Big Thicket Legacy

A. Randolph Fillingim

Introducing A. Randolph Fillingim Few people know the Big Thicket as well as Randolph ("Dolph") Fillingim. He knows its geography and its creatures from his own experiences as a boy who hunted, fished, and trapped from the Brown settlement on Black Creek for miles in all directions. As a boy he and his brother trapped fur-bearing animals and sold the hides to help make a living. He killed hundreds of squirrels, which he skinned and then walked fifteen miles to sell for ten cents apiece in Sour Lake. Times were hard and money was scarce. We spent a rewarding day with Dolph visiting his daddy's old homestead, and we saw the giant poplars that grew from small plants his brother brought from Mississippi in a suitcase. He took us to the places where he ran his traps, and he showed us where his tent was pitched the night a panther nuzzled the canvas as he held his gun in readiness and the creek that flooded and kept him from getting home for an extra day or two. What a boyhood he must have had, living in the depths of the Big Thicket in what was regarded as the best bear country to be found! Dolph Fillingim has an inquiring mind that probes beyond the obvious. He is a close observer with a good memory, and he is a student at heart. He has a persistent curiosity. He is careful not to exaggerate and to separate fact and opinion when he relates his experiences, even on points of minor importance. He speaks deliberately in a soft but firm voice. Afew years ago he drew a map, freehand, that is widely regarded as an accurate delineation of the historical Big Thicket and its waterways. Two of his brothers were Pentecostal preachers , and one of them, J. W., is now pastor at M.oss Hill. The other, Robert, began preaching at eighteen, but, Dolph says, he preached so hard his throat went bad on him after fifteen years, and he had to quit. Randolph himself is a quiet man of deep religious faith. He doesn't talk about it but one senses it in conversations, even when he's telling of bobcats, wolves, or rattlesnakes. Habitually , he sees the best in people and is charitable in his assessment of people or events. A. RANDOLPH ALUNGIM y daddy was William Archer Fillingim and he came to the Thicket in 1903. We were natives of Mississippi, but daddy moved to Alabama in about 1901. Uncle Warren Brown, who married my father's sister, he came to Texas in 1885 and settled about five miles southeast of Kountze, in the piney woods, about one mile north of the Big Thicket, on the old Samuel Andrews homestead. Uncle Warren, in 1903, went to Alabama and helped my father and mother and seven children come to Texas. After working for Uncle Warren for a year or more, daddy moved into the Big Thicket, the real Hardin County Big Thicket. South of Kountze seven miles, we chiseled out-I say chiseled out, because it was a pain to put that land in cultivation--a little field, with virgin timber on it and no market; we had to cut and burn it. The Big Thicket wasn't touched except for a few acres each family whittled out for growing corn for the horses and hogs. It was so thick and so much big timber on it, it was just impossible to have a big farm. Now we had about eight acres and there was four of us boys to do that, clear it and put it in cultivation. Alvin Jones was our closest neighbor. When we first knew Jones he was about seventy. He lived in a house built by his father, Joseph Jones, in the fifties. It was about three miles south of Hardin, and was occupied by four generations of Joneses, lasting for about a hundred years before being tom down. The framework of their house, and the pillars that supported the front of the building, was built of yellow pine heart, hewn with an ax. Lumber was from pine logs that were cut on the Jones' homestead and hauled by wagon to the sawmill, over on Village Creek, called Old Plank. It was on the front porch of the old Jones' house that Ilearned about what happened in or near the Big Thicket...