Big Thicket Legacy

Pearl Wiggins

Introducing Pearl Wiggins Pearl WIggins lives alone only a short distance from the banks of the Trinity River, a few miles north of Romayor. If I don't find her home Ilook for someone with a fishing pole headed for the pond, or the lake, or the river, on her 303 acres. Fishing is her favorite recreation, although in her refrigerator one is as apt to find squirrel as fish, or duck, in season. Her .22 rifle is her favorite for squirrel hunting, but last year she took up her .410 because her eyesight was not so good. Her aim is still steady. Mrs. Wiggins was one of four children, three girls and a boy. Her brother died at eighteen, and she was her father's "son" after that, working the cattle, securing the boats when the river was on the rise, penning wild hogs, fighting off the wolves, or whatever was required. She has lived in this immediate vicinity all her life. Strange circumstances brought Pearl Wiggins' grandparents together in Texas. They both came from Tennessee, near Memphis. John F. Carr, her grandfather,liked to gamble, but his desire exceeded his skill, and during his late teens he ran up numerous gambling debts which his daddy had to payoff. This continued until his daddy had enough of it and packed him up and sent him to Texas--him and a Negro servant John Carr was attracted to a girl that lived some distance from his home in Memphis, but, when he went to see her, he learned that the family had moved and no one knew where. So he later came to Texas, learned surveying, and settled on the western edge of the Thicket near the Trinity River. On a surveying trip, miles through the woods, he came upon a newly built log cabin in a smaIl clearing, and, believe it or not, it was the home of the girl he knew in Tennessee, and her family. They married and settled near Williams Creek, where later he owned the old CarrSmithfield landing for steamboats plying the Trinity between Anahuac and Dallas. This ended his carefree gambling days, and he became an outstanding citizen. Mrs. Wiggins still lives on the old family homestead of her parents, Bob Jones and Carrie Carr Jones. PEARL WIGGINS y grandfather, John Carr, had the mill just below here. The grist mill, where they ground com, and the cotton gin were east of here about a mile, on Williams Creek. You couldn't get to it now to save your life, it's grown up so thick. That old grindstone there, it came from the steam mill just under this hill. Grandfather had slaves and they worked at the mill, and they stayed with him, thought lots of him. He treated them well and had nice little houses for all of them. He also had the stagecoach stop on the route from Anahuac to Nacogdoches. It was a two-story house made out of logs that fit tightly, and the servants' quarters were under the same roof but separated from the main house, and that part was one story. This was all laid out for a townsite, but the railroad came to Livingston and everyone flew. Up the river he had a ferry. The river wasn't like it is now. That dam up there holds it. It gets so low now you can't go no place. It got to where you couldn't cross the river in a skiff, hardly. When Iwas a small child, Livingston was the closest settlement . Iregard Ace as part of the Big Thicket, but not the Indian Village, or Livingston. It's too far north. The Thicket was where no one lived then, and it was wild country, beautiful, sparkling creeks-and wolves! Why, wolves, they came right to my house. We had goats, and my daughter had a pet. The yard gate was every bit as close as this one here, twenty feet, and that pet goat stayed inside the yard, of course. That's where she kept it, and those wolves would come to that gate trying to getthat goat, and they did catch others out in the pen, lots of times. Oh, they were bad! I don't get to hear them howl anymore. Oooh! You know that's the saddest noise! But I love to hear them howl. I've had wolves...