Abilene, Texas - A Closer Look:

William Calvin Cheatham, part 11

Some of you may have noticed that my posts are not coming exactly a week apart anymore.  This is because it takes a whole lot longer than one would think to clip, put back together, and edit the newspaper articles for readability.  Then they have to be inserted, and commented on, and linked.  Then, if an article talks about something I'm not familiar with, I go look stuff up.  So my next newspaper article post is nowhere near completed.

I don't want you all to be bored or give up and decide not to check back, so I thought I'd throw a bit of extra stuff your way.  I was going to put it up in my last post about W. C., but really, now is actually a better time to do it.  Today I'm going to put up some maps and pictures.  From Abilene, not Buffalo Gap.  I really, really wanted to put some up of Buffalo Gap, but apparently pretty much all of the old photos from that town went the way of the old newspapers, and, if they even still exist, I don't know where to find them.  But that's okay, because remember what we discovered from the 1880's newspapers?  By the fall of 1889, W. C. was definitely living in Abilene.  Which makes all the stuff I found for that city perfectly relevant.

Before I get to the pictures, let's start with some maps.

Map of Taylor County Texas

Here is a survey map of Taylor County published sometime after 1889.  (This is actually a cropped version of the original.)  The blue star near the center of the county is Buffalo Gap.  The red start near the top is Abilene.  Notice the railroad cutting through the city.  Also, see what I meant when I said that it was too great of a distance to commute to and from work between the two each day when using a horse for transportation?

Now, here is a map showing just the city of Abilene.  You can see how, even though a large area had been surveyed, only the right-hand section had been subdivided and settled.  

Abilene Survey Map, 1885

Now here is one showing just the original part of the city, which was just over two and a half miles from top to bottom (1881 Abilene Survey Map shows scale):

Block Map of Original Town, Abilene

Abilene was designed to be on both sides of the railroad track.  The section outlined in green is where  W. C. owned lots (we'll see that article in the next post).  The little orange box shows the courthouse (which will become relevant next time as well).  The red star shows the intersection of First & Pine, which was right by the train depot and hotel.  Here is a 'birds eye' view of what the city looked like in 1883:

Birds Eye View of Abilene, Taylor County, Texas 1883

This was made two years after the town was established from absolutely nothing.  As you can see, the buildings are, for the most part, pretty spread out.  Here is a close-up:

The lots that W. C. owned would have been just under the bottom left portion of this map.  And check this out - if you follow the link attached to the title under the larger version of this map, above, you can zoom in and move it around.  See?

This is the downtown business district at (north) First & Pine.  Notice how long and narrow the buildings are, and how they are built right up next to each other.  A standard square block in central Abilene was divided into 12 lots, with each lot being 25 ft wide and 75 ft long.  The downtown area shown here, however, was surveyed for lots that were only half as wide.  That means each building was only about 12 feet wide, unless it occupied more than one lot!  Here is an actual photo taken near this intersection in 1885:

And here is one of Pine Street looking north, taken in 1888:

                                                                                                           
I'm guessing the photographer was standing in the wide open space by the train depot.



Here is a photo of Abilene from 1884:





And one from around 1900:

These two are obviously not showing the same area, but the town does seem to have filled in a lot during those six years, doesn't it?


I also found these fire maps from 1891, when W. C. was for sure living in Abilene:

Abilene, TX Sanborn Fire Map (north downtown - west), 1891

Okay.  So I clipped such a large portion of the map because I wanted you all to see the different buildings in relation to one another.  But when I made it small enough to fit nicely on the page, you couldn't read the words!  There are still a few that are hard to read, but this is much better.  (If you really want a good, large quality, click the link on the map title and use the zoom function.)

So this is basically the west section of the north downtown area. (There was a downtown area on both the north and south sides of the train tracks.)  Notice how many warehouses, dry goods stores, and groceries there were.  I also think it's cool to see that there were two candy stores, four saloons (I'm guessing that's what 'sal' refers to? - two with a barber and one with billiards), two jewelry stores (in a frontier town!) insurance agents, and a couple of furniture stores, among other things.  Notice also the Presbyterian church in the top left corner.  There was another Presbyterian church three blocks south of the railroad tracks.  W. C. most likely attended one or the other, since he was a Presbyterian in Duncan.


