Water Powered Mill on Bull Creek

Before electricity, flowing water was a prime source of energy to run mills for sawing lumber and grinding grains. The Mormons are credited with construction, in 1846, of one of Travis County's first mills on Bull Creek. That mill was created after the one at the base of Mount Bonnell on the Colorado River washed away.

The Mormons were not the only ones to build mills on Bull Creek. The one shown here was likely built ca. 1850s by Hughell Walden, one of the early settlers to the Bull Creek Valley. This photograph was taken by H.B. Hillyer, Austin based photographer, variously dated at ca. 1869 or 1875.

Historic Edward Zimmerman house

Clementine Walden Jackson, granddaughter of Hughell Walden, says this mill was used as a lumber mill, shingle mill, and also for grinding corn. The home of Edward Zimmerman, built in 1861, now on the property of The Settlement Home for Children, is said to have been built with lumber from a mill on Bull Creek, quite possibly this one. Another historic home, Martin Wieland's "Fortress Home" (a blockhouse), in what was then Dessau, Texas, was built in the 1850s and is said to have used large cedar beams cut from trees on Bull Creek. Those beams, too, may well have been milled at Walden’s mill.

Views in Austin from 1880 featured the old mill as one of the sites to be seen in Austin 

 

Wagon Ruts on Bull Creek

Downstream from the mill, inside Bull Creek District Park, 6701 Lakewood Dr, are wagon ruts, remnants in good part from ox drawn wagon traffic to and from the mill. Clementine Walden describes one of her visits to the old wagon ruts (p.41):

“Today … I went out to Bull Creek. I wanted to go down on what we always called the flat bottom where you can still see the deep wagon ruts cut into the solid rock bottom cut in there by the first Walden family, first by our Grandfather Hughill (sic) Walden with an ox wagon, then by his three sons: Junes, William, and my father, John Walden.”

We know these ruts in the park are the ones she is describing by her reference to what she called the "Mabry dam" just upstream (p.42). The dam was created by Gen. W.H. Mabry (as in Camp Mabry) ca. 1892, the year he signed a lease agreement with John Walden's widow, Rachel, to lease her land to impound water from his dam.

Other families living in the valley of Bull Creek likely also helped in the creation of these ruts as they came and went from their homesteads. If you measure the ruts, they are consistent width of about 4’8”, a standard width often cited for wagons and railroad gauges. Other ruts appear up and down the rock bottoms of Bull Creek, but these in the park are among the most visible, comparable to the prominent ruts near the Chisholm Trail crossing of Brushy Creek in Round Rock (literally at the “round rock” that marks that crossing).

Bob Ward with the Travis County Historical Commission measures width of ruts. As illustrated here, matching ruts are not those adjacent to one another (notice his ruler). The ruts closest together were different tracks.

Other tracks appear along Bull Creek. These close to the intersection of Loop 360 and Lakewood Drive unfortunately appear to have been disturbed by Loop 360 construction, or by the sewer system work that was done in Bull Creek. 

Wagon ruts in Round Rock

Dam created by Gen. W.H. Mabry. Lease agreement with widow of John Walden (son of Hughell Walden) signed in 1892 allowed the dam to impound water on Walden property. By 1892 the mill was out of use. Did wagon traffic come this far up the creek?

Travis County road maps of 1898-1902 show Mabry and Walden properties along Bull Creek

References

Barkley, Mary Starr (1963). History of Travis County and Austin, 1839-1899. Waco, TX: Texian Press.

Fortress Home, historical marker and marker application form
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=146852
https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth491598/

Hillyer, Hamilton Briscoe (1835-1903). Photo titled "The old Mill in Bull Creek". Date of photo is ca. 1875. However William J. Hill Texas Artisans and Artists Archive, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, cites a date of ca.1869. This image was purchased from Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs by Richard Denney. DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University. http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/jtx/id/686. Hillyer was a famous early photographer of Texas and opened a gallery on Pecan Street (now Sixth Street) in Austin in 1867 or 1868

Jackson, Clementine (Walden). The Walden home in the valley. 1966, Austin, Texas. Copy available in Austin History Center. A history of Bull Creek and the Walden family, early settlers there. See also related newspaper article: “Good Days on Bull Creek”, The American-Statesman, Sunday, April 28, 1963. Memories of Mrs. Clementine Walden Jackson marking the close of an era in the Bull Creek Valley. Also: “She Recalls Bull Creek, Oak Grove of Long Ago!”. The American-Statesman, Sunday, August 14, 1966.

