Smallpox scare and free school muddle for cottage museum namesake
Have you seen the small rock cottage near the gazebo in downtown San Marcos? That was the home of Charles Stephen Cock and Susana Walker, both born in Alabama. But eventually, as part of the westward expansion, they moved to Yalobusha County, Mississippi, near Water Valley. Susana was the daughter of Israel Walker (1790 Al - 1848 IL) and Melinda Dykes (1789 VA - 1868 IL). Yalobusha County is in north central Mississippi; they both settled near Water Valley in the northeast corner of Yalobusha County.
Susana met Benjamin Jefferson Boydston, whose first wife Elizabeth Jacobs had died in 1843 in Bolivar, TN, perhaps from complications in the birth of their youngest son Martin, who was born in 1843. After Elizabeth’s death, Ben and family relocated to Water Valley, about 100 miles southwest of Bolivar.
On 4 January 1848, Susana married Ben in Water Valley. On 28 August 1848, Ben signed a new will in which he made bequests to Susana: “a certain Negro woman named Fanny and her 15-months-old child Squire … also one cow and calf.” Ben expressed his hope that Susanna, his sister Kiziah, and his children remain together as a family until Ben’s youngest son Martin reached his legal age. Martin was pretty young; he was born 1843 in Tennessee. I speculate that Susana was in the Boydston household before her marriage to Ben. Perhaps she was taken in to help care for young Martin. Ben was 43. Susana was 26.
On 20 September 1848, Ben died; findagrave # 46980221; cause unknown; and that changed everything. Ben’s will had been filed, and MS law prevailed. Ben had several children with his first wife Elizabeth, and Susana, after a marriage of about eight months, was an interloper. Why would she want to stay with the Boydston family; why would they want her to stay?
The solution was to pay her off. Susana made that easy for them. She claimed her bequests under Ben’s will and asserted her dower rights under Mississippi law. Those dower rights gave her one third of the income from the entire estate. For life. That would be intolerable to a potential buyer of any of the land. The solution might have been to buy her out, for which they needed money.
Ben’s sons embarked on a frenzy of selling as much of Ben’s personal property as they could. Livestock, for example. 50 bushels of corn at 41 cents per bushel. And paying off Ben’s debts by collecting money owed to Ben. Susana’s cow and calf brought $10. I find no evidence of a sale of Fanny and Squire, but they were valued at $650.
Susana also got one year’s provisions: 500 lbs pork or bacon, 50 bushels corn, 50 lbs coffee, 100 lbs sugar, 1 sack salt, 1 barrel flour, 1 lb pepper, 1 lb spice, 1 gal vinegar, 1 lb [unreadable]. And a similar list for the children.
Children? That may solve one problem but leave another. On 30 Oct 1849, Charles and Susana married in Water Valley. They were still in Yalobusha County for the 1850 census which, for the Cocks, was enumerated on 28 Oct. Present in the household were C.S. Cock 27 TN [sic] , Susan 28 GA [sic], Mary 2 MS, John 5/12 MS. The birth states for Charles and Susana are wrong, but that is common on census forms. I speculate that Mary and John are the children referred to in the probate records for Ben’s estate and are Ben’s children. Their fate is unknown. I do not find them in the 1860 census for Yalobusha County. One biographer says that they probably died. There were several diseases: yellow fever, malaria, cholera, tb [consumption] due to poor sanitation, contaminated water, and mosquitos.
The other problem is the twins. Cecilia and Cevilia were born 27 September 1850. They were almost one month old at the taking of the 1850 census. They should have been present with Susana, but were not listed. Perhaps they were in bed with Susana, and Charles, the informant, forgot about them. Perhaps the enumerator misunderstood the rules which stated that ALL should be counted; not just those of a certain age. Those ages raise another problem. If John was 5 months old in October 1850, then he was born about May 1850. The twins were born in September 1850? I choose to believe that John was older than 5 months.
Ben’s estate was not settled until 1852, but Charles and Susana continued their westward migration. They joined a wagon train heading for Texas. They probably crossed the Red River on flat boats at Shreveport and, after a brief stop in Bastrop, arrived in San Marcos in 1851. Their other three children were born there: William Calvin Cock in 1852, Charles Wood Cock in 1854, and Lewis Walker Cock in 1860.
Charles was active in the Masons, in the Methodist church, in the schools, and in real estate, but he seemed to have preferred county politics. From August 1865 to January 1867, Charles was a County Commissioner. In January 1867, he was appointed Hays County Clerk. He was also a Justice of the Peace and performed several marriages. On 29 January 1872, Charles took his oath as Hays County Inspector of Hides and Animals. On 20 March 1875, Charles was a [the?] Deputy Sheriff. Charles filled two offices as a result of the 7 November 1882 election when he was elected Justice of the Peace, unopposed. On 4 Apr 1882, he was elected Mayor. Two years later, he called an election for 1 Apr 1884 and was re-elected 148-38.
The duties of a mayor are many and varied. In February 1883, Mayor Cock signed a 12-year contract with C.M. Holmes for a waterworks for fire protection and public and domestic sanitary purposes. The source of the water was, of course, the San Marcos River.
Also in February 1883, there was a smallpox scare. Mayor Cock was asked by the board of health to announce that there had been no new cases, reported only one case, very mild, doing well, well quarantined, and hoped it would not spread.
