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Columbus Tower by
Mike Cox
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Writing
by candle light, Capt. John Shropshire scratched out another letter to his beloved
Carrie.
The captain and his fellow Confederate soldiers had covered about
12 miles that November day in 1861, stopping to make camp on the Frio River about
60 miles from Fort
Clark.
The boys from Columbus
were on their way to El Paso
and eventually New Mexico. Shropshire knew it would be a long time before he held
his wife in his arms again or saw their son, Charlie. |
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Bird's-eye
view of Columbus, Texas in 1906
Taken from the courthouse. Photo courtesy Nesbitt
Memorial Library |
“If
peace is not declared before we leave [El Paso], we can not possibly get back
before 12 mo…which to me appears an age to be separated from my family,” he wrote.
Shropshire had been writing his wife since August, when his company marched
off to war. “I tell you,” he had written, “soldiering so far has not been the
most pleasant occupation I have followed.”
Indeed, before the war, he had
been a successful cotton grower. “But these are no times to long for the comforts
of home,” he had continued.
Early in the campaign, he had at least eaten
well. “I managed to eat or worry down a small portion of a calf and also a pig
which we pressed into the service of the Southern Confederacy,” he wrote.
“The
candle has burnt out and I am writing by moonlight,” Shropshire continued in his
November missive. “The moon shines very brightly in this country.”
By
early December Shropshire wrote Carrie that his company was “dirty and hungry
all the time.”
The day after Christmas, Shropshire wrote from a camp near
the Rio Grande not far from Fort
Quitman. Fighting Yankees would come, but for the time being, West
Texas has proven a formidable adversary in its own right.
“I candidly
confess I never would have come this way had I imagined the country was so mean,”
Shropshire wrote. “If I had the Yankeys at my disposal I would given them this
country and force them to live in it. I would make Devil’s
River hollow headquarters for them.”
By late January 1862, the Texans
had reached New Mexico. “In this long wearisome march my fancy has been idle and
allowed to roam at will,” he penned. “Many are the fancy castles I have built
for you and I and our little ones and I believe that some of them will be realized…”
Shropshire finally saw a fight coming, but he worried more about Carrie
than himself. “Remember darling,” he wrote, “that if I am so unfortunate as to
number among the slain in our country’s cause that to you alone on earth will
our children have to depend.”
When the smoke cleared after the Battle
of Glorietta Pass, Shropshire indeed lay among the unfortunate who would never
see Texas again. But his name did eventually become associated with a castle –
at least a structure that looks like one. |
| | An
early view from the NE corner of the Columbus town square
Photo courtesy
Nesbitt Memorial Library | | | |
A
round, white tower on the Colorado
County courthouse square looks like an architectural survivor of the days
of yore in England. No matter how European it looks, however, the tower is the
product of Yankee – well, Southern – ingenuity.
In the spring of 1883,
two decades after the war that claimed Shropshire, a fire gutted a livery stable
and adjoining hotel in Columbus.
Volunteer fire fighters managed to contain the blaze before it leveled downtown,
but getting enough water on the fire had been a problem.
To provide the
city a water system, the county commissioner’s court authorized construction of
a brick water tower. Built by R.J. Jones, the tower took shape from 400,000 locally
made bricks. The walls lack only four inches being three feet thick. A metal water
tank went atop the two-story brick tower. Beneath it, the city’s volunteer fire
department had its office and equipment. |
| | The
tower with the clearly-identified Stafford Building in the background
Photo
courtesy Nesbitt Memorial Library | |
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A
hurricane damaged the top of the tower in 1909. The county had the structure repaired,
but three years later decided the city needed a better water system. With completion
of that system, the tower stood abandoned. Eventually, the county hired someone
to tear it down, but dynamite did not phase it.
In 1926, it finally occurred
to someone that the tower had other than utilitarian value. The officers of the
John Shropshire and John C. Upton chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy
got county officials to agree to let them use the tower as their meeting place.
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L- The earliest photo of the tower courtesy Nesbitt Memorial Library
R- The
tower as it appears today after the removal of the tank. Photo by John Troesser,
2004 |
Local
architect Milton Wirtz and contractor A.N. Evans Sr. refurbished the old tower,
adding a small, rounded room on the east side of its base and a circular staircase
leading to a second floor. Since 1962, the tower has been the home of Columbus’
Confederate Memorial Museum and Veterans Hall.
A photograph of
Shropshire hangs on the museum wall, and his letters have been saved for posterity
by Columbus’ Nesbitt Memorial Library. |
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The tower unpainted
Photo Courtesy Colorado County Visitors Bureau |
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