The Land Swap & Journey Towards Plainview, Texas

MAP OF TEXAS / OKLAHOMA

Land

James traded, sight-unseen, his land in Minnesota for land owned by two soldiers (probably Civil War vets) near Plainview in northwest Texas.

The family traveled from 1879 until 1882, making their way from Minnesota to Texas, farming along the way. Not a lot is known of their journey but they never finished it as planned.

They stopped about five hundred miles short of Plainview, in Pilot Point, Texas to farm until the older children were grown and had some "schooling." Pilot Point is a small community about forty or fifty miles north of Dallas and about the same distance south of the Red River-the Oklahoma border.

The family didn't have the desire or the funds or both to journey another five hundred miles westward nor did they homestead in Oklahoma. They hung onto their land in Plainview while making a living farming other people's land in Pilot Point.

Land was at the center of most discussions by dry farmers. While the family was sharecropping in Pilot Point, the biggest land booms of modern times took place just north of them in Oklahoma, hitting their peak in 1889 and 1890.

Having lived in Texas for over fifteen years, they learned what poor land was in the Plainview area. Maybe they somehow visited Plainview. Certainly they heard more about the land in Plainview from the people in and around Texas.

Horses

After James died, Mary traded the land for 98 horses. She sent her "boys" to Plainview where they took possession of the horses while delivering papers to release the land.

George Smart would have been about twenty, John eighteen, and Charles sixteen at that time. On their way home, they traded for more horses, arriving home with 127 horses that were not very good livestock.

They didn't know much about horses but they did make the thousand-mile journey safely. Considering their ages and the fact that Texas was herding it's unwanted elements, including desperadoes and troublesome Indians, into that part of the country during that time, it's a testament to their fortitude that they survived in tact.

The boys must have been armed. They had brothers-in-law Rueben Taylor and Pete Kenney who were about 30. Rueben was a second generation Texan. He and Pete were seasoned cowboys. These two may have been the guardian angles that kept the young boys from going too far astray.
 
However, their two brothers-in-law were about thirty years old. Reuben Taylor was a second-generation Texan. Pete Kenney was also a seasoned cowboy. One, or both of them, may have went along during part of the journey.