In 1854, Judge A. S. Broaddus, his family, and slaves arrived in the Cooks Point Community. Judge Broaddus and his family left Caroline County, Virginia in 1853 and arrived in Burleson County six months later. The wagon train was said to have been a mile long; there were 200 people in the party. Judge Broaddus and others of Caroline County, received glowing accounts of Texas as the land of opportunity, reports coming from such as Lewis L. Chiles, an early settler of Burleson County and a native of Caroline County, Virginia.
(Burleson County Historical Society 1980, page 28)
My interest in the Brazos Bottom and Burleson County began with stories that my grandmother, Annie Davis Tabor, told of her early life on a plantation belonging to her grandfather. She was born in 1859 in Burleson County at a place called Chance Prairie. Her father, Dr. William Davis Jr. and her mother Anna Echols Davis were living on a plantation belonging to his father, William Davis Sr. Soon after the Civil War, William Davis Sr. moved to Bryan and served as a Judge. The younger Davis family then moved to a place belonging to her father, John Echols.
Dr. and Mrs. William Davis Jr. (Anna Echols)
John Echols had been awarded his land as a reward for serving in the Army of the Republic of Texas. He joined the Army at Nacogdoches and served under Captain John Quitman. Born in Virginia, he came to the area in January of 1835. He established a general store in what is now Tunis, Texas. He traded in land and horses and farmed cotton. ...
Annie Davis lived through hard times in a remote place. All goods had to be brought in from Galveston by wagon train. Medicine was in an infant stage and family members died of causes that today would be of little concern. During Reconstruction days, she told of Union Soldiers riding up to the house and taking all that the had to eat. She and her sisters were so afraid of them that they hid under the bed. Needless to say, she was never reconstructed.
In spite of the hard time the Davis and Echols families endured and prospered. They were strong Christians and good citizens who contributed much to the development of the county.
My Grandmother, Annie Davis Tabor, went away to school in Virginia. After the deaths of her parents she went to live with her grandparents Davis in Bryan. She met and married Oliver Lafayette Tabor in 1881. They had five children, Oliver Jr., Jeff, Loula, Malvinia, and Charles, my father. I am an only grandchild.
(Martha T. Brunson 1977, DAVIS/ECHOLS family history).
Business men in the county are emphatic in their assertions that the Brazos bottoms have made the town of Bryan. It cannot be said, however, that the land lying along the river has made the city. There is a large area of fertile land lying just across theriver in Burleson ounty that has contributed. Many of the farms are owned by brazos Count citizens. But the success of the plantation, and consequently the success of many people in the county, reste on a foundation of Negro labor.
Elmer Grady Marshall The History of Brazos County, Texas, 1937, Harvey Mithell, Memoirs, P. 125-126.
Today there are fourty-five marked graves and many older graves that are marked with only rocks or pieces of broken stones. (18) the cemetery is in a fenced area containing 2.44 acres (called 3-1/16 acres) in the J. W. Mitchell Survey A-41. (19)
From the periods of the Civil War through the late 1800s, a new wave of settlers including the Kovar, Orsag and Sontag families moved to Tunis and the surrounding region from Europe (Czechoslovakia and Italy) and from other states in the United States of America (Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi. (20) As more people settled in the area, the cemetery became their burial ground.
In the early 1890s a number of Italian immigrants settled in the Tunis vicinity, and in the late 1800s the town had a restaurant, a cotton gin, a general store, a blacksmith shop, a saloon, a mortuary, a school, and a church. At one time four physicians practiced in the community. Tunis had an estimated 187 residents in 1904, and an estimated 100 in 1936, when it reported two businesses. Its population climbed to about 150 in 1941. In 1945 the Tunis school was merged with the Snook Independent School District. Farm Road 166 was extended through the town in the 1950s. The New Jerusalem church and the Old Bethlehem Church were in the township in the late twentieth century. In 1990 the town had a general store and an estimated 150 residents.
("TUNIS, TX" the Handbook of Texas Online. <http://www.tsa.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/TT/hit35.html>
[Accessed Sun Jun 2 13:00:02 US/Central 2002].)
Vsude je dobre, ale doma je nejlip.
(Life is good everywhere, but it is best at home.) - Czech Proverb
(Olga Pazdral, Chapter 3 Social Structure)
Two factors probably more than any others dictated the direction of Czech settlement in Texas: The price and quality of land. ... the Czechs that came to Texas sought for the most part to become true citizens of their new homeland. .. At the same time, Texas Czechs sought to preserve their ethnicity, their culture, and their way of life, a practice that created near- cultural islands out of many Texas-Czech settlements. In his account of growing up in the Czech-Moravian Brethren community of Snook, Robert Skrabanek describes a strong sense of otherness from "Americans", brought on by the impression Czechs simply worked harder and did things better than their Anglo neighbors. Pride rather than arrogance was the defining feature of the average Texas Czechs in regard to their ethnic identity, a pride whose roots lay perhaps in the attempted suppressions of their culture by the Austrians in the nineteenth century. In any case, though the Czechs accepted America as their new home, they structured their communities and their lives according to their own ways.
