A. F. McDonald
A. F. M'Donald Settled in Collin Before Civil War
Learned Cabinet Makers Trade Under Uncle in McKinney
Daily Courier Gazette
W. S. Adair, writing in Sunday's Dallas News, gives some interesting early Collin County history, as told him y Prof. A. F. McDonald of Vickery:
Early McKinney Cabinet Maker
"The McDonalds were among the pioneers of Texas," said A. F. McDonald, 5643 Vickery Boulevard. "John McDonald, my grandfather came from East Tennessee To Texas in 1853 and settled near Springfield, Limestone county, when the Indians were not far away and there both he and grandmother died. Their children, including my father, Arthur W. McDonald, went to live with their uncle, Baxter Bell, at McKinney, making the journey on Horseback.
"Uncle Baxter was a cabinet maker, which was considered a good trade in those days when all the furniture in the Houses on the frontier and everywhere else, I suppose, was made by hand. Father, who learned the trade under him had about completed his apprenticeship when he was called to four hears' service in the Civil War.
"After the surrender father returned to McKinney and married Ellen C. Spurgen, daughter of a Collin county pioneer. In 1870 father eighty acres of land on Duck, Creek, Dallas, county and on it set up a cabinet maker;s shop and began to make furniture for the settlers around about....
Moves to Lazy Neck
"But after losing his land on Duck Creek father did not like that locality and he sought another foothold, this time in that quarter of Collin county known as Lazy Neck, eighteen miles southwest of McKinney, where he bought a tract of 120 acres. All that region was open range and wild in those days. The native grass was so lluxuriant that in places it would hide a man on horseback. Father built a log schoolhouse on the edge of his land and soon a village called Nubbinville with a general store owned by Alex Cox, a blacksmith shop and a saloon spring up around it. Being shy of lumber with which to make a door for the schoolhouse, father hung a cowhide, which swung from the top instead of swinging sidewise on hinges as wooden doors ordinarily do. The building was known on week days as the Rawhide School house and on Sundays as the Rawhide Church.
"The outstanding event of the year at Nubbinville was the big turkey-shooting tournament, put on by the saloon man at Christmas. The marksmen in a radius of fifty miles assembled to take part in these tournaments, or to get drunk and bet on the outcome, and to shout for the winners. Like the Texas State Fair, these tournaments ran two weeks, that is, through the holiday season. Whiskey was cheap and it flowed freely in those days, and was cracked up to be of much better quality than was on the market --- or fifteen years later when the manufacturers had learned how to poison the stuff. Still there were shooting scrapes and an occasional killing even in those days.
"We used to come to Dallas for supplies or to visit our relative, Sinclair Gunning, who was on the police force and who was the father of Charlie Gunning, now of the city detective department. we came in a wagon and, as there were no roads or bridges we had t pick or way and cross Muddy, Rowlett and White Rock Creeks, and the East Ford of the river as best we could; that is, we followed the stream until we could ford it. Caruth Brothers had a general store in Dallas and a warehouse on their farm north of town, from which they supplied their tenants. We always loaded up at the warehouse. Dallas was a small town in those days, in comparison to what it is now, and very much of a mudhole when it rained. On one of our trips to Dallas we took home a Singer sewing machine, which was the first sewing machine to find its way into the lazy Neck community and which was therefore a nine days' wonder.
"There was very little land in cultivation in Lazy Neck when we moved to that locality. the people depended upon cattle, which took care of themselves on the open range. A little corn and wheat and a few bales of cotton were all that any settler attempted to grow. Father hauled two bales of cotton to Jefferson and brought back the lumber with which he built our house. Even the people of McKinney and Sherman, when they outgrew log cabins, had to go all the way to East Texas for lumber. But those were good old days. The first settlers of Lazy Neck were high[-class pioneer stock and the name of the place was never applied to them as a whole. It is said that there once lived in that region a man who did nothing but lay the fiddle and hunt with a pack of hounds. The people of McKinney, where he often went with his fiddle under his arm, got to calling him Lazy Neck because he would not work, and from that small beginning the name spread to the very land he refused to lend a hand in cultivating. The dominant element of the community, however, was God-fearing, patriotic, industrious and sticklers for the strictest standards of old-time propriety and morality, and they strove to bring up their children to follow in their footsteps. They permitted the boys and girls to indulge in reels and other square dances, but sat down on waltzes, schottishes and round dances in general, that were at that time finding their way as far out as the frontier. Dim Sidwell was reputed to be the best fiddler in the Neck, with Babe and Jack Marriott as close second. Sidwell and Babe Marriott also played the banjo. When only one of them played for a dance the blowout was called a frolic. When the boys could raise money enough.to get all three of them to play, the event rose to the dignity of a function.