Views in Austin, Texas. The Daily Graphic, Wednesday, June 30, 1880. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin. The page features 10 printed sketches of various scenes touting Austin. Of the 10, two are from Bull Creek, illustrating the romance associated with Bull Creek from Austin’s founding. http://texasartisans.mfah.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15939coll6/id/1295

Travis County Clerk Records: Road Book Precinct 2 Page: 356. County road books of 1898-1902 show Walden and Mabry land holdings along Bull Creek 1898-1902. https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth713044/m1/124/?q=Travis%20County%20Clerk%20Records%20Road%20Book%20Precinct

Travis County Deed Records Deed Record 104, Page 392. Documents Gen. W.H. Mabry leasing land from Rachel Walden, widow of John Walden, to allow impounding of water from Mabry's dam onto Walden property. Dated June 13, 1892. The lease was for 10 years but Gen. Mabry died in 1899 in Cuba in the Spanish-American War. The Portal to Texas History, crediting Travis County Clerk’s Office. Thanks to TCHC associate member Lanny Ottosen for helping with the deed research. Retrieved March 15, 2020 https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth834335/m1/398/?q=Record%20104

Poor Farm: Travis County's First

See County Farm. 1898 Travis County Clerk Records: Road Book, Precinct 2, p.346

Before the social safety nets to which we are accustomed today – food stamps, unemployment benefits, homeless shelters – there were “poor farms”. The Texas Constitution of 1869 directed the responsibility for the care of its indigent and poor residents to counties. Based on the tradition of the almshouse, many counties established poor farms, a means for destitute inhabitants to live and work in an agrarian-based institutionalized setting.

Michael Barnes at the Austin American Statesman has written about a Travis County Poor Farm that was north of Windsor Road in what is now Tarrytown, but it was not the first. The very first poor farm for Travis was east of Spicewood Springs. George Washington Davis, an early settler of this area, received a land grant of 3,154 acres from the Republic of Texas for his service at the Battle of San Jacinto. A good chunk Northwest Hills Civic Association's (NWACA) neighborhood is from that old grant, and in 1879 Travis County purchased land from the Davis grant east of MoPac for its first poor farm that would eventually expand to 303 acres. It was roughly bounded by today’s Mopac, Anderson Lane, Burnet Road and Greenlawn, and was in operation until it’s closure ca. 1905 when the poor farm was relocated south to around today’s Tarrytown.

Not part of the poor farm proper, the county also purchased a roughly .16 mile wide strip of land in NWACA south of Spicewood Springs Rd that extended from the farm northwest to near Mesa. This was “timberland” used to provide timber and other resources for the farm.

From a number of sources we are able to get an idea of the layout and life on the poor farm. Travis County Clerk Records include a ledger from 1890 to 1900 with an inventory of property belonging to the farm, resident paupers, hired hands, and county convicts sent to the poor farm to work off fines they were unable to pay. Resident pauper information includes names, dates, sex, ethnicity, and date and reason for discharge.

The main buildings appear to have been located on about a 9+ acre tract where today's Lucy Read School is now located, with a main entrance off today’s Burnet Rd aligned with Richcreek Rd.

Mrs. Edna Carpenter’s husband was superintendent of the poor farm from 1903 to 1904; her memoir Tales from the Manchaca Hills (1960) provides a wonderful look at life on the farm. The superintendent and family lived in a one-story, five-room house that included a kitchen, two large porches and a large store room for groceries, clothing and supplies. A cook was employed who prepared three meals a day for the residents and convicts. The house also included a washroom and dining room where the residents ate at one table. Convict dining was confined to a side porch at a separate long table.

There were numerous outbuildings, a barn, a dozen two-room cottages for the resident paupers, and a separate guard house for the convicts. By this period of 1903 - 1904 the farm even had a telephone powered by battery.

In their stay she noted there were about 20 residents and usually about 15 convicts; as convicts worked off their fines they departed to be replaced by other offenders who lacked cash to pay their penalties. Convict labor supported the farm by raising wheat, oats, corn, cotton and vegetables; these were for consumption but also cash crops. The elderly and or disabled residents not able to do farm work did other chores: laundry, making butter, helping with cooking and serving meals, raising chickens, tending to live stock. Overall the picture she paints of everyday life is much like one of a commune (albeit with convict labor) and not quite as dismal as one might imagine.

County records document deaths on Travis County’s first poor farm. As one study statewide noted, the high death rate on poor farms made establishment of cemeteries on the property common. There is some evidence for a cemetery on this poor farm in an Austin news article from1886: “ ‘Ras Scott, a white pauper, died at the county poor farm day before yesterday of consumption, and was buried yesterday. Friends, he had none, but for all that, he was given decent burial in the graveyard on the farm.” (Austin American-Statesman 3 Dec 1886, Fri · Page 5)

If there was a cemetery where was it located? No official record of location has yet been found, including THC’s record of lost cemeteries. Also, at some other poor farm cemeteries bodies were reinterred when development encroached; as of yet no evidence has been found this occurred. The location of a cemetery if it existed, and the disposition burials, remains a mystery not yet solved for this, the first of Travis County’s poor farms.

Maps, Photos

from 1898 Travis County Roads Map

Snippet from 1885-86 General Directory of the City of Austin

Wilbarger referenced the "poor farm" in his classic Indian Depredations of Texas

 

Plat of Travis County Poor Farm and Timberland from sale by Travis in 1905. Travis County Clerk Records Commissioners Court Minutes J, p.537

1905 sale of by Travis. Travis County Clerk Records Commissioners Court Minutes J, p.537

 

 

Notes

Thanks to Christy Costlow, Travis County Archivist; and Bob Ward and Lanny Ottonsen, Travis County Historical Commission, for help in researching this article.  

Tales from the Manchaca Hills: The Unvarnished Memoirs of a Texas Gentlewoman, by Mrs. Edna Turley Carpenter. Published by The Hauser Press, New Orleans, LA, 1960