Navasota 150th anniversary issue

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The Navasota Examiner

Page 3

Publisher Tony Farkas publisher@navasotaexaminer.com

General Manager Brandi Chionsini

Contributing Writers Nicole Shupe Connie Clements Betty Dunn Carol Herrington

Advertising Sales Ana Cosino ads@navasotaexaminer.com

Bookkeeper Carrie Little bookkeeper@navasotaexaminer.com

Transportation/ Circulation Ina Lindley Michael Carrington

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150th Commemorative Edition

It started with a box of photographs, and an anniversary.

Then we started moving forward with something that we think will commemorate this great occasion — Navasota’s 150th birthday — with a glimpse into history.

This by no means is meant to be all-inclusive; a town like Navasota has such a rich tapestry of people, places and things that it would take numerous volumes printed over decades to highlight all of the things that makes this town special.

And special it is.

Think on it. The country has been a country for 240 years; Navasota has been a part of South Texas for two-thirds of that time. It has been home to special people, successful businesses and industry, music, schools, athletic championships, and so much more, all nestled in gorgeous countryside. What more could you ask?

We hope you enjoy these glimpses into the fabric of a great community. And we hope for another 150 years of greatness.

Tony Farkas Publisher

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The Navasota Examiner

People

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Page 6 150th Commemorative Edition

Artist

of the people

Paris has its sidewalk artisans and painters. Navasota has renowned sidewalk folk-art artist Leon Collins, and his daughter Molly Bee.

The Navasota Examiner

Page 7

By Carol Herrington

Painting with vibrant colors, Leon tells stories he heard told from the mouth of his Big Mama. His great-great-grandmother was born a slave and grew up in Brazoria County, where she was the house slave over all the others in the plantation. She took care of the slave owner, his wife and their children. Her husband, “Hamp”, was a slave and the overseer of the field slaves. He was a straw boss, says Leon without missing a beat.

“She was part of the family,” says Leon, reminiscing about Big Mama, as a smile touches his lips, he adds, “They left her their plantation when they died.”

Just like his great-great-grandmother, Leon was and is the consummate care giver.

He lived with his twice great-grandmother and her husband, from age 4 to age 14, when Big Mama on her deathbed told him to go back to California and care for his dying mother; she was 119. His mother had terminal cancer. As she lay dying, she sent her son back to Texas to live and care for his aunt, who was also dying; she died at age 114. In between, he made his way by treasure hunting antiques, selling antiques, and doing what he loved best – drawing and painting.

“I wouldn’t have never left, but Big Mama went to Heaven, and I couldn’t go,” says Leon, musing, “God is not ready for me, and the devil don’t want me.”

Sitting on the black wood bench outside Tejas Antiques, Leon, looks down the road of Washington Street and asks the store’s owner, Duane Garner, if he remembers how he discovered one of his painting in the thrift store at the end of the street.

“It followed me all the way from California,” Leon laughs, “I can’t believe that can you? I used to paint the boats and the fishermen, with their crabs, fish, and shrimp.

Then, one day this captain, who sold to the restaurants on the waterfront, took one my paintings under his arm and had me come along. This little black boy and this big sea captain going into the fine restaurant. The owner liked the painting, and asked who painted it, and he motioned to me. That is how I started painting in California. I painted what I saw.”

Now, Leon paints what he sees with his “mind’s eye” – from the stories Big Mama told him about growing up a slave in Texas, in Brazos County. Most children can’t read or write by age 4, but Leon was determined to be different and he wanted to take down what his Big Mama was telling him. Looking off into the distance, Leon says he remembers sitting down with a Big Chief tablet. He wrote down more than 9,000 pages worth of stories; but he didn’t want to make a book –

he wanted the stories to have a life in color in paintings. Once in Navasota, Leon went to the library and spent two hours reading about painting; he went to Wal-Mart but some supplies and the rest is history.

“No one else is painting it. It is not politically correct. A lot of blacks want to forget about it. But these paintings nail it home,” he says, in deep thought. “It doesn’t bother me.

If it were not for the slave trade, there would be no blacks in America and we would not be able to enjoy the bounty that this country has to offer.”

When Leon returned to Navasota, he walked up to Duane Garner, the owner of Tejas Antiques, and showed him two or three paintings he had created. Just like today, the paintings were vibrant colors reminiscent of African or Jamaican colors – vivid hues of turquoise, yellow, and red. His paintings hang in New York galleries and have been featured in the halls of academia, and of course, downtown Navasota City Hall.

“I wanted them to pop out. We used to have red planter boxes on the sidewalks along the street, so I displayed them in the planter,” said Garner, adding, “Normally, I don’t sell paintings but he came in and told me the story behind the art work. We sold the three he brought in that day, then next day, we sold three more and the next and the next.”

Indeed, up the winding, sharp turning, wooden stairs of Tejas Antiques, is a gorgeous (and that is understating) acrylic on wood painting of Big Mama, Leon and vibrant-hued turquoise peacock. The striking painting stands out against the wall, breathing light and life into the upstairs corner where it is tucked.

“That one is me and Big Mama and the peacock I killed. I didn’t mean to. The peacock would not let me sleep,” Leon recalls, while cupping his hand around his mouth, “Lee .. un…Lee..un, like it was saying my name. I picked up a coke bottle by the bed, and tossed it up in the air. It came down and hit it in the head. Ooh, she was mad at me.

That was her favorite bird.”

His love of painting and storytelling in paintings has been passed on to his daughter, Molly Bee. The two are the only known father/daughter folk art duo. Molly Bee, like her father, started painting when she was young. She would get his scraps and start painting.

“One day this lady from the Art Institute of Houston came by and Molly Bee had her paintings spread out on the sidewalk. The woman stopped and looked. She asked me whose paintings those were,” Leon says

gleaming with pride. “I told her that was my daughter. She bought them all.”

Molly Bee paints mostly still-lifes and paints from the stories her father has passed down from Big Mama. Like her father, Molly Bee is also a caregiver. Diagnosed with brain cancer in 2005, Leon has been pushing through the cancer diagnosis. He is also on a waiting list for a heart transplant and wears a heart monitor at all times. Molly Bee loves her dad and looks after him. For a while, Leon lost his eye sight and his speech for a while in the ‘70s.

“I told God, if you give me aback my eyesight, I will start painting again and not stop,” says the soft spoken Leon. “I don’t paint as much as I did but I still paint. I paint by commission mostly now.”

Leon’s paintings are known the world over. He has sold all over Texas and the U.S. A few of his paintings have made their way to Jasper and in Vidor, Texas. His paintings sell for hundreds but that does not faze Leon, nor does it motivate him. He paints what he sees, what he remembers and they tell a story; like the black and white silhouette leaning against the wall. The silhouette is of President Barack Obama and Martin Luther King: The message is clear and can see been in the eyes of the subjects.

“I paint about white people, too,” he says, leaning his head back slightly and cocking to one side, “I remember there was this woman who came in the store – remember Duane?

You could tell she was kinda stand-offish.

She walked around. Looked at the paintings, and then asked who the painter was. I told her it was me. She bought a painting and leaned over and hugged me.”

The fact of the matter is that in the South, things are different than what is seen in the north. Folks talk to each other as neighbors, Garner says, with Leon agreeing.

Almost simultaneously, they both share stories of how they were raised.

Walking around in the store, more of Leon’s variable art works and talent surface.

There is what is called “First Generation” pen and ink that is black and white and mechanical. Looking closely into the wheels and gears, Leon’s name is spelled out. There are some dark art as well, demons, devils, voodoo in nature but they, too are vibrant.

Big Mama was a healer, a voodoo practitioner as was common in those days. He has done sculptures, some of the gear nature and has carved slave figurines from wood. But, like his paintings, they don’t stay long in the store. With his long life line evidenced on his mother’s side, Navasota would be well blessed to have Leon well into his 100s.

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Page 8 150th Commemorative Edition

First

Artie Fultz Davis travels from the cotton field to courtroom and eventually to City Hall.

to lead

The Navasota Examiner

Page 9

By Connie Clements

By what circumstance does Navasota’s mayor command almost a full-page in the Houston Chronicle? The answer is…if it’s 1980 and you are the city’s first female mayor, Artie Fultz Davis.

