Document text
Ars. C. May Cohea
Amarillo, Texas
Wordage -2,100
District #16
PANHANDLE PIONEERS
Interviews Mrs. Jim Bolton
Corner Pierce and 7th, Streets
Amarillo, Texas
Mrs. Bolton came overland from Panhandle City to Amarillo as a young girl to visit
relatives dho had large ranch interests in the vicinity. Returning to her home in
Chicago, she pail recurrent visits to Amarillo until she came to make her home here
as the wife of Jim Bolton.
Henry Bradley Sanborn, the "Father of Amarillo", was Mrs. Bolton's uncle. His
partner in the Frying Pan ranch west of Amarillo, Joseph Glidden, much older than San-
born, was called familiarly, "Uhcle Joseph". Although Glidden was not a blood relative,
the Clildens, Sanborns, and Wheelers were "like one big family".
Mrs. Bolton has among family heirlooms the coat of arms of her family, which goes
back to the southern branch of the Wheelers, including the poet and novelist, Ella
Wheeler Wilcox, and General Joe Wheeler, the "Fighting Joe Wheeler" of the South during
the Civil War, and the coat of arms of the Sanborn family, which can be traced back
for hundreds of years. Both coats of arm consist of a Suitable motto and the figure
of an animal, rampant.
When she first walked down the main street of the small cow town that was 4marillo,
everyone looked at her from the pine board porches and shacks that lined the short
thoroughfare. The sensation of curious, watching eyes was a strange one to her,
accustomed to the busy avenues of Chicago, where the stranger went unnoticed.
As the guest of her uncle, who owned the Amarillo Hotel, Mrs. Bolton had occasion
to attend the dances held in the hostelry "parlor", which extended along the north side
of the building about the length of two rooms. A white chiffon frock which she wore
at one of these entertainments was shredded by the spurs worn by her cowboy partners.
Mrs. Bolton, who was educated in Chicago, Boston, and New York in music, art, and
concert work, played at many of the first entertainments of the town for charitable
y,urposes, graciously giving of her time and talent. A big, fine oil lamp was presented
to her by a. committee from one of the churches in recognition of her services.
Coming from a large metropolis, she often found the provincialism of the cow
town amusing. Once, after she had given a recital at which four small girls sang
"Mammyis Little Alabama Coon", interpolating a few rhythmic sweyings of their own, she
was visited in her hotel apartment by an elder of the church and its pastor, who informed
her that they would pray for her publicly if such "conduct" was continued. More in
amusement than anger, she ordered them to leave the roam.
Mrs. Bolton recalls that dancing had to be taught as "physical culture" in those
early days. Later, however, the sane elder la daughters went away to school and came
back and indulged in dancing and other formerly banned frivolities. The elder with his
family then occupied a small adobe which stood where the Elks Club is today.
Mrs. Bolton, who taught a large class of piano pupils, once gave a recital or
musical entertainment with her pupils in a building across the street from the Amarillo
Hotel, where the Amarillo building now stands. I shabbily dressed man who was about three
sheets in the wind came up during the entertainment and asked where he could find the
ticket seller. Mr. Bolton, realizing that the mans condition unfitted him for any
company but his own, told him to go around the building until he founftcket seller.
The man went around and around the building before he gave up in disgust and went across
to the hotel where he maudlinly told his troubles about the elusive ticket seller.
When a group of local educators organized Amarillo College in about 1899, Mrs.
Bolton was asked to teach music in the college. To help them out, she taught in that
institution for severel years, receiving as "salary" the fees paid by the music students
in her classes. Other members of the faculty apportioned among themselves the fees
paid by other students of the college.
-Other Instructors in Amarillo College were J. H. Hamlin, (now Judge Hamlin of
Farwell) W. D. Twichell, Mr. R. B. Briney, local preacher, educated at the University
of Indiana, who taught mathematics, and a Mr. Franks, who was somewaat of a ladies'
man. Dr. David Fly taught physiology and hygiene.
