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chapter 20 The Migration to Uvalde The migration of the large extended groups—grandparents, parents , aunts, uncles, children, grandchildren, and cousins—of the Sutherland, Rogers, White, Heard, and Menefee families from northern Alabama to what is now Jackson County, Texas, was a well-organized move, undertaken in successive waves that brought them all to Texas in 1830 and 1831. Careful coordination was necessary partly because they were going to a “wild” area, a place where they had to construct their lives and community completely from scratch—build houses, clear fields, and plant crops while they lived on deer meat and survived for at least year. The next migration of the descendants of those groups to the Texas Hill Country was the last one undertaken as an extended family. Beginning in 1892 some of the offspring of the Alabama settlers moved to Uvalde over a period of several years. The relocation was undertaken by individual families who were closely related and intermarried as before, but without the overriding authority of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the last generation. This was a group of siblings who decided to make a new life in a new area where they could become ranchers. They were going to a remote, rough country, but it was not “wild,” as Texas had been when the first migration took place. There were roads and railroads, and they would find towns where folks would rent them lodgings or take them in until they built their own homes. The first sibling to migrate was Rosa Rogers and her husband, Frank Witt. Then the three Rogers sisters who were married to three Sutherland brothers followed. Several cousins such as Willie White, Shelton Wells, and Mack Rogers (a brother of the four Rogers girls) also joined them. Nueces Canyon is in the Hill Country in Uvalde County, a rocky, dry cedar brush area that barely supported cattle but was perfect for Angora goats. The settlers were drawn to the region by rumors that one could make a living by raising goats. A friend in Jackson County told them, “All you need is a Mexican goat herder for $10 a month and beans, and he takes care of the herd, defends them from theft by man or beast, and the flocks increase. You sell the mohair in the nearby town of Uvalde.”1 Like many stories of the promised land, reality did not turn out to be so easy. 162 chapter 20 Rosa and Frank Witt moved to Uvalde in 1892, then Willie and Emma came a year later, bringing with them Emma and Rosa’s widowed mother, Mary, and a nephew of Willie Sutherland, Willie Lee White. In the town of Uvalde they stopped and bought two beds, a small kitchen stove, four dining chairs, and a small kitchen cabinet. After arriving at the ranch, they made a dining table out of lumber and a large box to hold the groceries and used the kitchen cabinet for their clothes. Their neighbors generously gave them a few hens so they could have eggs to eat. These hens’ eggs were a major part of their diet and, of course, highly valued. One day while cooking, Emma heard a squawk and saw a large hawk trying to carry off one of her precious chickens. Without hesitation she grabbed a gun and shot the predator out of an old live oak tree in the yard. Since the bird was not dead, she knocked it in the head with a stick. That hawk was not going to take food from her children. The Witt group bought 2,080 acres of land through which the Nueces River ran for a mile and a half. The people who sold the land to them had been their neighbors in Jackson County. Willie had ranched with his father since 1885, running horses, cattle, and mules, but in Uvalde he began breeding and raising Angora goats, Delaine sheep, and cattle.2 Later they built a house that had two front rooms, a shed room that was used as a kitchen, and a small bedroom. From a well in the backyard they drew their water. When they first arrived, their son, John D., was two and a half years old, but the next six children were born in this house: Sam, Robert, Laura Mae, Gayle, and the twins Virgil and Viola. Gayle and Robert eventually went deaf like their grandfather Sam Rogers. In all, Willie and Emma had eleven children. Although Uvalde was...

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