Early Pioneer Days in Texas
Chapter X
Dr. JohnCunningham
Ravenna, Fannin County, Texas
This pioneer was born midst the dark green valleys of old Kentucky on the 21st day of September, 1836. In the early days of his youth he labored in the fields of corn and tobacco along with the colored servants. His education consisted of a training in the subscription schools of Trigg County and later in the Bethel College at Russellville, Kentucky, where he earned his own way through. He studied medicine in Pope's Medical College in St. Louis. After practicing a year the war broke out and he enlisted as a soldier of the Confederacy, where he commanded a company at Shiloh.
After the war, some two years, he started for Texas, landing at Jefferson, Texas, early in March of 1867, on board the steamer Frolic, from New Orleans, La., where, being without money, he was compelled to walk from Jefferson to Old Warren, in Fannin County, about 140 miles. A caravan of five or six wagon teams were heading for Weatherford, in Parker County, who were hauling flour down into Fannin County at Bonham. The road led through an open prairie almost the entire distance, and on the way we passed through Sherman, which was then a small town of about 500 people. Fort Worth was then, when we were on our way through there, only a town of 300 souls, and Pilot Point, in Denton County, about a hundred people, while at Bean's Station there was only a handful. When we reached Weatherford we found a town of four or five hundred, where there were two old-time flouring mills. Most of the grain raised in this section of Texas was wheat. The few settlers along the road lived in pole or log cabins, occasionally one or two rooms would be finished with pine planks hauled in wagons from Eastern Texas, two or three hundred miles away. The settlements on the road were ten or fifteen miles apart, each house having an enclosure of about fifteen acres, where they raised wheat or corn or kept a cow lot, though they scarcely ever had a garden. Cattle and horses could be seen in every direction, and jack rabbits, wild turkeys and prairie chickens were abundant everywhere. Deer was plentiful, but mostly in the cross timbers, while wolves, wild cats and prairie dogs held high carnival at night. The elk and buffalo moved westward as man ap- proached, and the blood-thirsty savage, with his tomahawk, bows and arrows, and later the deadly rifle, receded, leaving a trail of blood along his path.
Upon my arrival in Fannin in March, 1867, I found the following towns: Bonham, the capital, with a population of five or six hundred souls. The prairie grass surrounded the town almost waist high. On the north side it almost approached the present plaza. Honey Grove came next in size, with a population of about three hundred; Ladonia third, with a population of about one hundred fifty; Orangeville, Kentuckytown and Coontown were only respectable broad places in the roads. Bonham, Honey Grove and Ladonia have held their own and grown to be respectable towns and small cities. But since that date many towns and villages have almost, as if by magic, sprung up in various parts of the county, as follows: Leonard, Trenton, Savoy, Windom, Dodd City, Monkstown, Telephone, Tulip, Ivanhoe, Ector, Ravenna, Randolph, Edhube, Bailey, Lamasco, Hudsonville, Carson, Lanius, Bantz, Self and Needmore, all flourishing young towns and villages ranging in population (we suppose) from 200 to 2,000, Leonard leading. There were no railroads then nearer than Hempstead, two hundred miles south, but now the county is passed through by the Texas & Pacific, Cotton Belt and M. K. & T. enters the county from Denison by Ravenna to Bonham. The population of Texas at that time (1867) was 600,000, but now it is over 4,000,000 and growing rapidly. Fannin County then had only about 13,000 population, and now has some 60,000 or 70,000 and rapidly absorbing more through immigration and home production.
The doctor, after making this trip, borrowed a wild mustang from Dr. A. H. Henry one of nature's noblemen and began the practice of medicine without a dollar in his pocket, having procured his medical supplies by pawning his army pistol to a druggist named Gray, in Bonham, and for thirty years practiced among the people, the pauper and the well-to-do, whether he was paid for his services or not he treated all alike.
Four years after landing in Texas he was elected, over five other better men than he, for the 13th Legislature, in 1872 the year Horace Greely ran for the presidency. One of the proudest votes he cast in the 13th Legislature was when he voted for Hon. John Ireland's bill, giving one-half the public domain of Texas to the free school children of the State, amounting to over one hundred million dollars. In the same Legislature he had incorporated into the free school curriculum a work on anatomy, physiology and hygiene, which is still used by the schools. The work of the 13th Legislature turned the State over to the Democratic party in 1874, and it has remained there ever since. In 1900 the doctor was re-elected to the Legislature of the State of Texas by a plurality of fifteen hundred votes over two opponents, and again re-elected in 1902 over his opponents by two thousand. Upon the winding up of that Legislature they presented him with a gold-headed ebony cane. His wife thought it was worth $500 the doctor never told her any better.
