When Walter was 13 years old (1860), owning to
economic conditions, lack of food, etc.,
he came to America with an aunt on the sailing
vessel, "The W.B. Travis", the voyage
taking nine weeks from Liverpool, England to
Galveston, Texas. Two weeks into the
voyage Walter fell and broke his leg. The Captain,
a typical, hardened old seaman of his
day, had the young lad placed on a pallet on the
dining room floor, holes cut through the
floor and the pallet so that the boy's body could
be securely strapped down in an
immovable position that could not be wrenched by
any lurching of the ship, and a very
cruel stretcher made and attached to the broken
leg. Walter laid in this torturous position
for seven weeks producing a strongly knitted bone
but Walter walked with a severe limp.
After going ashore at Galveston, Walter and his
aunt traveled up the Bayou to Houston
on a small barge. They completed their journey to
Kent, Bosque County, Texas by
wagon.
[In 1850 the Universal Immigration Company of
England purchased 27,000 acres of land
from Richard KIMBALL to establish a colony devoted
to both agricultural and manu-
facturing endeavors. The Company laid out a
townsite on the west bank of the Brazos.
Thirty English families, consisting of 125 people,
arrived in the fall of 1850 and in
January 1851. They settled in an area between the
present-day towns of Kopperl and
Kimball under a massive rock formation called
Solomon's Nose, on the Brazos River
beginning this idealistic colony of Kent. near
Kimball's Bend, when that area of Bosque
County was still part of Milam and McLennan
counties. . The first winter was harsh
causing many hardships that led to a high number of
fatalities. Five immigrating families
soon abandoned the project and received individual
headrights from the state. In 1852,
Lieutenant Charles Finch MacKenzie, leader of the
colony, and the other colonists
abandoned the venture. Some colonists moved to Fort
Graham, located across the river in
Hill County, which was vacated by the army in
November 1853, some colonists migrated
separately to other areas, and some moved back to
England. The town of Kent dissolved.
In the 1970s only ruins of log houses were left at
the site. It is now a vanished
community.]
Young Walter lived for a year with an aunt and
uncle, T. Timms, in Kent, Bosque
County, not very far from Kimball. . His brother,
James Timms, had been sent over
previously. Walter was very lame until a strange
incident made it possible for him to
walk as straight as any one. He had been helped up
on a horse to ride over to a
neighbor's, Mr. Baker's--several miles through the
woods--to get some mutton that Mr.
Baker had just killed. As the boy rode along the
trail through the woods, a sudden flurry
of quail startled the mare, her plunge forward
causing the inexperienced young rider to
fall under her feet. In an attempt to become
untangled from the frightened boy, the mare
kicked him right in the broken leg, so that he fell
over on the ground almost paralyzed
with pain and the fright that Indians were near by
and had caused the quail to fly. But by
and by the pain was gone; and when Walter tried to
get up to attempt to mount the horse
that was grazing near him, he suddenly discovered
that he could walk on his leg and was
so overcome with joy that he ran up and down the
trail screaming, "I can walk!, I can
walk!" Leading the horse, he walked on up to the
Baker house to show his friends that he
could walk as straight as other people.
After the failure of colonizing the town of
Kent, Walter and James Timms' aunt and
uncle returned to England, leaving the two boys on
their own. James Timms settled in or
near Mayhann, Bosque County, Texas, where he
married Miss Maria Archer and raised a
family
When Walter Timms was fourteen years old he went
to work at fifteen dollars a month,
driving for Mr. Jacob DeCordova, who owned great
tracts of land and was agent for other
large tracts, and who went about the country in his
buggy looking after these lands. .
Young Timms stayed with Mr. DeCordova for several
years, doing things for him that no
one else could do. One of his jobs in the earlier
days was riding horseback eighteen miles
to Meridian to get Mr. DeCordova's mail. Another
of his jobs brought him to Barnard's
Mill (near Glen Rose) to have wheat and corn ground
into the winter's supply of flour and
meal. DeCordova's Bend is named for Jacob
DeCordova. Very soon Mr. DeCordova
found that young Timms was "as true as steel, and
as straight as a shingle", so that he
trusted him more and more and put more and more
responsibility upon the youth.
After Mr. DeCordova's death, Walter Timms was a
trail driver and representative of local
farmers and ranchers going up trail with herds of
cattle, bringing back the money in gold
to pay various ranchers for different amounts of
cattle thrown in to these trail drives.
Walter bought an interest in the ferry boat across
the Brazos River at Kimball, where the
cattlemen, driving cattle up the trail, crossed the
river.