As the Valedictorian at Iola High School, 15-year old Artie McWhorter knew what she didn’t want to do in life, and one of those things was picking cotton.

More importantly, she was willing to work hard for what she did want even when that meant working her way through Sam Houston State Teachers College as a live-in maid, cleaning floors and caring for an elderly couple.

Before the year was up, however, the bright young woman was snapped up by Anderson title company owners, Bill and Jeanette Barron “who spotted her astuteness.” Davis told the Chronicle in a 1980 interview that her decision to quit school after one semester was against her parent’s wishes but a short time later, Barron was awarded the contract to print the “session laws,” into booklet form.

These were the laws passed by the Texas legislature. Accompanying the Barron’s to Austin, Davis took advantage of the opportunity to proofread the session laws, soak up legal knowledge reading law books and familiarizing herself with the laws being created or drafted by the Texas legislature.

At the age of 19, without a college education or formal law training, Davis became the youngest woman to ever pass the Texas State Bar Exam.

Meanwhile, she met University of Texas law student, Joe Fultz, working his way through school as a security guard at the capitol and sleeping on a cot in the Treas-

ury Department at night. The couple studied together, he passed the bar exam a year after Davis, they married and returned to Grimes County in 1937 and set up Fultz & Fultz Attorneys at Law. Being “first” was fast becoming a way of life for Davis. She became Grimes County’s first female county attorney when she stepped in to that role when Joe was tapped by Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson to work in Austin in the 1940s, and then again in 1964 when Joe died in office.

Along the way, she developed a reputation for being a “peacemaker,” a trait that son John M. Fultz describes as “Biblical.”

John said, “The basis of that love (God’s love) for your fellow man helps you be aware of the needs of others, and at the same time, the need to address issues.

Again, to work together to resolve issues is what she was quite able to do. I think it was a gift from God.” It was that “gift” that prompted businessman Albert Miller to approach Davis, now married to Retired Colonel and attorney Richard Davis, to consider running for a seat on the city council (formerly called the city commission) and the position of mayor.

Fultz explained there was an issue before the city. “Miller asked her to run because they needed her leadership and someone on the commission who could be fair and open-minded.” Davis was elected to the commission in 1977 and elected mayor by the other commissioners that same year. She resigned in 1980 so Fultz could run for city attorney, “ever attempting to lift up her children,” he said.

Fultz described his mother as financially conservative and a big believer in the indi-

Proud to be a part of Navasota’s 150th Anniversary!

vidual and individual rights.

“What she did, she did on her own without anyone mentoring her.” He credited an inner drive that comes from birth, and credited God with leading her to the Barron’s who solidified a work ethic she inherited from her parents.

Fultz said, “For her, having lived through a time period when it was difficult for women, she was always supportive of women and women’s rights. She probably would have been a suffragette or a flapper, if she could have afforded it. She thought outside the box. She did things that others did not do - such as a woman becoming an attorney in the 30s.”

In the legal field, his mother was a lawyer first then a woman, Fultz said. “She was quite able to take clients in, smooth over their concerns, address their concerns and make them feel better when they left.”

Fultz is confident saying Artie Fultz Davis would be an encourager to people fearful of stepping out of their comfort zone.

“She would encourage and support them in being the best human being they could be.”

Recalling the people standing in the street the day of her funeral, Fultz said, “She had quite an effect on people, not just as mayor – that was just a sidelight of what that person did for people in this community. She just gave of herself and that goes back to community involvement giving of oneself. She was selfless in many respects.”

Recalling that she expected her children to speak English correctly and be grammatically correct, Fultz said, “It was a good world to grow up in.”

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Page 12 150th Commemorative Edition

Music

for the heart

Sisters make huge impact on the early music history of Navasota.

The Navasota Examiner When twin sisters were born at Anderson on Nov. 13, 1868, to be the youngest of thirteen children born to John H. and Elizabeth (Fleming) Owen, no one could have guessed the impact they would make to the early music history of Navasota.

Julia and Jessica Owen spent a long life initiating and influencing the deep music culture of Navasota. Neither sister married, with Julia seemingly the dominate of the two. Jessica was known for an exceptional voice; while Julia, also a vocalist, taught piano, violin and voice. They both taught and composed music.

The Owen family first settled near Piedmont Springs making the trek from Georgia in 1851 with then three daughters. Soon the Owen family relocated to Anderson where its wagon and farm equipment business flourished. During the Civil War the business provided transportation for hauling supplies to ordinance depots. In 1875, with the twin sisters age seven, the family moved to Navasota operating a livery stable business. At that time, the twin girls were showing rare musical talent.

John Owen died eleven years later in 1886.

Mrs. Owen then traveled with six children, including Julia and Jessica, to Boston, Massachusetts. There she enrolled the two girls in the New England Conservatory of Music. They

Page 13

By Betty dunn also attended high school there. After returning to Navasota, Julia was in San Antonio studying voice and later in Chicago studying violin.

Julia composed her first musical composition, “Nocturne for Piano” in one sitting at the time of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair winning her first gold medal awarded by the Federation of Women’s Clubs. Two years later, in 1895 at the Texas State Fair, Julia met Philip Sousa, former director of the U. S. Marine Band. Sousa taught Julia how to set her poetry to music. She wrote “Sleep Little Eyes” that Sousa played at the Fair. Overtime Julia composed teaching pieces for violin, songs and a few piano and string ensembles.

For a time, about 1910, Julia lived in Fort Worth where she was a soprano and choir director at two churches…the First Presbyterian and the Congregational churches. Awards continued to pour in including three more gold medals. Back home in Navasota, Julia was a member of the First Baptist Church, the Navasota Civic Club, the Reading Club and the Music Study Club. She was founder of the Texas Music Week observance in 1920.

The idea came to her during the time she served as president of the Navasota Music Study Club. Julia was Past Worthy Matron of

the Navasota Chapter No. 309 of the Order of the Eastern Star.

In 1920, Julia wrote the popular “Texas Bluebonnet Song.” It became the winner of her most cherished gold medal. It is undoubtedly the best known of her sheet music published locally in Navasota. Jessica is known for her sheet music of “Thou Art the Dearest.”

The sisters, from mid-life on, lived with their brother Tom Owen, and following his death, continued to live in the home that was located in the 400 McAlpine block in the now empty lot located just to the west of the Episcopal Church.

Finding the death notices of both Julia and Jessica in the Navasota Examiner, the notice for Jessica gave little information of her career. Most of the detail of Julia’s life story was found in her death notice. Today, information from someone who lived near the sisters indicated that they were very competitive, and in late life were eccentric and often arguing.

Jessica died suddenly on February 19, 1957 at the age of 88 years. Julia died 7 years later on October 2nd, 1964 at the age of 95 years.

Both are buried at Navasota’s Oakland Cemetery. Julia’s image is featured at the far end of the Navasota Blues Alley mural recently done

by Russell Cushman.

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Page 14 Pensive blue eyes stare straight ahead as he ponders the questions asked and considers the next leg of his journey. Navasota artist Russell Cushman is a mainstay in the local art scene and in Navasota life.

Sitting in a friend’s new business over which he is seeing the start-up portion, the man dressed in blue denim with tufts of gray hair escaping from beneath his baseball cap, does not look like he suffered his second heart-attack six months prior.

Turning slightly, Russell still has the emotions of a great artist as he states matterof-factly, that he is in a new phase of his career.

“Now I am going to paint what I want to paint when I want to paint it,” he states.

“The art world as we know it (you and I inferred), is dying. There will always be artists looking to create what they don’t see out there, but the culture is dying and artists are taking a hit.”

The art industry – music included – has stalled. Gone are the soulful melodies that are found in music and extruded from the artist’s touch onto blank canvas. Now, it is staccato but somewhat rhythmic monotone music of emotion, along with digital oddities where light doesn’t shine on the work but through the work via digital pixels. Although, some young people are getting back into the classics and LPs (long play vinyl), he said, it is not a widespread revolution, yet. Russell has seen it all. He was, and is, a hugely successful western realist artist.

