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Samuel
Uhl was born November 26, 1832 and grew up on the border of Maryland
and Pennsylvania. It was near Wellersburg in Somerset County,
Pennsylvania and Mt. Savage in Alleghany County, Maryland. He
died April 21, 1930 in Wheatland, southern Dallas County, Texas at
age 98.
In
1846, at age 14, he moved with his parents Lean Flickenger
(1809-1847) and Archibald Uhl (1808-1850) to Carlinville, Macoupin
County, Illinois. Between Spring and Fall of 1854, he worked
his way 2,000 miles to the California gold fields earning his way as
a driver of cattle. One motive was to find his father who had
gone out in 1850. In California, he discovered his father had
died shortly after his arrival. After three years of gold
mining for himself, he returned to Illinois, but soon left on the
first of three trips to Texas driving sheep to be sold there.
In 1858 he settled in Texas, to spend the rest of his long life at
Wheatland. On December 24, 1862 he married Eleanor Branson
(March 10, 1842 - September 12, 1907). She was the youngest
daughter of Thomas A. Branson and Louisa Cole.
 Samuel
Uhl, in 1861, enlisted in the Confederate Army, serving in the
Texas-Mississippi Department with Company F, Col. Parson's 12th
Texas Calvary. The picture to the left was taken of Samuel
upon entry into the Confederate Army. This service was a very important episode in
his life, to its very end. In later life each Sunday, Samuel
put on his Confederate uniform to greet family and guests at his
farm home. On such occasions he was not reluctant to
"speechify" on the subject of states' rights. He had attended
many Confederate soldiers' reunions. At his request, he was
buried wearing that uniform at the Wheatland Cemetery. The
original land donation for the Wesley Chapel was given by Thomas
Branson in 1864. Later the Wheatland School was built on this
same land. Additional land was added to expand the cemetery by
Samuel Uhl in 1872 at which time he specified that all the Branson
and Uhl descendants and spouses should have the right to be buried
there.
The
Flickenger Family History written in 1927 summarizes Samuel Uhl's
life this way:
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As a
progressive farmer in Texas, Mr. Uhl endeavored to
combine an approved rotation of crops and the
maintenance of large herds of stock, including sheep,
with an extensive cultivation of cotton; and was greatly
prospered. He had acquired the ownership of 700
acres of land, previous to the time of its division a
few years ago among his children. He has served
many years as a trusted official of the M.E. Church
(steward), and has been a life-long advocate of the
principles of total abstinence and prohibition. As
a veteran of the Civil War he has to his credit four
years of faithful patriotic service. |
One of
Samuel Uhl's daughters, Emma Balch (Mrs. Charles South) Uhl wrote
several accounts of his life based on what she had heard him tell.
For his 95th birthday celebration, she wrote:
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He is a charter member of the Oak Cliff Masonic
Lodge. When Wheatland was first established as a
voting precinct he served for over twenty years as the
presiding officer of the elections. For years and
years he was a school trustee. For more than fifty
years he has been a leader of the Methodist church here.
He has been a constant attendant of the pioneers
reunions of Dallas and has traveled thousands of
miles attending various reunions of the Confederacy.
For the past five years he has been blind, yet he
maintains an active interest in everything going on;
listening over his radio, being read to by relatives or
friends, his mind is brilliant and his memory clear.
And thus he is rounding out his 95th year and is looking
forward cheerful, joyous and alert. He has seen
all the modern inventions come into use.
He has lived the span from the stagecoach days and the
tallow candle to the automobile and the airship, the
cotton gin and the factories, the transportation
facilities and the great strides of civilization and
commerce that have wrested the plains from the Indians
and the buffaloes and planted cities upon a thousand
hills. Thus he serenely awaits his century
birthday joyously and eagerly. |
Great Aunt Emma Balch Uhl remembered and recorded Samuel's
stories of his trip to California.
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On April
9, 1854, Sam Uhl with twelve other men started with a
herd of 200 cattle, from Chicago to drive across country
to California. There were three wagons for
provisions and camp equipment. They traveled the
same emigrant trail that Emmerson Hough described in the
"Covered Wagon." There were no Indian raids, for
at that time traffic was so heavy that within an hour's
time a hundred armed men could be gathered together to
meet any Indian raids. So heavy was travel this
year that the clouds of dust along the trail marked the
army of travelers that were seeking a change of fortune
with a change of country as far ahead, or as far behind
as the eye could see. So in numbers there was
safety. They were five months crossing the plains
but game was plentiful and there were as many buffaloes
in the Platte River as he ever saw cattle on the Texas
plains..
