BASSETT FARMS SITE HISTORY

The Blum Place is located entirely in Limestone County and consists of 249.5 acres bisected by the Bassett Branch of Sulphur Creek. The southern portion of the Blum Place was originally part of a 640-acre tract granted by the State of Texas in 1854 to Dr. Augustine Owen, a son-in-law of the largest slave owner in Limestone County, Ethan Stroud.1 Dr. Owen is not known to have lived on the property and sold his 640 acres to B. J. Chambers in 1856. The northern portion of the property was owned by John G. Walker, who sold to Chambers as well. The use of both halves of the Blum Place during the Chambers period of ownership (1856 to 1870) is not known but was most probably leased for grazing, perhaps to neighboring property owner Sidney M. Jones who had an extensive horse-breeding operation.

B.J. Chambers sold 367.5 acres to cattle rancher John J. Norris2 in March 1870 for $1,900 in gold plus a note for $362.21 payable six months later.3 The timing of this land sale coincided with the construction of the Houston & Texas Central Railway, which was to come within a few miles of the property, greatly enhancing its value.

1 The Stroud Plantation was located southwest of present-day Mexia. The Stroud House (demolished) was documented for HABS by Ernest Connally in the 1930s, and was the site in Limestone County where slaves were informed of their emancipation in 1865.

2 Norris was born in Georgia in 1816; he migrated to Texas, settling in Robertson County by 1860. He and his wife Rebecca (Bishop) Norris had eight children. In 1860 he owned $2,660 worth of real estate, $5,765 of personal property, and three slaves: one male (28), one female (21), and one male child (7 months). Norris's own children in 1860, ages 19 to 3, were all born in Georgia, suggesting he arrived around 1858. His post office address was Eutaw, just east of present-day Kosse. In 1870, despite his large-scale stock-raising he was recorded as a "planter" in Limestone County, and was still living in the county in 1880 as a farmer.

3 Deed, B. J. Chambers to John Norris, Bassett Archive.

Norris's ranching operation was significant and diverse, and included a number of large, discontiguous parcels. He likely lived elsewhere and only purchased the Chambers property to expand his grazing capacity. The June 1870 agricultural census shows Norris as the owner of a total of 100 improved acres and 747 unimproved acres in Limestone County valued at $2,540. On his properties were 17 horses, 3 mules, 2 working oxen, 2,000 cattle, 50 sheep, and 50 swine; he produced 300 bushels of Indian corn.4 By 1872, he owned nearly 2,000 acres, but tax records show a reduced herd of 400 cattle.5

Barbed wire made its appearance in the area by 1876, which made it possible to subdivide the open range into smaller farms.6 Norris died about 1880; perhaps in ill health, anticipating his death, and recognizing the value to be gained by subdividing his property, he sold a 132-acre portion in the John Walker survey to a 40-year-old Louisiana-born Black farmer, Ben Johnson, in October 1880, and a 117.5-acre portion in the Reinhardt survey to Lewellen & M. H. Robinson in January 1881.7

Johnson's acquisition was structured in three annual payments of $528; he probably defaulted, as the first of the three promissory notes only shows record of a payment of $115.02 on October 18, 1881.8 Johnson sold to Hyman Blum for $10 and "other valuable consideration" on February 23, 1883.9

The Robinsons sold out to Blum for $100 two days earlier on February 21, 1883. It seems probable that the Robinsons were also in debt to Norris, and the coordinated transactions suggest that Norris sought out Blum's Kosse-based attorney, Capt. Elisha Hall, to liquidate the outstanding debt on both parcels to Blum who then foreclosed on them.

In 1884, Hyman Blum sold both tracts to his Leon and H. Blum Land Company for $2,775.10 Hyman and his cousin Leon conducted a thriving Galveston-based business known as "Leon & H. Blum." The Galveston-based importers, merchants, and investors also had offices in New York, Boston, and Paris; they served the Southwestern U.S., Indian Territory, and Mexico, and also engaged in real estate speculation through their land company.11

4 The 1870 population census shows three Black residents in the J.J. Norris household: Jennie Norris (35, b. Virginia), Peter Norris (11) and Simon Norris (9), both born in Texas. Jennie and Peter were likely two of the three slaves Norris owned in 1860.

5 1872 tax list for Limestone County, Precinct No. 5.

6 Oral History of George Ogden, File No. 240, Image 10, Library of Congress.

7 Deed, John Norris to L & M H Robinson, 8 January 1881, Limestone County Deed Book M:211.

8 Deed, John Norris to Ben Johnson, 16 October 1880, Bassett Archive.

9 Deed, Ben Johnson to Hyman Blum, 23 February 1883, Bassett Archive.

10 Deed, Hyman Blum to The Leon and H. Blum Land Co., 5 July 1884, Bassett Archive.

11 The company's earnings exceeded $1 million in 1870; by 1887 they employed 125 clerks and 30 traveling salesmen. The firm failed during the 1890s depression. See Kleiner, Diana J. "Leon and H. Blum," Handbook of Texas (online), Texas State Historical Association.

