Wagon Train to Bagdad

Wagon Train to Bagdad

Written by Karen R. Thompson Wednesday, 07 March 2007

On his way to the Alamo, David Crockett wrote in a letter home, “I must say, as to what I have seen of Texas, it is the garden spot of the world.”

Beauty aside, the force that led men to Texas in the mid-1800s was not gold and riches, it was land. A first-class headright was a league of land, 4,428 acres.

Newspapers raved about Texas. Families, mostly from the southern states, loaded their wagons and left a note reading “Gone to Texas.”

Of the 58 signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, 13 were from North and South Carolina. During 1849 and 1850 Col. C. C. Mason and his kinsman, Samuel D. Carothers, began to form an immigrant party bound for Texas.

In a short time 300 people, including slaves, had registered for the journey. Carothers had 11 slaves, and Col. Mason had seven.

Some of the others making the journey to Williamson County were the families: Schooley, Farris, Waddell, Walker, Cashion and Wilson.

Col. Mason had been left a widower in 1848 when his first wife, Margaret Carothers died, but their five children, Alpheus S., 12, Mary Louise, 9, John D., 7, Charles C., 4, and David, 2, made the long trip to Texas. Mason married his first wife’s sister, Mary Jane Carothers, and their two babies, James Neely, age 1, and newborn Margaret, brought the total children to seven. In Texas they had five more children.

Much had to be done to ready for the exodus. Substantial clothing and shoes had to be acquired. Mules were shod. Wagons and harnesses had to be repaired and equipped for carrying water and food.

Col. Mason concluded that each family should equip five wagons and one carriage, or one wagon for every five people. The 100 wagons of the train stretched at least a mile in length.

On Oct.15, 1851, with loaded wagons, they departed for Texas. Carothers’ teenage daughter, Leanorah, kept an account of activities along the trail. She wrote of an unfortunate accident when they were crossing the Canyfork River in Tennessee a month into the journey. Thomas Cashion and Mr. Bales were shooting ducks, and Cashion shot Bales in the leg and crippled him. At this point they had traveled 400 miles and were into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

As they traveled over the Cumberland Mountains, they encountered some “toll gates.” Due to illness in the family, the Masons stayed in Tennessee while the others continued on.

By June 3, 1852, the primary wagon train reached Hempstead County, Ark. where some of the families decided to stay, plant some crops and send their children to school.

Col. Mason and his family continued, first arriving in Travis County. In 1853, he purchased 1,420 acres in western Williamson County on Brushy Creek.

In Bagdad, Mason operated a store and was a leading force in bringing other businesses to the growing town. He died in 1865. Even today, his tombstone in Bagdad Cemetery is the tallest.

When Leanorah Carothers visited the Mason homestead at Bagdad, she wrote that “it is the prettiest country I ever saw in my life.”

Thompson is manager of archives for Williamson County. Her husband’s mother, Frances Mason Thompson, is a descendent of Colonel C.C. Mason.