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 Texas : Features : Columns : All Things Historical

Replying to Readers

by Bob Bowman
Bob Bowman

One of the pleasures of writing this column is hearing from readers all over East Texas, especially when they offer suggestions or ask questions.

Over the last year or so, we have accumulated dozens of questions, and it’s about time that we tried to answer some of them.

An Arlington reader, who grew up playing on Tree Monkey Road near his grandfather’s farm at Ace, a community in Polk County, wanted to know the origin of Tree Monkey.

There are a couple of origins.

The earliest “tree monkeys” were Civilian Conservation Corps workers during the Great Depression. They cut down trees and used them to build log structures all over the pineywoods.

Another version says “tree monkeys’ were men who, in the days before fire lookout towers, climbed spiked pine trees and sat in small platforms in the tree’s top to spot forest fires. The spiked trees were replaced by metal lookout towers, which were later replaced by airplane flights.

A reader from the Tyler area said she heard there was a town named Pee Dee in East Texas.

She’s right. The community of Pee Dee, located on Collards Creek in Madison County, was named for the family of Mr. and Mrs. W.M. Pee Dee, who came to East Texas from Georgia around 1830. The name has also been given to a road, lake and cemetery.

The Pee Dees came from a part of the South where the Pee Dee Indians lived. Perhaps they were offsprings of tribal members.

From Henderson, a reader wanted to know what happened to the Antlers Hotel, a Diboll landmark for decades.

The Antlers, owned by Southern Pine Lumber Company, was burned down in the 1950s because termites and decay made it impractical to rebuild the log structure. When the building went up in flames, one newspaper report said “the whole town cried.”

“Where is Cry Baby Creek?” asked another reader.

Jack Creek, a stream west of Lufkin, has for years been known as Cry Baby Creek, supposedly because a women and a baby died when their auto veered off a wooden bridge and fell into the steep creek.

Annette Sawyer of Lufkin, who directed us to the bridge, said visitors who come to the site at night claim they have heard sounds resembling a baby crying. One visitor supposedly found the imprint of a baby’s hand on her auto window after returning from the bridge.

Several people have asked about Cynthia Ann Parker’s burial place in Texas.

Tom Bell of Tyler carried us to Foster Cemetery near Poyner, where Cynthia was buried when she died around 1860. She was later reburied at Post Oak Cemetery in Oklahoma in 1910 and buried a third time near the grave of her son, Indian Chief Quanah Parker, at Fort Sill Cemetery, also in Oklahoma, in 1957.

A reader from Newton wanted to know if there was really an East Texas town named “Yallo Busha.”

Yes, but all that’s left is the Yallo Busha Cemetery ten miles southwest of Pittsburgh in Camp County. The town was supposedly named for an Indian expression which meant “beautiful stream.” The town, founded in the 1870s around a small rural school, was also known as Yellow Bush, presumably because the folks living there couldn’t pronounce Yallo Busha.

All Things Historical
July 2, 2007 Column.
Published with permission
A weekly column syndicated in 70 East Texas newspapers

(Distributed by the East Texas Historical Association. Bob Bowman of Lufkin is the author of more than 35 books about East Texas, including “The Forgotten Towns of East Texas”)


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