He was a “troubled child” according to his own description. He was small, nonathletic, not like his siblings who were awesome at baseball. He was more like his

150th Commemorative Edition

By Carol Herrington mother, artistic. Russell began drawing when he was age 10 or 11, and by his own account, not very well, but he must have been since one of his grade teachers took an interest in him and touted him as her “star art pupil” in the fourth grade. Then fifth-grade happened, and his “free ride in art” was over. His grades went from “A’s” to “D’s”. “D’s” do not get students held back, but with a new teacher’s desire to help, and his parents support, Russell was held back and repeated the fifth-grade. Today that would be unheard of since only an “F” can be an automatic hold back in school.

“I was ashamed. My friends were ashamed of me because I was held back,” but that one act saved him, he said. “I was hanging with those who were not academically inclined. After that one year, I excelled and made all A’s from that point on.”

His mom, who came into her own about the time Russell began drawing, took him for art lessons because he loved to draw. He remembers his first subject was learning to draw a horse. His father tolerated the thought but back then, the oilman family-man, thought art was not a man’s occupation until Russell’s mother took her husband to the Remington Art Gallery in downtown Houston.

Russell graduated high school and by age 17, and “I was selling out of my mother’s shop in Plantersville and a prestigious gallery in Dallas while attending TCU (Texas Christian University) and NTSU (North Texas State University).”

Later in his career, Russell branched out to galleries in Austin, Granbury, Houston,

Santa Fe, Salado and Navasota. During his sophomore portfolio review at NTSU, he recalls a conversation he had with his instructors, “They called me an anachronism and assured me that I would “not be happy here”, and I took that to mean “they would make sure of that!”

He was not an artist and never would be an artist. The decade was the 1970s and everything was modern and impressionistic, not realist. While they considered his work out of date and old fashioned, nothing could be further from the truth as his career would illustrate. Not one to give up, Russell returned to college at age 46 and received his art degree from Sam Houston but by then he was a renowned artist with murals and paintings selling upward of $4,000.

“I was told I would not make it there (TCU Art School and North Texas State).

To me that meant they (the art instructors) would make sure that I didn’t make it there, so I left. To me, I knew I would make it, not just there,” he said. “When I was 13, a private art teacher, Karen, told me I was “damned good” and that stuck with me. That was all I had to remember.”

During his career, he has taken under his wing, the likes of Iola-native impressionistic realist artist June Dudley, and sidewalk artist and well known folk artist Leon Collins. He has taught many students but now it is time to change course.

Art is changing, Russell says, and artists are having to learn how to adapt, he said.

“If you look at the art that we have grown up with,” he says, “The light is meant to shine on it, much like those lights that hang from above,” he gestures hand

Leader

in culture

Russell Cushman at the center of evolving Navasota art hub.

The Navasota Examiner upward as if shining on a piece of imaginary art. However, “today, with technology our eyes are trained to look at light – the art – the light goes right through it. The art, if we want to see it, is instantaneous, much like adding a new screen saver to your computer.”

The demand for art to hang and look at is fading, he sighs as if somewhat resigned to the evolution today’s culture and art are now taking. Youth don’t want their parent’s “junk”.

“There are times I feel like a dinosaur,” he says. “We as artist are having to learn to how to adapt to the Internet. The idea of buying art for mental stimulation is out; we are now on essential overload with everything hitting our senses.”

As a result of the changes, the artists’ best friend, the galleries are also dying. In Houston, there used to be 30-40 galleries, now there might be seven to 10. Russell still has one gallery in San Angelo; it is way out in the middle of nowhere but it is surrounded by the Texas landscape that Russell loves to draw and paint.

During his time, Russell has painted more than 10,000 square feet of murals in the Brazos Valley, including Brenham’s Bluebell’s entrance, as well as numerous works in Texas hospitals. Stelzig’s store in Houston Bush Intercontinental Terminal D featured a larger than life Texas Longhorn sculpture, and other works have been featured in Paradies Shops in Kentucky for Churchill Downs. In Navasota, The largerthan-life status of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in front of Navasota City Hall is one of his as is a life-sized monument to mothers called “Memoire” at Heritage Park in Bryan, Texas. There are also the international award winning welded steel sculpture “Brazos Freedom” at Navasota Texas, and so many more. His BlogSpot is a plethora of wonderful projects and thoughts of Russell Cushman. http://russellcushmanart.blogspot.com/ Russell is not gone, and he certainly is not forgotten, he is just taking his time to do what he wants to do, for example, when one of the galleries closed in Houston he took his paintings and had a oneman show beside the Blues Alley mural where he sold over 28 of his pieces. He posted the event on Facebook and had people from other states and countries, i.e., Turkey, call him about his work. He still does commission work, and when a hospital or corporate calls, he puts brush to canvas. One of his past endeavors that he plans to revive is healing art.

“There has been research on healing art. A lot of the healing process is mental,”

Page 15

he states, “And, I want to be a part of that.

How wonderful it is to help someone get over their pain. The healing, an awareness of God, is a mystical to the healing process.”

Looking pensive again, and brought back to the art decade at hand, Russell believes art “has to go through a baroque period (when art is extravagant).” Hardship is

the seed of creativity, and for now, the youth of today have not experienced it.

The Greatest Generation raised another generation that raised a group that wants “instant gratification.” It is not the end of the world, he softly states, but is the end of the world he knew, and “I wish it were different.”

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The Navasota Examiner

Places

Page 17

Page 18 According to Dr. Andrew Robert Kirkpatrick’s “Brief Historical Sketch of Navasota” dated July 4, 1876, from the time period of 1859 to 1867 all of Navasota’s church denominations met in one building, the “Union School House.” Eventually they would all acquire their own properties and sanctuaries but just as the presence of the railroad was instrumental to the existence or demise of a town, Houston and Central Texas Railroad was instrumental in providing land for almost every denomination built in the 1860s.

•St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 414 E. McAlpine Street traces its origins to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Old Washington in 1844 and is one of three Episcopal churches established in the area organized by St. Paul’s in Old Washington that still exists. The Navasota congregation met monthly in the “old schoolhouse” on land donated by the Houston and Texas Central Railroad and Rev. R.S. Seeley, Rector at St. Paul’s in Old Washington conducted the services. By 1869 Navasota’s The Church of the Holy Comforter was added to the missionary circuit.

In 1870 the red cedar church in Old Washington was physically moved to its new home in growing Navasota – at a cost of $600 – and the diocese gave its consent to change the name to St. Paul’s.

150th Commemorative Edition

By Connie Clements During 1890-1891 church member Ernest Lord was contracted to build a new church that he modeled after an “English village gothic church.” Some of the wainscoting, beams, joists, furniture and benches came from the original red cedar church in Old Washington. There have been some renovations and improvements over the years that

include the addition on a parish hall in 1981 but care has been taken to maintain the “original and beauty of the church.” Rev. Niles Pierce is the current pastor.

•First Baptist Church at 309 Church Street began in 1860 on land donated by the Houston and Central Texas Railroad through the organizational efforts of six men holding

services in the school. By 1864 there were 52 members meeting every 4th Sunday in the Methodist Church but in 1872 a wooden structure was completed and R.E. Baten was hired as the church’s fulltime pastor.

In 1889 the new pastor’s wife, Mrs. J.T. Stanton, designed the plans for the rock church that stands today. Additional amenities were added beginning in 1925 through 1955 that include the two-story annex with a kitchen and a library, stained glass windows, a 600 seat sanctuary and an educational building.

In 1970 a fire destroyed the fellowship hall but the 18 inch thick walls withstood the heat and reconstruction began as soon as possible. Rev. Clyde Larrabee is the current pastor.

First Presbyterian Church at 301 Nolan Street was founded in 1866 primarily by people following the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. Meetings alternated between the Methodist Church and the old school. Church history states a Classical Revival church of native stone was built in 1876 but by 1891 had developed cracks from settling. Rev. William Stuart Red and other congregants supported the idea of a new building. Architect Jesse Youens, carpenters Will Youens and Ernest Lord with rock worker Alexander McFarland were selected to carry out the work of build-

Faith

shapes a city

Railroad gives land for Navasota’s spiritual needs.