When Mr. Sanborn platted the townsite of Amarillo, he set aside about 20 acres where
the Sanborn Park, the Polk Street Methodist Church, end the W. H. Fuqua residence no are,
for a college campus. He made a standing offer to give the land for educational purposes
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if someone would erect a $20,000 college plant upon it. Presbyterians of Fort Worth at
one time considered establishing a college upon the site. However, it was left to a
group of interested local teachers to establish the institution, which flourished for
several years. Mr. Sanborn had a long, rambling structure moved upon the grounds for
the school building. A yer book, giving deteiis of the school, faculty, and curriculum,
was printed, with pictures and everything. Several former students in the old Amarillo
College still live in Amarillo, Terry Thompson being one of them.
W. D. Twichell, now of San Angelo, established the first institution of higher
.learning in Amarillo because the older girls and boys were totally without accommodations
for such training. Later, as the town grew, many of the older girls attended Kidd
Key College at Sherman.
Mrs. Bolton's piano, the first and only one in Amarillo at the time, made many a
trip un and down the stairs of the old opera house to furnish music for various forms
of entertainment. The old piano today sits in one of Mrs. Bolton's houses in the
600 Block on Pierce.
Today Mrs. Bolton, whose fine sense of poetry and music perhaps harks back to her
remote relative, Ella Wheeler Wilcot, plays upon another and newer piano, but it is
doubtful if its lovely tones can ever blot out the memory of its ancient predecessor.
Although she would be the first to disparage such a repott, Mrs. Bolton gizegthe benefit
to
of her musical training aspiring young musicians of Amarillo, coaching them for the
career for which she herself was educated.
Mrs. Bolton recalls the neighborly helpfulness of those early y&rs; when women
such as Mrs. W. H. Fuqua nursed the sick and lent assistance wherever it was needed.
Mrs. Bolton would be the last to tell how she herself did more than her share of visiting
the sick, how she still bears a scar from an infection received while she was nursing a
cancerous patient, whose small son she kept for years until others could cre for him in
his own home.
While Mrs. Bolton was visiting in Chicago, she received word that her husband
Saint Anthony's
required an operation for apnendicitis. Hurrying home, she stayed at hospital where
the operation was performed for five weeks until he was discharged. When hr. Bolton
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came to pay his hospitilization bill, no charge was made for Mrs. Bolton's room and board
for all those weeks, the management refusing to make any charges other than the regular
”pon
hospital fees for any patient, since Mr. Sanborn had given the lanA which St. Anthony's
stood. Later, although she and her husband were both Protestants, When Mr. Bolton
died, Catholic sisters visited her to tender their condolences. At that time they
recalled that she had played at the dedication of St. Anthony's years before, upon a
raised platform built for the purpose. Once, during the progress of the ceremony, she
had forgotten to pump the organ until nudged by a friendly elbow.
Mrs. Bolton was hostess to perhaps the first house party on the north plains. In
about lg97 several young men and women and two or three couples were invited to the San-
born ranch property west of Amarillo, on what is now the Wilson place. The entertain-
ment was called a "sunset to sunrise" party. The dining table would seat -only twenty,
so lots were drawn to see who would eat at the "first table". Among those present were
Ray Wheatley, Elmer Roach, Banks Jones, Mr. Graham, Mr. and Mrs. Evans, Mrs. Ricks,
Dr. and Mrs. David Fly, Katie Williams, Malcolm Jones, and Mr. and Mrs. Bolton.
While she was at the Frying Pan ranch, Mrs. Bolton once saw a headrise in the creek
which was fed by Tecovas Springs eweep everything before it.
Mts. Bolton was one of the original twelve members of the JUG (Just Us Girls)
Club, through whose interest and efforts the Potter County Library was established.
The first money earned by the club was used to buy 30 -books for the purpose of founding
a library. Later efforts of members of the club added further donations to the tiny
beginning. One entertainment given b‘-, the club for the benefit of the library, a dinner
dance with areal"orchestra, netted several hundred dollars.
Among historical relics which Mrs. Bolton purposes to give to the Panhandle
Plains Museum at Canyon in trust until a museum is established at Amarillo for such
objects, is a piece of the first barbed wire used in the Frying Pan ranch and a valuable
antique clock. Family heirlooms include an Oriental rug 65 years old and a bed more than.
a hundred years old. The bed, every part of wood, was given to her mother by her great-
grandmother when the former moved to Chicago before the great fire in that city.