After leaving Fort Laramie they crossed the Rocky
mountains at the South Pass and wintered the cattle in
the Sacramento valley. Mr. Uhl left the herd at
Gibsonville and began work in the field mines washing
away the dirt from the nuggets with water. He also
did underground mining. He learned but little of
his father after reaching there, only that he had died
or pneumonia soon after he got across to California.
The winters of 1852 and 1856 were the years of
California heavy snows. In 1852 and 1856
were the years of California heavy snows. In 1856
the snow began in November and lasted until May.
During one snowstorm that winter the snow fell four feet
in 24 hours. The next morning when they awoke they
were a buried settlement. They had to open their
cabin doors and shovel the snow into the cabin to make
way for them to burrow out. Then began the
shoveling to clear their cabins and make access to the
outside. This snow lasted nearly all winter.
There were some snow-shoes but not many so those who did
not possess them remained inside rather than risk being
buried alive in the loose snow outside.
The mail and express were carried by foot and by the
snowshoe route. It cost 25 cents a letter to have
mail brought into camp from Marysville, a distance of
seventy-five miles, and the nearest post office.
The trees were cut at the snow line for fuel and next
spring the settlement was filled with topped trees whose
stumps were four feet high.
There were no cashier's checks in those days. What
money you had you carried with you, so when he was
leaving California he purchased a buckskin vest quilted
in squares large enough to conceal and hold a $20 gold
piece. In this manner he was able to bring his
earnings of $1,800 safely out of the country with him
and thus start into business for himself. In
December, 1857, he sailed from San Francisco harbor, by
steamship, to the Isthmus of Panama, crossing it by rail
to Aspinwall, New Colon, and again taking ship to
Havana, thence to New Orleans, and from there by boat to
St. Louis and by rail home again, at Carlinville,
Illinois, where he and his brothers set out in the sheep
business for Texas. |
Here is Great Aunt Emma's account of his sheep drives from
Missouri to Texas, and early life there:
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Samuel
Uhl and his two brothers, A.J. and Thomas Uhl, in 1858
drove a herd of 1,100 sheep from Shelby County Missouri
to Dallas. They started with a chuck wagon and
yoke of oxen, in addition to their herd of sheep.
By the time they reached Corbert's ferry, one of their
oxen took sick and died on the Indian territory side of
Red River, and the next day the other one died on the
Texas side. After the death of their oxen, they
traded their chuck wagon and its contents for a pony and
a saddle and came on down the old cattle trail to
Sherman.
At that place they divided their herd into two lots.
Thomas and A.J. Uhl took one drove and followed the
McKinney road to Plano, where they sold their sheep or
traded them for young mules. Sam Uhl drove the
others on the Preston road to Cedar Springs Crossing on
the Trinity River and came on out by the old French
colony and thence out to Maj. John Penn's whose post
office was Cedar Hill. Major Penn had come out
from Sangamon County, Illinois several years before, and
he and Mr. Uhl's family had been friends back in the
states. The following spring, Mr. Uhl sold his
sheep to Nick Simms on Chambers Creek in Ellis County,
after which he rode back to Carlinville, Illinois in
Sangamon County. The unique feature of this trip
was that Sam Uhl walked all the way grazing their sheep
as they came, and making about seven or eight miles a
day. In
August 1859, they bought another herd of 1,200 sheep and
drove them through as before, along the same trail,
which was the emigrant trail from Missouri to Texas,
walking and grazing as they brought them. After
disposing of this flock in the Spring, Sam Uhl and a
brother again went back over the same emigrant trail
from Texas to Missouri, in a covered wagon, to Sedalia,
Mo., and from there by rail to Calhoun County, Michigan,
where they bought a thousand head of two year old
full-blood Delaine sheep. They shipped them, from
there by rail to Quincy, Ill., and from there for the
third time they took the emigrant trail to Texas.
Leaving there in August, they proceeded on their way as
before, passing through Cedar Hill on the day of the
presidential election, in which Lincoln was elected.
