The First Road to Texas from the North
THIS WEBSITE WILL SOON BE COMBINED INTO A SINGLE SOURCE FOR ALL OF GARY’S BOOK. PLEASE GO TO WWW.GARYLPINKERTON.COM.
From an 1841 court case. The clerk wrote the spelling of the name.
Photo of a young surveyor family reports attribute to their ancestor, Nicholas Trammell
Description from a soldier's account when passing through Washington, Arkansas. The illustration "Frontiersman With Pipe" is by the masterful historical artist, David Wright. www.davidwrightart.com
E. F. Lee, Map of Texas containing the latest Grants and Discoveries, Cincinnati: J.A. James & Co., 1836, Map #93855, Holcomb Digital Map Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX.
(click picture to see more)
“Gary Pinkerton’s book Trammel’s Trace, The First Road to Texas from the North is an impressive contribution to our understanding of the Nineteenth-Century settlement of eastern Texas. For the first time, a comprehensive compilation has been made about Trammel’s Trace and the life of Nicholas Trammell, the man who developed the trail system to first smuggle contraband and later to engage in legal commerce in Texas. Pinkerton is the perfect author of this study, having personally located many present-day remnants of the trace with his team of historians and archaeologists. Pinkerton’s exhaustive research in Texas, Arkansas, and other archives has enabled him to describe the trace with stunning detail and to make a plea to the present generation about the urgent need to preserve the parts of the trace that still exist. Moreover, his presentation of Nicholas Trammell’s life from Tennessee to Texas appropriately highlights the contributions Trammell made to Texas. Anyone interested in the history of settlement in the Lone Star State will want this book for their library.” — Jim Bruseth, Ph.D.
“Western expansion following the Louisiana Purchase created turbulent pressures on the boundaries of Spanish Texas and the United States which neither nation could afford to ignore. During these disquieting years the sparsely patrolled frontier and the lure of lucrative trade in horses gave rise to numerous smugglers in the wild fringes of Texas and none was more colorful than Nicholas Trammell. Pinkerton’s wonderfully written and meticulously researched history of Trammel’s Trace follows the life of Nicholas Trammell; exposing him as both a scoundrel and an entrepreneur. Pinkerton leaves no doubt that Nicholas Trammell, like all the shadowy figures associated with the early borderlands of Texas, played an integral part in opening Texas to those who wished to emigrate from the United States. Trammel’s Trace, while belonging to history as a smugglers trail turned artery of early Texas colonization, exists today as dim paths through forests or as shallow swales across forgotten pastures, and in some places as county roads and highways. In his book, Pinkerton has expertly demonstrated the depth of his research through the retracement of this early and often obscure road across the landscapes of today. Backed by solid evidence from dedicated examinations of landownership abstracts, historic maps and documents, as well as sifting through voluminous antecedent documents, Pinkerton has written a compelling and intriguing story of the origin and evolution of an early Texas road that no historian should be without.” —Jeffrey M. Williams, Stephen F. Austin State University
“Pinkerton’s glimpse at Trammel’s Trace as a ‘smuggler’s back alley’ into Northeast Texas offers a refreshing tale about other roads and characters beyond the traditional narrative of colonization in the Lone Star State. The transformation of Nicholas Trammell from clandestine trader to settled farmer and slaveholder by the early 1840s is a reminder that there remains more to learn about early immigrants to Texas than meets the eye. Pinkerton relates Trammell’s journey in a well-written, narrative style that different audiences may share alike.”— Francis X. Galan, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University-San Antonio
Markers that will NOT be seen in east Texas, cuz a LOT happened here.
There is something about the idea of treasure hunting that worms its way into the damp folds of the imagination. Legends grow fat there and sing sweet and low of pirates and priests who held plunder in their hands -- then let it slip through their fingers for others to find.
For more than a decade one team of professional treasure hunters heard the siren's call, and earlier this summer Odyssey Marine Exploration hauled up an estimated $500 million in Colonial-era silver and gold coins from a secret trove deep in the Atlantic Ocean. Television crews jockeyed for the best shots as hundreds of plastic jugs filled with the coins were unloaded from a private cargo plane at a guarded location.
And right then, deep in some viewer's mind, the old legends began to sing. I heard them too, as I often do on lazy summer afternoons. But this year I didn't put them aside. I went looking for the lost treasure of Hendrick's Lake, a $2 million fortune in silver allegedly taken from a Spanish galleon by the infamous "Pirate of the Gulf," Jean Lafitte.
