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The Golden Triangle" Dobbin-Dacus-Montgomery Residents of that area known as Montgomery with a Montgomery Post Office address know or should know that Montgomery was the largest and first settlement in Montgomery County since the Spanish Land Grants began the settlement of Montgomery County, Circa 1820. Montgomery, first described as a village, then called "the town" and now a city has never failed to draw attention as the site of the County Seat, the home of C.B. Stewart, the location of businesses and business men who accumulated vast fortunes and lands, the founding of brilliant family professionals, surviving with heads held high, the Civil War Reconstruction, corrupt politics, The Depression of the 1930's and a stagnant period of growth, now experiencing a growth moving in with mind-boggling speed. There are many written histories of the village-town-city of Montgomery, but some of our younger historians think that several of Montgomery’s neighboring communities that contributed support the great success of Montgomery itself, should be recognized and tribute paid to those "Kissing Cousins". One of our very able younger historians, James Price, a descendant of Dr. James Howe Price, who came to Montgomery in the 1830's, settled about two and a half miles west of Montgomery. The Price family became large land owners and founded a family of teachers and educators, office holders, surveyors, business owners and many of Dr. James Howe Price’s descendants are living in the Montgomery area today. Our present day James Prices is a brother to Bessie Price Owens, teacher and foremost historian of Montgomery and surrounding areas. The Price family land lies about halfway to the community known as Dobbin--the distance from Montgomery to Dobbin is called five miles and James Price, the primary author of this story lives beside his sister, Mrs. Owens, on the original Price homestead land about halfway between Montgomery and Dobbin. Big Lake Creek, a travel route of more than one tribe of Indians runs through part of the Price land and was at one time an unsurmountable barrier between Montgomery and the settlement now known as Dobbin. Early settlers and their early descriptions of the area which our present day historians was designated as "The Golden Triangle" and which includes Montgomery, Dacus and Dobbin indicate a great part of the area was a prairie. They write of Montgomery Prairie, Shannon Prairie, Grimes Prairie, etc. Robin Montgomery, in his book "The History of Montgomery County" describes the area southward from the town of Anderson as "an occasional pine grove decimates the plains and for miles the prairie is completely flat and even," the time being Circa 1832. To travel over The Golden Triangle area today taxes even the imagination of prairies. After the Civil War, the great need for help on the huge land grants devoted almost entirely to farming and stock raising, attracted the German, Polish and Irish immigrants, finding available land from Big Lake Creek west to Plantersville, very aptly named, they began to move there. One of the first land owners was located just north of the present townsite of Dobbin, was Colonel Jacob Shannon. This family was the leading force in establishing a Baptist Church and the Jacob Shannon Evergreen Cemetery, still in existence and in beautiful condition one hundred and thirty six years after Jacob Shannon’s death. Another founding father was Judge Theodoric Smyth. These men were highly educated, professional men with farm experience, who came with their slaves and who provided the means for education and religious freedom in their community. In the times before the Civil War, most settlements were self-sufficient, but the Civil War made "Contract Labor" a must and the call for help was answered by the immigrants who came too late for the free land grants. They came as skilled carpenters, brick masons, blacksmiths, timber operators and highly skilled farmers and stockmen. Many descendants of those first families settling in Dobbin and as far west as Plantersville, still live in that area today. The phone book is full of Mocks, Hoffarts, Herzogs and my own paternal great grandfather, Anthony Martin was an immigrant from Baden-Baden, Germany. The destruction of the farming south, by the Civil War, the horrors of reconstruction, the violent political struggles, the great loss of life from Yellow Fever epidemics, all were taking a huge toll on our Golden Triangle citizens well into the early 1900 period. Then came World War I, Depression periods that were warning signs of what could and did happen in the early 1930 period. The death of cotton farming began when the bollweevil crossed the Mississippi and began a race horse speed trip across our Golden Triangle crop land. The ever resourceful citizens looked around for another means of livelihood and found thousands upon thousands of acres of pine and hardwood timber and began to set up sawmills to harvest the timber in every form. Some turned to truck farming and the advent of the railroads made those projects more profitable by getting them out to market. Those historians writing about Montgomery County as a whole, list many sawmill "Fronts" which became towns, even as close as two miles apart, but I have never seen in print, naming Dobbin as a sawmill town, though the Montgomery County History Book giving the history of Dobbin has a very meaningful sentence which says "Dobbin’s first settler was a Mr Hardesty" there is no date to say whether Mr Hardesty was there before or about the time the Shannon’s, Smyth’s and Deveraux’s settled in Dobbin or whether he is counted as the first settler listed when the townsite of Dobbin was recorded in 1914. To be continued |
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©Montgomery
County News, 2004 |
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