The Navasota Examiner ing the new Victorian Revival of High Perpendicular, “the last Gothic style produced,” and incorporating materials from the old church into the new one.

•During the 1900s several pipe organs served the congregation and educational and fellowship facilities were added. A fire in 2002 did considerable damage to the church’s historic sanctuary but the pipe organ, Victorian stained glass windows, original pews and pulpit were spared.

The restoration was completed and celebrated on Palm Sunday 2003. The current pastor is Rev. Barrett Ingram.

•First United Methodist Church at 616 Holland began with services held in the schoolhouse in 1853 and the Rev. T. W. Blake served as pastor through the Civil War years. In 1866 land was deeded to the church by the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, a frame building was erected for worship and named the Robert Alexander Chapel in honor of early Methodist circuit rider, Robert Alexander. It was used by the Presbyterian congregation as well. That building was eventually replaced by a stone building in 1891. In 1912 a brick sanctuary was built and the sanctuary in use today was completed in 1959.The current pastor is Rev. Jeremy Woodley.

•Lee Tabernacle Methodist at 203 Teague. The congregation was founded in 1860 and worshipped with Baptists in shared facilities. In 1876 the Methodists separated from the Baptists and built a church building but constructed their current place of worship in 1896. The congregation honored its pastor, the Rev. Edward Lee by calling the church Lee Tabernacle.

The church is a Gothic Revival and has arched stained-glass windows, a tower entry, double wood paneled doors and a gabled roof. The current pastors of Lee Tabernacle are the Revs.

Anne Zenor and Carolyn Robinson.

•Christ Our Light Catholic Church at 9677 Texas 6 South traces its Catholic roots to the Civil War years and a ministry by

Page 19 the Catholic Diocese of Galveston to Navasota.

•The first St. Patrick’s Catholic Church began in the 1870s on land donated by the Houston and Texas Central Railroad on a site near the current Navasota City Hall. After the 1896 fire that destroyed the church, a second St. Patrick’s Church was built on property purchased in the I.M. Camp survey. The groundwork was laid for a third St. Patrick’s Church in 1946 on two lots on Church Street purchased from the Herbert Youens in an effort to meet the needs of Navasota’s growing Hispanic community.

An Army chapel from Laredo was moved to Navasota and the work began on the third church.

Eventually, the second church was razed and Our Lady of Guadalupe was dedicated in 1958 and renovated in 1982. Now called Christ Our Light Catholic Church, it moved to its present location and the pastor is Father Rodolfo “JoJo” Cal-Ortiz.

•Missionary Camp Baptist Church at 9429 CR 423 was a true prairie church organized in 1880 with its first services being held “in a brush arbor on the Blackshear Place, southwest of Sand Prairie.”

Later a log cabin was constructed on donated land 2 miles from its original location and named Missionary Camp Baptist Church. It was nicknamed Sand Prairie because of its location on a sand bar in the middle of a prairie.

Later a wood frame building was constructed and the church began regular services with a fulltime pastor. In 2003 the congregation moved into their new facilities off Highway 105 West under the leadership of their new pastor, Rev. James Mable.

•Iglesia Bautista de Navasota at 9970 Texas 6 South was established in 1919 and was a mission of Navasota’s First Baptist Church from 1934 to 1995. It is an independent church with a Baptist doctrine. The church incorporated in 2008 and built a new sanctuary in 2014. The church’s current pastor is the Rev. Jose Maldonado.

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Page 20

150th Commemorative Edition

By Connie Clements

The end of the Civil War marked the beginning of education for AfricanAmericans in Navasota when the Rev. J.J. Reinhard, a white man from Virginia, founded the Navasota Colored School in 1865. Later renamed the George Washington Carver High School, it is remembered with affection by generations of alumni as “the Carver School.”

Former students have honored the school’s motto, “Carver Spirit Will Never Die” by preserving Carver history and through an active alumni association that has provided $230,701 in scholarships since its inception in 1995.

Putting down roots The Navasota Colored School held its first classes in Gibb’s store in downtown Navasota and the Lee Tabernacle Methodist Church on LaSalle. Students paid $1 to attend, 25 cents for a spelling book and could enroll at age eight. The 1870s showed promise with the hiring of Chicago professor James Washington as principal and Navasota resident Malcolm Camp’s donation of land on LaSalle Street for a permanent site.

A frame school house was built in 1875 for which the State Board of Education provided maintenance funds when the school adopted a constitution in 1876.

A school in transition The Navasota Colored School had numerous principals until 1918 when W.E. Jones was hired but each one left their mark. Some shepherded the school through fires and rebuilding while others added faculty as enrollment increased.

One led the Navasota Colored School to become a graded school and added algebra to the curriculum.

The year 1910 was especially eventful when the frame school burned to the ground again. Classes continued at Truevine and Friendship Baptist Churches and the Odd Fellows Hall until a new brick building complete with a library was erected on the same site. Enrollment increased, as did teaching staff now totaling 16 and the school’s first baccalaureate program was held that year.

Growth continues During the 19-year tenure of W.E. Jones, the school developed a reputation for its skilled debating team. In 1928 the Rosenwald Foundation donated $1,000 which funded a four-room building to house the Home Economics and Manual Training departments. In 1929 administration obtained state and federal funding for the home economics teacher’s salary.

The Navasota Colored School entered a period of growth in 1937 with the addition of Negro History to the curriculum.

Tennis was introduced along with construction of a tennis court. In 1940 the first band was organized, a cafeteria was built and stocked with dishes and flatware from people in the community and Dr. E. T. Ketchum donated for a playground.

What’s in a name?

The school took on a new identity in May 1942 as the result of a contest essay written by student Katherine Tapscott Jones entitled “Why Navasota Colored School Should Be Named George Washington Carver High School.” Tapscott’s essay won and the school’s name was officially changed a few years later from Navasota Colored School to George Washington Carver High School.

Leaps and bounds History provided in the Carver alumni program states that the school “grew by leaps and bounds” under Professor J.H. Payne in 1947.

It reads, “There were eight buses transporting students to the school daily.

A new auditorium-gymnasium was built.

The old elementary school was renovated. A new high school was built with facilities for a science laboratory, a library, a typing room and fully equipped lunch room. Stewart Field was purchased for outdoor sports. New audio visual equipment was purchased. Carver became a

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The Navasota Examiner four-year accredited high school with an updated curriculum which met the state guidelines.”

Unparalleled growth occurred from 1947 through 1955 with the consolidation of 12 community schools into the Navasota Independent School District. This tripled student enrollment at Carver bringing the student population to 1,000 and increasing faculty as well. Carver’s staff now consisted of 33 teachers, four vocational teachers, one visiting teacher, three elementary principals, one high school principal and one supervisor.

But the icing on the cake was the Carver Wildcat win to become the 1959 Class 2A State Basketball Champions beating Amarillo 66-58!

A new era In 1966 with the Supreme Court ruling that “the doc-

Page 21 trine of separate but equal was unconstitutional,” Carver was nearing the end of its days. Desegregation was introduced at the high school level.

Carver held its last graduation in May 1968 and in September Navasota High School opened as a desegregated school.

Carver continued to serve grades one through eight until it officially closed in 1970.

The building, opening as “Navasota Junior High School,” housed grades seven and eight through Nov.1974 when it closed. Various community agencies used the building until 1996 when it reopened as the Carver Learning Center for Alternative Education.

A legacy Service has been a byproduct of a Carver education.

Debater Thomas Cole became president of Wiley College.

John Galvan became one of

Dorelia “Mama” Jarvis and Mrs. Melvia Wrenn Mitchell wrote the words and music for the Carver alma mater. The second stanza captures the Carver spirit.

“When from thee we’ve gone away, May we strive for thee each day, Make us brave and true and strong, Evermore to battle on.”

America’s Buffalo Soldiers.

Celestine Hatchett, a champion of tennis and female athletics was inducted in the Lubbock ISD Hall of Fame in 2015 Mildred Edwards was the first black woman to serve as mayor pro tem on the Navasota city council – just to name a few.

