However, before I answer the question, a little history behind the sketch itself.
As noted in my previous article, by the early 1970s Grimes was living in the small town of Acuff, located just east of Lubbock. At the time Grimes, entering his eighties, began thinking back on his childhood days in Bonham. As well as writing about many of his experiences, he literally drew some as well. Though not an expert sketch artist, his drawings are nonetheless quite interesting. They have, as one observer noted, a sort of Grandma Moses look about them.
Perhaps most important among the sketches was the one of the Texas and Pacific rail yard as it looked in the early 1900s. Why most important? Given that we have practically no photos of the rail yard in its heyday, Grimes’s sketch might remain the only visual representation we will ever have of that part of town in its prime.
The fact that Grimes drew the sketch completely from memory in 1973, at the age of eighty, makes it even more impressive.
In an undated issue of her history column, Here’s History Looking At You, that appeared in the Bonham Daily Favorite in the mid-1970s, Mildred Welch noted that the rail yard sketch was carried from Lubbock to Bonham by Grimes’s grandson, Buddy Blackmon. In a neat, heavy frame, it hung on a wall of the Fannin County Historical Museum, located on the third floor of the courthouse at the time, for years.
Now, back to the earlier question: Why didn’t I just take a photo of the original? Answer: When I started my research on Grimes early this year, no one at the historical commission or the historical museum could find the sketch.
The logical conclusion was that the piece, along with a few other Grimes sketches, was lost during the moving of the museum and its artifacts from the courthouse to the old Texas & Pacific depot in 1987. Perhaps I’m a bit biased, but I felt that a real treasure had been lost – perhaps forever.
Imagine my relief when Larry Standlee, volunteer at the Fannin County Historical Museum, called in mid November to inform me that the rail yard sketch had been located in one of the storage rooms.
Two additional sketches were also found. One was of another form of transportation, a ferry on Red River. Pryor’s Ferry, more than likely located due north of Ivanhoe, moved many people, wagons, animals and materials across the river.
In a companion article with the sketch, Grimes constantly refers to the land north of the river as Indian Territory, meaning that the ferry must have operated prior to Oklahoma becoming a state in 1907. Moreover, he states that he remembers being ten years old when he watched the ferry at work. That would have been 1902-03.
This is reinforced by 1900 census records showing two men by the last name of Pryor running a ferry. Andy P. Pryor is listed as a “Ferryman – Red River,” while A. P. Pryor, more than likely a brother, is listed as a farmer, but had a boarder living with him who worked as a “ferryman.” Neither man is listed on the 1910 census.
Grimes’s sketch is a good look at an important form of river transportation that was widely used prior to the building of bridges across Red River in 1927.
Perhaps his last sketch was of the courthouse square area as Grimes remembered it in the late 1890s.
The courthouse appears to have a rope fence around it, the streets are dirt and a horse is taking a drink of water that came from one of the many wells located on the square. Grimes drew the sketch in 1980 at the age of eighty-eight.
And so, Casey Grimes’s illustrated look at Fannin County history has been restored to its rightful place: On display in the Fannin County Historical Museum. Volunteers at the museum encourage everyone to stop by and view his work.
Big thanks to Larry Standlee and Jean Dodson, volunteers at the Fannin County Historical Museum, for their unending search for Grimes’s sketches. Your tenacity paid off.
Tim Davis teaches at Bonham High School.