Cockrell, Alexander

Alexander and Sarah Horton Cockrell
From Proud Heritage, Vol 1 by DCPA. This 300 page hardcover book is available online.

By 1851 there were 160 residents in the town of Dallas, 123 whites and 37 black slaves. Among the white population were seven lawyers, three doctors, five carpenters, two tailors, a cabinetmaker, and a stonemason. There were three dry-goods stores, two groceries, two blacksmith shops, and one drugstore. Of the new residents none would match the contributions made by a native Kentuckian named Alexander Cockrell and his wife, Sarah Horton Cockrell. Cockrell, having served with the U. S. Army during the war with Mexico, moved to Dallas County to join a cousin along Mountain Creek, southwest of town. Here he met and married Sarah Horton, who would be destined before too many years to shed her role as frontier housewife and succeed her husband as the town's most farsighted entrepreneur. Cockrell conducted a freighting business in which his ox-drawn wagons carried loads to and from Jefferson (which was a navigable waterway at the time) in East Texas, Houston, and Shreveport. He also raised livestock on the 640 acres he had claimed along Mountain Creek. A contemporary wrote that he was a "man of tireless energy". Like John Neely Bryan, he was accustomed thoroughly to the wilderness, for he too had fled civilization at one point in his life to stay with the Indians.

Perhaps it was this mutual experience in the wilderness that drew the two men together. In their discussion of things which few other men could know so intimately, they somehow conceived and consummated a deal that in one stroke removed the mantle of Dallas' leadership from Bryan's shoulders and placed it atop Cockrell's. For $7,000 Cockrell bought out Bryan's entire holding in Dallas, including Bryan's own cabin on Commerce Street. (The friendship was such that Bryan was permitted to remain in his cabin.) The agreement was effective March 21, 1853, whereupon Cockrell promptly left the stubby hills along Mountain Creek and moved with his wife to Dallas.

He lost no time in seeking to enhance his investment, and the enhancement was such that it redounded to the benefit of all the residents. First he decided to span the Trinity with a bridge to replace the slow and awkward ferry he had acquired from Bryan. Such a bridge would help unite the disgruntled "West Siders" (Herd's Ridge supporters in the election for county seat) with the "East Siders" (Dallas supporters).

To construct the bridge, Cockrell, acting under the company name of Dallas Bridge and Causeway, set up a steam-powered circular sawmill adjacent to the site of the projected bridge at the south side of Commerce Street. Workers chopped down trees in the cedar forest south of Mill Creek below town and pulled them by ox-drawn wagons to the sawmill for cutting. With the abutments firmly in place Cockrell moved the mill to a bluff (where the Cadiz Street viaduct now stands) to be near a source of timber needed for finishing the job. Here he sawed the necessary lumber, and in 1858 he opened his toll bridge to the public. It was this same year that a new red-brick courthouse was erected on the square.

It could be argued that the ancillary benefits of Cockrell's sawmill outweighed even the advantages of the bridge; for having finished his project, Cockrell opened the sawmill to the public. So that the "West Siders", too, could enjoy its benefits, Cockrell established a ford and ferry at the site. Frank Cockrell, Alexander's son, later observed that "the impetus thus given not only enthused the home people, but it spread far and near and caused a flowing in of architects, contractors, mechanics, carpenters, and brick masons, as well as investors".

Yet another development caused Dallas to blossom economically during the decade of the 1850s. The settlers realized and began capitalizing on the soil's fertility. Bryan himself had grown the first crop of corn on the courthouse square. William M. Cochran astonished his neighbors (and himself as well) with the bountiful harvest realized in 1845 when he planted wheat. The next year Cochran grew cotton; it too thrived remarkably well in the rich, black soil. At the time wheat production was more advantageous since cotton had to be ginned and exported if it were to be grown profitably in large quantities; neither gins nor adequate transportation were available.

Wheat easily became the dominant crop, so much so that in the 1850s Dallas County became known as the heart of the great wheat region of Texas. By 1856 there were already 40 fancy Emory's threshing machines operating in the county. These machines, powered by two workhorses, could thresh 250 bushel of wheat in a single day. Horse-and mule-powered mills sprang up for milling wheat, followed by water- powered and finally steam-powered mills. So many were established that Dallas became, during this decade, a milling center for farmers from a large number of surrounding counties. "Dallas flour is beginning to be known and appreciated in every section of our state", the Dallas Herald reported in 1858, "and wherever used, has invariably, we believe, been preferred to the best Western flour." Most families in these years grew small amounts of cotton for domestic uses, but not until the 1870s would cotton make North Texans begin to forget about wheat.