The story that fishermen, sometime in the last century, pulled several silver bars from the muddy waters with a hoop net seemed to give this legend legs. The search was to be a lark, a pleasant diversion.
I had no idea what was waiting to be uncovered.
From the coast to the Cap Rock, Texas has more than 200 treasure legends. One cache is supposed to sit beneath a private 400-acre lake in the heart of the Sabine River bottom near Tatum. The ancient river snakes through Panola County near Carthage and divides Texas from Louisiana, but here, deep in this forest of pine and oak, it has always had a mind of its own.
When this land was young, the river changed its course, leaving behind slivers of spring-fed water that locals call "oxbow lakes" or "lost lakes," including Hendrick's. The Sabine is a stone's throw away; some say that the ancient river and its fickle ghosts stand sentinel over any treasure that may be hidden there. In August, the thick air is filled with the shrill whine of mosquitoes. Cypress trees on the steep banks stretch their leafy arms skyward. A silvery scum tops much of the lake's bourbon-colored water and toothy alligator gar, snapping turtles and black bass swim its murky depths.
Occasionally, an oil field truck whizzes up the clay lane that was once a part of an early roadway called Trammel's Trace, splashing mud from the recent rains. According to legend it was here in 1812 or 1816, or maybe 1818, along this half-mile stretch of water, that Jean Lafitte's men, afraid that they were about to be ambushed, pushed several wagons loaded with silver ingots into the muddy water.
The wagons and the silver bars quickly disappeared into the soupy depths and the thick layer of bottom silt. Only one man lived to tell the tale -- the others were slaughtered.
No one knows for sure if that lone survivor came back to recover the silver, but it is clear that by 1884, treasure hunters were feverishly trying to drain the lake. The Galveston Daily News sniffed at the effort. "They should transfer their operations to the Gulf of Mexico. A good deal of wealth has been left under its waters by shipwrecks," wrote one reporter.
Before the treasure hunters could drain the lake completely, a storm tracked across the countryside and the angry Sabine River overflowed its banks and coursed through the lake, filling it to overflowing.
Decades rolled past. Teddy Roosevelt stormed San Juan Hill. The Wright brothers flew. Ford automobiles became the rage. The stock market crashed. Prohibition came and went. Women got the right to vote. The world went to war twice.
And then came the prosperous days of the 1950s. Treasure magazines became popular and searching for lost gold became an interesting distraction. True West Magazine printed a story about the long-forgotten Hendrick's Lake silver, and treasure hunters flocked to Carthage and Tatum, says Gary Pinkerton who is writing a book about Trammel's Trace and the legend.
Dallas oilman Henry SoRelle and his brother A.C. SoRelle Jr. were part of the onslaught.
"I was about 25 then, and my brother was 10 years older," SoRelle says. In those years, the younger SoRelle was the land man for the family's Houston-based oil business. In no time, he had inked a lease from the landowners, which included former Panola County Sheriff Corbett Akins; his chief deputy, "Cush" Reeves; and Peter Walker Adams, who wore overalls, carried an impressive knife and rented fishing boats at one end of the lake.
The SoRelle brothers had a large metal detector that they hauled around the lake. "All of a sudden we got a hit," SoRelle remembers, his blue eyes shining, his fist clenched in victory. "We thought we could get a scuba diver to just dive down there and get it, but we found out the lake was very deep in silt and the water was so murky you couldn't see very far." He leans back in his office chair, smiling. "That didn't work," he says.
They brought in a giant crane and attached a drag bucket to the cable, but the gooey bottom slime was too much for the machine, and the treasure was too far from the bank. More than once the crane almost toppled into the water. Soon the crane operator, fearful that he might lose his machine and his livelihood, went home. But the SoRelles weren't ready to call it quits.
They built a raft with a hole in the center and sank large pipes into the goop on the lake bottom. They lowered another contraption through the pipe to the lake floor. A light would come on when a probe hit metal. "It did light up, too," SoRelle says. Encouraged, the men worked on.
"We had a drill, which we turned manually," SoRelle says. The men laid into the chore with gusto, but there was too much gumbo silt to move, he says. Running low on cash, the brothers decided they needed a break -- and a better plan.
They headed for their Houston homes and a few days of rest, leaving the raft anchored in the center of the lake, confident that the sheriff would protect their find.
They hadn't been gone long when a great storm raced across Panola County. The rain came in torrents, and the Sabine River swirled over its banks. The river swept across the little lake, smashing the raft and washing away every shred of evidence that the SoRelle brothers had ever been there.