On the same page the same newspaper referred to “unreasonable panic” and then an “excess of confidence” but the danger was by no means over and there should not be “the least abatement of any possible precaution to ward off the loathsome enemy.” Charlatans took the warning to mind.
Again, on the same page, were several recipes for preventatives and remedies. A mixture of saltpetre and brandy. That’s gunpowder and brandy, a mixture which has probably caused more trouble than it has cured. But nobody was taking chances. Seguin quarantined against San Marcos. Smallpox was a dread disease. Of those who contracted it, 3 of 10 died. Survivors were often scarred, sometimes very severely. We’re slow to catch on. In the late 1700s, Dr. Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who contracted cowpox did not then contract smallpox. That’s what I got in the 1950s in my small pox inoculation.
Meanwhile, Mayor Cock was business as usual. He purchased a stock of saddlery and harness and moved it to the southwest corner of the public square with Mr. T.J. White employed to oversee sales, if any. On 1 April 1884, Cock was re-elected as mayor.
On 31 August 1884, a body was found on the railroad track between San Marcos and Hunter. Mayor Cock, Sheriff Barber, Marshal Prince, and others headed for the scene on railroad hand cars. Cock, Barber, and Prince were sitting on some scantling at the front of the car. On a downgrade, the brakes were applied, the loose scantling shifted and Cock, Barber, and Prince were thrown in front of the car which then hit them. Cock’s legs were damaged to the point that he had to use crutches for quite a while; it may be that he never fully recovered. In the event, a lawsuit ensued, which was not settled until 1890. After 2 or 3 trips to the state supreme court, Cock and Prince won their lawsuits and collected a total of $5,000 from the I&GN RR. Their lawyer was O.T. Brown who had preceded Cock as San Marcos mayor.
That was not the end of Cock’s troubles. On 7 April 1885, William Giesen opposed Cock in the mayoral election. Giesen won 181-103. In November 1886, Cock did win re-election as Justice of the Peace 218-127. But in November 1888, he lost to R.J. Smith “by a large majority.”
Cock’s loss to Giesen may have been due in part to the free school muddle. Before 1879, education in Texas operated like any other free market enterprise, like grocery stores or blacksmith shops. Coronal Institute offered high school instruction; its faculty maxed out at 12 and student body at 129. Mrs. Mosher, formerly an instructor at Coronal, taught, at her home, a number of little ones under the scholastic age. Major J.H. Bishop, former president of Coronal, opened Mary Henry Academy, a female boarding school.
The Texas legislature got into the act. On 3 April 1979, Gov. Oran M. Roberts approved House Bill 71 which provided that, upon application by at least 50 qualified voters, the mayor shall order an election to determine whether such city or town shall acquire exclusive control of any or all of the free schools and institutions of higher learning within its limits, AND [caps mine] whether they shall be controlled by the town or city council or by a board of 6 elected trustees.
On 14 Apr 1883, Gov. John Ireland approved Senate Bill 320 which provided that the city council of every city or town of 1,000 inhabitants or more, that has or shall assume control of its public free schools, may appoint six persons as a board of trustees. Appointed rather than elected.
City or town? A city had a population of 1,000 or more. A town did not. In either case, the city or town had to be incorporated under the general laws of the State. San Marcos did that in 1877.
In 1885, in response to a valid petition presented in 1884, Cock called for two elections.
1. A special election on Monday March 30 1885, to assume control of all public free schools. But NOT to decide whether the council or a board of trustees should control the schools. Cock and city attorney Sterling Fisher felt that San Marcos’ population, above 1,000, made the council vs. school trustee question superfluous because of SB 320.
2. A regular election on Tuesday 7 April 1885, to elect corporation officers.
Public indignation was high.
1. That the council vs. board of trustees question was not to be decided, and 2. That the time and expense of two elections would have been avoided had the two elections been combined. The vote to take control of the schools passed 166-99. In the town officials election, William Giesen replaced Charles Cock as mayor. Giesen thus inherited the school muddle. I know that you want to know how it turned out. See next week’s story about William Giesen.
Cock had always been a strong advocate of temperance and prohibition. In 1887, Cock was one of seven to call for the selection of delegates to attend the State Prohibition Convention in Waco.
On 15 March 1888, Prince and Cock vs. I&GN RR led to damages of $2,300 for Prince and $1,700 for Cock. The decision was appealed. On 18 Jan 1890, one of Cock’s buildings was destroyed by fire.
On 7 August 1890, after two or three treks to the Texas Supreme Court, the decision in Prince and Cock vs. I&GN RR was affirmed, with damages of more than $5,000 awarded to them. Prince and Cock’s successful attorney was O.T. Brown who had preceded Cock as mayor of San Marcos.
On 13 December 1891, yet another fire destroyed several buildings on the east side of the plaza, where the old courthouse now sits. One of those buildings belonged to Cock; valued at $1,500, it was uninsured.
On 26 January 1897, Cock died intestate and is buried in the San Marcos City Cemetery; see findagrave # 89865876. His five children deeded their share of his estate to their mother Susana. Susana survived until 20 December 1906 when she died; she is also buried in the San Marcos City Cemetery; see findagrave # 89865898. Susana, whose marriage to Ben Boydston had left her with an appreciation of wills, did have one.
The next mayor was William Giesen. Next week.