In the mid1950s, Mrs.

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Page 22

150th Commemorative Edition

By Connie Clements

While most of us prefer to avoid the topic of cemeteries on a personal level, there is something about rural and small town cemeteries that draws us to them. Is it the peace and tranquility that allows you to hear your own thoughts or to hear an acorn drop? Is it the restful shade of low hanging oaks? Or is it a respect for history and the thousands of life stories that went untold to the grave with their owners?

Navasota’s Oakland Cemetery is all of that.

Coming together Oakland’s history reveals a melding of three cemeteries and three cultures. The earliest recorded burial was in 1840 with the death of William Washington Gant who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto and then served as a congressman to the Republic of Texas. What is now called Section A reflects the white European influence of its occupants with obelisks, monuments adorned with angels, or symbols of the deceased’s occupation or religious beliefs - typical of the Victorian 1800s.

Preceding Oakland, however, was Rest Haven, the burial ground for AfricanAmericans. Rest Haven had a separate entrance and a barbed wire fence that separated it from Oakland but just as desegregation brought down walls that separated the living, the fence that separated the

dead came down as well. Cemetery Hill, as some locals called it, is now Section D and a lot of information was lost with the 2002 death of Jones Funeral Home operator, Lonnie Turner. Turner is said to have maintained a map with burial dates and names on the back of a closet door in his office and he knew who owned each grave space and who the heirs were. Restoration is on-going in Section D but perhaps the most famous of those buried there is songster Mance Lipscomb remembered for his parables and his music.

The third cemetery that comprises present day Oakland contained the graves of Navasota’s Jewish population who, in 1874, formed their own cemetery called Rest Ever. According to the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, while only a few Jews lived in Navasota before the Civil War, it is estimated that 80 resided there by 1876. A chain link fence serves as the boundaries for the 90 graves of Navasota’s Jewish population. Honoring the deceased in the mitzvah tradition, visitors may take a stone from the urn inside the gate and place it on the grave. The names of businessmen like Bookman, Chinski, and Templeman etched on headstones are also found on building facades in Navasota’s central business district.

Patriotism is not defined by race or ethnicity and the graves of military men and women who served in the Texas Revolu-

Rest

tion, the Civil War, Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, Korean War, Viet Nam Conflict, Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield, the Iraqi War and War in Afghanistan found throughout Oakland bear witness to that.

City maintained The deadly yellow fever epidemic of 1867 took 176 lives between August and November resulting in hurried burials in a mass unmarked grave in the cemetery. This prompted the formation of the privately owned Oakland Cemetery Association followed by the Women’s Cemetery Association at an undetermined date. On June 23, 1954, the City of Navasota acquired the cemetery from both organizations. Finally, a resolution certified by Grimes County clerk Trinston Harris Aug. 11, 1975, gave the city responsibility for the entire 32.02 acres when five descendents paid $4,000 to the City of Navasota for a fund to “provide perpetual care to the Jewish cemetery.” The resolution cited the “great threat that in future years, the cemetery will not be maintained and cared for due to the fact that few of the family members still reside in this city.”

Also located within Oakland Cemetery are two pauper sections and, for the most innocent among us, Baby Land with 46 infant graves - the earliest documented in 1988.

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In 2015 Eagle Scout Raymond David Wood of Troop 249 designed and constructed a map of Oakland detailing the

Page 23 sections and roads. The legend was installed at the entrance and is visible to visitors from their car.

The historic Oakland Cemetery is a time capsule of Navasota history and the city and community honor that history through its efforts to care for the 11,965 graves of those who rest there.

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The Navasota Examiner

Page 27

Things

Page 28

150th Commemorative Edition By niCole sHupe

Editor’s note: The original story was found in the Examiner-Review archives. The author is unknown.

There aren’t many people in the area that can’t name at least one battleship or aircraft carrier commissioned by the United States Navy, but how many know that there was once a USS Navasota AO-106 in the country’s fleet?

“The Nasty Nav was basically a floating gas can,” said Daniel Morris. “She was a real workhorse.”

Morris was one of the many men who served aboard the USS Navasota from September 1968 to 1969, referring to the old girl as “Nasty Nav” or “Cell Block 106.” At that time the USS Navasota was servicing the fleets in the waters off Vietnam, but she had a long and interesting career from the time she set float in 1945 to her decommission date in 1992.

The following is an article that was found in the Examiner-Review archives.

The document gives no indication as to the publication date or author, but is before the time frame when Morris would have been making his 21-day trans-Pacific crossing in rough seas to the shores of East Asia.

Just as rivers in the United States give our people water for survival, today one of their namesakes, USS Navasota, supplies the Pacific Fleet with fuel to operate – to provide U.S. seapower in the vast Pacific area.

USS NAVASOTA (AO-106), the “Pride of the Pacific Fleet Oilers,” is named after a river in East Texas. The name is Spanish, meaning “Nativity of DeSoto” the explorer. Commis-

sioned in 1946, Navasota has been in continuous service, and saw action during the Korean conflict.

She has completed 13 tours of duty with the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Far East, refueling ships underway at sea, in pre-arranged schedules. Navasota has a never-ending job, in peace or war, for fuel is “life blood” of diesel and steam engines, and the jet turbines of our aircraft.

Her aim is to assist in making Pacific Fleet combat ships and aircraft mobile and free land bases. Operating from fuel depots on U.S. bases, Navasota “tops off ” before joining U.S. Task Forces wherever they may be, off the coast of Asia or American shores.

At strategic rendezvous she replenishes aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and other types of ships enabling them to accomplish their mission without weakening U.S. defensive forces by having them return to port for fuel.

Of the more than 400 ships and 300 aircraft in the Pacific Fleet, 23 are fleet oilers and gasoline tankers. The necessity for refueling at sea while underway in World War II resulted in developing a science requiring many tricks of the nautical trade. Its techniques are still being refined to match the needs of the modern fleet.

For the U.S. Navy, the idea goes back to the 19th Century. In 1899, the collier USS Marcellus, under tow, shifted coal to the battleship USS Massachusetts. So began an astern-refueling method in use until coal disappeared from U.S. ships.

Now an along-side method is used. A receiving ship and fleet oiler steaming side by side, are linked by flexible hoses, and fuel is pumped from the oiler to her customers.

Within a hundred feet of each other, the ships maneuver. Too close, they may collide; too far apart, they may break houses and spout oil over each other or into the sea. Between ships the sea

boils and ocean currents ship – similar to the waters of the river Navasota is named for, but on an immense scale.

When fleet operators require it, Navasota refuels two ships simultaneously one on either side.

There are times when the whole crew labors from pre-dawn well into the night, refueling ship after ship in order that a task force can operate at top strength.

Naval special fuel oil and diesel fuel are transferred to all types of ships, while in addition aircraft carriers take on jet fuel and aviation gasoline to keep their aircraft in the air.

Navasota is 553 feet long, 75 feet wide and three stories high below the water line. She can carry over 6 million gallons or 142,500 barrels of fuel.

Her armament consists of four 3-inch guns, located near the stern and bow of the ship, on the port and starboard sides. The crew is fed cafeteria style in a modern mess hall, and for entertainment they enjoy the ship’s library, lounge and movies.

Like all larger ships, she has a barbershop, laundry, carpenter shop, machine shop, refrigeration plant, bakery, hospital, post office, arsenal, four galleys, a ship’s store and a radio center. Living conditions aboard are as comfortable as possible for the crew, because they spend long periods of time at sea in order to be ready at all times to refuel other ships.

On any given day Navasota may refuel an attack aircraft carrier striking force, a “hunterkiller” antisubmarine group, an amphibious task force, or any group formed for a specific mission.

The Navasota and other fleet oilers have the same overall mission of keeping the Pacific Fleet ready and on the spot if trouble comes. As a member of the Seventh Fleet operating in Western Pacific waters, she is an important partner in enabling Fleet units to carry out their proud motto.

Defend

Navasota’s namesake

City’s namesake helps fuel the war in the Pacific Theater.

The Navasota Examiner

Page 29

Seventh Fleet: “Ready Power for Peace.”

