by: RayH69
Setting the Stage – 1870
After the Union won the Civil War in 1865, Southern families were generally impoverished, which encouraged them to migrate westward, with many settling in Texas.
The Texas economy of the late 1800’s experienced tremendous growth. Most Texans engaged in farming or ranching. After the Indians had been forced from the plains and the buffalo destroyed, Texans drove more than three million cattle north to the railroads in Kansas between 1875 and 1885.
These were the times into which John Melton Choate and Cora Zaid Gibbs were born. Their ancestors had lived in Texas for a generation before the War, and in the South for two generations before that – they were Southern patriots.
John’s Early Years – 1871-1895
These were the glory days of the cattle industry in Central Texas. The great Longhorn cattle round-ups and drives over the trails to Northern markets created much of the romance and legends of the cowboy as the authentic American mythic hero.
John Melton Choate was born in 1871 in Waco, McLennan County, Texas, to John R Choat and his bride of less than a year, Emma Sexton Haddox, on the day after her 18th birthday.
When John was an infant, his father died of the “flu” in 1872, near Ft. Dodge - later Dodge City, KS.
So John never saw, and had no personal knowledge of his father, after whom he was named.
Several years later, his mother married Vincent Murphy – that family eventually gave John 5 step-sisters and 4 step-brothers.
John spent his late adolescence and early manhood in the saddle, on the trail, and working on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma. His ambition was to become an independent cattle rancher.
Zaid's Early Years – 1876 -1895
Mud Creek is a small rural community near Eulogy in Bosque County, TX – an area with rich, well-drained soils and many streams, rivers and lakes – it is “well-watered”.
In 1876, Cora Zaid was born as the first child to Harrell Bascom Gibbs, son of a Civil War casualty as a Confederate soldier from Marion County, Alabama, and Mary Candis "Mollie" Jones. When her father was 21 and her mother 16, she first saw life in Mud Creek. In early 1879, when Zaid was 3, her mother died giving birth to her only sibling, Mary Candace "Mame" Gibbs.
Later that year, her father married a 21-year old widow, California Virginia Teague. They relocated to Pontotoc, Texas, where he operated a cotton gin, and later became the Sheriff and Tax Collector of Mason County. Zaid lived at home and assisted her loving stepmother in caring for her 6 stepbrothers and 3 stepsisters. Picture of Zaid in 1899.
Romance in Pontotoc – 1895
During the summer in rural Texas communities, there were few opportunities for people to socialize. Churches and schools occasionally sponsored social events such as dances, picnics and concerts.
In 1895, John was looking for some entertainment after a long ride back from Oklahoma. He attended a community dance in Pontotoc – the kind that lasted 3 days and 3 nights. That’s where he met the “spirited and beautiful” Cora Zaid Gibbs. They were described as the handsomest couple there.
They danced all night. John tells that some of his toenails were sacrificed that night “to the ardor of his passion, prolonged dancing and tight cowboy boots – he wasn’t used to that much time out of the saddle.”
A Texas Pioneer Family begins
After a short courtship, John and Zaid were married in Menardville, Texas (now Menard) on 20 October 1895, two days before John’s 24th birthday, and shortly before Zaid’s 19th birthday. After the wedding, over 150 guests were served “dinner on the grounds” – there weren’t enough chairs, so the guests were served standing under the trees.
After their wedding vows, the major promise they made to each other – and kept – was that they would never go into debt.
His marriage was the anchor and linchpin of John’s life as a man, a father, a cowboy, a farmer, and a city policeman.
Starting a Family on the Frontier
By 1890 Pontotoc, Texas included a hotel, general stores, mills, and businesses related to the horse industry. A major school, the San Fernando Academy, was opened in 1883. A typhoid fever epidemic nearly wiped out the town in 1887 - they filled up their cemetery, and opened another.
With so much of the population decimated, the school closed in 1889. That, and not being able to bring the railroad through the town, caused the town's prosperity to decline.
Soon after their marriage in 1895, John and Zaid started their life journey together as modest sharecropper farmers on a rented farm near Pontotoc, “raising cotton, watermelon, grassburrs, and kids.” Maybe the farm was Papa Gibbs other property - see map.
They possessed $50 cash, a saddle horse and a milk cow. Papa Gibbs gave them a Hereford calf, and neighbors contributed a small flock of chickens – an austere and unpretentious set of conditions to start a family on the Texas frontier.
Their first ranch – 1901
Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on the land.
John and Zaid were sharecroppers growing cotton and watermelons. It was never an easy task, nor a path to wealth and economic security. And farming was never the preferred occupation of a young man who had lived and worked as a cowboy in the glory days of the cattle industry in Central Texas.
After 5 years of farming, they had saved enough to buy a few goats and a few cattle, and to lease a small ranch near Pontotoc, where they survived for the decade of 1900 to 1910. During that time, they produced five boys and two girls.
Against a background of unrelenting personal poverty, as each new baby came off their production line, they each were given to feel that they were "special" in that family, and the social equal of their peers. They never whined about their limited means, or felt that they were “poor”.
A Big Opportunity – 1910
Kaffir was a quiet little farming community 20 miles west of Eldorado, Texas. It consisted of a store, post office and a one-room schoolhouse, where church was held every Sunday.
The young residents got together in their homes for parties. Groups would also go “Kodaking” on Sunday afternoons, sharing each other’s company and taking a lot of photos. Charlie Chick had the only car in Kaffir – a Model T – and he carried the mail twice a week between Kaffir and Eldorado.
