1876 :: Postmaster Antony

Milton Antony (1824-1885) was the third Postmaster in Rockdale, beginning on the 6th of June in 1876. His term ended one month after the entire wooden portion of Rockdale burned in March of 1877.

1876 :: S H Hume and family

S.M. Hume and family left for Rockdale, Texas, to make a home. Schuyler Citizen & Rushville Times, March 17, 1876

1958 :: Amelia W. Williams

Amelia W. Williams, educator and historian, daughter of Thomas Herbert and Emma (Massengale) Williams, was born in Maysfield, Texas, on March 25, 1876. 

Several generations of the family were planters in South Carolina until after the Civil War, when her father established a plantation on the Little River in the blacklands of Milam County.

Amelia, the oldest of seven children, was early recognized as a potentially outstanding scholar and so was given the best education available from local teachers. She attended Stuart Seminary in Austin and graduated from Ward (later Ward-Belmont) Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1895 with a liberal arts degree.

By the time she turned twenty-two both of her parents had died, leaving her the guardian of four younger sisters and manager of a 2,000-acre plantation. After rearing her younger sisters Amelia Williams was able at last to work toward her academic goals.

She passed exams for temporary certification and taught history and English in rural schools in San Gabriel, Marlo, Branchville, Baileyville, Calvert, and Cameron. Attending college during the summers, she earned a B.A. at Southwest Texas State Normal School in 1922, a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Texas in 1926, and the Ph.D. in 1931. From 1925 until her retirement in 1951, Williams taught American and English history at the University of Texas.

As a student of Eugene C. Barker, she investigated Texas history, doing primary research on the Alamo. Her M.A. thesis, "The Siege and Fall of the Alamo," incorporating much of this material, was expanded into her Ph.D. dissertation, "A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of its Defenders," which established her as the authority on this subject. Five chapters of the dissertation were published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly in 1933 and 1934. In 1935 she published Following General Sam Houston, 1793–1836. 

From 1938 to 1943 Williams and Barker collaborated on the eight-volume edition of The Writings of Sam Houston, 1813–1863. Her tact was credited for having convinced Houston's descendents to grant access to portions of his correspondence, an act that Barker's disdain for Houston had precluded for many years.

Williams was an honorary lifetime member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and also held membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Order of the Eastern Star. She was a Presbyterian and a Democrat. She died in Austin on August 14, 1958, and was buried near Maysfield. The Barker Texas History Center at the University of Texas at Austin contains her papers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Milam County Heritage Preservation Society, Matchless Milam: History of Milam County (Dallas: Taylor, 1984). National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 44. Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Jane Smoot [her niece, who is still living in Austin, Texas as of this date]
 
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.

Jane Smoot, "WILLIAMS, AMELIA WORTHINGTON," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwi83), accessed August 10, 2011. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

1885 :: Death of Dr. Milton Antony

On this date in the history of our hometown . . . the 25th day of January . . . in the year 1885 . . . Dr. Milton Antony dies in Rockdale, Milam County, Texas. He is buried in the Old City Cemetery, which is just out of sight at the bottom edge of the postcard in this collage.


Dr. Milton Antony, Jr. was a Confederate Surgeon in Brazoria County, Texas during the war between the states, then relocated to Milam County, Texas where he was the third Postmaster in Rockdale, serving 06 June 1876 to 26 April 1877 (which was one month after the entire wooden portion of Rockdale burned). He was a practicing physician in both Cameron and Rockdale. A Henry family reunion write-up in a 1931 edition of The Rockdale Reporter states that --

On Oct. 3, 1876, the Henrys [i.e., William Paschal Henry (1836-1912) and Josephine Wingfield Henry nee Davis (1842-1899)] arrived in Rockdale to visit a sister and family of the Mrs. Henry's, it being Dr. and Mrs. M. F. Anthony, who at that time had the post office and drug store combined on the corner where the Wolf Hotel now stands.

That is the Wolf Hotel on the right corner of the Rockdale postcard. The Wolf sat on the northeast corner of the intersection of Main and Milam. According to a history of Rockdale published in 1936, a two-story stone and brick bank building was erected in 1875, which later became the Wolf Hotel, and then, ca. 1935, the American Legion Hall. An 1885 map of Rockdale does show a bank at that location, and on the corner across the street is a post office in the Mundine House.


A year before Josephine arrived in Rockdale to visit her sister, Margaret, the following item appeared in the 12 November 1875 issue of the Galveston Weekly News --

There are street fights occurring (in Rockdale) almost every day and the officers of the law seem to enjoy it, taking their fines, never giving offenders the least word of warning or lecture. Nothing better could be expected when they license women of ill fame for ten dollars a month and receive half of the fines and their compensation. The most disgusting of it is, when they choose, these officers step beyond their authority and utterly disregard the law at pleasure. Every day or two some very interesting scenes occur in the pettifoggeries of Rockdale.

