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Grandma Hobbs Tells of the Yesteryears

Grandma Hobbs tells of the yesteryears
Thursday, September 24, 1914
In her words:

Since my last letter to the Courier many of my friends have expressed their appreciation and urged me to write some more reminiscences of my early life in this country, so I will again endeavor to give a few incidents of those early days in a new and wild country.
My father came to Texas I think about December 1839, when I was about 7 years old, and I have seen many Indians on the war path roaming over our fair country, which is now so thickly dotted with prosperous farms and thriving towns. The country then was very thinly settled and people were afraid to venture out of their houses at night. One man was killed in his yard at Bastrop by the Indians.
About three weeks after my father arrived here, he and four others went out buffalo hunting and were chased back home by a band of Indians. The Indians then went to the house of a widow woman, Mrs. Coleman, killed her and her oldest son, and took one little boy prisoner: three little girls and and one boy kept hid in the house until the Indians left, and then came to our house leaving their mother and brother dead in the house. The boy died with his head in his sister lap, telling her she must do the best she could, he could do no more. The people went the next day and buried the dead, and brought the things to our house. Oh, I never can forget the sight, the mother was in a little chair where she had sat down and died after she was wounded.
The oldest girl was about 10 or 12 years old. Father and mother kept the children until their relatives came after them. This happened between Bastrop and Austin. The woman was in the garden and the children outside when the Indians came; they all got in the house except the boy whom the picked off the fence.
Mr. Hobbs came to Texas in 1839 when about 17 years old; he joined the Texas Rangers serving under Captain Cady and Jack Hays. He has been in many battles and skirmishes with the Indians and had much hard fighting to do, and has helped in the rescue of several children who had been captured and made prisoners. He was out on a raid after the Indians and was taking a dispatch to headquarters at Austin when about a mile from Brushy Creek a band of Indians spied him and he had to run for his life, the creek being on a rise was all that saved him; they ran to the water edge and shot arrows across at him. The creek was said to have been higher than it ever had. When he was mustered out he joined the army taking part in the Mexican War serving under General Taylor until the war ended. On July 1, 1847, we were married and lived near Bastrop until Christmas then moved to the Yegua on account of his health.
I have seen herds of buffalo, deer and wild mustangs grazing near our home, and have stood in my door and seen 25 or 30 run by not 50 yards from the house, which was a pretty sight. Bears were plentiful and Mr. Hobbs used to hunt them often, one evening his hounds treed two bears up one tree, he killed them and brought them home, and we certainly had some good eating as I think bear meat is fine. While we lived near the Yegua he killed alligators, panthers, wild cats and various other kinds of wild animal.
These things are all only a memory now and it is hard to realize that I am now spending a peaceful old age among my children and grandchildren on the same ground which during my lifetime I have seen transformed from a wilderness to a busy populous state, and the trail of the Indian and wild beast replaced by railroads and crowded thoroughfares.
Mrs. E. J. Hobbs

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