who was bob jones?€¦ · grapevine’s newest public art piece on main street the northeast...

Volume 23 Issue 9 September 2020

Who Was Bob Jones? Bob Jones’s name can be seen in many places around the

area: a park, a road, and the city’s nature center, but most people that live here have no idea who Bob Jones was. The Southlake Historical Society has opened an exhibit on Jones and his wife, Almeady Chisum Jones—designed by Grapevine’s Fray Design Firm—including newly uncovered documents, family heirlooms, and colorized photographs. Bob Jones was a former slave freed at the end of the Civil War who went on to become a very successful landowner and rancher. Jones provided jobs for both black and white tenant farmers and was known to loan money to these employees and work with them until they were successful. Jinks and Emory Jones, his sons, went on to establish the Grapevine Auction Barn in 1948, which became the largest business in Southlake until the 1970s. The exhibit includes 12 posters detailing the Jones’s lives along with quotes of other important members of Grapevine society including Ted Willhoite and William D. Tate.

“Bob and Almeady Chisum Jones: A true story of resilience, courage and success” can be visited in the Southlake Town Hall and Library through September 4th. Aislyn Gaddis

Pandemic 2020: Not Our First Rodeo We started our historic coverage of the current Pandemic in the April 2020 newsletter with an article titled The Plunge into the Great Unknown. What we are experiencing today may not be so new and unknown after all. September’s newsletter compares today’s Pandemic to the past 1918 Epidemic in an article by Larry Groebe, a look at the role of Pest Houses during the 1930s Smallpox Epidemic by Sallie Andrews, the 1830s Cholera Epidemic that claimed many of the earliest north Texas settlers, and a photographic comparison of past epidemics by John Boyd. Today, the plunge into the great unknown continues as we begin to open our public schools, in many cases asking children to decide between their own safety, and the quality of education one can only receive in-person. School plans change almost daily, leaving students uncertain while politicians, teachers, parents and health officials all promote their own ideas and solutions, leaving the public not so sure who they should listen to.

Aislyn Gaddis

Grapevine Historical Society P.O. Box 995 Grapevine, TX 76099 www.grapevine history.org.

Grapevine’s Newest Public Art Piece on Main Street

The Northeast corner of Main and Wall Street now features a 3,000 pound granite sphere floating on a thin layer of water. Funded by the Public Art Fund, the interactive sphere (or “Kugel” in German) is a globe of the world with a star over Grapevine’s location. Despite weighing as much as an average car, even a child can make it spin. The location was also chosen to encourage pedestrians to venture across Wall Street from the Torian Cabin to visit the northern most block of South Main. John Boyd

grapevine historical society

On The Vine Dedicated to preserving grapevine history

http://history.org


Social Distancing in 1930 “Come on, J.B., we are going to Dallas,” may have been how Jesse Jackson Daniel urged his ill son to get into the car for a 20-mile ride that could save the lives of his entire Grapevine family. The year 1930 held an epidemic that still strikes fear in our minds…smallpox. J. B. Daniel’s sister, Berniece, wrote in the Grapevine Area History book, “Nine of us had smallpox during an outbreak in the spring of 1930. J. B. had them first, and Dad took him to the ‘pest house’ thinking it might keep the rest of us from having them.” The preventative measure did not work. All but one member of the Daniel family contracted smallpox, and thankfully, they all survived. Berniece grew up to be a rancher and banker in Chico, J. B. became a Grapevine homebuilder and cabinet shop owner, and Thelma became Grapevine’s first City Councilwoman in 1972. Grady moved to Dallas, Roy to Arlington, Jim to Pasadena, George to Baton Rouge and Marshall moved to Australia. The Daniel family w e r e p r o m i n e n t Grapevine citizens. On March 22, 1908, Jesse Jackson Daniel married Llora Elsie Lindsay. They had eight children and for many years farmed on the Grape Vine Prairie. Jesse operated cotton gins and owned a feed store, grocery store and gas station and managed the Co-op Feed Mill. He also served on Grapevine City Council from 1947 to 1954.