Evolution of the School.
"Nubbinville flourished until the Santa Fe Railroad built the Dallas-Paris line and on W. D. Daniel's farm placed a station a mile south of Nubbinville and called it Wylie, for Col. W. D. Wylie, father of Gus Wylie, Street Commissioners of Dallas, Brown & Burns, the saloonist, the blacksmith and everybody else at Nubbinville moved to Wylie, taking the Rawhide School and church along with them, and that was the last of Nubbinville. Wylie started with six saloons, all doing a brisk business. At once the people began to sell or to take West their cattle, to make barbed-wire fences and to put the land in cultivation.
"I went to school at Rawhide, at Wylie and finished at Garland, where Prof. E. M. Chartier, was the principal of the public schools, and at the same time was head of the Western Normal and Business College. i took both the normal and business courses. I had a view a business career, but failing to land a position, I went to teaching and was for seven years principal of the Wylie public schools. As pupil and teacher, I saw the Wylie public schools grow from the one-room log schoolhouse, with the rawhide door, at Nubbinville to the handsome sixteen-room schoolhouse at Wylie, with all the modern equipment and employing a staff of twelve teachers. Wylie boasts as good a high school as there is in Texas, and it is the ambition of the patrons of the school generally to give their sons and daughters at least a high school education.
"I went from teaching to banking and served four years as cashier of the First State Bank of Wylie. Moving to Dallas in 1916.
Learned Cabinet Makers Trade Under Uncle in McKinney
Daily Courier Gazette
W. S. Adair, writing in Sunday's Dallas News, gives some interesting early Collin County history, as told him y Prof. A. F. McDonald of Vickery:
Early McKinney Cabinet Maker
"The McDonalds were among the pioneers of Texas," said A. F. McDonald, 5643 Vickery Boulevard. "John McDonald, my grandfather came from East Tennessee To Texas in 1853 and settled near Springfield, Limestone county, when the Indians were not far away and there both he and grandmother died. Their children, including my father, Arthur W. McDonald, went to live with their uncle, Baxter Bell, at McKinney, making the journey on Horseback.
"Uncle Baxter was a cabinet maker, which was considered a good trade in those days when all the furniture in the Houses on the frontier and everywhere else, I suppose, was made by hand. Father, who learned the trade under him had about completed his apprenticeship when he was called to four hears' service in the Civil War.
"After the surrender father returned to McKinney and married Ellen C. Spurgen, daughter of a Collin county pioneer. In 1870 father eighty acres of land on Duck, Creek, Dallas, county and on it set up a cabinet maker;s shop and began to make furniture for the settlers around about....
Moves to Lazy Neck
"But after losing his land on Duck Creek father did not like that locality and he sought another foothold, this time in that quarter of Collin county known as Lazy Neck, eighteen miles southwest of McKinney, where he bought a tract of 120 acres. All that region was open range and wild in those days. The native grass was so lluxuriant that in places it would hide a man on horseback. Father built a log schoolhouse on the edge of his land and soon a village called Nubbinville with a general store owned by Alex Cox, a blacksmith shop and a saloon spring up around it. Being shy of lumber with which to make a door for the schoolhouse, father hung a cowhide, which swung from the top instead of swinging sidewise on hinges as wooden doors ordinarily do. The building was known on week days as the Rawhide School house and on Sundays as the Rawhide Church.
