THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
I am writing this from Karnes
City, Texas,
the county seat town of Karnes County. I
am visiting my grandson, Nathan Jones, and his wife Kayla and my great
granddaughter, almost-five-year-old Brenna.
He is one of the ones, who, a few years ago, like some of his
ancestors
of old, got the urge to GTT—that is, Go
To Texas.
The closest I had ever been to Karnes
City, Texas before in my travels back when my husband and I had the
ambition to
“visit every state in the Union,” I had explored that notable Texas
town, San
Antonio, site of the famed Battle of the Alamo.
Karnes City lies about an hour’s motor drive south of San
Antonio. We
(my son Keith, his wife, Debbie, and I) are here for a visit for Palm
Sunday
and until Thursday of Holy Week when we will fly back to Georgia. A brief visit for a long journey, but spring
breaks and obligations about the celebration of Easter somewhat
dictated our
schedule.
We worshiped on Palm Sunday in the
church where Nathan and Kayla are active, First Baptist of Karnes City. Both of them serve on the ministry staff, he
as part-time minister of music (his regular job is band director and
chorus
director in the local school system) and she is church secretary and
youth
leader (better known nowadays as ministry assistant).
The music was glorious and uplifting. The
sermon by the Rev. Kevin Cornelius asked
and explored the probing question, “Why the Cross?”
He related how we observe Palm Sunday as a
day of rejoicing because of the celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry
into
Jerusalem. On Easter Sunday we are filled
with rejoicing because of the resurrection of the risen Lord. But in between these two events of rejoicing
is the darkest day in Christendom—we call it “Good Friday,” the day of
Jesus’
death, the Day of the Cross. “Why the
Cross?” he asked pointedly. Then Rev.
Cornelius traced the necessity for the cross in God’s redemption plan. The cross was necessary in God’s plan because
by Christ’s substitutionary death He did for us what we could not do
for
ourselves: He became the perfect
sacrifice for sin required by God to restore mankind to Himself.
We are seeing the countryside, quite
different from the spring we left in Georgia, with trees in full
regalia of new
leaves and the flowers in brilliant array.
Karnes City and the surrounding area is in the Texas plains area. The county itself has several oil wells, some
now being drilled and others that have been active for some time. At night we can see the well frames alight,
one close to Nathan and Kayla’s house on Fair Lane.
The cattle farms and pasturelands stretch for
miles, with Texas longhorns sometimes close to the fence that encloses
the
Jones property in the town of Karnes City.
Within the county are people of Polish descent and of Spanish
descent. The foliage is grassland, and
mesquite trees and a type of oak, much shorter than our tall oaks of
various
types in Georgia. And there’s the
wind—always the wind. It may be
extremely hot or extremely cold. Here in
this Texas springtime, it is cool and somewhat bracing as it stirs the
limbs of
mesquite and oak and the shoots of prairie grass.
And now I come to GTT. The story is
told that when some of our
ancestors from the Georgia hills decided to find their fortunes in the
west
that was opening up to settlers, they painted in large letters on their
barns
in Georgia: GTT. The
designation meant Gone to Texas. They
might be back, they might sell their
property in Georgia where the side of their barn announced their
destination,
but most likely they would remain in Texas, trying to make a living on
the
plains they had chosen for their new destination.
I learned that some of the eighteenth
century property developers went to far away Poland and made the new
world and
its opportunities seem so inviting to those who wanted to leave their
homeland
to settle in America that a large contingent of Polish settlers came to
the
area of Texas that became Karnes County.
No doubt, they hardly thought of any letters such as GTT—Gone to
Texas. But that’s what they did, and
that’s how the
Polish immigrants came to make the area around present-day Karnes City
their
home.
It was easier for the Spanish. Mainly
they had to cross the border of Mexico
to make America their home. Many had
come to fight in Santa Ana’s army that led up to the Texas War for
Independence. And there many remained, and
others migrated farther on.
And so the Spanish communities, with the many who had moved
across from
Mexico, settling permanently in Texas and other southern border states.
Migrations into our mountain counties
took place in the early nineteenth century.
GTT (Gone to Texas—or GWYM, Go West Young Man) was a common
occurrence
in the late nineteenth century. Both
migrations were with hopes of a better way of life and more room for
growing
families.
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
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