Willie C Brown
This is an article I wrote many years ago, completely unaware at the time that, like Willie, my own family also lived and died on this land.
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We live in a quiet neighborhood at the top of a bluff overlooking a lake. There’s nothing extraordinary about it, we’re just a small town in north Texas along the Red River. It’s where the Sand Springs bubble up through the red clay into Waterloo Lake. For many years before white settlers came, it was a watering place for various Caddo groups, the Kichai, Tonkawas, and Ionis.
Later, when the Butterfield Overland Mail line passed through here, it became a watering stop for horses, riders, and passengers. There are still carvings on one of the small cliff faces where people left their marks as they passed through.
It was originally a settlement called Waterloo, then it became Sand Springs. When the MKT railroad built a line and terminal here in 1872, they also built a city. The small settlements in the surrounding area dried up as people moved into the new city of Denison, population 3,000.
Sometimes when we’re out hunting, we find an abandoned homestead or derelict road marker that dates back to days long forgotten. We’ve chased rabbits through overgrown culverts that run under the old Denison-Sherman rail line. We’ve caught cottontails at the defunct WWII air force base. I’ve climbed over fences where the barbed wire was strung so long ago that it now passes through the center of a two-foot thick tree trunk.
Every now and then there will be a real surprise. Something suddenly reveals itself in a place you’ve been countless times. It can bring new meaning to something long taken for granted.
For many years we’ve hunted in a 90-acre hay field north of town. It’s bordered on the east and west with small creeks and heavy brush. The south side is adjacent to the Union Pacific tracks where you can count on at least two trains passing during the hunt. On the northern boundary is an old cedar hedgerow that’s almost completely overgrown with blackberries, wild roses, and many other bushes that make it impossible for anything larger than a cottontail to get into.
We’ve caught many rabbits in these creeks. This is also where my first red-tail, Reggie, caught and killed a bobcat. A tiercel peregrine and a sparrowhawk made their first free flights in this field. The peregrine’s buried here on the far side of the ridge.
Hidden deep in the southwest corner of this lot is a coyote den now. The coyotes have almost cleared the field of rabbits, so we don’t come here very often anymore.
Last summer, a new road appeared. Shiny red fire hydrants along the side of it belie the hopefulness of a developer intent on turning our hunting ground into a major industrial complex. Some day that will happen; it’s the age-old lament of land lost to human progress. Open country tamed by the farmer yields itself to concrete, steel, and noise when paper and ink grants title to change things forever.
We went back there a few days ago just to see how the field was doing. We started off in the southern section and worked our way fruitlessly up the west side to the old hedgerow. Once we got there, I noticed that a small section had been recently cleared. As we got closer, I saw a small wrought iron fence enclosure in bad repair. Underneath two cedars is the gravesite of a small boy, Willie C Brown.
There’s nothing much to know about Willie other than he sleeps here. Someone thought enough of him, though, to clean up his gravesite. Perhaps it was a descendant of Willie’s family or maybe it was just someone who stumbled on to it in their wanderings through a field. For whatever the reason, he’s no longer hidden away in dense brush at the edge of industrial development.
When the day comes that some manufacturing firm decides to carve up the plain to build a new factory, Willie will be there to remind them that this land was not always theirs. It belongs to Willie, the coyotes, and the rabbits. It’s only ours to share.
WILLIE C.
Son of
W.J. & M.H.
BROWN
Died Sept. 6, 1872
Aged 12 VII M
&5D
Tho’ lost to sight, to memory dear
- Willie C Brown