"The outstanding event of the year at Nubbinville was the big turkey-shooting tournament, put on by the saloon man at Christmas. The marksmen in a radius of fifty miles assembled to take part in these tournaments, or to get drunk and bet on the outcome, and to shout for the winners. Like the Texas State Fair, these tournaments ran two weeks, that is, through the holiday season. Whiskey was cheap and it flowed freely in those days, and was cracked up to be of much better quality than was on the market --- or fifteen years later when the manufacturers had learned how to poison the stuff. Still there were shooting scrapes and an occasional killing even in those days.
"We used to come to Dallas for supplies or to visit our relative, Sinclair Gunning, who was on the police force and who was the father of Charlie Gunning, now of the city detective department. we came in a wagon and, as there were no roads or bridges we had t pick or way and cross Muddy, Rowlett and White Rock Creeks, and the East Ford of the river as best we could; that is, we followed the stream until we could ford it. Caruth Brothers had a general store in Dallas and a warehouse on their farm north of town, from which they supplied their tenants. We always loaded up at the warehouse. Dallas was a small town in those days, in comparison to what it is now, and very much of a mudhole when it rained. On one of our trips to Dallas we took home a Singer sewing machine, which was the first sewing machine to find its way into the lazy Neck community and which was therefore a nine days' wonder.
"There was very little land in cultivation in Lazy Neck when we moved to that locality. the people depended upon cattle, which took care of themselves on the open range. A little corn and wheat and a few bales of cotton were all that any settler attempted to grow. Father hauled two bales of cotton to Jefferson and brought back the lumber with which he built our house. Even the people of McKinney and Sherman, when they outgrew log cabins, had to go all the way to East Texas for lumber. But those were good old days. The first settlers of Lazy Neck were high[-class pioneer stock and the name of the place was never applied to them as a whole. It is said that there once lived in that region a man who did nothing but lay the fiddle and hunt with a pack of hounds. The people of McKinney, where he often went with his fiddle under his arm, got to calling him Lazy Neck because he would not work, and from that small beginning the name spread to the very land he refused to lend a hand in cultivating. The dominant element of the community, however, was God-fearing, patriotic, industrious and sticklers for the strictest standards of old-time propriety and morality, and they strove to bring up their children to follow in their footsteps. They permitted the boys and girls to indulge in reels and other square dances, but sat down on waltzes, schottishes and round dances in general, that were at that time finding their way as far out as the frontier. Dim Sidwell was reputed to be the best fiddler in the Neck, with Babe and Jack Marriott as close second. Sidwell and Babe Marriott also played the banjo. When only one of them played for a dance the blowout was called a frolic. When the boys could raise money enough.to get all three of them to play, the event rose to the dignity of a function.
Evolution of the School.
"Nubbinville flourished until the Santa Fe Railroad built the Dallas-Paris line and on W. D. Daniel's farm placed a station a mile south of Nubbinville and called it Wylie, for Col. W. D. Wylie, father of Gus Wylie, Street Commissioners of Dallas, Brown & Burns, the saloonist, the blacksmith and everybody else at Nubbinville moved to Wylie, taking the Rawhide School and church along with them, and that was the last of Nubbinville. Wylie started with six saloons, all doing a brisk business. At once the people began to sell or to take West their cattle, to make barbed-wire fences and to put the land in cultivation.
"I went to school at Rawhide, at Wylie and finished at Garland, where Prof. E. M. Chartier, was the principal of the public schools, and at the same time was head of the Western Normal and Business College. i took both the normal and business courses. I had a view a business career, but failing to land a position, I went to teaching and was for seven years principal of the Wylie public schools. As pupil and teacher, I saw the Wylie public schools grow from the one-room log schoolhouse, with the rawhide door, at Nubbinville to the handsome sixteen-room schoolhouse at Wylie, with all the modern equipment and employing a staff of twelve teachers. Wylie boasts as good a high school as there is in Texas, and it is the ambition of the patrons of the school generally to give their sons and daughters at least a high school education.
"I went from teaching to banking and served four years as cashier of the First State Bank of Wylie. Moving to Dallas in 1916.
