Wednesday, July 3, 2024
In the early days, before formal country church buildings were established, brush arbors were built for worshippers to gather in for services and camp meetings.
Remembering Uncle Bob
Robert Lee “Uncle Bob” Saunders was an early-day resident of Gatesville and the son of one of Gatesville’s early business pioneers. Born in 1880 in Gatesville, Uncle Bob had many memories and stories from his childhood which, later in life, he put in writing during the 1940s and 1950s for The Gatesville Messenger in a weekly column titled “Down Memory Lane.”
According to John Frank Post, editor of the Gatesville Messenger from 1946-1978, “Mr. Saunders composed his Down Memory Lane columns from his West Main Street home in the shadow of the county courthouse dome. Deadline time would find him hunched square-shouldered over his small desk pecking away at his typewriter.” Post continued, “disdaining the rules of grammar and political correctness, he wrote like he talked – straight and plain-speaking. He was spared any tedious research, as his gifted memory supplied him with facts that he could weave into his own inimitable embroidery, using colorful anecdotes, local history, and happenings. Yes, Uncle Bob knew how to juice up a story.”
Post recalled that the “Down Memory Lane” column was a hit with the readers of the newspaper from the beginning. Post said that Uncle Bob’s close friends felt he viewed his writing as a “gift to his generation and a legacy to generations to come.”
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The following is an excerpt of Uncle Bob’s Down Memory Lane column that appeared in the July 23, 1948, edition of The Gatesville Messenger:
Recalls Camp meetings
I remember them camp meetings I used to go to when I was a kid – sometimes over to Straw’s Mill on the river but most times to Farmer Springs on Hinson Creek. I remember them old brush arbors with clean oat straw on the ground so that when the kids got sleepy, they could take a nap in all the comfort. The sermons was kinder dry and the prayers purty long, but when them folks got to singing and shouting, it made up for that long sermon, for they shore would git happy.
Down on Old Coryell Creek (July 30, 1948)
There was a feller telling me the other day about some old feller that is going around talking about the folks that settled on Coryell Creek in an early day. According to this old feller, the Hard Shell Baptists (Primitive) country down on the creek away from the Indians, put them good little farms in cultivation, and raised several good crops. Then they sorter neglected their crops when it came time to have the social on and foot-washings, lost several crops and when others moved into the country and took over, they run Uncle Henry Franks and Uncle Jasper Chambers and the rest of the brethren back into the hills. The Hard Shell Brothers have been in the mountains ever since, and of course the descendants of J.M. Davidson and Frank Martin sitting in the saddle on Coryell Creek.
Now I ain’t talked to this old feller, and don’t know who he is. He could be right; it was before my time, for I don’t remember when the Hard Shell Brethren were on the creek. Uncle Henry Franks has been living on the mountain to the east of Gatesville for many years, and Uncle Jasper Chambers has been living in the mountains to the west of Gatesville long before the cedar brakes caught on fire. All I know for certain is that when that old feller was a-talking about the Hard Shell Baptist folks, he was talking about the best bunch of folks we ever had in the country.
They were the Salt of the Earth, for they paid all their obligations in full, both to their fellow man and to their Lord. If that old feller is right about them losing a crop or two on account of Sociation, you can bet your bottom dollar they weren’t nobody hurt, for if they didn’t pay their store account the same year it was made, they would pay it the next year. In my business experience, I never heard of a bank or merchant losing any money on a Hard Shell Baptist.