Seeing what they thought would be their big opportunity, John moved his family in 1910 to Kaffir in western Schleicher County. Land was cheap there, and they invested in acreage of their own, where he ran cattle. His main support was from a job as the foreman of the Mayer Brothers’ large cattle ranch, the T-Half Circle.
Family Tragedies in Kaffir
Three months after they arrived, a dire tragedy struck when their eleven-year-old son, Wyatt, fell under a wheel of a horse-drawn freight wagon, was crushed, and died an agonizing death within a few hours [2 May 1910]. There is no record of their grief, nor how they dealt within themselves with this devastating loss.
Zaid's next baby, named Chester, had convulsions after his birth, died the same day [1 Nov 1911], and was buried beside his brother at Bailey Ranch Cemetery.
A fire burned their house to the ground, and they had to move into a new cattle barn for shelter for the next two years.
They saw their eldest daughter, Jewell, graduate from high school, lose her fiancée to a bronc-riding accident, and take a job as a "governess" on the Tisdale ranch, where a Christmas fire burned the Tisdale home - Jewell lost all her possessions, including clothing.
Turning Mules into Money
San Angelo became a central railroad transportation hub for the region in the 1880s. After a tuberculosis outbreak hit the United States in the early 1900s, doctors could only recommend rest in dry, warm climates, so many TB sufferers went to San Angelo for treatment.
With sons Harold and Melvin, John ran a freight service out of San Angelo to nearby towns. They’d load the wagons at the railroad depot in San Angelo, and on a good day, would travel about 15 miles before stopping.
Every morning it was “like a rodeo” getting harnesses on those biting and kicking mules to get them lined up on the wagon.
They would make extra money breaking other people’s mules for $5 each. They’d harness a young mule, and position him next to an experienced mule. The young mule could get "all tangled up in the traces," and would pitch and kick – acting “just like a spoiled kid."
Sometimes the mule would get dragged in harness for up to a mile, and would eventually get up “without much hair left on him." By the time they made a round trip, young mules were broken and ready to work.
A Few More Kids
The picture shows Jewell (3d from left, back row) and her school class in 1915.
The eldest son, Harold, left home to work in the Howard County oil fields as a roughneck.
Two more children -- George and Merle Grace - were born, and Jewell came home to have her first baby – Jay T - and sustained a childbirth injury that sapped her health for the next decade.
A Tough Decade – 1920
When Howard County was organized in 1882, Big Spring became the county seat. In 1920 it was a small city of 4,273 that served as a shipping point for livestock, cotton and small grains.
Oil was discovered in the Big Spring area in 1926, and the city experienced a boom over the next ten years. Elbow was a very small, rural community with a country school 7 miles south of Big Spring.
By 1920, they sold their cattle and their land. John had taken a county road construction job to keep food on the table. At the end of the decade, they had abandoned their ambitions to become independent ranchers and cattlemen, lost all their savings, and reached their lowest ebb with the deaths of a baby and an eleven-year-old child.
Most likely on Harold's advice, they decided to rent and move to a sandy-land cotton farm at Elbow, where they again lived for 5 years before they abandoned rural life for good, and moved to Big Spring in 1925.
Simple Folk
It is known that John and Zaid were hard-working, energetic, and sociable. They loved parties and dancing, and found parenthood a natural and deeply fulfilling role in life. The care and feeding of their healthy and diverse family consumed their best energies and was their highest priority. Self-supporting, self-reliant, and independent, they set a wonderful example and high standards of Christian morality, honesty, and simple virtue in their home.
Although always poor as a wage earner, they were never in debt, and cared deeply about their reputations for trustworthiness and reliability. There was no malice in either of them, no deceit nor dishonesty. They were simply simple folk, who had no need or wish to appear in public other than they were in private.
Relationships
They were proud of their pioneer heritage, but found no need to boast, and did not. And they played no favorites among their children or grandchildren. They were even-handed and even-tempered, and exuded a powerful sense of stability in themselves and in all their relationships.
They had legions of friends and admirers among their own generations, and among the younger generations, down to their last great-grandchildren.
Family Values
Each child who grew to adulthood was expected and encouraged to marry and to raise a family of hard-working, law-abiding citizens, as they themselves did. Dignity and self-respect were gained the old-fashioned way -- each earned his own, and passed it on. Children knew definite expectations, limits, and discipline with love.
They lived their Christian, middle-class family values, but did not boast about them, or try to impose them on others outside the family circle. Their values were "family-centered", in the light of evolving meaning of that description, decade by decade. It appeared never to occur to them not to put their children's and their over-all family's welfare ahead of their own.
"Sacrifice of self" in the Christian spirit, as their Methodist faith instructed, was accepted as the bottom line of ethical conduct. Perfection was not the goal, and inevitable failures to live flawlessly were treated by teasing good humor: smiles and not frowns.
The Choate Family Legacy
A flinty pragmatism emerged between the two and ruled in the family conduct, but they were not Puritans. Music, dancing, laughter, and good, old-fashioned fun could, and did, take over at any time, and always provided most of the sugar, which helped the medicine go down. As a consequence, their home was always filled with children, adolescents, and young adults, which included their children's friends as much as their own.
Their riches - and they had them aplenty - were not of the material kind, but in the family life they lived together, and the spirit of challenge and adventure with which they faced the world from the start, and which lasted until their deaths.