Place Names: Brownsborough

All across the internet, from the City of Kerrville website to The Handbook of Texas Online, one can read that Kerrville was originally named Brownsborough, but was it?
There are some historians who believe this is a misreading of the historical record.
There was a community in Kerr County called Brownsborough that was about four miles downstream of Comfort where some early legal events occurred.  Today that community is in Kendall County. All that remains today is a cemetery and some scattered buildings.  It is unlikely there would have been two communities in the same county with the the same name.
In the Galveston Flakes Daily Bulletin of June 16, 1868, June 25, 1868, and many other issues, both Brownsborough and Kerrville are mentioned as separate places.

As proof, at the first county court session May 19, 1856, a second class road was ordered laid from Kerrsville to Brownsborough by way of Comfort.
Old maps also show Brownsborough being east of Comfort.

"Be it ordered by the Honorable County Court of
Kerr County that there is hereby appointed five
Commissioners to review and locate a road from
Kerrville to the North Bank of the Gaudiloupe (sp)
River at Brownsborough by the way of Comfort
it is further ordered that E.A. McFadin, J.M.
Starky, J.C. Ridley, Theodor Wiedenfeld and
R.E. Brown are the Commissioners appointed to
lay out and locate said road and that said
road shall be lain out and located on the best
and nearest route without partiality or
predugi(?)."

If Kerrville were Brownsborough, it would not have been possible to locate a road from Kerrville to Brownsborough. I have seen a few referrals to Brownsburg. More likely Kerrville was known as Brownsburg rather than Brownsborough.

Remembering Clarabelle Snodgrass

Today we buried Clarabelle Barton Snodgrass in a beautiful ceremony that honored a life well lived.  She was 102 when she passed away this past Monday, February 29, 2016.  Clarabelle was the Queen of Kerr County History.  A lifelong resident of Kerr County, Texas, she had lost most of her vision and much of her hearing, but her mind was sharp until the very end. It seemed liked she remembered EVERYTHING about Kerr County.  We are all the richer because of Clarabelle. She was responsible for saving the old Tivy School and the Schreiner Chapel of the First Presbyterian Church as well as editing the Kerr County Album and writing a memoir. Most of the 80+ historical markers in Kerr County are due to her unceasing work.  I now serve as the marker chair for the Kerr County Historical Commission. I hope I can be half as successful as she in marking and saving our history.

Turtle Creek Cemetery where her parents are buried

She was born in Kerrville in a house on Water Street, on October 13, 1913, and spent her early years along Turtle Creek. After she and Ross Snodgrass married, they moved to the Divide and began ranching. They later moved permanently off the Divide and into Kerrville where she spent the last decades of her life.

I've only know Clarabelle a few years, just since 2010. I talked with her on occasion about some of my research.  She was always supportive, and usually confirmed what I had "discovered".

This past October the Friends of the Kerr County Historical Commission asked her to speak on "102 years of Kerr County Memories" focusing mostly on Turtle Creek and the Divide.  I am so glad we did this.  It turned out to be her last public appearance. The photos here are from that talk.

Since her husband, Ross, lived to be 107, I guess we thought she'd be around forever--or at least another few years. There are a few more things I'd like to know. Those questions will have to wait until we meet on the other side.

The last time I talked to her she told me that she wanted to live long enough to write a book about the Divide. Some of us should take that on in her memory.  Anyone?

B. C. Richards' First Addition

This subdivision lies across Quinlan Creek near Schreiner Institute.and opened in March 1924.
"Located on the high elevation adjoining the Presbyterian Encampment and the Schreiner institute grounds, these beautiful lots appeal to everyone who desires a home-site that combines all the natural advantages of good location with solid groves of Live Oaks on each lot, and besides cement sidewalks, cement curbs and graveled streets throughout the entire property."

The neighborhood is more or less from the corner of Travis and Aransas, north on Travis to Main, east on Main to Rawson, south to Aransas. It was once bordered on the south by the railroad.

To learn more about other Kerrville subdivisions, go here.

Methodist Encampment

Methodist Encampment is built around the Mount Wesley Conference Center.  It is a community of homes originally built to provide housing for families attending the annual denominational encampment each year.  The first season was 1924. Originally the homes were primarily for summer use, but today they are occupied year round.

The first mention of Methodist Encampment in the Kerrville newspapers was November 1, 1923, when the Kerrville Mountain Sun reported that H. C. Geddie "represented the local Chamber of Commerce in the matter of the Methodist Encampment for this city."
Then on February 7, 1924, the headlines in the Mountain Sun were "Kerrville Lands Methodist Encampment."