SoRelle shrugs at the memory. The brothers left the treasure for someone else to find, he says.
Barnie Waldrop, a fix-it man and inventor who worked in a radio repair shop in Carthage, was the next man to look.
Waldrop had studied the legend -- and the lake -- for years and had long ago struck a deal with the landowners to search for the treasure with a water-resistant metal-detecting apparatus he perfected himself. In 1958, he finally had his chance to search.
"Mr. Barnie was kind of quiet. He tended to his own business ... He wore khakis and was neat about his appearance," says Brodie Akins, 69, son of the old sheriff who owned part of the lake. "If you needed something fixed, why you took it to Mr. Barnie and he'd fix it up, but he wasn't jokey."
Akins and his late sister's three sons inherited his daddy's portion of the land, but he remembers that he was in high school the summer of the treasure hunt. "Daddy never doubted Mr. Barnie," he says. Young Akins was there the day the dragline hauled up an ancient metal wagon wheel rim of the sort used on Mexican ox carts a century or more earlier.
"That ol' wheel came out of the water all covered with slime," he says. "Everything shut down. The operator got off the dragline. We all thought, oh yeah, we going to hit it now. We on to something now, but that ol' wheel is the only thing they ever found," he says.
The sticky silt lay more than a dozen feet deep on the lake's lignite bottom, and like other treasure hunters before him, Waldrop decided he had to move that mud to find the silver.
He tried dynamite. "Snakes and fish and all kinds of things floated to the top," says Waldrop's son Philip Waldrop, 62, of Carthage. He was often at the lake with his sister Diana. In fact, she is the one who dropped the dynamite charge into the lake that day.
Nothing worked. If the treasure was there, it remained hidden in the slime. Barnie Waldrop swallowed any disappointment he felt and soldiered on, writing at least one article for a treasure magazine and searching for the lost silver several more times over the years.
An occasional newspaper article kept the story alive and throughout the 1960s treasure hunters found their way to Hendrick's Lake, but none matched the expeditions launched by the SoRelle brothers or Barnie Waldrop.
A few years ago, treasure hunters, certain that the lake had silted in over time, decided the silver must now lay under dry land. They punched holes in a pasture near the lake but found no treasure, Philip Waldrop says.
So is there treasure at Hendrick's Lake?
"Some thinks there is. Some thinks there isn't," Akins says.
He rocks back in a squeaky office chair and thinks a moment. "I'm not a believer in jinxes," he says, "but I've seen these people that have hunted. They've come in here with a good bit of money and they claim they get real close to it, and then that ol' river comes up and floods everything and they're right back to zero. I've seen it happen too many times.
"I think there may be a jinx on it -- but I'll say it's a good legend."
And what of the fishermen's silver bars found so long ago? That never happened, Philip Waldrop says. "It just was something to add to the story," he says.
Back in his Dallas office, SoRelle considers the treasure he's not thought of in years. "The only way to get to the treasure is to drain the lake," he declares, "but every time someone would try ... well, it's just amazing, there would be a storm. The river would take over."
If he owned the lake, he'd drain it for sure. "There's something there," he says and taps his desktop -- and his blue eyes dance.
That ol' wheel came out of the water all covered with slime.
Every time someone would try ... the river would take over.
Snakes and fish and all kinds of things floated to the top.
1. Peruse the Internet ( www.legendsofamerica.com; www.treasurefish.com), but invest in a copy of Coronado's Children by J. Frank Dobie (University of Texas Press) and W.C. Jameson's Buried Treasures of Texas (August House Publishers Inc.) There are other Texas treasure books on the market, but these two little volumes cover most of the major stories.
2. Research the treasure that tickles your fancy and determine where it might be located; then contact someone in the area to help narrow your search area.
3. Remember that most treasure sites are on private property and you'll need permission to search before you get there.
Red River gold
The legend: In 1894 four men robbed the bank at Bowie and made off with $10,000 in $20 gold pieces and $18,000 in currency. They rode north toward the safety of Indian Territory, but when they got to the Red River they found the water too high to cross. They camped near a grove of trees for the night.
Meanwhile, the Bowie sheriff telegraphed a U.S. marshal named Palmore and told him to watch for the outlaws. Palmore apprehended the outlaws at the river crossing the next day and hauled them off to the hanging judge in Fort Smith, Ark. Before the men were executed, one told Palmore that the gold was buried at the campsite -- and then he winked.
The location: The gold is said to be on the Texas side of the Red River at the confluence of the Little Wichita River.
