 Dallas County Pioneer Association – Founded 1875, Reorganized 1979. P O Box 12496, Dallas TX 75225 972-260-9334 dcpa1875@gmail.com From the President  Greetings All, Here’s hoping all of you are well and safe. I was without electricity a lot of hours over several days. I hope your luck was better. As you probably saw in an earlier email, we will not be having the March meeting in an effort to maintain vigilance and keep everyone safe from COVID-19. We plan to hold the June meeting currently. I hope you were able to get both shots if you felt the need. Please remember to pay your 2021 dues and 2020 dues if you did not pay them. Send them to DCPA at P O Box 12496 Dallas TX 75225. $20 for an individual and $30 for a couple. Please make sure and read the emails we are sending as we are trying to hold events other than the meetings especially at cemeteries. If you would like to see some beautiful photos and video check out: Friends of Oakland Cemetery on Facebook: Here is a great video: Click Here Louis Moore is working on getting our first book PROUD HERITAGE reprinted. It will be great to have it back in print. We have plenty of Vol. 2 & 3. They make great gifts!“May God be with us till we meet again”,Jim Bookhout, President From the Vice President  Greetings to our Dallas County Pioneer Association members, I pray our newsletter finds everyone safe and warm. This week’s weather and resulting power outages reminds me, and I’m sure a majority of our readers, of the 1978-79 ice storm. I lived in Merriman Park at the time and we were without power for 5 days, if my memory is correct. It was a miserable experience and we were fortunate enough to have a gas water heater to which we hooked a water hose and snaked that hose through the living room and into the sink, and we probably stayed warmer than most people with that hot hose kept near us. This week’s weather was even colder than that storm 42 years ago but once again we are forcibly reminded of how easy our lives are in this modern age. We take heat and air conditioning, free flowing water, and all of the conveniences of electricity for granted. . .until we lose it. The hardships imposed on our pioneer ancestors by such a drastically changeable climate are frightening to contemplate. I stand in awe of those hardy people. Although I am of the same blood I don’t think I could do it, I don’t think I could survive a night outside in single digit temperatures, not even with my best winter clothes, and especially not with the wind blowing like it was. But they did it and they settled this land and they passed it down to us, and I’m glad if I can help keep their stories alive. Godspeed, Joe Watts.Vice President It happened before – Courtesy of NWS  MembershipOur DCPA President, Secretary, and Membership Chairperson attempted to make contact with all members to update the roster with current information. We were saddened to learn several members had passed away. We welcome new members Marshall Hodge, John H. and Beverly J. Combs. Please remember to pay your 2021 dues and 2020 dues if you did not pay them.Send them to DCPA at P O Box 12496 Dallas TX 75225. $20 for an individual and $30 for a couple. Gwyneva WintersMembership Chairperson On our Website If you haven’t been to our website lately please take a look, there are articles about the Pioneers of Dallas County, Pictures of Dallas’ Past, stories about churches and biographies of some of the people who built and lived here in Dallas’ beginnings. https://dallaspioneer.org/ The officers and members of the association hope you are staying safe and healthy. If you have changed your mailing address, e-mail or phone numbers, please let Sheryl Curlee know by sending a note to DCPA1875@gmail.com If you haven’t already paid your dues for this year or for 2021,or you would like to make a donation,please make your payments to: Dallas County Pioneer Association PO Box 12496 Dallas, TX 75225 Cemetery Reportby Kathy Ann Reid  The attendees at Beeman Memorial Cemetery on January 16, included five direct descendants of John and Emily Hunnicutt Beeman: M.C. Toyer, Justin Williamson, John Hampton, Marsha Leach, and Marla Daniels. Adding their spouses and others, a good number were in attendance. There was a discussion of who ended up with the rifle that is etched in the granite memorial with Emily, and baby Scott. Details of the day are presented on DCPA.Beeman The February 20 visit to McKinney Family Cemetery was snowed out and is now scheduled for April 17. Next up is a visit to Wesley Cockrell Cemetery on Saturday, March 20. Pictures of last year’s visit are at DCPA.events The annual W. W. Glover Cemetery get-together with picnic will be the first Saturday in May (May 1). Marsha Leach made plans for our checking on endangered cemeteries. Please volunteer to help and consider a generous donation to the Cemetery Fund. What’s in a name  Simon David (Simon David Grocery Stores). Simon David was a pioneer Texas grocer, born in Germany in 1842. In 1889, Simon David opened his store on Leonard Street near downtown. The store became known for carrying kosher food and other specialty items that often could not easily be found elsewhere. Simon David died in 1915 and was succeeded by his son Delmer David (1889-1960) who expanded the business and opened a store located at 4311 Oak Lawn. Delmer also expanded the business to include a wholesale operation. Another (and now the current) location on Inwood Road in Dallas was opened in 1961. Delmer David was succeeded by his son Stanley David (1919-1974). In 1963, the business was sold to the Tom Thumb chain. There have been numerous corporate changes since the sale, but the Inwood Road store still retains the name of founder Simon David. Simon, Delmer and Stanley David are all interred at Emanu-El Cemetery in Dallas County, Texas.  