   Kerrville's proposition of a site of 200 acres of ground with frontage on the Guadalupe River was accepted by the local committee of the Methodist Encampment, West Texas Assemby, subject to the raising of $11,500 by a local committee for purchase of the land.
   The site accepted for the encampment consists of the Bud Porter place of 160 acres, including a hilltop from the J. J. Starkey place adjoining, not to exceed 40 acres in extent. The location is within three miles west of the city on the Old Spanish Trail.

On April 1, 1924, a lot sale and barbecue were held at the Encampment grounds. An estimated 500-600 prominent Methodists ministers and laymen attended the opening. One hundred thirty lots ranging in price from $100 to $1000 were offered for sale on opening day. Ninety one of them sold.  By then there were two roads from the Old Spanish Trail (Junction Highway) to the top of the mountain, a water system, electric lights, telephone, cafeteria, and a number of tents, all in preparation of the program beginning July 8 and lasting until August 3.
W.H. King was hired to construct the cafeteria for the camp--the first community building. The  auditorium and commissary soon followed.

The first cottage builder (in 1924) was J. M. Calhoun.  The house was a frame building finished with cobblestones. Other houses continued to go up, but the next mention of homes in Methodist Encampment was June 3, 1926, when Hill View Times reported on two new cottages. One was owned by Mrs. M. E. Moore of San Angelo. "It is a beautiful building with cobblestone front, and cobblestone columns.  The grounds have been beautifully laid out, terraced, and flower gardens planted." The other was a "fine new 5-room house for Mrs. Phoebe Storms. [A] beauty in every respect, with front porch and sleeping porch". The builder for both was Moore & Saner, who was the contractor for most of the early encampment buildings.  Many of these original cottages remain.

I have been told that Alice Street in Methodist Encampment was so named because the first owners were all from Alice, Texas, and similarly McAllen Street and Uvalde Street. Lazy Lane was originally Shady Lane.  The name was changed sometime before September 1958 when rural mail service was extended to the Methodist Assembly area.

Kerrville has several historic neighborhoods suitable for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. This is one of them.

To learn about other Kerrville neighborhoods, go here.

Richards Park

Richards Park Addition opened November 1941--just before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of World War II.  This ad appeared in the November 20, 1941, Kerrville Times. It was advertised as the first FHA planned residential district in Kerrville.  Frank Richards was the developer.

The Federal Housing Administration was created in 1934 during the Great Depression when the housing market was flat. The idea was to help construction workers get back to work and to help people become homeowners. At that time America was a nation of renters rather than home owners, fewer than half owning their own homes.  Mortgage terms were very difficult, with large down payments, short repayment schedules of 3-5 years and final balloon payments. The FHA changed that.

To learn about other Kerrville subdivisions, go
here.

424 Tivy Street

House near completion, 1948

 2016

This house was built by hand by Mrs. Nettalie Russell Bateman in the late 1940s. The story of the construction of 424 Tivy Street is told in the Kerrville Mountain Sun of June 10, 1948, based on a story in the Houston Chronicle written by Mrs. J. L. Shanklin of Kerrville. It also appeared in the Canton (TX) Herald because she had once lived there, "leaving in 1930."

Joe Herring wrote about the house in the May 9-10, 2009, Kerrville Daily Times. This column does not appear on his blog, but it can be read on-line here. (Alternatively, the original story from 1948 can be read at newspaperarchive.com or newspapers.com.  Both are subscription sites.) Some of this was taken from that column. The original story is quite entertaining. I think I would have enjoyed knowing her!

Nettalie Russell Bateman was born 28 December 1895 in Texas.  In the 1930 census she was living at 3 Bonner Street, Tyler, with her husband J. Kirby Bateman, a dental surgeon.  They had been married 17 years and had no children.  By 1940 they had moved to the Whitesborough Road, also in Tyler.  His 1954 death certificate said he was never married, but that is wrong. They were divorced. When she died the obituary in the New Braunfels Herald Zeitung incorrectly called her his widow.

She enlisted in the Women's Army Corps on 20 October 1943 from Smith County and served in the Engineers Division of the Army Air Corp, Eighth Service Command. While a WAC she dreamed of a house she would one day own. According to her nephew, she was injured in the course of her service, and after her discharge she moved to Kerrville for outpatient care at the VA Hospital. She bought a vacant lot at the corner of Tivy and Garden Streets from G. L. and Iva Richeson. She was unable to find anyone to build her dream house, so she began to do the work herself, donning a parachute suit for protection against the weeds and started clearing the lot.  When she was unable to buy quality lumber for her house, she switched to rock and built her house herself with almost no help—but with lots of sidewalk superintending from the community. It took two years, but she did it.

