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Settlers on Old Plantersville Road Part VII To tell of the importance of the Old Plantersville Road to our first settlers, the most interesting account of living on that old road was the brief account by Mattie Steussy, a daughter of Franklin Goldstein Dupree and granddaughter of Zachariah and Letitia Landrum. I happily claim her as an aunt and so greatly enjoyed her too-brief story. The opening paragraph of her story reads: " We lived in the piney woods of East Texas. My father had a sawmill. We were along way from any town. Eight miles was a half a days journey in those days with deep sand and stumpy roads. There were very few roads that one could travel in a hack or buggy. In the winter we were waterbound as all streams were swollen and dangerous. There were footlogs, but very few bridges." Some of the more prominent families who lived along the old road between the Noah Griffith homestead and the end of that road at Plantersville are listed below. Punchard- In 1856 Sam Punchard bought 150 acres across Mud Branch from the Frank Dupree settlement known as "Dupree Switch" which lay opposite the Noah Griffith homestead. Sam operated a grist mill and Frank had a sawmill, the two operations connected by a track and a Dolly Varden Cart that carried supplies back and forth between the two mills. The boys of the two families were loosely home taught, but the girls were sent to the nearest school, the Markey Boarding School at Plantersville. The Punchard family owned enough land to be called a plantation and the like the Griffith’s and Dupree’s had their own family cemetery. Springer- Elizabeth Landrum daughter of Zachariah and Letitia Landrum, married John May Springer in 1825 (Zachariah Landrum and wife in Texas at "Lake Creek, Coahuila and Texas" as their address was known on the Spanish Land Grant in 1831). The senior Landrums wanted all their family with them on their 4,400 plus acres. Three miles south of Montgomery and so the son-in-law John May Springer and daughter Elizabeth arrived at Lake Creek Coahuila and Texas in 1832. Dupree- John May Springer and wife Elizabeth Landrum had a daughter with an unusual name Canzada, with the middle name of Tyne, for her mother’s maiden name. In 1847 Canzada married Franklin Goldstein Dupree. Family lore says he was French. He and father-in-law both loved the sawmill business, as did many of the next generations of Springer’s and Dupree’s. When the Springer-Dupree settlement was established across from the Griffith home, they were called Plantersville residents that little town being nearer than taking the Old Plantersville Road to Montgomery. Although the Dupree-Springer family established a family cemetery close by their homestead, many of the Dupree-Springer families are buried at Plantersville and Magnolia. Here credit should be given to the great part Mud Branch played in the lives of those before Texas had dropped off the address of "Coahuila and Texas" as with the Noah Griffith family and descendants, the Punchard’s, Depree’s and Springer’s, along with their sawmills and farming depended on their source of water from the ugly named Mud Branch. The Old Plantersville Road leaving that town was the only dependable travel route to Montgomery and the need for the Dupree-Springer family to come often to visit the Zachariah Landrum family was described very well in the Mattie Steussy story of life in Plantersville in her childhood. She was a Dupree and her father ran the Dupree sawmill. She talks of reasons the Old Plantersville Road was so important to those early settlers. Dean- Another large sawmill enterprise was that of George Dean who settled on a tract of land in the old Noah Griffith survey and so used both the Old Plantersville Road and the Mud Branch water supply. An interesting letter from one of the George Dean’s family to a son living in the Griffith survey on the Old Plantersville Road asks "Son, how far do you have to go to bathe?" That means "Son, how far are you from Mud Branch?" as in many cases, this sawmilling Dean family had their own cemetery and it was on the right hand side of the Old Plantersville Road going west where it intersects what is known today as Jackson Road. James Price talks of the many happy hours he and Noah Griffith’s grandsons Bill, Clinton and Maynard spent swimming and playing in Mud Branch. The Branch was the only source of water for the Griffith family for many years. To be continued. |
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©Montgomery
County News, 2004 |
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