded 33 songs between 1925 and 1929. After that, he settled in Bryan and went back to selling insurance but there was renewed interest in his music when folk music became popular in the 1960s and 70s so for a short time, he once again performed for the masses. He recorded two more albums in 1972 and 1974 for a German label. He died in 1979 but he left behind a legacy that can't be forgotten. His crooning gave us a historical look back into the days of the cattle drive and his fashion statement encouraged many young gentlemen to dress like a real "cowboy."

Story of Survival - Hugh Glass

By: Peggy L Henderson

A few days ago, my husband asked me, “Have you ever heard of Hugh Glass?”

I looked at him, and answered, “Of course I have. I write about mountain men.”

He gave me a look of pure incredulity. “You have?”

Well, apparently he’d just finished watching a documentary on the history channel or one of the science channels about Hugh Glass. I pulled out one of my favorite resource books, The Mountain Men, by George Laycock, and opened it to one of many dog-eared pages.

I have wanted to use some aspect of Hugh Glass’ incredible tale in one of my novels, but the story is so fantastic, I don’t think it would even work in a work of fiction.

The story of Hugh Glass has to be one of the most amazing stories of survival in the history of the west. The man practically became a legend in his own time.

    He’d led a life as a pirate before he decided to become a fur trapper in the early 1820’s at the age of 40. He signed on with William Ashley and Andrew Henry, who led an expeditions up the Missouri River in 1823. When they reached the Grand River near today’s Mobridge, South Dakota, they left their boats to head toward the Yellowstone on land.

During this journey, in which many of Ashley’s men were killed by Arikara Indians, Hugh Glass surprised a grizzly sow and her two cubs. He was away from the rest of his party at the time, and the grizzly attacked him before he was able to shoot his rifle. He fought the bear with his bare hands (no pun intended) and a knife, and nearly killed it, but he was badly mauled during the fight.

His companions heard his screams and came running. They found a bloody and badly maimed Glass. He was barely alive, with the grizzly lying on top of him. They killed the bear and pulled Hugh’s body from underneath her.

Everyone knew that there was no hope for their friend. They bandaged him as best as they could, and waited for him to die. The danger of Indians discovering them was a constant fear, and Hugh’s moans and cries of pain would certainly give them away. William Henry decided their group needed to move on. It wasn’t worth risking their lives for one dying man. He asked for a couple of volunteers to stay behind and bury Glass properly once he died.

 John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger agreed and immediately began digging the grave. They waited. Three days later, Glass was still alive. Fearful of Indians, Fitzgerald persuaded Bridger that they should leave and follow their comrades to the Yellowstone.

Fitzgerald picked up Glass's rifle, knife and other equipment and dumped him into the open grave. They threw a bearskin over him and shoveled in a thin layer of dirt and leaves, leaving Glass for dead.

    But Glass did not die. It’s not known how much time passed, but he regained consciousness. He was alone and without weapons in hostile Indian territory. He had a broken leg and his wounds were festering. His scalp was almost torn away and the flesh on his back had been ripped away so that his rib bones were exposed. The nearest help was 200 miles away at Ft. Kiowa. His only protection was the bearskin hide.

    Glass set his own broken leg and began crawling toward the Cheyenne River about 100 miles away. Feverish and fighting infection, he was often unconscious. It is said that he used maggots to eat away his infected flesh. Then, according to legend (or tall tale at this point, take your pick) he woke up to find a grizzly licking his maggot-infested wounds which could very well have saved him from further infection.

Glass survived mostly on wild berries and roots. On one occasion he was able to drive two wolves from a downed bison calf and eat the raw meat.

    According to Glass's own account he only stayed alive to seek revenge,  that he wanted to kill the men who had left him for dead.

    It took Glass two months to crawl to the Cheyenne River, where he built a raft which carried him downstream to Ft. Kiowa on the Missouri.

    After he was nursed back to health over many months, Glass set out to kill the two men who had left him for dead. He found Bridger at a fur trading post on the Yellowstone River but didn't kill him because Bridger was only 19 years old, and just following Fitzgerald’s orders. Glass later found Fitzgerald but changed his mind about killing him because Fitzgerald had joined the Army.

    Glass eventually returned to the Upper Missouri where he died in 1833 in a battle with hostile Arikaras Indians.

    The story of Hugh Glass has been made into a movie "A Man in the Wilderness" in 1971 staring Richard Harris and John Huston, a moderately accurate film. A novel, "Lord Grizzly" also recounts and embellishes the story.

    

Sad News

One of our authors has been dealing with health issues and the dire illness of her son, and as we all believe family comes first, we understand her need to concentrate on her life away from writing.  Sadly, Sharla Rae's son passed away, and we hope you will all include her in your prayers and thoughts.  Once her heart heals and she's ready, she'll be back to join the group.  We wish her love, hugs and comfort during this difficult time and hope she will take all the time she needs to heal.  We're here for her.