We know from the stories told by Morris when he visited the VFW Post 4006 to donate USS Navasota memorabilia that the ship underwent “jumboization” between 1964 and

1965. According to records, she was cut in two separate places and elongated to 644 feet.

She was assigned to the Occupation and China service in the Far East and served continuously during the Korean War

and the Vietnam War. The Navasota earned nine battle stars in Korea and 14 campaign stars in Vietnam before being decommissioned and transferred to the Military Sealift Command in 1975 and renamed the USNS Navasota.

The USS Navasota ended her long career in 1992 when she was removed from duty and sold as scrap metal.

The memorabilia items donated by Morris can be viewed in the military museum inside VFW Post 4006 in Navasota.

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Page 30

150th Commemorative Edition By niCole sHupe

The people of Navasota love music. A town doesn’t receive the moniker of Blues Capital of Texas by being apathetic towards the fine arts. More importantly, a town doesn’t start a nationwide trend in music that continues for almost a century by turning a deaf ear on composers and musicians.

From the earliest days of the town’s inception the citizens of Navasota have embraced the arts. Whether painting, sculpting, singing or composing, Navasota has produced some of the finest musicians and artists in the country and wherever there are great musicians, there are also great appreciators of their music.

In 1875 P.A. Smith built an opera house on Tenth Street that, while siphoning money from his own wallet, brought enjoyment to the town’s citizens. Many other saloons, dance halls and music venues would emerge and fade away as Navasota went through her growing pains, but the appreciation for music would continue.

First Music Club In 1899, Mrs. Laura Blackshear was teaching music in Navasota. She had many friends in the town who were equally accomplished musicians, “excelling either in piano or voice or violin” and they formed The Navasota Club.

The Navasota Club was part of the Derthick Music Club movement that had been started by a well-known musician from Chicago, Wilber Derthick. The clubs would meet on a regular basis with members paying a fee of $5.

According to historical records, the meetings would include lessons on the literary history of composers and their

works. The members would then play games about what they had learned for the chance to win a “booklet of the characterization of the composer studied.”

The Derthick Club continued nationally until 2014, but in Navasota Mrs. Blackshear’s daughter, Ira, and her counterparts would develop a different club.

The Music Study Club of Navasota Whether wishing to break away from her mother’s club or due to some other unknown reason, Miss Ira Blackshear joined fellow Navasota musicians in 1912 to form The Music Study Club of Navasota.

The charter members of the Music Study Club of Navasota included Margaret Baylor, Ira Blackshear, Mrs. S.J. Emory, Bettina Jacobs, Mrs. H.H. Knox, Clara Lang, Frances Leake, Mrs. Burns Pedigo, Mrs. J.H. Powell, Mrs. W.S. Stubblefield, and Bessie Youens.

“These women were all highly educated in the musical arts,” said the club’s current co-president Carol Gessner. “They went to very elite schools and were accomplished performing musicians.”

In 1915 the club joined the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Texas Federation of Music Clubs. The members of the Navasota club decided in 1920 to host Music Week, so that the entire community to be introduced to and appreciate fine music. It took another four years for the National Federation of Music Clubs to declare the first week of May as National Music Week.

Play

Promoting music in Navasota For 104 years, the Music Study Club of

Navasota has worked tirelessly to promote the fine arts in the city of Navasota.

“It is not just music that we support,” said current co-president Marilyn Bettes.

“It is also dance and the way it relates to music.”

The club has paid special attention over the past century to keep the magic of music alive in the public school system. In 1952 the group raised money to buy a concert Steinway Grand piano for the “new High School Auditorium” that is now called Brule Auditorium.

True to the club’s appreciation of music, they did not raise funds through a bake sale. No, the Music Study Club of Navasota hosted a “truly history making occasion.”

“When have any of us heard as many as two hundred pianists performing on one program? … When have you seen ten pianos being played at one time on the stage?” reads the printed copy of the master of ceremonies’ speech from that night.

Where the Steinway Grand piano now resides, there were 10 pianos donated by Mr. Stuart and the Kimball Piano Company for simultaneous playing by some of Navasota’s most talented young pianists.

Through the annual presentation of the Jane Lott Music Scholarship, the numerous programs and donations throughout the year and during National Music Week, the Music Study Club of Navasota continues to do what they have done for more than a century – “promoting the love and appreciation of good music in the community.”

A legacy of sound

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Page 32

150th Commemorative Edition By niCole sHupe

In his novel, The Hamlet, William Faulkner wrote, “The cotton was open and spilling into the fields: the very air smelled of it.”

The late American author may have been setting the stage for a fictional Mississippi family, but his words could easily have been used for the growth of Navasota. While the train industry brought people and goods into town, the iron horse was instrumental in exporting the bales of cotton and barrels of cottonseed oil that the families of Navasota produced.

“Bursting bolls like piles in surf ” The city’s first citizen, Judge James Nolan, planted the first 15 acres of cultivated cotton in 1858. From there, families like the Moores and Schumachers would build an industry that would help propel Texas into the highest producer of cotton in the United States.

“What wasn’t trees was cotton, it is just the way it was then.,” said the current patriarch of the Moore family, Thomas. “We have always been cotton farmers, we have grown some corn or other things like soy and sorghum, but cotton that is the way it was for a long time.”

The Moore family has been farming the banks of the Brazos River for over 150 years. After the Battle of San Jacinto, Robert Moore knew that the fertile lands of the Brazos Valley would help provide for his family. After five generations of raising Navasota sons, the family is still working the land by growing cotton, corn and cattle.

“It’s been good working the land here, we don’t have any complaints. Navasota is

a good place to grow up,” said Moore.

According to Thomas, reaping cotton in Navasota used the labor of many different people, including the “German prisoners of war during World War II, which were held in a POW camp in the area.”

With Texas currently producing more than 25 percent of the entire U.S. crop, the work is just as hard as it was when Nolan first placed his plow to the ground and requires all hands on deck.

Waste not, want not There have always been uses for cotton fiber. Shirts, pants, blankets and a host of other products can be used once the seeds and fiber are separated. But what do you do with the seeds?

Henry Schumacher, an immigrant from Germany, was the proprietor of a handful of businesses in Navasota in 1875. Two of these were a cotton gin and a gristmill that was run by a small engine. Schumacher decided to place the cottonseed on the mill and was quickly producing more than “1300 barrels of cottonseed oil and several tons of oil cake.”

“This is one of the first cottonseed oil mills west of the Mississippi River, and at the time it was constructed it was one of the first four or five in the United States,” reported the Navasota Examiner and Grimes County Review on May 3, 1979.

The crushing of the cottonseed left Schumacher with hulls or “cake” that was considered to be of little value, except for the occasional use of fuel. Having nothing to lose and with tons of crushed hull on his hands, Schumacher experimented with a pair of oxen to see if the waste could be

used for livestock feed. It didn’t take long for the man to learn that oxen loved cottonseed hulls as much as ladies loved cottonseed oil soap and a new business venture was born.

The H. Schumacher Oil Works continued to crush cottonseed and make products from the oil until 1954, when they changed over to a cotton warehouse.

Raining cotton?

Cotton is just one of the many industries that has helped make Navasota an industrial center. But the “fabric of our lives” became part of Navasota folklore shortly after the end of the Confederate War. According to Dr. Andrew Robert Kilpatrick, who wrote a Brief Historical Sketch of Navasota in 1876, returning soldiers were so disgruntled with the outcome of the war that they raided a warehouse storing cotton, supplies and munitions. The soldiers took what they could carry and laid waste to the rest before “a soldier put fire in a shell and rolled it towards the warehouse over the scattered powder.”

“Bales of cotton in the house were blown fully 300 feet high and some fell by Mrs. Ackerman’s, some where Mr. Joe Holly lives and some where Camp’s rock house is,” wrote Kilpatrick.

It may no longer rain cotton in Navasota, but citizens new and old are still reaping the benefits of a city built on the backbone of a strong agricultural identity.

