ELECTION IRREGULARITIES

It was Crockett Hendricks, Hamp McCain, and Berkley, who were indicted for miscount of votes, probably out at Lanham (toward Twin Mountains), but they never were tried. (I had given a list of criminal cases from the court dockets for Mr. Williams’ perusal and comment.) He said with reference to this record, that Colonel Potts, who represented the Western factions, was really elected sheriff, but that they counted him out and that Dave Smith won by one vote.

He said that Dave Smith would have been all right as sheriff if he could have acted independently. He said that Old Man Jim Rice was one of the rulers but that he ... was ... ...twenty years old when first elected. He was the first really elected sheriff. They were all appointed before that time. When Ezekiel Manning was appointed the first sheriff by Sam Houston there were not enough people here to amount to anything. Bill Manning, lately the bank president, has a framed commission to him from Houston, the governor. Buthead Wilson and such sheriffs did nothing in the way of enforcement. Sam Gholson, (later the great cowman, the man who was with Ira Aten in the affray with the Spikes man) was an appointed sheriff and served only a short time. They could not do much in the way of law enforcement and were not expected to..

(Mr. Sam Gholson was the brother of my friend, Uncle Frank Gholson, who lived in the old rock house in the edge of Lampasas County, just south of Gholson Pass. Felix and I got his story of the Pease River battle with the Comanches in 1868, later published in the State Historical Journal, also his part in the Confederate army when under General "Gentleman" John Bankhead., they took Galveston Island back from the Yankees; (Not Bankhead,) General McGruder.

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