From Joe Herring's column

City Hall hasn’t changed much ....  According to the story, Mrs. Bateman reported “I was told that I must first have a plumbing permit before I could get a building permit…I finally got a plumbing permit after I haunted a plumber’s shop until he began to suspect that I had taken advantage of the housing shortage and had moved in on him.”
After finally getting the building permit, she spent several days staking off the foundation, which was “L-shaped, 44 feet on one side and 40 feet across the front.”
She dug the foundation herself by hand, often with an audience telling her she was doing it all wrong.
“The day I that I finished the excavating for the foundation, a man from the city hall stopped by…and told me that to conform with a city ordinance, I would have to move the foundation in 10 feet.”
It took 2 weeks to fill in the excavation and dig another 10 feet inside.
Then came construction – which took almost 2 years.   People stopped and asked her what she was doing; in small town Kerrville, in the 1940s, everyone knew she was a divorcee who’d been in the Army.   She told everyone she was building an arsenal.
“Except for several days help from school boys and occasional lifts from old men, she did the entire job herself,” the article concludes. “She wore out more than three dozen pairs of heavy leather gloves, but at the finish there was not a scratch or callus on her hands.”

Then December 1948, after all that work, she sold the property to Frank R. Stevenson and wife. At some point she also enrolled at Schreiner Institute, taking classes and maintaining honor roll status while building this house. She then moved to Austin to enroll at the University of Texas, while also serving as director of Kirby Hall women's dormitory at the university.  After graduation with a Master’s in Speech Therapy she served as a special education teacher in Comal ISD in the 1950s and early 1960s. She died 26 April 1987 in Comal County at her “writer’s cabin” in Dripping Springs

This building was restored in 2009 and continues to serve its original purpose today.

Oak Park

Oak Park is located between Schreiner University and the VA Hospital. According to descendants of W. L. Council, he and Dr. Wm. L. Secor saw a need for housing the families of men housed at the VA Hospital for the treatment of tuberculosis and in 1924 began developing this community for that purpose.  Many of the houses were one bedroom and very affordable. He and Dr. Secor developed the first water treatment facility for the Kerrville area as well as the first sewage treatment facility.  By 1938 the residents of Legion village and Oak Park were petitioning to be added to the city of Kerrville water system because the four-inch steel pipes were expensive to maintain and repair.

The first mention in the newspaper of Oak Park was on September 18, 1924, when it was recorded that W. L. Council and Wm. Lee Secor sold lots 13 and 14 of block 6, to E. F. Everett, and lots 15 and 16  of block 6 to Fred Kreis, who then immediately resold it to Mrs. Flossie M. Everett.
Both lots and houses were sold.  Many of the houses advertised for sale were 4 room cottages.


In 1925 Council and Secor began advertising "Why Pay Rent?  Pay $10 down and $10 per month and buy a lot! Pay $50 down and $25 per month and build a home!" In addition, they were promoting its healthful elevation, excellent water supply, and beautiful shade trees.

The March 12, 1925, Kerrville Mountain Sun reported on the development of Oak Park. Described as a "real estate proposition of vast proportions", it initially was 58 acres which was augmented by the purchase from E. C. Meeker of between 160 and 200 acres between that development and the city of Kerrville.  It was reported that nearly every original lot was sold and forty homes had been erected. It had its own water supply with mains running to every lot. An electric light plant was also planned.

Advertising also pointed out that Oak Park was NOT Legion.  Oak Park was not on the highway and consisted of home owners, not renters.  Note though that part of Legion Drive is in Oak Park Addition.

Community life developed quickly.  In July 1925 it was announced that a Union Sunday School was being held in Oak Park in an arbor built for the purpose. There were five classes with forty members and occasional preaching.  This appears to be the origin of Oak Park Baptist Church.

On January 11, 1949, an election was held to add over 1000 acres to the Kerrville city limits.  Areas to be annexed included Richards Park Addition, Oak Park Addition, Legion Hospital, Meeker Addition, Mosty Addition, and the City Farm, as well as territory along the Guadalupe River to the south of the city which was described as being more or less between Schreiner Institute and Spur 100.  It was rejected almost four to one.  Oak Park was finally annexed to Kerrville in 1981, adding about 200 households and 135 acres to the city.

For a list of other Kerrville subdivisions, go here.