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The Navasota Examiner

Page 33

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Page 34

150th Commemorative Edition

The Navasota Examiner

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Page 36

150th Commemorative Edition By niCole sHupe

“Navasota would never have graced the maps, the gazetteers, or these pages, but for the life giving power of the Central Railroad,” wrote Dr. Andrew Kilpatrick in his Brief Historical Sketch of Navasota in 1876.

A decision that would change a region Over 100 years ago the citizens of Anderson told the surveyors of the H&TC Railroad that they were morally and fiscally opposed to the railroad coming through their fine city. Local lore says that Anderson citizens told the railroad officials that they “did not propose to have any ripping snorting monster disturb” their way of life.

What would become Anderson's loss became a boon for the citizens of Navasota.

The Houston and Texas Central Railroad proceeded to build a line in the direction of Navasota and the first engine hauled a line of empty flat cars to the city in September 1859. According to records, those flat cars were filled with people who had been picked up in Houston and Hempstead ready to start a new life in a new town.

“The usual scenes of bustle and activity witnessed of every terminus of railroads was seen here then,” wrote Kilpatrick.

Railroad builds more than tracks Late in 1862 the railroad company decided that communication was key to the success of the new town and began to implement the new systems devel-

oped by Samuel Morse and other inventors just a few decades earlier.

“The telegraph poles and wires were put up for the railroad company and for the Government by D.P. Shepherd and reached Navasota late in 1862,” wrote Kilpatrick.

The company had already built a railroad depot in late 1859 and 1860 with Colonel Nat Fuller assuming the post of agent. In addition, the railroad was instrumental in bringing settlers to the area that would be vital to the continuing growth and prosperity of Navasota.

“The town lots and streets were laid off for the Railroad Company by an engineer and surveyor named W.E. Wood … The lots were sold soon after they were surveyed,” said Kilpatrick.

Lumber for buildings was scarce in the Navasota and Brazos River area. It wasn’t until the railroad was able to tap into the East Texas piney woods lumber industry that the citizens of Navasota began to move their stores and homes from tents to more permanent structures.

Navasota goes whole hog on trade Navasota soon became a bustling trade town. Shops and businesses boomed while three separate railroads vied for the best routes through the region: the Houston and Texas Central, the Illinois and Great Northern and the Santa Fe. “At one time in 1860, the glut of freight at the depot, and in and under and around the platform, and Clough and Bonner’s Warehouse was so great

that the platform broke down, with a tremendous crash, destroying boxes, crates, barrels, hogsheads and sacks, mingling their contents in one vast mass of incongruous waste and destruction,” remembered Kilpatrick.

The contents of the food and drink barrels mingled around the platform and, according to Kilpatrick, over 300 local hogs were able to partake of the city’s trade bounty.

Train Town, USA The railroad companies continued to pump funds and trade through the tracks of Navasota over the next 150 years. The Union Pacific arrived in 1902 and Mayor Charles Stewart declared a holiday when the first train left for Madisonville.

Being a railroad town that survived on agriculture, there were many times when the streets of Navasota were shut down to load rail cars with cotton or livestock. Today, visitors and traffic can view the life-giving trains as they travel parallel to Railroad Street throughout the day.

In April 2010, the Union Pacific Railroad dubbed the city of Navasota as Train Town, USA. One of only three such towns throughout the state of Texas, Navasota is proud to acknowledge the iron horses that plowed through town cultivating a 150 year history.

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Page 38

150th Commemorative Edition By niCole sHupe

The city of Navasota would look much different on Friday nights if the original colors of the Navasota school system had stayed in the traditional orange and black.

As with all things, however, change is often necessary.

School before NISD Time and time again history shows that the Navasota was built from the generous hearts of its citizens. If it were not for the donation of four acres of land by Dickson D. Greer and Jackson M. Duke in 1853, the students of Navasota would have had to stay in the log house in Greer’s crop fields, taught by a single teacher. Instead a small wooden schoolhouse, The Union School, was built on the land along Washington Avenue.

Growth required the building of a larger building and the trustees sold a portion of the original four acres. This revenue was added to a “generous donation” given to the trustees by Captain D.D. Atchinson, for whom the new school building was named in 1872.

Free public school systems were not yet in existence, although the Texas Legislature had authorized local school districts to be established in 1854, and the Atchinson Institute was run largely on tuition paid by the students.

In 1876 Dr. Andrew Kirkpatrick wrote in his Brief Historical Sketch of Navasota regarding the public school system, “In 1866 James P. Pye, who had been long engaged in teaching in Anderson, moved to Navasota and carried on a school in a house of his own, teaching boys and girls in all branches. He afterwards undertook

the public free school, but owing to the no payment of dues by the public functionaries, he was compelled to quit teaching.”

The Atchinson Institute continued for many years both as an institution of its own and later as a building to house the Navasota High School. The first high school class of Navasota graduated in 1888 with seven students.

Navasota ISD is formed According to the historical records, the very first Navasota School Board meeting was held in May of 1899, but it was not until October 1947 that NISD became an independent school district.

As local common districts were annexed by Navasota, including Allenfarm, Millican and Terrell, the district began to grow and new buildings were needed. A “magnificent new High School, modern to the last detail” had been finished and opened to the public in 1930 thanks to the “hardwork of City Engineer and City Manager Joe Brule.” Just two years after becoming a district, NISD was in need of a new elementary school. Facing Brosig Avenue and completed in 1949, the elementary school now bears Brule’s name as a testament to what he achieved for the city and for the district. The Atchinson Institute was demolished after the completion of the new elementary school, ending its 79 years of housing the students of Navasota.

As the Civil Rights Movement continued throughout the country, the Navasota Independent School District implemented a Freedom of Choice plan in 1964. The first year of the plan incorporated grades

first through third; the second year included grades fourth through sixth; the seventh through ninth grades were integrated by the third year; and the high school was completely within the plan by the end of the 1967-68 school year.

The Carver High School, which had been the school dedicated to AfricanAmerican students was closed and converted into a junior high school campus.

Current campus sites and numbers From those original seven graduates of Navasota High School in 1888, the NISD system has grown to include 3,078 students in grades from early education to twelfth.

After a redistribution of classes before the 2015-16 school year, the elementary students are housed in three separate schools: Brule Elementary, High Point Elementary and John C. Webb Elementary.

The district has one junior high campus that shares land with the Navasota High School.

In addition, there is one alternative learning high school, the W.B. Bizzell Academy, named after a superintendent who served within the Navasota School System in 1910.

As the city of Navasota continues to grow, so, too, will its school system. The NISD mission statement states, “With stability from the past and a vision for the future, students are prepared to excel in a progressive and changing world.” With over 150 years of history standing behind them, these students can proudly proclaim WE ARE NAVASOTA.

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Page 40

150th Commemorative Edition

By Carol Herrington

Born out of love for culture, family and the dance, Navasota’s Folkloric CHISPAS – Coalition for Hispanic Society, enjoyed five years of celebrating Navasota’s rich diverse culture.

Founded in 1992 by Earnest Zaragoza for his then-Navasota High School Senior son, Frank, and his friends. The CHISPAS was an outlet for remembering and honoring their Hispanic heritage through dance and music, while emphasizing education and academic achievement through scholarships. Pauline Cervantes, who began in the Navasota Independent School District as a bilingual instructional aide, was also active with CHISPAS as their reporter. She remember the fun and the spark of life it brought to the community. Now retired from Navasota Independent School District as the secretary/attendance clerk at High Point Elementary Cervantes, said some of her students still stay in touch and still talk about the festivities.

“My brother-in-law, Earnest, started it,” said Cervantes, adding Earnest is married to her younger sister, Yolanda.

“I used to be a dancer in my younger years. I remembered many of the dances from Mexico, so we added what we remembered and made up the other steps.

This was family – we started with family and we taught the dances. It looked good and everyone enjoyed it.”

The Hispanic culture has been strong in Navasota adding to the vibrancy of life in this small rural community. Cer-

vantes said she remembers as a small child of 8 years, there was a Folklorico group and place of gathering on LaSalle, where musicians and local talent would gather and celebrate their heritage. Back then it was a small stage in the open in front of a small store, she said, noting her older sisters also sang at the events.