Ginger & Cowboy Kisses Crew

COOL, CLEAR WATER - HOW WINDMILLS CHANGED THE WEST

When I took watercolor lessons, the first scene I painted was of a windmill at sunset. Not original, nor was it very good, but it was indicative of my love for both windmills and sunsets. Although they’re difficult to find now, my favorite are the old wooden-frame style windmills shown in the photo below. 

The land on which we live had a metal windmill, now down for repair due to a rude tornado that tore through the orchard. That part of our land has been sold to a neighbor, so it’s no longer our problem. However, I miss looking out the window and seeing that windmill turning. Our windmill was a Chicago Aeromotor, one of the major brands used in in the United States. 

Ranching Heritage Museum, Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas - photo by author

I also miss the song the windmill sings during a breezy day or evening. With the windows open, the sound is a lullaby at bedtime. Don’t get me wrong, I love modern conveniences, but they’re a trade-off. We lose something with each part of our past that disappears.

Our former windmill at dawn
Photo by Stephanie Smith

Due to my love for the life-giving machines, I included them in two of my books. BRAZOS BRIDE was released in 2012 and has been re-released as part of a boxed set in MEN OF STONE MOUNTAIN: MICAH, ZACH, JOEL available from Amazon.. TEXAS LIGHTNING is a time travel due to be released in 2014. Thinking about these books led to research about windmills that involved more than just loving to look at and listen to the marvelous machines. Something many readers don't realize is that the few sentences I included in each of these books involved a lot of research. I might have been carried away and overdone the research, which happens to me often. 

Over 80,000 working windmills are estimated to be still working now in Texas. You can’t drive on any road without seeing them in the distance. They are of particular service to ranchers in the arid regions. Land that once was almost useless to ranchers became valuable once windmills were erected. The windmill has come to be one of the symbols of ranching and cowboys. Once I started researching them, I was surprised the type I have come to love was not as old as I’d suspected.

West Texas ranch land - water?
photo by author

Before the introduction of windmills to Texas and the West, inhabitable land was confined to areas where a constant water supply was available. There was no way for vast areas to be settled without a life-giving supply of water. The coming of the windmill made it possible to pump water from beneath the ground, and soon whole new areas were opened up to settlers. The first windmills were of the European style, built by Dutch and German immigrants for grinding meal and powering light industry. What settlers needed most, however, was a windmill that pumped water.

Windmills in Germany
Photo from iStock

Because of its bulk and need for constant attention, the European windmill was impractical for this purpose. The solution to this problem came in 1854, when Daniel Halladay (Halady or Halliday) built the first American windmill in Ellington, Connecticut. He added to his mill a vane, or "tail," as it was called by cowhands, that functioned to direct the wheel into the wind. The wheel was a circle of wood slats radiating from a horizontal shaft and set at angles to the wind, designed so that centrifugal force would slow it in high winds; thus, the machine was self-regulating and operated unattended. Its simple direct-stroke energy converter consisted of only a shaft and a small fly wheel to which the sucker rod was pinned. This compact mechanism was mounted on a four-legged wood tower that could be constructed over a well in one day.

 

Steam Locomotive - water required
 iStock photo

Railroad companies immediately recognized windmills as an inexpensive means of providing water for steam engines and for attracting settlers to semi-arid regions through which they planned to lay track. By 1873 the windmill had become an important supplier of water for railways, small towns where there were no public water systems, and small farms. Many of the very early mills were crude, inefficient, homemade contraptions. One of the popular makeshift mills was a wagon wheel with slats nailed around it to catch the wind, mounted on half an axle. The axle was fastened securely to a post erected beside the well. A sucker rod was pinned to the edge of the hub. It was stationary and worked only when the wind blew in the right direction. The windmills used later on the big ranches were the more dependable factory-made windmills.

Barbed wire fences changed the West
Photo by author

Windmills moved to the ranches when the use of barbed wire began in the late 1870s. At first the water holes, springs, creeks, and rivers were fenced, so that the back lands had no access to water. In the midst of the fence cutting and fighting, some ranchers began drilling wells and experimenting with windmills. Most of these experiments were unsuccessful, however, due to lack of knowledge concerning the proper size of the windmill in relation to the depth and diameter of the well. One of the earliest successful experiments was made eight miles north of Eldorado, in Schleicher County, Texas by Christopher C. Doty, a nomadic sheepman. Doty moved his flock into that area and found abundant water in shallow wells. By 1882, however, a drought had dried his wells; he ordered a drilling rig from Fort Scott, Arkansas, bored a fifty-two-foot well, and erected a Star windmill, which successfully supplied water for his 4,000 head of stock.

