Gone to Texas

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In the early 19th century, a huge migration took place as people in the United States traveled west. Some of these people left a cryptic sign on their abandoned homes, revealing their destination: GTT, Gone to Texas. In the latter part of the 19th century, more people headed to Texas as the railroads made travel easier. Two of these late-comers to Texas (compared to some of my ancestors who arrived before independence from Mexico and were given Spanish land grants) were my husband's great-grandfather, Baker White Armstrong, and his great-grandfather's brother Robert Armstrong. The two brothers left home and family in Virginia for Texas. Robert settled down in Bryan, Texas, married Cora Cavitt, and practiced law. Baker, a pharmacist, traveled around Texas selling pharmaceuticals, worked as a pharmacist at a drugstore on Main Street, in Bryan, Texas, married Mary Ophelia Nugent, whose family had moved from New Orleans to Virginia in the mid-1880s, and eventually settled in Houston, where he was connected with two or three of those ubiquitous oil companies of the early twentieth century. He also speculated in land.

One of the items handed down in the Armstrong family is the Bible of Baker's and Robert's mother. The inscription in one of the inside leaves reads: Mrs. L. T. Armstrong, From Her Daughters, July 7th 1878. Running sideways and parallel to that inscription are these words: For Baker W. Armstrong, from His Mother. The Bible had been passed on, from mother to son, from Virginia to Texas, with a mother's sorrows, comfort, and anxieties clearly revealed in its pages: handwritten notes on deaths of family members, clippings of obituaries, various flowers pressed between the pages, a newspaper clipping of a beloved son's recent appointment as pharmacist to "Geo. W. Norrell, Druggist, Main St., Bryan---Texas." And on the first pages, notes of her sons' travel, a mother's version of GTT:"Robert left for B--Aug 30, 188?; Baker left for Roanoke, Aug 20, 188?; Baker came home sick Oct 5, 1882 & left for Baltimore Jan 2 1883; Baker & Robert left Sept 18th 1884; Baker left for Texas Oct 8, 1884; Robert left for Romney, Mar 13, 1885; Robert left for Texas Aug 31, 1885; Baker reached home July 7, 1886, from Texas--left for Texas again July 26, 1886."

I'm thinking of starting another blog that just focuses on family history, on those ancestors who left in their wake the blaze: GTT, Gone to Texas.

Gravestone in Decatur Cemetery, Decatur, Georgia