Sam Bass' cache
The legend: Sam Bass and his outlaw gang robbed many trains and stagecoaches and stashed the loot in several locations. In 1877, it is said, they robbed a Nebraska train of a fortune in newly minted gold coins. The robbers divided the gold and rode off in different directions. Young Bass made his way to Denton and hid his portion of the prize.
Around 1900, a farmer near Springtown, northwest of Fort Worth, found a trunk filled with 1877 gold coins that many believe is part of the treasure -- but only a portion.
The location: Treasure hunters say Bass' part of the gold is hidden at Cove Hollow, a brushy ravine shot through with shallow caves about 30 miles from Denton.
The lost San Saba silver mine
The legend: For more than two centuries, this lost mine with its rich vein of silver has been the Holy Grail of Texas treasure seekers. In 1756, Don Bernardo de Miranda, a Mexican official, learned of the mine from an Apache guide. It's said that American Indians worked the mine, often trading the ore in San Antonio. Over the decades, many men looked for the mine, including Jim Bowie a few years before he came to the Alamo.
The location: Somewhere near Menard, on the San Saba or Llano rivers.
News researcher Marcia Melton contributed to this report.
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rog@star-telegram.com Mary Rogers, 817-390-7745
Read more at http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1067673/tales_of_spanish_silver_lure_treasure_hunters_to_an_east/#t3KpH0Kub7HeJCt3.99
LIDAR image from Jeff Williams, SFASU
Larry Jacobs, Bob Vernon, and Justin Blackwell share an interest in preserving history.
In the bottom left quadrant you can see a slight change in the color of the ground. Not all ruts are Trammel's Trace, but this one is in line with other known spots.
The old road followed the contour of the land just out of the creen bottom. All of this has been pasture land for many years.
This is what that visible rut looks like on the ground. Not much more than a swale, but a remnant of a 200-year old road after years of cultivation.
Thank you - I can't tell you how incredible the family thinks this information is. The next day the kids insisted on going to look. Even at their age they know the name "Davy Crockett." Can't wait for your book!
On a recent visit up to northeast Texas for Christmas with the family, we made a side trip back through Rusk County along the route of Trammel's Trace. Lignite mining has resulted in thousands of acres of land in Harrison and Rusk counties being dug up, sifted and sculpted back into place. Around 15 miles of Trammel's Trace no longer exists as a result.
I'm sure the good people responsible for restoration of the land would dispute and correct this characterization, but after mining the land is just a movie set version of itself. Soil stratification is gone, topographic features are altered, and though lovely, the land that was no longer exists. That includes the valueless but irreplaceable features of the land such as old roads and trails. After mining, nothing remains on the land which would indicate that history was made across it -- both by the Caddo people who used the trail for centuries and the Anglo immigration in the early 1800s which led to the Republic of Texas.
The pictures below show some of the current state of the area north and south of Tatum. The road to Hendricks Lake, the focus of treasure myth and Trammell legend, is now closed due to mining. Land that I once walked and documented and photographed remains of Trammel's Trace is now nothing but cleared, sifted land.
Loss of the trail isn't always due to such massive projects. I am communicating with one landowner now who is pretty sure that after using the Trammel's Trace rut on his family's property as a dumpsite for years, they filled it with dirt level with the rest of the pasture. I've seen that more than once. I commiserated with one landowner who when I commented that it must be hard to let his family land be mined, he said, "yeah, it was kind of hard until the Brinks truck pulled up." Without a knowledge of the history, a rut is just a rut.
Though I realize that lignite mining is the type of progress that waits for no one, it is still sad to see Trammel's Trace disappear. That is part of the reason I'm working so hard to help landowners identify and protect any remaining ruts. If you are a landowner who thinks that Trammel's Trace may cross your property, let's talk. You can make a difference.
December 16th, 1826 -- Republic of Fredonia stillborn in Nacogdoches
On this day in 1826, Benjamin Edwards and about thirty men rode into Nacogdoches and declared the Republic of Fredonia, thus instituting an attempted minor revolution known as the Fredonian Rebellion. Benjamin was the brother of Haden Edwards, who had received a grant near Nacogdoches and had settled some fifty families there. Fearing that the brothers were about to lose their land, Benjamin took the desperate step of declaring independence from Mexico. In spite of an attempt to get the Cherokees to help, the revolt was easily crushed by Mexican authorities, and Edwards was forced to flee across the Sabine. In 1837 he ran for governor of Mississippi, but died during the campaign.