Now here is the east side of north downtown:

Abilene, Texas Sanborn Fire Map (north downtown - east), 1891

This side of the street had another Chinese laundry, hotel, drugstore, saloon with billiards, two banks, more dry goods and groceries, a restaurant, and some offices.  Oh, and another barber.  (They were doing much better than Capitan, NM, which went several month during W. C.'s stay there with no barber at all!)   And guess what it is possible to find out with a little bit of digging into the old newspapers?  Remember how W. C. was managing the alliance store?  Well, I found out that it sold groceries.  Then I found out that it was on Pine Street. Then I found out that there was a photo studio on the second floor.  Then I remembered that I saw something on one of these maps that said "photo Gro" which I thought was a super weird combination, but now makes perfect sense!  See, that is it at the top of this map.  That is where W. C. Cheatham went to work every day.  Cool, huh?


And here is a picture of the inside of a general store from around this time.  W. C.'s store may have looked very similar.

If you look back at the map above, you'll notice the cotton yard on the far right.  This very well could have been the Alliance cotton yard where W. C. was the book keeper.



Here is an old postcard of wagons waiting to have their cotton weighed:

This shows up online with various dates, but even though it was probably taken after W. C. moved away, the scene was probably pretty much the same in his day.

This photo is from 1895 or 1896.  It's kind of funny to see all of the carriages 'parked' in front of the stores, isn't it?


(You know, ever since I first downloaded those fire maps, I kept wondering what the different colors of buildings meant.  It finally dawned on me while proofreading this that the map must have a key.  Duh!  So here it is!)

So all of the buildings with an X are not crossed out, but are stables!  (See why you should always read the map key!?)  The key doesn't say this, and it took me weeks to figure this out, but I'm pretty sure now that 'Dw'g' means a dwelling.  And most of the downtown buildings were brick or stone, with a few wood frame and some 'specials' (whatever that means!) thrown in.  You can pretty much see that in the photo above, but this 1890 photo is another example:

The town founders weren't kidding around when they decided they wanted Abilene to be a magnificent city.  You would never find a grocery store like this in most other brand new/frontier towns of this era.

This is one of the Presbyterian churches in Abilene.  Although the picture is from after W. C. moved away, it was built in 1885.

This was Abilene's first actual public school building, a high school completed in 1890.  It sat just off the bottom left of the north (west side) downtown map, above.  W. C.'s oldest son, Armon D., would have attended school there.

This supposedly shows when the circus came to town.  It is undated, but there are some clues (which I spent way too much time digging up) that narrow it down a bit - the downtown area received electricity by 1891, the ladies' fashions are consistent with styles between 1890 and 1910, the Bass Bros. Drug Co. (painted on the building) was in business from 1888 to 1906, and there was indeed a circus in town six different times between 1890 and 1906. That means that this photo could have been taken while W. C. lived in town.  Heck, he could even be one of those tiny figures out in the crowd!

And this is the Taylor County courthouse.  (Crazily enough, this beautiful building was torn down in 1914, just thirty-one years after being built, to make room for a newer courthouse, which was just plain ugly!)  I just threw this one in so you could see that it snowed there!

Credits: The photos in this post came from all over the internet.  Some came from The Portal to Texas History, some from museum websites, some just from doing an image search.  A couple came from a book I found a preview of online, Historic Abilene: An Illustrated History by Shilcutt, Coffey, and Frazier.  The book is full of fascinating facts, like the outrageous number of gunfights in Abilene (I saw a newspaper article from 1890 or 91 saying that two men were arrested for carrying guns, which were banned in town by then!) You can read the whole first section, which covers the years up to 1900, in the free preview online.


So, this was supposed to be put together and posted up real quick, but it turns out it actually took four days (because of all that digging I ended up doing)!  I'm hoping to have the 1890's newspaper articles up within about a week.  I added a little 'subscribe by email' button on the top right corner of this blog so you can get notified whenever I put up something new (I think that's how it is supposed to work - I haven't tested it out yet!)  See you soon!

                                                                                                                                          - Therese