Fredonia, Texas

May 27, 2024 (Memorial Day)

This is the fourth in a series of posts about our explorations in the Texas Hill Country in late May 2024.

This blog is essentially a personal diary of mine and Kristi’s explorations, but one that we choose to share with our friends and whoever else might find the topics interesting or informative. I sort of alluded to this in The Church in the Wildwood post. Often, we do little or no documentation of our journeys, but other times we make an intentional effort to do so in order to report on what we see and find.

All of the above paragraph was to explain why this particular adventure was not thoroughly documented in photos. We spent most of our time simply enjoying the drive and the scenery, the latter of which is in abundance in and around Mason County, Texas.

This trip was almost completely unplanned, except that we wanted to see the old schoolhouse at Grit, Texas, and drive down a ranch-to-market road that sort of borders the west and north sides of the Lindsay Ranch (there are other properties between the Lindsay Ranch and this road).

Route: Fredonia, Texas, Part I

So, to start, we headed toward the little community of Grit, which is located on TX-29/US 377 northwest of Mason. Before getting to the turnoff from US 87, we stopped to read the Old Fort Mason historical marker. The marker is located on the north side of Mason, but the fort was located on the south side on top of a hill. The original structures of the fort are gone, but the officer’s quarters have been rebuilt for visitors to explore.

Grit was settled around 1889. Originally, the residents wanted to name the community Funston, after a general who served in the Mexican American War. When they applied for a post office, however, the name was rejected because there was already a town named Funston, Texas. Residents settled on the name “Grit,” apparently due to the gritty quality of the soil.

A couple of side notes from my admittedly odd brain: First, “Funston” sounds like the name of an amusement park. The area around Grit is not what I would call fun, amusing, or park-like. But I could see putting up a sign on the edge of town that would read, “Have Fun in Funston!” or something like that. Second, the origin of the name “Grit” seems uncertain. It is not uncommon that the origin of a place name is forgotten over time. I find it interesting and somewhat sad that, sometimes, official records are not kept on such matters and that we must rely on hearsay and legend for an explanation.

Anyway, the schoolhouse was built around 1908. It served as the place of worship for the local Baptist church until 1924. Sadly, the building is on private property and behind a gate with a “no trespassing” sign. The entrance is located in a curve of the highway, so it was a somewhat harrowing experience to take pictures. Below are the best that we were able to get in the minute or two that we stopped at the driveway entrance.

Continuing past Grit, we drove to the junction of RM 1222. This road had been on my to-do list for a while because I wanted to see what the landscape looked like to the west of the Lindsay Ranch. As it turns out, it is not much different as pretty much anywhere else in Mason County, but it was a very pretty drive.

Kristi took some pictures of flowers in a small meadow near the junction:

RM 1222 runs north from TX-29 and then turns east before crossing US 87. Continuing across US 87, it runs through Katemcy and passes through ranch lands and huge granite outcroppings.

RM 1222 ends at RR 386, just south of Fredonia. Kristi and I wanted to see Fredonia, thinking that it was a significant small town in the area. While it was a community of note probably 100+ years ago, there is little left today to indicate its former importance.

To clarify, this is not the Fredonia of the Fredonian Rebellion. This specific Fredonia (there are others in Texas) is located in Mason County. It started off as a community of cotton farmers in the 1850s, after Texas had been admitted into the United States. The community was originally named Deerton and was located a couple of miles away from its present location in neighboring San Saba County. A man named John C. Calhoun (not the former Vice President of the United States) established a store there. He became postmaster and move the post office into his store. For reasons that I have not been able to determine, he moved the store a couple of miles away into Mason County, and the community followed him there. He renamed the post office to Fredonia because there was already another Deerton, Texas. (This was a pretty common occurrence, by the way.) The second store still stands today but is no longer in use.

The name “Fredonia” is used often as a placename. It is derived from the English word “freedom” with the Latin suffix. I imagine that the choice of the name reflected the pioneer/frontier spirit that probably still persisted in the area at the time.

Another mental side note: check out this painting of Vice President John C. Calhoun.

Fredonia fascinated Kristi and me. She immediately started researching the town. Not much information is available online, but we learned from the few articles available and Mrs. Lindsay that the area had transitioned from cotton farming to peanut farming. It was once a busy community with a stagecoach stop, blacksmith shop, various stores, and several churches. It even had a newspaper for a time. Eventually, the peanut industry began to wane. Peanuts are still grown in the area, but I don’t suppose that they provide enough incentive for a large community to exist there.