December 13th, 1777
Spanish mapping expedition heads for Texas
On this day in 1777, Luis Antonio Andry and a crew of thirteen sailed on the schooner Señor de la Yedra from New Orleans on a mapping expedition. Andry, a French engineer in the pay of Spain, was chosen by Louisiana governor Bernardo de Gálvez to map the Gulf of Mexico coast from the Mississippi River to Matagorda Bay. Andry's survey ship reached Matagorda Bay by early March 1778, its work essentially complete. Shortly thereafter, it fell victim to the trickery of apostate Karankawas from the Texas missions. Acording to the lone survivor of the crew, the expedition sought aid from Karankawa brothers Joseph María and Mateo who, feigning friendship, claimed to be soldiers from La Bahía. After first disposing of two parties sent ashore to obtain provisions, the renegade brothers brought their companions on board the ship, seized the crew's unguarded weapons, and murdered the rest of the crew with a single exception, whom they held as a slave. After removing the guns and other useful gear from the ship, they burned the vessel and with it perhaps the most detailed Spanish map of the Texas-Louisiana coast to that time.
In the late 1820s in the United States, anti-gambling movements were cropping up in areas which were frontier not that many years prior. Nicholas Trammell's tavern and gambling at horse racing put him on the other side of that line. Those resisting gambling mostly received only lip service from justice officials, so operations generally proceeded as usual but with a little less fanfare.
The Mexican settlement of Nacogdoches was a haven for gamblers more than eager to welcome a newcomer to Texas. Though the local council in Nacogdoches tried to control gambling through fines on gamblers and operators, their efforts were largely unsuccessful. The unwritten rules often left the unwitting relieved of their stake. One gambler, an unnamed future signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, spotted an easy mark that appeared to have money and directed him into a game. After the newcomer sat down, the future patriot went out to look for others to fleece.
Noah Smithwick was there for the game and wrote about it in his memoirs "The Evolution of a Nation. Smithwick said, "When he returned the game was over and the clique dividing the spoils. The steerer demanded his share. "Why you was not in the game," they contended. "The hell I was not; didn't I find him first?" and backing his claim with a pistol he secured his share." The future signer was not named, but was likely Martin Parmer.
The following entry from "Texas Day by Day" of the Texas State Historical Association recognizes the date when Smithwick was banished from the state.
From: https://texasdaybyday.com/Dec/7/
December 7th, 1830 -- Noah Smithwick banished from Texas as "a bad citizen"
On this day in 1830, Noah Smithwick was banished from Texas as "a bad citizen." Smithwick, born in North Carolina in 1808, came to Texas in 1827 and eventually settled in San Felipe. When San Felipe authorities ordered a friend of his who was accused of murder chained with leg irons, Smithwick, a blacksmith by trade, provided a file and a gun so he might escape. As a result, the authorities tried Smithwick, declared him "a bad citizen," and banished him from Austin's colony and Texas, providing an escort as far as the Sabine River. Smithwick returned to Matagorda in the fall of 1835 and reached Gonzales the day after the battle of Gonzales. He served in the Texas Revolution, married, and after an unsuccessful stint as a Williamson County cattle rancher established a mill near Marble Falls. With the coming of the Civil War, the Unionist Smithwick received threats and decided to abandon Texas. He sold his property and, with a number of friends, left Burnet County for southern California in 1861. In California, Smithwick gradually lost his eyesight but dictated his memoirs to his daughter. After his death in 1899, she had the manuscript published by Karl H. P. N. Gammel as The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days.
GONZALES COME AND TAKE IT CANNON
GAMMEL, KARL HANS PETER MARIUS NEILSEN
Be among the first to get the new TTR window sticker. At 3 1/2 x 5", it is a nice size for your back window or bumper. The sticker also has the website link named.
Send me your mailing address and I'll be happy to drop one in the mail for you. Enjoy!
In pursuing all the research that has gone into this project, I've had to resist pursuing what I call "rabbit trails." Those are the interesting tidbits that seem irresistibly interesting and perhaps connected. Well, I've resisted all but one. When I bumped into Harry Rieseberg, the self-proclaimed world's greatest treasure hunter, in connection with Hendricks Lake treasure myths I couldn't resist. Now Harry is turning into a second book. (see www.harryrieseberg.com and thanks for pursuing my rabbit trail. See what I mean?)
In doing some research today, this article was just below the one of my interest. Talk about a RABBIT TRAIL! So far.....I have resisted a Google search to inquire more about this sect, but should anyone be so inclined, please keep me informed. (grin)
Gary
Seattle Times, 1935/05/23