Since the doctor has been in Texas he not only has been engaged in the practice of medicine, but has also been engaged in farming, merchandising and in the cattle business and made a reasonable success out of all of them. In 1912, at the age of 77, the people of Fannin County called on the doctor to stand for a fourth term in the Legislature. He consented and was opposed by a better man than the doctor so the man said in the race. Early in the doctor's campaign, one evening as the shades of night came on he stepped from a porch, thinking it a foot and a half to the ground, but when he landed the distance proved to be three and a half feet. In landing, the doctor received a broken hip bone, from which he suffers today, having to travel in a push chair, but is one of the most regular attendants in the House. He goes to the House in the morning and remains until taking out time at night. John Reeves, his colored valet, goes to his boarding house and brings his dinner, which he eats upon his desk.
The doctor, after serving in four Legislatures, does not hesitate to say that the present House is superior to all the Legislatures in which he has served (and the accomplished Speaker, Chester Terrell, may have had some equals, but never a superior) except the old Thirteenth, all of whom, except about forty Republicans, were men who wore the gray, and served in times that tried men's souls, and their acts and their votes gave the second freedom to Texas. Sam Houston, in the battle of San Jacinto, freed Texas first from Mexican subordination. Reconstruction, through the acts and laws of scalawags, carpet-baggers, coffee-coolers, State police and the Twelfth Legislature, which was composed of a large majority of Republicans and colored politicians, the people of Texas had become almost enslaved again. Through the action of the Thirteenth Legislature, assisted by a few noble-hearted Republicans in the Senate, one of whom was the Honorable Web Flanagan, a leader with a great big heart, Texas, received her second freedom. The doctor thinks the Thirty-third House to be a superior body of men. They all seem to have their individuality. They do their own voting. They are not swayed by United States Senators, the Governor or any one else but their own conscience. When they believe the Governor is right they endorse him; when they believe the Governor is wrong they oppose him, just like the Governor does the House, showing that both have their individuality and use their own minds. The doctor is proud to say that all the acts of the former Legislatures in which he served were generally approved by the people of the State. He trusts that the 33rd may occupy the same proud position. Almost every member of the House is a pretty fair orator; many of them are first-class, with the exception of the old doctor. Some of them are really eloquent and are fit subjects for Congressional or United States Senatorial timber in the future. There is a fair sprinkling of young men in the House, mostly from what was once the wild and wooly west, but they are all up-to-date, up-headed young men of above average ability. They are nearly all good speakers. The Legislature seems to have great progressive ways, passing laws with advanced ideas demanded by the people. As time rolls on and scientific progress and the world moves forward, new and progressive laws will be demanded and will be given by future Legislatures, just as they are doing today.
The doctor believes, owing to the great natural turn in political affairs and the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency, the disposition to enforce the Sherman and other anti-trust laws, the nation has taken on a new lease of life. It seems that things are now working on the Lord's side and the interest of the great mass of plain people of this great country.
The doctor does not endorse the treason, bribery and political corruption and murder of their rulers, practiced by our sister republic of Mexico. It seems that Mexico has fallen into the hands of men that know very little about Republican government. It seems like a great mass of people in Mexico had rather make a living by war than labor. Should Mexico only demonstrate the fact, and it seems like she almost has, that some other means should be set on foot giving her a better form of government. The Monroe Doctrine cuts off all European nations from helping Mexico. America claims to rule the roost over all American nationalities. Many believe that the opening has been made in Mexico for Uncle Sam to try his hand, should he and his patriotic sons so desire.
In the Twenty-eighth Legislature the doctor had the life-size portrait of that great jurist, statesman, diplomat and most eloquent orator placed on the walls of the House. We mean Judge Alexander W. Terrell. It happened this way: The judge had invited the doctor to dinner with him. He saw the portrait. He decided immediately that that picture should grace the walls of the House. That evening, without consulting the judge, he wrote a resolution consummating the same. The resolution was introduced and carried unanimously hence the judge's portrait on the walls of the great Capitol he had planned and caused to be erected.
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