MR. WILLIAM SECREST

Uncle Bill Secrest was operating a store with Uncle Bob Shockley out at Gentry’s Mill. He would come in to Hamilton and ask how much it would cost just to close the saloon for the evening. Maybe it would be fifty, maybe seventy-five dollars. He would engage the place and throw a big party, with Joe Roberts, lawyer who drank himself to death, Marion Graves, Jack Allen, his brother Siras said, no, "it wasn’t brother Jack.") J. B. Allen, a popular young lawyer from Georgia, who first taught school, died early, John Boynton, Henry Allen, able lawyer, they say, who went west. et. al. Uncle Bill would furnish the drinks and they would have a big time, and would sing.

This doesn’t sound like the Uncle Bill I knew--slow-going, conscientious, cautious, working in hardware stores, serving as tax collector, very good on frontier history. Regret that I did not take down his stories. Old Uncle Bob Shockley was conservative, and heard Uncle Bill nearly broke him, wanted to over-extended the business at Gentrys Mill.

When he [F. C. Williams] told King and Fortran he wanted to quit, they prevailed on him to stay ’till Christmas, which he did. Then they hired Tom Stidham, but he didn’t do so well. He went to Galveston lots of times. He reported on the business every week. In those days they ran excursions to Galveston for five dollars. (Catch Santa Fe at Moran.)  When these men hired him to work in the saloon, he was rounding up cattle down at Bark’s Ranch Timber on Alexander Creek.

Mr. Hearne, later the merchant, had gone broke farming down in the Brazos Bottoms.

The Stidham referred to above was about the size of Bill Stidham. (He was a very fat man, worked cattle, used to run the old Black from Livery Stable. Once took him out to carry a small Jersey bull from one farm to another. Had quite a time of it. Called generally "Stick" Stidham, Jim and Ernest (Nesty) Stidham were good fellows. The old man had put in the old Stidham Hotel, frame building, out in S. W. Part of town.)

They would have him and the boys to run footraces to the salon and bet on them.. Mr. Williams said, as I suggested, that they could run faster toward a saloon. Said that Jobe Cooper as I recall, and others would lock hands till they got to an old liveoak tree on the square and that would break them apart.

There were about five saloons here then. Could get along somehow on one or two grocery stores. Pap Reinhert, Bob Matheson, and maybe Manning and Watson were running them. (Ones I recall were Talley’s up the street where there were usually many barrels stacked against the wall; Tony McQuire’s, the "Ideal saloon," I believe. Down Rat Row to the east, Watson’s saloon and Restaurant, separated by a partition, were about midway of the street. Later, Seagle’s was down what is now Bell Avenue, sometimes referred to as "The Baptist Saloon," being down toward that church. When they finally voted the bars out, about World War One, Mr. Watson stated if people didn’t want him in that business he would close up. Later knew two brothers of his at Jonesboro, ardent prohibitioners. Mr. Watson was a good man, had a boy Bob, in my class in school from the beginning, a fine fellow. They moved to Raymondsville and were in the hardware business.

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