The Blums would rent the two farms on the Blum Place to tenant farmers for the next few years. Their Land Company eventually agreed to sell the entire 249.5-acre property to Henry Bassett in a single transaction in August 1887 for $2,500. Payment was to be $1,500 cash with a promissory note of $1,000 due January 1, 1888 at an interest rate of 10 percent, secured by a vendor's lien and a deed of trust.12 A letter from the Land Company informed Bassett that they had instructed their Kosse attorney, Capt. Hall, to forward to him the rents collected in 1887 "less costs of improvements and his commission."13 The Land Company posthumously released Bassett from his debt in July 1888.14

The 1887 "improvements" were a new barbed wire fence as documented by two receipts. One receipt from J. L. Markham's dry goods store in Kosse totaled $34.43 for 506 pounds of wire, 30 pounds of nails, 6 pounds of staples, a pair of hinges, and the cost of cleaning out a well. A second receipt documented payment of $16.45 for lumber to A. Woods, a Kosse dealer in "lumber, shingles, doors, sash, blinds, window glass, etc."15

Within months of acquiring the property, Bassett leased the southern 101.6-acre portion of the property ("south of the branch") to J. B. Dearman for one year at $3 per acre beginning on December 18, 1887.16 Dearman was to "have the privilege of pasturing the timber branch" but was "to [keep] up the fence on [the] south side of said Branch … Bassett to furnish wire to put up said fence..." and Dearman "to do all the work."

The 1887 Dearman lease included "all the buildings on the land," including a one acre house lot. This pre-1887 house and outbuildings probably relate to the surviving cluster of collapsed structures (house, outbuilding, and barn) on the property that were later associated with Prince and Gracie Washington.

Undated field notes and an accompanying map document the 101.6 acres of "plow land" leased by Dearman, presumably dating from 1887.17 The surveyor's map associated with the field notes depicts an irregular boundary where the "timber branch" was located and thus where the fence was to have been maintained.18

12 Deed, The Leon and H. Blum Land Company to Henry Bassett, 26 August 1887. Bassett Archive.

13 Letter from The Leon and H. Blum Land Company to Henry Bassett, 7 September 1887, Bassett Archive.

14 Release, Leon & H. Blum to Henry Bassett, 26 July 1888, Bassett Archive.

15 Receipts, Bassett Archive.

16 Lease from Henry Bassett to J. B. Dearman, 18 December 1887. Bassett Archive.

17 "Field Notes of Field Where Mr. Dearman Lives;" includes verbal boundary description and associated surveyor's map.

18 The 1940 Limestone County highway map indicates the presence of a dwelling at what would be the northwest corner of the Prince Place fronting on the abandoned county road. In 1926, it was clear that the Prince Place was divided into two separate farmsteads: those of Peter Jackson and Tom Wright.

Henry Bassett died in the summer of 1888, and his widow, Hattie Ford Bassett, became embroiled in legal issues with Bassett's first wife in Connecticut about land titles. Once these legal issues were resolved and her title to the property quieted, she engaged Kosse-based builder and contractor J. G. Barrow in the fall of 1890 to construct a house for $650 and a well for $10, and to provide a stove flue for $6.00.19 For the next forty years, Blum Place was continuously cultivated in at least two sections as cotton farms by numerous tenant farmers into the 1930s.

19 Receipt, 1 December 1890, Bassett Archive. The receipt was kept with papers related to the Blum Place..

The Blum Place and Oil Exploration (1920s)

The Blum Place was the site of two wildcat oil wells drilled during the 1920s heydey of oil exploration around Kosse.

The first test well, the Mason-Kosse Syndicate's Bassett No. 1, was drilled in 1922 on the Blum Place. Mason sold a controlling interest to Transcontinental, and the well was abandoned in 1923. Maps show this well site to be at the far southeast corner of the tract, but this may not be accurate based on aerial photographic evidence of a possible well site slightly further to the west.

The second test well, Pandem Oil Company's H.F. Bassett No. 1, was drilled several years later in 1926 and gained notoriety through extensive newspaper coverage. Drilling began August 20, 1926 for what was said to be the deepest test well ever drilled in East Central Texas20 by the time it was abandoned on October 7, 1927 at 6,049 feet. In a letter to her grandson-in-law Fred Glass on June 30, 1926, Hattie Ford wrote:

There is some little activity in the oil business. A Houston firm started drilling in the Sam [Fannin] Place. There is another company from Okla.[homa] wanting to lease some out here where we live and promise to put a well down somewhere on the home place. I think we will lease to them and try again. If I succeed in getting any thing my little grand babies will share it with me.

Hattie Ford later wrote on August 2, 1926 to her granddaughter Gladys Glass:

20 "The Pandem-Bassett test at Kosse still holds the district record for depth. It was carried well below the 6,000-foot mark." See "Test Suspended at Depth of 6,002," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 17 October 1928, page 2.