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H. B. Sanborn, Mrs. Bolton's uncle, who had a 20 -year contract with Joseph Glidden,
the man credited with the invention of bPrbed wire, was the first millionaire in Texas.
To his horse ranch near Sherman, Texas, he imported purebred stock, draft horses, running
horses, roadsters, riding horses, from France, Belgium, and other European countries.
He owned the first Percherce colt in Texas. From the ranch near Sherman Mr. Sanborn sent
fine stallions to breed good horses for the Frying Pan ranch. It was he van introduced
horse racin7 at the Dallas Fair.
When Mr. Sanborn learned that one of his employees on the Frying Pan with several
other men had bought the townsite of Old Town, he resolved to establish a town in what
he considered a better location.
He was at first undecided whether to found a torn at Canyon or Cliffside. With
several other men and a Mexican who drove the open buckboard which was drawn by four
horses, he went to look over the possibilities of the latter site. During the inspection
tour he sat down upon the high cliffs with their sand like deep yellow pigment, the
clay staining the sent of his trousers. When Mr. Sanborn rose to go, the old Mexican
pointed to theyellow imprint and chortled, "Amarillo: amarillo",.
"Well, gentlemen," Sanborn seized upon the Spanish word for yellow, "we may not have
a town, but we've got the name for it. There is no other town named Amarillo".
Soon the old Amarillo Hotel arose on the new townsite which Sanborn envisioned for
his town, about a mile east of Old Town. The new hotel was painted yellow. Many of the
residences which soon sprang up in the new location were also painted yellow, which was
a durable color adapted to the climatic vagaries of the region.
The Sanborn home, which stood upon the block now occupied -by the Municipal ASAi-
torium, was painted yellow. Here Sanborn maintained a private park in which were several
'deer. Here, too, were the first municipal waterworks. The Sanborns planned to build
a home on the present site of Sanborn Park. However, Ellen Sanborn later gave the plat
to the city for a park to be used by adults.
By giving lots and moving houses of the residents of Old Town to the new location
with a team of six or eight oxen, Mr. Sanborn soon populated his townsite.
Glidden, partner in various enterprises with Mr. Sanborn, never lived in Amarillo,
merely visiting the town at different time. At the division of their community interests,
Sanborn retained 50,000 acres of the Frying Pan ranch and the townsite, Glidden receiving
the remaining range acreage and the Amarillo Hotel. The Frying Pan, among the first
fenced acreage in the Panhandle, cost the partners around $33,000 to enclose with barbed
wire in lgg2.
Later, Mr. and Mrs. H. P. Oanode, who worked for Glidden in his De Kalb Hotel in
Illinois, where his family maintained a home on one floor of the hotel, bought the old
Amarillo Hotel, paying it out in installments after a large down payment.
The annex to the old Amarillo Hotel, known as the McIntosh Hotel, was moved to the
Bowery and was later burned.
Glidden's daughter, Elba, was married to William Bush. Her father several years
before his death gave her $100,000 wit71 which to build a home on Chicago's famous Lake
Shore Drive. However, she spent but half of the sum on the home, investing the other
half in a business for her husband, who was a glove salesman. His company imported
gloves, material for men's hats, and the like. After her death, which occurred while
she was still a young woman, her husband remarried a girl 15 years his junior.
The old Frying Pan ranch records, destroyed in a fire which consumed the head
quarters building„would have yielded interesting historical mater0.1. Here the first
child of Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Wetsel was born. For a number of years Mrs. Wetsel was the
only white woman, as she was the first, in Potter C'ounty. Mr. Wetsel, sent to the Frying
Pan by Mr. Sanborn from the horse ranch near Sherman, went back to Potsdam, New York,
for his bride, then a young girl of eighteen.
There are still early residents of Amarillo Who can recall Sanborn's tallyho
coach, drawn by four spanking horses, with a seat for the hostler, *hose duty it was
to go to the horses' heads when the coach made a stop, behind, one for the driver and
footman in front, and seats for 6 or g persons on top.
