Tuesday, December 16, 1986/The Battalion/Page 3
State and Local
-CS area, A&M owe existence to Boonville
$y Carolyn Garcia
Staff Writer
exaS A&M, College Station and
in owe their existence and suc-
pritiurily to the railroad, the
ivej of Daniel Boone and partic-
ly to a pioneer whose sharp or-
tional abilities put him before
e in the unsettled West.
tpan, often called the Father
razos County, was Harvey
ell - patriarch of Boonville.
[itchdl and his family, along with
rela ives of Boone and a hand-
mother pioneers, settled in the
munity they named Boonville in
or of the explorer.
■jel Boone was really a hero to
pioneers,” said Margaret Lips
Ba' el, author of “Birth and
of Boonville: First town of
bs County.”
He opened up the West by laying
a load over the Cumberland
|which is a pass over the Appa-
ians.” she said.
■ for Boonville were drawn
H841 by Hiram Hanover, a
lerfrom Maine who came to the
Jtry and make a fortune in
J-transfer business,
le new town had no money — a
ition that would not change
so the first courthouse was
in the center of town by volun-
Bor. Judge R.E. Baylor pre-
Bjudge of the district and, at
Buragement, a jail was built
Ians he had drawn up him-
One prisoner of the jail who man
aged to escape turned himself back
in and pleaded with the judge to try
him because anything — even hang
ing — was preferable to the flea-in
fested dungeon, the book says.
Because it was a cashless society,
the construction of the jail was paid
for with land, which became a com
mon form of payment.
Mitchell handled much of the
town’s business transactions himself,
and while he lived in Boonville, he
served the community as hotel man
ager, store clerk, blacksmith, post
master and gristmill operator. He
even took a term as county judge,
and served as the first Brazos
County teacher, offering the pi
oneers’ children a variety of courses.
Children were especially vulnera
ble to diseases that swept the area,
and Mitchell and his wife lost four
daughters to spinal meningitis
within two months.
Boonville settlers nearly were
wiped out by a plague of dysentery
in 1844.
The residents lived on poor diets,
since pioneer women didn’t have
time to grow adequate gardens.
What they did manage to grow had
to be protected from wild animals.
But life in Boonville could be as
good as it was bad.
The second courthouse was a
large one-room building with a
smooth pine floor — perfect for
dancing. It also was used for church
services, school classes, a dance
school and a place for singing les
sons.
Quilting bees and barn raisings
were included in the social activities
of the community.
In 1852, only two families actually
lived in the town — one being the
Mitchells — because the settlers
found it easier to live on their home
steads outside of town.
A census taken two years earlier
had put the population of the area at
614.
Following the Civil War, the rail
road became interested in the area
and everything began to change.
Boonville began to die.
So, 25 years after the birth of
Boonville, residents changed the
county seat to Bryan.
“Many of the residents of Boon
ville took their cabins apart and
moved them by wagon to be near the
railroad,” van Bavel said. “Harvey
Mitchell became a real estate broker
in Bryan. He went to Houston to
meet a committee to establish the site
for the land grant college and per
suaded them to establish it here. . . .
“They established it (the college)
six miles from Bryan because they
were afraid for the morals of the stu
dents, because Bryan was a real wild-
West town. It had saloons on every
corner because of the railroad wor
kers.”
The Boonville cemetery is now all
that is left of the town. The tall mon-
The town of Boonville was established in 1841 as the first town in Brazos County.
Photo by Bill Hughes
uments stand as quiet reminders of
what was.
The grave markers, ordered from
Europe and delivered to Galveston,
were brought to Boonville by ox
cart, van Bavel said, and although
four Boone men and their families
helped establish Boonville, there are
no “Boones” buried in any Brazos
County pioneer cemetery.
“The Boonville cemetery is the
only part of the town that is public
land,” she said, “therefore the most
historic place in Brazos County.”
Van Bavel is organizing a commit
tee which hopes to raise $25,000 to
clean up the cemetery and erect an
ornamental fence.
ipropriatcs
i the audieral
( him the
l — or even
e had tosa 1 1*’ By Russell Pulliam
wed Piertfi® Reporter ■
hearing/ jespiie recent emphasis on drunken
nority ed- ting, neither the percentage of alcohol-
ire. Hiatal accidents nor the degree of in-
Hjbn of those drivers killed in Texas
asn't rivettt"Bf :i rec ^ uce d significantly, a Texas
i ,he a* “ s p sa y s -
ny effortbvi-’H research, conducted by A&M’s
to recruit iaiH Trans P ortation Institute for the
, jlHepartment of Highways and Public
grams , *w | (®» )rtat i on studied 1,742 driver fatali-
ir institution lfroni 1983 to 1985>
n as ourasii Hlood alcohol concentration test results,
icy get I
of discrii
between
t the real
athy than ant
Alcohol remains factor in Texas traffic deaths
taken from a sample of fatally injured driv
ers in 10 Texas counties, reveal half of the
drivers were legally drunk when they died.
The counties that participated in the
study were Bexar, Dallas, El Paso, Galves
ton, Harris, Johnson, Nueces, Tarrant,
Travis and Wichita.
“Since we were able to obtain test results
for only 65 percent of the driver fatalities in
the 10 counties, these results do not nec
essarily provide an accurate estimate of al
cohol involvement among all drivers killed
in motor vehicle collisions,” TTI researcher
Nancy Hatfield said.
But this data does suggest an answer to
what may be happening across the state in
terms of the drinking and driving problem,
Hatfield said.
While blood alcohol concentrations that
are equal to or greater than the legal limit of
.10 percent were found in half of all the
drivers sampled, the survey says more than
60 percent of the drivers had at least some
measurable amount of alcohol in their sys
tems.
The data also shows that among the 50
percent whose blood alcohol concentration
designated them as legally intoxicated, the
average concentration was .21 percent —
more than twice the legal limit.
front
“The fact that average levels among all
drivers who had been drinking . . . ap
proached twice the legal limit suggests that
it is more than just the social drinker who is
involved in these fatal accidents,” Hatfield
said.
The level of intoxication among the le
gally drunk drivers did not vary signifi
cantly between sexes, she said, nor was age
of the drivers or time of the accident a dis
tinguishing factor.
Several demographic distinctions uncov
ered by the research show that most fatali
ties occurred between 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. and
involved 21- to 25-year-old males. The data
also shows that all males surveyed had an
average blood alcohol concentratrion of. 12
percent as compared to .06 percent for fe
males.
The study also found discrepancies be
tween blood alcohol concentration test re
sults and the reporting of alcohol involve
ment in police officers’ accident reports.
Comparisons between the accidents and
police reports of those accidents revealed
only 31 percent of the reports for legally in
toxicated drivers cited alcohol as a contrib
uting factor to the accident.
Celebrate
0
HaBreSSh rt . u ^
Cotton Bowl
6 ^
dless drift!
ited to hear
(urna/tf®
attalioD'
owntown Countdown ’87
-m Live on Channel 8 at the corner of Young St. and
Lamar St. in downtown Dallas 8pm-1:30am
ow
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Herman’s Hermits
National
Young
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Plus Spectacular Fire Works over Dallas at Midnight
Food, Soft Drinks and Beer Available
$2. 50 Admission
($2. 00 with A&M ID)
Midnight Yell 12:10-12:40
Entertainment continues after Yell Practcie