… the oil men has [sic] begun to haul out stuff for the derrick.21 They are going to put it up just north of the Mason well on the branch between Uncle Peter[‘]s and Mr. Wright[’s]. They have promised to go five thousand and five hundred feet deep. If there is any oil there I suppose they will reach it. However I am not building any air castles, but only hope they may find it, and if they do I want to tell you it will be something for us all.22

The branch referred to in Hattie Ford's letter is the branch of Sulphur Creek that had been referenced some forty years earlier in the 1887 Dearman lease, and her letter indicates that the 1926 tenants were "Uncle Peter" Jackson23 and Tom Wright.24

21 The drilling contractors were "Brandon and McCamey." See "Efforts Are Being Made Secure Paying Well From Trinity," Corsicana Daily Sun, 8 July 1927, page 2.

22 Letter from Mrs. H. F. Bassett to Fred and Gladys (Bassett) Glass, 2 August 1926. Glass Papers, UT Arlington, transcribed by Evan R. Thompson, see "Letters from Mrs. Hattie Ford (Pope) Bassett, 1912-1932, p.4. In 1930, Peter Jackson, 64, an African-American farmer born in Alabama, was enumerated in the census immediately after Mrs. H. F. Bassett. Jackson was living with his wife Julia, 64, and daughter Evelyn, 19. Tom Wright, a white farmer, was 44 years old, born in Texas, living with his wife Elsie, 33, and daughters Mildred, 16, and Elsie F., 6.

23 In the 1930 census (7 April 1930), Peter Jackson and his wife Julia are enumerated immediately after the Bassett household. Peter is 64, Black, born in Texas of Alabama parents, married at age 20. He was renting a cotton farm. His wife, Julia, 64, born in Texas of Louisiana parents and a divorced daughter Evelyne, 19, was living with him. By 1940, Julia Jackson was widowed and living in the town of Kosse with her daughter, Evelyn Alexander, and grandson, Leodis D. Ross.

24 In 1930, Tom Wright was a white farmer age 44 born in Texas about 1886; his wife, Elsie, 33, and daughters Mildred, 16, and Elsie, 6 were living with them. He rented a cotton farm and was recorded in the census four households away from the Bassetts.

In that same year, 1926, a 123-foot steel and wood derrick was constructed. Drilling was done using rotary tools to 3,800 feet, after which cable tools were to be used.25 As drilling continued into late April 1927, it was reported that a showing of oil was made at 4,600 feet and that "six 1,000 barrel tanks have been ordered to the well and two of them are to be set up immediately."26 Drilling continued until October, when the test came to an end. The showing of oil made by the test did not merit further exploration.27

The last known tenants on the Blum Place were Prince and Gracie Washington who lived south of "the branch" in a house that has since collapsed. It was during their tenancy that the property became known as the "Prince Place" rather than the Blum Place. In 1930, Prince and Gracie, both 49 years old, were listed in the census as cotton farmers living on a rented parcel near the Bassetts. They probably moved into the house rented to the Jacksons after Peter Jackson died in the 1930s. Prince died in 1949 and was buried at Hopewell Cemetery; his wife Gracie is buried there as well. A utility pole stands adjacent to the Washington farmstead; the Bassetts made payments on the Washington's utility bills and social security while they lived out their lives on the property.

25 "Kosse Oil Field is Reviving Interest," Waco News-Tribune, 20 August 1926, page 3.

26 "Much Interest Manifested Here Kosse Operation; Pandem-Bassett No. 1 Expected to be Good Producer by Oil Fraternity," Corsicana Daily Sun, 23 April 1927, page 2.

27 "Deepest Test in East Texas Near Kosse is Given Up After 6,049 Feet," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 9 October 1927, page 39.

The Blum Place cotton farms and the 1920s well sites would have been accessed by a public Limestone County road that traced the boundary between the Blum Place and the Bassett Home Place. This road was later abandoned as a public road and incorporated into the Bassett Farms by the mid-20th century. At least two creek crossings would have been needed as part of this road, but no evidence survives of any bridges or low-water crossings.

The Blum Place has been used for cattle grazing since the 1930s, when cotton growing was curtailed by federal programs. The transition to grazing required the construction of two stock tanks on the Blum Place adjacent to "the branch." The first was constructed behind the Washington farmstead before 1939 while the Washingtons were still living on the property. The second tank was constructed toward the eastern end of the tract by the early 1960s, probably as a supplemental water source in response to the intense Texas drought of the 1950s. Interestingly, bricks and broken ceramics have been found from time to time in the vicinity of this later pond.

Some above-ground features of the Prince and Gracie Washington Farmstead site survive. The house is a collapsed ruin. At its rear are the remains of an outbuilding, possibly a smokehouse. A barnyard gate and fence posts are in place, as well as scattered remains of the barn. A hand-dug brick well survives to the east of the house.

Aerial photographs are available from 1939, 1940, 1952, 1955, 1965, and 1981. The Blum Place is highlighted on each of these maps below.