Sanger Brothers (Sanger Brothers stores, Sanger-Harris stores). Born in Bavaria, Phillip, Isaac, Alex, Lehman, Sam along with other siblings and members of the family opened a chain of stores along the Houston and Texas Central rail lines. These pioneer Texas merchants actively owned and operated their mercantile stores for more than fifty years. Their business was sold in the 1920s but successors kept the name for another sixty years, finally existing as the Dallas area chain of Sanger-Harris stores.For more stories click here DCPA.Names Oldest Methodist Church west of the Trinity River  Wheatland United Methodist Church is known as the “oldest Methodist church west of the Trinity River”. Originally it resided in the small farming community of Wheatland. The Wheatland community may have been older than Dallas or Hord’s Ridge (the original name of Oak Cliff). With settlers arriving just before Texas entered the American Union, Wheatland may have been the first settlement in Dallas County (then a part of old Robertson County). The Wheatland Methodist Church traces its roots back to 1838 when prayer meetings were held at the home of Reverend Thomas A. Crutchfield. Reverend Crutchfield was a veteran of Sam Houston’s army. The church was officially organized by Nacogdoches missionaries in the summer of 1847, and met in a one-room log cabin called “Wesley Chapel”. Wesley Chapel was located southeast of the intersection of Highway 67 and Camp Wisdom Road. At the time Wesley Chapel was built, or shortly after, the corners were marked by four Pecan trees. Those pecan trees still exist and are located in the back of Bankston Dodge near the corner of Marvin D. Love Freeway and St. George Drive. In 1856, the Wesley Chapel was destroyed by a tornado which also devastated the town of Cedar Hill, eight miles to the south. Many people also died from yellow fever at about this same time. At Wesley Chapel it was believed that water from a nearby stream was contaminated because the stream lay at the foot of a slope below the Wesley cemetery. With the Wesley Chapel destroyed and to get away from the contaminated water, the Methodists moved to Wheatland and established a new church – which eventually became Wheatland Methodist Church. At the time of the move Wheatland was known as “Sprowls’ Corner”, “Sprowls Store”, or just “Sprowls”, named after an early settler. When the U. S. Postal Service continued to confuse “Sprowls” with “Sowers”, another Dallas County community, the name became “Wheatland”. The land for the church building, as well as for a school, cemetery, and for the town of Wheatland itself, was donated by Tom Branson and H. K. Brotherton, partners in the real estate business. The construction of the original Wheatland Methodist Church building was begun in 1856, by Jackson Bell, a pioneer builder, who was Sam Penn’s maternal grand-father. The foundation stones were hand-quarried limestone blocks from a local rock quarry. The lumber was hauled from Louisiana in ox-drawn wagons. The original lumber still supports the present structure. In 1912, the need for expansion caused the congregation concern because of its policy to remain debt-free. However, Albert A. Rowe, a local builder, was asked to estimate the cost of a new structure. The $3,000 required was contributed by ten members of the congregation, who gave $300 each. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, those ten were Charles Brotherton, T. B. Brixie, W. C. Davis, Charles S. Uhl, Lynn Brotherton, John Penn, Eph Bell, Will Rowe, Frank Tufts and Jess Spillers. (In later years, Eph Wilmut and William Bullock each contributed $300 towards reroofing this same structure.) With the entire cost of the new church building in hand, the construction began and was completed in the same year. As part payment for his services, Mr. Rowe stipulated that the new structure would have pictured glass windows like Dutch churches in his native state of Pennsylvania. The congregation agreed to this, and theirs was to be the first “country” church in this area to have pictured glass windows. In the midst of the country’s depression, funds to support a church were hard to raise. Several times the church’s insurance lapsed. The women of the church took on the responsibility to make certain that this did not happen again. They gave socials and suppers, but soon found that they could not raise enough money for their purpose that way; so they began to quilt. Quilts were donated, quilted and sold, and their cause was amply supported. Once, when a pastor’s salary could not be met by regular church contributions, the ladies were challenged to make up the shortage with their quilting money; but they refused to give up any of their insurance fund. Wheatland was annexed by Dallas in the mid 1950’s so it is now part of a large busy city. Except for a few renovations over the years, the church building remains much the same as it was when originally constructed. In fact, Wheatland United Methodist Church is now known as the “country church in the city”. In 1965, the Wheatland Methodist Church building was designated as a Texas historical landmark. Submitted by Paul Foreman |