Though many Texas Czechs found the opportunity that had been unavailable to them in Bohemia and Moravia, the lives of most offered hard work and meager reward. Many arrived without enough money to buy land, so they got jobs wherever they could, and this often meant living as a sharecropper picking cotton. Until the post-World War II period, cotton was truly king, and harvesting it before the advent of the mechanized cotton-picker was grueling work. In her memoirs Rozie Belicek, who came to Texas as a young mother in 1908, wrote: "Gladly looking towards August when there will be cotton to pick; that this will be an easier American work. We were mistakien. The August American sun burned our backs, and it took so long to fill those long sacks, and with my fingers all pricked and bloody. I barely picked 100 pounds a day. We were paid 50 cents for 100 pounds. My husband was worse off for he barely picked 50 pounds.
Eventually the Beliceks rented land by working halves, which meant that the landowner would provide them with housing, seed, implements, and horses, and in return he would receive half of the harvested crop. Yet this did not mark the beginning of a much- improved life. Landowners (often fellow Czechs) exploited them and had little sympathy for their poverty. On top of it all, nature seldom cooperated. Mrs. Belicek writes of frost, hurricanes, ruined crops and Spanish flu, and with her family growing, she and her husband eventually moved across the state in search of better conditions: from Bryan south to Vesell...finally Ganado, where they bought land in the 1930's. Not long before her death she wrote: "Today in my 87 years in ill health following a stroke, I am looking back on my whole life which was full of hardship; that constant struggle for mere existence. I often wonder how it was possible to endure and live through it all: always having courage to fight over and over again life destiny {sic}. My efforts were to insure and take care of our family welfare under conditions, of which the present generation cannot even imagine".
(Gallup 1998, pages 5-6,9,103)
After the close of the Civil War, the future again appeared brighter and they looked forward to better days At that time, Wesley, where the Sebestas were then living became quite a Czech colony. It was at Wesley that during and after the close of the Civil War, these people built the first Czech Protestant church in America. This church was the first church of any denomination in he United States in which the services were conducted in the Czech language with the possible exception that some of the churches of the Moravian Brethren who came to America before the American Revolution, and who by that time were almost completely germanized and may have used Czech in some of their churches. Grandfather Sebesta hewed out of live oak logs, the heavy timbers for the foundation of this church. These timbers are as sound as ever, to this day. This little church at Wesley is still standing and my grandparents, Pavel Sebesta who died December 14, 1882 and Rozina Sebesta who died August 6, 1878 and Thomas Chupik who died August 30, 1881 and Rozina Chupik who died July 31, 1872, are buried in the cemetery adjacent to it.
...John Sebesta the oldest son, married Anna Rubac, and after her death married Marie Luksa. To the first union were born the following children: Frank M. Sebesta, who married Frances Valenta, and after her death married Terezie Kovar, Anna Sebesta who married Lukas Orsak, and after his death married Charlie Sontag; Marie Sebest, who married Frank Jakubik; Fracs Sebesta, who married Joe Jakubik. In about 1888 or 1890 John Sebesta with his family moved from Wesley to the Snook community in Burleson County, where he lived until is death. ...
(J. F. Chupick, SEBESTA family hisotry)
In the late 800s, the Fountain family arrived by covered wagon from Selma, Alabama and settled in Tunis. ...Milton [Fountain] joined his father in the operation of a large plantation in Burleson County in the Brazos River bottom. Their only child Rosemary, remembers the plantation as being much like a small community. It consisted of the commissary, a gin, a blacksmith shop, "the big house". Tin money was minted with the permission of the United States Government for use on the plantation. This money was used to pay the "hands" and could then be exchanged by them for food, clothing, Medicine, and household supplies at the commissary The "E J. Fountain" money was traded at the commissary for "hard money" when someone wanted to go to town.
At Christmastime a huge cedar tree was placed in the backyard of the "big house" and on Christmas Eve a party was held for everyone on the plantation. A program of carols, special song, dances and poems was held around the tree. The highlight of the party was the arrival of Santa Cause with gift wrapped presents bearing the name of each child on the plantation.
Another celebration took place on June 19th. At this time
an all day barbecue was held. Before sundown the night before, the "hands"
dug a large pit on which the pork and beef were barbecued all night.
During the night as the men sopped the meat with rags tied to long sticks, their
songs could be heard in the "big house". The next day a greased pig
contest and other rodeo events were held and finally the giant tables were laden
with food and everyone enjoyed eating. At four o'clock each morning a big
bell which rested on the top of the tower was rung to call the "hands" to work.
(Burleson County Historical Society 19800, Rosemary Fountain Oliver, FOUNTAIN family history, page 200).