Route: Fredonia, Texas, Part II

Another interesting topic mentioned in a couple of articles was that Fredonia is located near a granite dome named Spy Rock. Funny, but when Kristi read that fact aloud as we were driving down RR 386 I asked, “I wonder where it is,” and immediately saw it through a clearing in the trees. We worked out how to get close to it and turned down Wagram Road, and then onto Spy Rock Road.

We never made it to Spy Rock, proper. Spy Rock Road had a section that was a bit sketchy–I wouldn’t attempt it without a high clearance vehicle and possibly some kind of four-wheel drive. But that wasn’t why we didn’t get to the base of the hill. We came upon what appeared to be a gate onto private property. The gate was open, but there was a sign that we couldn’t read due to it facing away from us against some bushes. Rather than risk trespassing, we turned around. Also, it had been raining on and off, and we were concerned about there being a sudden downpour. The sketchy part of Spy Rock Road was a small section that had become very muddy and was deeply rutted, so we did not want to risk being cut off from the main road by a flash flood.

Route: Fredonia, Texas, Part III

A heavy thunderstorm suddenly appeared in the area. We were originally on the northern edge but drove to the south side after the worst had passed to the east. The sun was in the west, and although still fairly high, there was a chance that we could see a rainbow. We drove down RR 386 a few miles and backed into an apparently seldom-used driveway to a hunting club to watch the storm as it receded. Kristi took this picture while we watched:

I’m sad to say that we didn’t see a rainbow. Furthermore, the hunt distracted us from taking pictures of the beautiful scenery that we saw in the next part of this trip. After watching the storm from the driveway for a few minutes, we turned onto RM 2618 and headed east toward Fly Gap.

Fly Gap was a small community in northeastern Mason County. As stated in the link in the previous sentence, the name came from an incident where a group of settlers were attempting to ambush a band of raiding Indians. The settlers had hitched up their horses near a gap in the surrounding hills and, upon returning from the ambush, noted that their horses had been badly bitten by horseflies. Horseflies or no, the area is very pretty and feels very remote despite not being far from both Mason and Llano, Texas. Nothing is left of Fly Gap as far as I can tell. We turned south on to RM 1900 before actually reaching it, but I hope to return someday to explore further.

RM 1900 headed almost straight south to TX-29, east of Mason. We turned toward Mason but stopped along the way to see a couple of historic sites. The first was the Kothmann Homesite and Cemetery. As the historical marker below explains, the Kothmanns were German immigrants who settled in the area of the community of Art in 1856. Members of the Kothmann family were involved in the Mason County Hoo Doo War of 1875 – 1876. (Source: Lindsay, Deloris Haley, Good Times – Second Edition, p. 65)

Art was originally called Willow Creek, but was renamed Plehweville by the town’s first postmaster, Otto Plehwe. The post office department asked that the name be changed due to the difficulty of the spelling and that, as a result, mail was being lost. In 1920, postmaster Eli Dechart took the last three letters of his name and renamed the community, Art.

Imagine for a moment that I or one of my ancestors had been the postmaster of Plehweville in those days. The town might be named, “Gow.” It’s easy to spell, but it might be confused with “Cow.” Also, it would be pronounced “Go.” Spelling and pronunciation are important things to consider in these situations. There’s an Art to naming towns.

By far the most prominent structure in town is the Art Methodist Church. Organized in 1856, the present building was constructed in 1890. We’ve not seen inside, but the outside is quite impressive in our opinion.

It was time to head back to the ranch and get a bite to eat, so we continued along TX-29 into Mason. We stopped briefly on the square to read the historical marker for the Hofmann Dry Goods Company, across the road from the Mason County courthouse. Today was Memorial Day, so the square was decorated with American flags.

I’ve heard that people in other countries wonder at America’s love and prominent display of its flag. “Why do they need to be reminded of where they live?” someone once asked. It has nothing to do with our historically poor knowledge of geography. It has everything to do with Freedom and Patriotism.

And what’s more patriotic than a beautiful courthouse surrounded by shops festooned with American flags on Memorial Day?

So, overall, visiting a town named Fredonia and ending the adventure at a patriotic display in a small Texas town turned out to be a good celebration of Memorial Day.