History of Cooke County

Cooke County has an interesting history itself and I always wonder how much of its history the Pollards interacted with. Cooke County is in north central Texas on the Oklahoma border. It's about an hour from Plano Texas. Because of its location, Cooke County has always been a rugged area with an early history of Indian wars, vigilantism and outlaws.

The Texas State Legislator established Cooke county in 1848. And several trails connected through Cooke County. For example, the California, and Chism, as well as the butterfield mail route all went through Cooke county. In fact the California street got its name because it follows the California trail. In 1851 Robert Bean bought a plot of land where the trails all merged and built a store. The spot he built on later became Gainesville, the county seat. Bean seems to be a rather cantankerous person, who disliked children and not hesitate to attack a customer if he felt they where trying to cheat him. He only traded on a barter system and would not take money. One funny story I heard about Robert Bean is he would have a barrel of whiskey in the back of his store. Often he would demand customers bring him a drink of whisky before he would start working with them.

One notorious event in Cooke county history would be the great handing at Gainesville.  In 1861 Texas voted on whether to enter the Civil War and Cooke county voted 61 percent against secession. Despite being against Texas entering the Civil war, the residents rallied in support of Confederacy. Cooke county became a very dangerous place during the war years and bandits would often attack homes. The citizens of Cooke county began to suspect that Union sympathizers coordinated with the Union to bring terrorism to Cooke county. In October of 1862 forty-two men where rounded up and hung on suspicion of supporting the Union. The fifty two men where not given a proper trial and some even had children that had enlisted to fight for the confederacy. The mass hanging remained controversial for years after the event. Often people that had families targeted by the outlaws usually supported the mass hangings as neccessery, while others recognized the illigality of the mass hangings and saw it as a mass murder. 

Given its border with Oklahoma, a lot of outlaws came through Cooke county either to hid out in Oklahoma, or to hide out from Oklahoma marshals. The famous martial Heck Thomas once chased an outlaw into Cooke County, taking him to the jail in Gainesville. Sam Bass also supposedly hid out in south west Cooke county after some of his robberies (probably around where the Pollards lived in 1910). In fact, they still have a Sam Bass festival once a year there. There is also speculation that Jesse and Frank James hid out at Sivells Bend (the Pollards lived in Sivells Bend).

Finally, most of the cattle traveling to market in Kansas during the great cattle drive traveled through Cooke county. Gainesville was the last chance to get supplies for a long period of time, so the town would be full of cowboys blowing off steam. Gainesville hosted several saloons on its main street.

By the turn of the century Cooke Counties economy started changing. The end of the cattle drive meant a shift in demand from crops meant to support the cattle trade to commercial crops. Cotton became the main crop grown. Also, there became fewer family own farms. Instead sharecropping and farm laborers became more common. The Pollards at this time started renting their homes and “worked out” as farm laborers. Nathan Pollard also began moving around Cooke county (see here) instead of staying in one place. In fact, by 1927 it seems like Nathan had given up farming altogether and moved to the city.

According to the 1930 census Nathan Pollard had moved to Gainesville and began working for the city. I haven’t been able to find exactly what job he had, but it listed as a laborer for the city. I suspect that he might have done construction, but I don’t know for sure. 1930 started another interesting event in Gainesville history though, the Circus.

In 1930 the great depression had started. The local theater needed to raise some money to prevent being closed down, so someone had the idea of creating a circus with all the proceeds going to the theater. All the acts came from people in the town volunteering their skills. One story I heard was a trapeze artist fell and got hurt. They took her to a tent and a clown came running up offering to help. Someone told the clown, she doesn’t need a clown, she needs a doctor. The clown told him, “I am a medical doctor!” The town had such a great response to the circus that not only did they save the theater, but every year they had another circus. People came from all over to see the Gainesville circus.

Stories like that are always serial for me. It makes me wonder how many times the Pollards went to the circus. I haven’t found any evidence that they ever participated in it, but you would assume they at least came to the circus given it was only three of four miles from their house.