[Note: THE CHISHOLM TRAIL path: ran from San
Antonio, Texas thru Oklahoma and
into Abilene, Kansas.
Tens of thousands of cowboys drove an estimated 6
million head of cattle and 1 million
horses north along the trail that stretches from
San Antonio, Texas to Abilene, Kansas.
The Chisholm Trail became a main route after 1867,
when Abilene, Kansas cattle dealer
Joseph McCoy built stockyards at a rail spur. He
encouraged ranchers to bring their
longhorn cattle north, offering to pay 10 times the
going price they could get in Texas.
At the trail's peak use, cattle herds as big as
10,000 head were driven up the trail,
although the average herd ranged from 2,000 head to
3000 head.]
Later Timms bought a wagon and four horses and
did freighting for several years.
During this time Walter Timms' life was among the
real frontiersmen of the new west,
and he experienced both the pleasures and the
hardships of life.
For several years Mr. Timms was Deputy Constable
of Bosque County, and to him was
usually given the commission of going out for the
most difficult characters. Once he was
told to go out and bring in a certain criminal for
whose safe delivery $500.00 was offered.
Mr. Timms took three of his most trusted men and
went to the out-of-the-way cabin
where a relative of the man lived.
"Now, boys, he's in that cabin. Two of you go
in and get him while the other two
of us watch outside; he'll be quick about giving us
the slip if we aren't very
careful."
At the instant that the men's knock sounded on
the door, the faint flicker of the candle
that had been seen in one room suddenly went out.
In a moment, however, the door was
opened by the man of the house with, "Who's
there?". The men went in and searched the
two room cabin and came out with the report that
only the family were inside.
"He's in there. You go back and look up the
chimney," ordered Mr. Timms. In a few
minutes the undesirable citizen was being pulled
down by his legs from the rather close
quarters of the old rock chimney.
Walter Timms then bought some land and settled
down to farm. He had a splendid crop
planted and everything in ship-shape order when one
night he was wakened by someone
shouting his name. Grabbing his trusty gun, he
went to the door to inquire what his
visitor wished. It turned out to be a Mr. Southern
who had brought a great herd of fine
cattle to carry up the trail and wanted Timms to
go with him. When Mr. Southern had
inquired among cattlemen of the vicinity for a real
man that could handle the cows
correctly and that could be absolutely trusted,
Walter Timms had been pointed out to him
as the man he wanted. Mr. Southern had ridden many
miles to find Timms. At first the
young farmer refused to go, explaining that he had
crops just ready to be harvested. Mr.
Southern wanted just such a man as Walter Timms, so
the pay offered was generous.
Young Timms asked for a few moments to decide; he
had a good hired black man on the
place and he wished to speak to him. The hired man
promised to carry out his employer's
directions and to harvest the crops for him, and
the former cowman decided to go once
more up the trail. As an intimate associate of Mr.
Southern, Timms had many interesting
and pleasant experiences.
The trip took them up into the western part of
Colorado and Nebraska. One early
morning when Walter and Mr. Southern, who bunked
together and shared the care of the
same division of the herd, rose up from their
blankets and looked down a draw in the
great expanse of the prairie, they saw three young
buffaloes drinking at a spring.
Immediately the two men were on their horses with
six-shooters ready, and that day all
cowmen feasted on young buffalo meat. There had
been times, when Walter Timms had
first gone up the trail, that he had seen buffalo
herds that were so thick that their
movements looked as if the earth were moving.
Later, during his life among the frontiersmen of
the new west, Walter had many varying
experiences, adventures and hardships.
In 1871 Timms married Mrs. Elzey
Payne-Lancaster, a widow with two children.
Walter and Elzey had one daughter, Lenna, born July
22, 1873. Elzey died during the
birth of their second child in 1875 (her death
attributed to excessive use of chloroform
used by a Saturday night drunken town doctor).
After Elzey's death the children of her
first marriage were sent to live with relatives.
Walter borrowed money on his farm
(recorded in the Survey Book #1 years 1870-1880,
Index of Deed Records, where you
will find "Headright Surveys" made to Walter Timms)
and took his two year old
daughter, Lenna, to England where he learned, in
the course of two years, the jeweler's
trade and the art of fine watchmaking from a man
named Leach. Walter regarded Mr.
Leach as a very fine, understanding gentleman.
After two years in England, being unable
to stand the conditions and climate of England,
Walter and Lenna returned to Central
Texas. In August of 1878, he sold out his holdings
in Bosque County and moved in 1879
to Cleburne where he established the firm, W. Timms
Jeweler.