Until 1857 James Horton, Sr. followed farming exclusively. At that time he built the Eagle Ford Gristmill, in which he was interested the rest of his life, as was his sister, Sarah Horton Cockrell. He got a "miller" by the name of Alexander Harwood and his son, Rifley B. Harwood, to operate it for him and Aunt Sarah. Sarah Horton Cockrell and James Horton Sr. were brother and sister, children of Enoch and Martha (Stinson) Horton.

Alexander Cockrell was shot to death under unclear circumstances on April 3, 1858 by City Marshall Andrew M. Moore. Moore, on his third day in office, was attempting to arrest Cockrell for violating an ordinance of some sort. The result was that Cockrell was shot eight times in the lower abdomen. The shooting occurred near Cockrell's home on Commerce Street between Houston and Broadway Streets. (Broadway Street then paralleled Houston on the side of the river; it no longer exists.)Moore was tried for murder, and the courtroom battle in July was the most sensational yet seen in Dallas. Even the town's finest ladies, uncharacteristically, went to the courtroom to see and hear the arguments.

John C. McCoy, the former Peters Colony official who had been the town's first practicing lawyer, prosecuted. One of the four defense lawyers was the same Colonel Warren Stone identified by Bryan as one of his enemies. For three days evidence was presented, but afterwards the jury had no trouble in rendering an immediate verdict: not guilty. One might imagine that this verdict in the death of a community leader as prominent as Cockrell would cause an outpouring of outrage, but for some reason this was not the fact. According to the Herald account, observers greeted the judgement with "an irrepressible outburst of applause in the court-room, which was caught up in the streets and made the welkin ring with demonstrations of satisfaction". Why the citizens where so pleased with the verdict can only be imagined.

Cockrell's widow, Sarah, did not let public sentiment prevent her from assuming her late husband's work. The very next year she opened the town's finest inn, the St. Nicholas Hotel. It far overshadowed the comfortable Crutchfield House. The St. Nicholas drew its name from its manager, Nicholas H. Darnell, a former Indian fighter and Texas politician, who inaugurated the hotel with a grand ball attended by persons from all over the state.

Those attending danced to the music of an orchestra seated on a raised platform. Sarah Cockrell also persevered with her late husband's plan to construct a new bridge over the Trinity. She obtained a charter from the State of Texas to form the Dallas Bridge Company, but before the work could begin the Civil War intervened and stalled the project indefinitely.

By the eve of the Civil War some 500 people lived in Dallas. They could read in the Herald of typical happenings in their frontier town (but only on the inside pages - the front page was reserved for state, national, and international news and advertisements): four horses and two mules had either strayed or been stolen from La Reunion; a runaway slave, named Caesar, was being held in the Dallas jail until his owner could identify him; a caustic review characterized the performance of a visiting circus as "miserable". A brief stroll around the red-brick courthouse would reveal the following businesses in operation: two hotels, two exchange offices, two livery stables, two drugstores, seven mercantile houses, two brickyards, two blacksmith shops, a carriage factory, a jeweler, an insurance agency, a boot and shoe shop, two saddlers' shops, two mechanics' shops, two saloons, two schools, a barber shop, a tinner, a cabinetmaker, a milliner, a steam-powered sawmill, and a newspaper and printing office. Dallas' greatest need, however, even more than a bridge, was that outlet to the world beyond. The ox-wagon carrying goods to and from Jefferson - a town with a navigable waterway to New Orleans via the Red River and the Mississippi - were slow and expensive. Use of the Trinity would have been more convenient, faster, and more economical. Yet another possibility had emerged: the railroad.

In the midst of this prosperity the city acknowledged that its continued growth by no means was assured. The problem remained Dallas' remoteness. The only commercial means of passenger travel to or from Dallas was by stagecoach. Lines went in all four directions of the compass, but travel was so slow as to be painful. Even in the best of weather the average speed was only five to eight miles an hour. And in bad weather the roads became so mired in black mud that they were all but impassable. Many streams had to be crossed without the benefit of bridges. This even included the Trinity. Bridges had to be constructed, editor Swindells harped, if the town hoped to attract more business.

The problem of a crossing at the Trinity, however, was already in the process of being solved by Sarah Horton Cockrell. Mrs. Cockrell, whose earlier plan to bridge the river was delayed by the war, established in 1870 the Dallas Wire Suspension Bridge Company to achieve that goal. On March 2, 1872, the new bridge opened. It was erected at a cost of $65,000, and its ironwork was fabricated in St. Louis. A tollhouse was constructed as a part of the project. The toll bridge, according to the eminent publisher of the Galveston News, Willard Richardson, was "one of the handsomest iron bridges we have ever seen." Extending from the foot of Commerce Street, its two arches were 14 and 16 feet high, it measured 300 feet long and its plank floor was 56 feet above the river's low-water mark. Ten years after its construction Dallas County purchased the bridge for $41,600, opening it to the public for free passage. The structure served the town until the early 1890s, when a larger iron bridge replaced it.