And just a year before that 1875 report, the same paper, in the 09 November 1874 issue, described the brand new city of Rockdale as being --

delightfully located in a thriving section of the county. . . . there are two or three banks, fifty or sixty merchants, and plenty of saloons, and has generally all the appearances of a railroad town. . . . While all is new and in some degree crude, there are some fine stone and brick buildings. . . . Where a population of eighteen hundred now thrive, was ten months ago the home of the deer, and the pleasure ground of the black bear.

For more information about Dr. Antony and his family, see --

• Dr. Milton Antony, Jr.
• His findagrave memorial page
• Dr. Milton Antony, Sr., his father
• Judge Edwin Le Roy Antony, his son
• Antony Roots & Branches, his ancestors & assorted kith 'n kin

P.S. The handwritten paper in the background of the collage is a document from 1864, signed by Milton Antony, M.D. and three other doctors -- requesting the Confederate army to excuse the only druggist in Brazoria County, Texas from being conscripted into the army . . .

Every Family Has One :: My Hometown

My Hometown . . . when I return . . .
the main street still is filled with pleasant faces and glad hellos
with an atmosphere of calm . . . with time for neighborly concern
with joy in sharing another's fortune
or heartfelt words to one who mourns.
Hometown is more than just a town
it is a way of life, a place of peace and quiet
and when I return it is as if I have never been gone
and in my heart I have not.
by
Craig E. Sathoff

Old Rockdale postcard . . .
Main St. north from I & G. N. Depot, Rockdale, Texas

The postcard has been reproduced in multiple Rockdale publications . . .
location / ownership / existence of original unknown . . .
According to a newspaper clipping from the files of my cousin, Peggy (Ferguson) Skeeters, a Henry family reunion was held at the old Hamilton homeplace in Rockdale, Milam County, Texas sometime in 1931. That yellowed and crumbling piece of paper recorded the following about the arrival of my 2nd great-grandpa, William Paschal Henry (1836-1912), and his family in the brand-new town of Rockdale, Milam County, Texas . . .

On Oct. 3, 1876, the Henrys arrived in Rockdale to visit a sister and family of Mrs. Henry's, it being Dr. and Mrs. M. F. Anthony, who at that time had the post office and drug store combined on the corner where the Wolf Hotel now stands.

That is the Hotel Wolf in the lower right corner of the above collage, with an arrow pointing to the same building on the old Rockdale postcard. The Hotel had gone out of business before 1935 when Rockdale's American Legion post purchased the building.

During World War II the building's second story was lopped off and its Main Street front was shortened and remodeled. A stage was added and the hall became the place to be for dances and music for almost 20 years. Rockdale Reporter, 06 Aug 1998

When I was in high school (the 60's), we frequently spent a portion of our weekend hours attending teen dances -- with real live bands! -- in the un-airconditioned bottom-half of this building. My parents were regular fixtures as chaperones at these events.


Directly across the street was McVoy's Grocery Store where my parents shopped weekly. Every Friday, my widowed Grandma, who never learned to drive, had her grocery list ready for Mom or Dad to take with them to McVoy's. There was a large wooden magazine rack near the front door where I would sit and read comic books while Mom checked out. Mr. Galbreath kept the produce stocked and freshly washed, and would give us pieces of fresh sugar cane to chew on. The meat market at McVoy's was where Mom bought steak cutlets for making her infamous chicken-fried steak with cream gravy which NONE of us have ever been able to replicate.


I was back on Main Street in June of 2009 while in Rockdale for the 75th Annual Rockdale Homecoming as well as my Mom's 60th RHS Class Reunion, where I was flattered to be told by numerous people (who had known Mom since the 40s) that, "You look just like your Mom!"


At the Homecoming gathering, one lady said to me, "Aren't you the one who found the snake in the bedroom when you were babysitting Delaine?" That was also during high school in the 60s! I was babysitting for the local pharmacist in his home. The baby and I were sitting in the rocker / recliner in her nursery when I saw a snake come crawling in the room! I got out of the room with Delaine and shut the door (which wasn't much of a barrier since it had such a gap at the bottom) and called my trusty Dad at our home (no cell phones in those days). Dad was there immediately, but it took him a while to find and kill the poisonous copperhead -- it had crawled up into the coils under the rocker / recliner!


Before I left town, we (me & Mom & my sister) visited the Dan Kubiak exhibit at the I&GN Depot, and I also took a few photos of Joy Graham's Bit of History building on Cameron Avenue.


The journey back home to Main Street was nostalgic, while somehow filled with the sweet assurance that at Home we are not forgotten. These people knew me as a child. They knew my grandparents. And in some cases, their parents and grandparents knew my ancestors. And many of the families of Rockdale have somehow managed to climb into my family tree!