Timms married for the second time on April 13,
1880 to Miss Ada Tracy of New York
State. (Miss Ada H. Tracy had come to Cleburne, in
1877 with her brother and sister and
brother-in-law, E.R. Tracy and Mr. & Mrs. W.E.
Hill. Miss Tracy taught a private school
for the two years.) Hattie Ellen, the only child of
Walter and Ada Tracy Timms died in
infancy.
Walter's daughter Lenna Timms was married
September 05, 1900 to James Benjamin
Finley of Hillsboro, Arkansas. His only
grandchild, Walter James Finley, was born
September 7, 1901. Lenna was widowed in 1906 and
she and her son Walter Finley
lived with Walter and Ada Timms. Lenna Timms-Finley
remarried August 24, 1915 to
Charles James Stevenson.
In June, 1900, Mr. Timms retired from the
jewelry business and bought the Bostick farm
of 320 acres, located 6 miles northwest of Cleburne
on the Nolan River. Once more the
life of the open was to be his--the life from which
he could not get entirely away. A lover
of fine horses, he began to breed good blooded
stock. He raised a number of colts that he
raced at the Dallas Fair and on other tracks. In
about 1912 he sold to Mr. Waggoner, of
Fort Worth, for $1,200.00, the mare and colt,
Planetta and Clickmaker.
Walter and Ada Timms lived for more than half a
century in Cleburne at their home on
north Anglin Street, and for over thirty years he
drove back and forth daily to his farm.
At the age of eighty-five he still drove back and
forth almost daily in a two-horse wagon
and attends personally to the affairs of the farm.
Frequently he was seen on horseback,
riding a usually tall black horse. During the
fifty-three years since his return from
England and settlement in Cleburne, Walter seldom
got very far from his jewelry
business in earlier years, or in later years from
the management of his farm and horses.
There were trips to Dallas with his horses or on
other business, and occasional visits back
to Bosque County.
October 6, 1913 Walter received his
naturalization papers #15400. He made a notation of
this in his "Birthday Book of Shakespeare", The
poem for that day was: "WHAT
Providence delays it not denies"-Anthony and
Cleopatra.
Walter Timms, pioneer Texan and retired jeweler
of Cleburne, died at the age of 87
years, March 03, 1934, at his home on North
Anglin Street, following his wife in death
by exactly a week. Both had pneumonia. He was
buried in his Prince Albert wedding
suit. His wife was buried in her wedding dress
February 26, 1934.
Varied indeed were Walter's experiences, and a
bit of the frontier history of Texas was
interwoven with his life.
Sources:
Naturalization papers #15400
Bible Record of Walter Timms (picture of original
record)
Oral Timms Family History – word-of-mouth by Walter
Timms (1847-1935) to Lenna
Timms-Finley-Stevenson (1874-1940) to Walter James
Finley (1901-1980) to Virginia
Mae Finley-Workings (1928 to present) to Douglas
Walter Workings (1948 to present).
1860 Federal Census, Bosque Co, TX.
1870 Federal Census, Bosque, Matagarda, McLennan,
Navarro Counties, TX.
1880 Federal Census, Bosque Co., Cleburne, Johnson
Co, TX.
Article from the Dallas Morning News, Section 4,
Features & Book Reviews, Sunday,
October 30, 1932: Walter Timms, Texas Pioneer by
Frances Dickson Abernathy, 1932
KENT, TEXAS— Bosque County; vanished community
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/NN/rbn11.html
Kent, TX
Curtis Bishop, "Kent, Colony of, "The Handbook of
Texas, Vol. 1 (Austin: TSHA, 1952),
949-950;
"Fort Graham," in The Handbook of Texas, Vol. 1
(Austin: TSHA, 1952), 626;
Ed Bartholomew, 800 Texas Ghost Towns (Ft. Davis:
Frontier Book Publishers, 1971),
56; 1998-1999 Texas Almanac, 153;
See Dorothy Waties Renick, "The City of Kent,"
Southwestern Historical
Quarterly 29 (1925-1926).
"English Settlement at Kimball's Bend before the
Civil War": filed of record in Plat Book
#1, in Court House Records of Bosque County, at
Meridian, Texas. "English Settlement
at Kimball's Bend before the Civil War". (The town
was laid out and plotted by Ervin
DeCordova, a brother of Jacob DeCordova, his plat,
beautifully drawn).
Kimball's Bend was a trail town at a crossing of
the Brazos River.
Kimball Bend, TX; Bosque County; bend
320943N - 72854W USGS
Kimball Bend Park, TX; Bosque County, park
320724N - 0972952W USGS
Last Update Thursday, 10-Feb-2022 13:41:49 CST
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County Coordinator:
Gayle Triller |
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