Rock line cabin from the Matador Ranch mentioned below,
now on view at the Ranching Heritage Museum,
Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX
photo by author

 Watering stock with windmills spread rapidly. Eastern land speculators began buying, fencing, and running stock on the land until it became ripe for colonization. Among the first of these speculators to indirectly bring windmills to North Texas was the Magnolia Cattle and Land Company, organized by Maj. Willa V. Johnson. In 1884 the company bought two-thirds of the state-owned land in Borden County, land which had natural water resources and had long been unofficially claimed for grazing by Christopher Columbus Slaughter. When Johnson fenced the land, Slaughter was forced into the use of windmills to supply water for his cattle. By 1886 the Matador Land and Cattle Company (where years later my husband’s uncle worked) began using windmills to water stock.

Texas windmill - Imagine farming
or running cattle on this land
without the windmill's life-giving water
from Kozzi Photos

The largest of the Eastern land speculators, the Capitol Syndicate, began using windmills on its XIT Ranch in 1887. One of their windmills was believed to be the world's tallest; it was made of wood and was a total height of 132 feet. A Texas historical marker at Littlefield marks the site of a replica of the world's tallest windmill built on the XIT Ranch. The original windmill blew over in 1926. By 1900 the XIT had 335 windmills in operation.

Not until the King Ranch began extensive use of the windmill in 1890 did that the practice began to spread rapidly over that area. By 1900 windmills were a common sight in the Texas and the West. Inhabitable land was no longer limited to regions with a natural water supply. The windmill made the most remote areas habitable.

Pawnee National Grasslands Windmill
iStock photo

The use of windmills brought about two of the most colorful characters of the West, the driller and the windmiller, and altered the lifestyle of another, the range rider. The driller was usually a loner and seldom seen by anyone except the range rider and windmiller. He followed the fence crews and guessed at where he might find water, then bored wells with his horse-powered drilling rig. When the driller was successful the windmiller followed and set up a mill. Owners of the larger ranches usually employed several windmillers to make continuous rounds, checking and repairing windmills. The windmillers lived in covered wagons and only saw headquarters once or twice a month. The early mills had to be greased twice a week, and this was the range rider's job. He kept a can (or beer bottle) containing grease tied to his saddle. When he rode up to a mill that was squeaking, he would climb it, hold the wheel with a pole until he could mount the platform, and then let the wheel turn while he poured grease over it.

Lone range rider - iStock photo

The range rider was always in danger of attacks from swarms of wasps, which hung their clustered cells beneath the windmill's platform; there was the added danger of falling from the tower when such attacks occurred. The windmill industry's shift in 1888 to the back-geared, all-steel mill caused heated debates in Texas livestock and farming circles. Most ranchers and farmers welcomed the new steel windmill because its galvanized wheel and tower held up better in harsh weather; also, its gear system was better able to take advantage of the wind, thus enabling the windmill to run more hours per day. The back-geared mill could also pump deeper and larger-diameter wells. Those who favored the old wood mill argued that the steel mill was more likely to break because of its high speed, that it was not as easily repaired as the wood mill, and that when parts had to be ordered the steel mill might be inoperative for days. Though sales of wood mills continued, they declined steadily, so that by 1912 few were being sold.

 

Three windmills at sunset
iStock photo

The last major development in the windmill came in 1915. A housing that needed to be filled with oil only once a year was built around the mill's gears. This relieved the range rider of his biweekly greasing chores and somewhat diminished the windmiller's job. Because of the dependability of this improved windmill, worries over water shortages were eased for the rancher, farmer, and rural dweller. This mill was the prime supplier of water in rural Texas until 1930, when electric and gasoline pumps began to be widely used.

Though Texas became the largest user of windmills in the United States, there were never more than three active manufacturers of windmills in Texas at one time. Windmills remain an important supplier of water for Texas cattlemen. The King Ranch in the late 1960's kept 262 mills running continuously and 100 complete spares in stock. Stocking spare mills is a common practice among ranchers who depend on the windmill to supply water for cattle in remote pastures.

Because the windmill has been confined for the most part to remote areas, it has become a symbol of a lonely and primitive life, fitting for the pioneers it first served and the cowboys about whom we love to read. I hold windmills dear to my heart as symbols of the Old West--just not as old as I'd first imagined. 

Let me leave you with a video of one of my favorite groups singing one of my favorite songs about water and the need for it: Sons of the Pioneers singing "Cool, Clear Water."

Caroline Clemmons is an award winning and Amazon best selling western romance author. Her latest release is the boxed set of the MEN OF STONE MOUNTAIN: MICAH, ZACH, JOEL from Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/Men-of-Stone-Mountain-ebook/dp/B00DTGQXLW/ref=sr_1_18?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1374464741&sr=1-18&keywords=caroline+clemmons.  

Thanks to Wikipedia and Texas State Historical Association Online Handbook of Texas.