Joseph Glidden always wore a top hat, colloquially called a "stovepipe" hat. One
day his hat blew off in a high wind. Sanborn laughingly offered two dollars to anyone
who would retrieve his partner's "sombrero". A cowboy rode after the tumbling headgear,
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lassoed it, and brought it back intact to its disgruntled owner, collecting and pocket
in, the reward.
Mrs. Bolton recalls many of the first residents of Amarillo, which has been considered
en uncouth cow town, who were cultured men and women, college and university graduates,
among whom were John Arnott, educated at Edinburg University to become a barrister;
Banks Jones, Texas University scholarshir man who spent three years at old Heidelburg
University in Germany; Mrs. Higinbothem, who was a Vassar girl; and numerous others who
became the first educators in Amarillo and on the north plains.
Among memories of early Amarillo Mr-. Bolton recalls silent moving pictures in the
old opera house seen -and more or less enjoeed for the sum of ten cents.
Stringfellow had the first hardware in Amarillo. W. H. Fuclea, who with his wife
was noted for his many deeds of charitableness, ran a livery stble before he esteblished
the First National BPnk.
A negro named Jerry, supposedly still livine in marillo, was the oldest colored
man in town. In those first days people of color were discouraged from letting the sun
go down upon them in the nee cow town. Mr. Fuqua's colored cook hPd to be Drotected
from such discoureging tactics.
Jack Floyd, first restaurateur in Amarillo, had a cefe on main street with a
high board porch. Hot grease thrown through cracks ueon the backs of straying hogs,
which rooted an enjoyed the refuse from the resteurant under the pine planks,caused
the animals' hides and to flesh to slough off. These wandering hogs an+ther animals,
individually owned milch cows, etc., gave the town a bad odor, literally, if not
figerptively.
Very early in the histore of the town, cow chips and soft coal gave way to commer-
cial gas as fuel. The gas was manufactured in a plant north of the railroad tracks.
Later, when natural gas displaced the artificial type, a large volume of the natural
product was turned on and set afire, the column blazing high Al the heavens in celebra-
tion of the event.
Lend which later became the erclusive eolflin addttion to Amarillo was bought for
a son& the cost totalinc: perhaps $1200 to $2000. Before the "olflin hprle could be built
in the addition, a. lone grave had to be moved. 'here being no graveyard at the time,
early dwellers in the vicinity had. buried a dead man on their on property.
Many English, Irish, and Scotch people were at one time or another interested in
land and cattle in the Panhandle. Many younger sons came to the plains to grow up into
sturdy manhood in the cattle industry. Still others became "remittance men". One of this
like was said to be the illegitimate son of the then Prince of Wales.
Milch cows once grazed on the green which is now Ellwood Park. Mr. Salborn,
when he platted the townsite of a newer and better Amari7lo, set aside a large acreage
for a park and named it for his son, who died in early manhood. For yeafs the plat lat
neglected, a pasture for any stray bossy. Sanborn, realizing that nothing had been done
toward establishing a park and that the land was lying idle, worthless to anyone under
the existing conditions, brought a friendly suit to rouse the city fathers to action.
Fearing that the ground might be lost to the city, leading club women of Aaarillo in-
terested themselves in the matter. Mrs. Will A. Miller, whose husband was city manager
at the time, learning of the proposed legal proceedings, planted two trees at the north
entrance to Ellwood, in order that it could be said that something- had been done toward
making it a park. Later, she planted flowers and shrubs and tended them with her own
hands, bedding the plants in winter to keep them from freezing. In the park is a foun-
tain memorial to Mary Tudor, another Amarillo woman -.oted for her civic efforts and
kindly deeds. On the sidewalks of Polk Street are the spots which mark the site of two
other drinking fountains dedicated to kar:v Tudor.
But nowhere, even in beautiful Ellwood Park, is there a meokial to H. B. Sanborn,
the "Father of Amarillo", the fair city that he envisioned on the fairest spot on earth,
the Panhandle plains of Texas.