They drove this herd on to Hill County and sold it as $8
and $10 per head - a big price in those days for sheep.
After disposing of this third flock of sheep they came
back and spent the winter in the Cedar Hill
vicinity.
Samuel joined the Confederate forces in the Twelfth
Texas Cavalry (Parson's Brigade - procurement) in 1861.
On Christmas leave in 1862 he married Eleanor Branson.
After the Civil War he returned to what was then known
as the Cedar Hill vicinity, but is now the Wheatland
community - and it was so named by Mr. Uhl - and there
settled down to farming and stock raising. He has
always kept sheep, good cattle, hogs and horses, and has
practiced diversified farming. At the close of the
Civil War, land values were around $5 an acre.
There were no bridges and no roads other than what was
knows as trails over the open range. There were
plenty of deer and wild turkey, also antelopes, but no
buffalo nearer than Parker County.
In early 80's, he and a partner built a gin in Wheatland
which they operated for about three years, then sold it.
He began freighting from Calvert on the H. & T. C., the
nearest railroad points in Dallas, Collin, Denton,
Parker, Ellis and Tarrant counties. He had both
oxen and mule teams. He accepted all kinds of
commissions from lumber to millinery.
He bought on he freighter's van all the needs of the
households that were scattered over the wide prairies
along his route. There was hard work - there was
humor, there were heartbreaks, that the citizen with his
automobile, with this telephone, with his radio, know
not of. On one of his freighting trips in the
earlier years of his married life, his baby boy, at that
time his only son, was taken sick with diphtheria.
From the first, it was known the child was seriously
ill, and so runners were dispatched for the father, who
was already overdue on his return trip. But death
out-rode the messenger, and the child was buried before
his father reached his home. |
In
addition to her reports, I found in a "History of Dallas County"
an account of Samuel Uhl joining other leaders in signing a
"Memorial" on June 4, 1868, sent to the Texas legislature urging
the appropriation of funds to make the "majestic Trinity River
navigable." The resolution did not pass.
Samuel Uhl and Eleanor Branson Uhl had eleven children, nine of
whom survived, and thirty-one grandchildren, of whom my mother
was one. The children are:
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Sue
Ellen, born October 2, 1863. A school teacher who
never married. She was her father's housekeeper
and caretaker. She died in 1946.
Addie Corilla, born April 20, 1865. Married Joseph
L. Bartlett. No children
Thomas, born March 2, 1868; died July 14, 1871 of
diphtheria.
Leah Louise, born April 26, 1870. Married Robert
Henry Sprowls. Eight children.
Charles South Uhl, born February 21, 1872, died December
30, 1945. Married Emma Balch (1877 - 1974)
Alma Augusta, born December 15, 1873. Married
William Cummings Davis. Six children.
Carrie Lee, born June 16, 1876. Married Thomas B.
Brixey on December 25, 1895. They had six
children: Archie Roy, Samuel Uhl (died in infancy),
Bess, Ida, Florence, and Addie Mae (who died of measles
as a young girl.) Carrie Lee died in 1934 and
Thomas Brixey died in 1947.
Benjamin Forrest, born August 9, 1878. Married
Mabel Paige. Two sons.
Leslie Branson, born November 27, 1880. Married
Lula Jennings (1882 - 1963). Four children.
A daughter born in 1883 and a son born in 1887 died in
infancy. |
Many of Samuel and Eleanor Uhl's grandchildren have continued to
live in Dallas County. When his granddaughter Ida's sons,
Vernon and James, bought land for a housing development they
found that the original deed showed the owner to have been
Samuel Uhl. Many of the Uhl relatives return each year to
the Memorial Day gathering at the Wheatland Methodist Church and
Wheatland Cemetery It is easy to connect with family roots
in that one location for there have been relatives buried there
for at least five generations.
Samuel Uhl was adventurous and enterprising, and also a stable
family man and a community leader. He was both ingenious
and practical: after seeking golden treasure in California, he
herded sheep cross-country to acquire the capitol for Texas land
and business opportunities. He learned, however, that
lasting treasures grow from community roots. The legacy he
left for us is a church which is an Historic Landmark, a school
where intellects expand and a cemetery where the family can
gather together annually in life and more permanently in death.
Joan Smith King
August 1994.
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