When CHISPAS was started, it was more than for enjoyment, she said, “we wanted the kids to get involved in their culture.” Cervantes’ grandparents were from Mexico but they immigrated to the United States; Cervantes was born in Millican. Back in the day, she recalls, the family picked cotton on the Moore’s land, and they bought their supplies from the Moore general store. Pay ranged from .50 cents to .75 cents per day. Cervantes’ mother decided it was time for the family to make more money and moved them into town; where, they also became migrant workers, traveling to Michigan during the peak seasons.

“We picked onion, mint, strawberries, cherries and I don’t know how many types of apples. That is where I met my husband. We worked hard during the week, and went to church on Sunday – the only place to meet boys,” she admits shyly. “Michigan had lakes and we went swimming. On Saturdays we would go to the carnivals and we would meet in a large place and dance.”

Between the pages of the album she has maintained from those times long ago, Cervantes points to a color picture

of a Michigan church she attended on Sundays, and the meeting hall where the festivities were held on weekends.

Benches lined the wall, she recalled, and one night in particular she met a new friend; she could sing, and did sing locally at the festivities. It was at the Saturday night gatherings, where many of the dances were taught and learned.

That became the foundation for the formation of the Navasota Folklorico, CHISPAS in later years.

“The schools were good at letting us perform,” Cervantes, said while pouring over many of the pictures in her large album. “I practiced with the kids one hour every day. They loved it! We would practice in the gym. I made many of the dresses the girls wore.”

Cervantes had helpers with the dances, Francis Zaragoza, Yolanda Zaragoza, Rita Austin, Blanche Bernal (who later became CHISPAS president) and Maria Almanza.

“I had 5 girls, and I spent several hours a day teaching them English, while they also taught me Spanish (there are more than 17 dialects of Spanish in Mexico) and helped me with the dances.

They also became my dancers,” Cervantes said, adding. “I knew the parents and I was involved with the school. I asked the parents and they said yes. Because I worked in the school system, and because of the parent involvement, I was able to get students involved in CHISPAS.” The CHISPAS organization, which

Friends

from afar

Hispanic culture intertwined in Navasota’s rich history.

The Navasota Examiner

Page 41

ended as a club five to six years later, performed at many local Navasota events, including Cinco de Mayo and the now defunct Navasota Nostalgia Days.

The group’s first Christmas float in the Chamber of Commerce Christmas parade won first place, and won first-place again the following year. The float featured riders dressed in traditional Mexican costumes, as well as a depiction of Hispanic children breaking a star-shaped piñata filled with Christmas candy and presents, according the 1992 Navasota Examiner article. The second year, Santa’s float was powered by his “reindeer” who were donkeys.

During the four years of activities, many young women and men participated in the cultural dances and music.

There was Fiesta Patrias, Christmas celebrations and giving back to the community such as the CHISPAS’ spreading of cheer to the elderly in Navasota, and

special events during Navasota Nastalgia days, i.e., CHISPAS’ Little Mexico. Other events included outings to Houston to attend forums, one of which “reminded” Zaragoza of his great-grandfather General Ignacio Zaragoza. It was his great-grandfather’s major victory in a battle against the French that resulted in Cinco de Mayo.

“We had fund raisers, and the young girl who raised the most money was crowned queen,” as evidenced by the many pictures on the album, she points to several distinguished young ladies in the book. “We gave two $500 scholarships the first year, and as we made more money we increased it to $1,000 scholarships.”

The first year, six young women from Navasota competed for the title of queen: Beverly Anzaldua, Noey Castillo, Stacey Lynn Bernal, Valerie Ostiguin, Candy Munoz, and Melanie Martinez.

That year Valerie Ostiguin was crowned queen. The group raised more than $12,000 gross from the queen’s coronation and dance in 1993. The queen raised $8,695 toward the scholarships, according to the Navasota Examiner. In 1994 competing for queen were locals Andrea Anjelica Flores, Melinda Jean Pimental, Kathy Johnson, Monica Christina Vega and Jessica Castillo. Monica Christina Vega was crowned queen.

“We used to perform in what was Cedar Park (LaSalle and Washington St. – now Mance Lipscomb Park), but the insurance that the City required was too expensive and we had to stop and that was when we disbanded,” Cervantes’ sighs, remembering the many dances held in the park. “The CHISPAS are still around at Prairie View A&M University, and the Folklorico dancers in Bryan still come down sometimes for events, like at the church, recently.”

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Page 44

150th Commemorative Edition

By Connie Clements

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was just one segment, and one of the largest of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal public works programs.

Established May 6, 1935, its purpose was to increase employment and reduce relief rolls following the Great Depression.

According to Britannica, before the WPA’s termination June 30, 1943, due to the rise in employment from a wartime economy, the WPA had added or improved 800 airports, 8,000 parks, 16,000 miles of new water lines, 125,000 public buildings, 650,000 miles of new or improved roads and employed 8.5 million people across America at a cost of $11 billion.

No funding guarantee Despite the needs across the country, funding was not guaranteed. To start the ball rolling, city and county officials assessed their needs and the number of unemployed in their area.

According to The Living New Deal, a UCLA organization that documents WPA data nationwide, “Proposals were sent to a WPA state office for vetting before being forwarded to headquarters in Washington, D.C., and finally to the president for final approval.” In addition, the project could be rejected at any step in the process and local communities had to provide about 12-25 percent to “trigger federal funding of WPA projects.”

Texas peaks 1936 How did Texas fare in the quest for WPA dollars? According to the Texas State Historical Association, WPA projects pro-

vided 600,000 Texans a means to support themselves and their families. The program was gender and colorblind. Texas men and women from all races earned wages that ranged from $45 to $75 per month and at its peak in February 1936, 120,000 were employed in Texas.

Brule – “a genius” Locally, fighting for Navasota’s share of the WPA dollar was engineer and city manager R.J Brule. “Images of America – Navasota” by Robin Montgomery and Joy Montgomery, described Brule as “a man of solid accomplishments and reputation.”

Brule is credited with securing the funding

for the area’s unemployed to build the city’s municipal swimming pool, the flagstone football field and stadium as well as a sewer system, several bridges and extensive work on the bridge over Cedar Creek.

Projects were designed by Brule and used the area’s natural resources.

In a Navasota Examiner article April 13, 2011, former city councilman, artist and sculptor Russell Cushman said, “Mr. Brule served as city manager for about 13 years and was a genius at getting grants during the WPA. Mr. Brule was a genius at using natural resources to make what the city needed. Navasota has no idea how much we owe him.”

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150th Commemorative Edition

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Associated with Tire Pros, an elite family of independent tire dealers across the country, Jarvis Tire is committed to the local community.

The company is active in various nonprofit organizations in Navasota and Grimes County, including being a faithful sponsor of the Grimes County Fair.

Owner Jody Jarvis decided to become part of the Tire Pros network so that his company could offer Grimes County all of the benefits of a franchise, but still maintain the independence of a small town business. The association among dealers allows for Jarvis Tire Pros to offer the rebates and exclusive offers that may not be available to independent tire merchants.

“As part of the franchise tag, we are able to offer nationwide road hazard and separate nationwide roadside assistance,” said Jarvis.

“There are over 30,000 locations that honor the Tire Pros road hazard.”

Jarvis Tire Pros are dealers for BridgestoneFirestone, Michelin and Goodyear. In addition, they are the exclusive Hercules Tire dealer in the area.

“We are the only shop in the area that can offer the Laser Hawk tire alignment machine and road force balancing services,” said Jarvis.

Jarvis Tire moved to their current location at 1120 North LaSalle St. in Navasota in 2011, but their needs have already begun to outstrip their size.

The company just recently purchased the 17 acres behind the building and hopes to hire more employees and witness more growth in the coming months and years.

“Expansion is key,” said Jarvis. “We have had tremendous growth in just the past 6 to 7 years; one day we hope to have new locations spread across Texas.”

For now the professionals at Jarvis Tire Pros will continue to offer monthly specials to their local customers.

“We try to have a different special each month,” said Jarvis. Jarvis Tire Pros has become well known for their spur of the moment specials.

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