A pest house was not an infirmary or hospital, just a place to go to be isolated from society to help stop the spread. Family members could accompany a sick person to the pest house and stay, but no treatment or medication was provided there. Woodlawn Hospital in Dallas was previously called Union Hospital, and before that was one of the city’s pest houses. In 1936 Woodlawn Hospital became part of the Dallas City-County Hospital System as a site to care for people who had tuberculosis, after the smallpox epidemic had passed. Sallie Andrews

“Hazardous to Your Health” Asiatic cholera first reached U.S. Eastern cities in the early 1830s and moved westward with the

emigrants as they crossed the continent. “Emigrant” is the 19th century name for American pioneers moving east to west. They rode saddle horses, but most of them trudged along on foot beside oxen pulling canvas-covered wagons with barely enough room for the sick and smallest children. During the westward movement, cholera killed more pioneers than all other diseases combined. Historians estimate one of every 17 emigrants who started westward on the Oregon Trail were buried beside the trail as victims of the very illness they traveled west to escape. Excepted from The Cattleman magazine – August 2020 issue


September Events At this time our September meeting is canceled.

The Grapevine Historical Museum remains closed, but the other museum buildings and the Ted Ware Plaza are open. The Hotel Vin Grand Opening is

scheduled for September 3.

Lifetime Member AwardsIn recognition of outstanding service and

contributions, the Grapevine Historical Society annually recognizes selected members for the

"Lifetime Member Award". A complete list of past Lifetime Members is at the bottom of the page. If

you have suggestions for members to be considered for the 20th Annual 2020 award, please notify Joe Ann Standlee ([email protected]) or Margaret Telford ([email protected]) before

September 15.

http://history.org

mailto:[email protected]





Grapevine and the Pandemic of 1918

Today the COVID-19 virus is redefining and reshaping our daily lives. Just over 100 years ago, the world was hit with one of the worst pandemics in human history - the "Spanish Flu”. 1918 was an era with no air travel, few cars and highways, but was far less medically advanced. With those conditions, the Spanish Flu virus managed to kill as many as 50 million people worldwide. Grapevine’s population was just over 800 people in 1918; today we are more than sixty times larger, but in both 1918 and 2020, the pandemic proved deadly to the local community. The Spanish Flu hit in waves, with the most deadly being the fall of 1918. The Grapevine Sun mentions an "influenza epidemic in Spain" for the first time early in August and it spread quickly by the end of the month. By early October, the Sun carried more influenza stories and, like today, the news could be confusing and contradictory. One dispatch noted an astonishing 20,000 cases in just two days at the country's army camps. Meanwhile, another article on the same page announced that the quarantine at the Army’s Love Field in Dallas was being lifted because there were no documented cases of influenza, merely a few cases of "the grip.”However, two weeks earlier a huge war loan fundraising parade was held in downtown Dallas, where thousands of soldiers and civilians mingled together and marched - within days, people started getting sick. By October 12, the mayor of Dallas had to shut down all public gatherings, including schools and churches. Over 700 cases were reported to Dallas' City Emergency Hospital that day alone.Within Grapevine, face-to-face gossip (or perhaps face mask-to-face mask) provided townsfolk with most of their local news. A visit to Wall's Grocery or to the post office to pick up the day's mail would give people a chance to compare stories on who had taken ill recently. Some reports did make it into the Sun, especially when outlying communities wrote with weekly updates. On October 12, Lee Willis was listed as sick with influenza while Grapevine resident, Will Harris, was said to be recovering. The Stringtown High School was reported shut down on October 19th due to influenza.The November 16, 1918 issue of The Grapevine Sun made it clear the influenza epidemic did not spare the Grapevine area. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Landrith's baby daughter, not quite two years old, passed away from pneumonia brought on by the flu. The nearby communities of Dove, Minter’s Chapel and Pleasant Glade (south Colleyville) reported flu cases, but optimistically stated things there were looking up, and they'd only had one death. That week the Sun also reported on several other people, young and old, who recently died from pneumonia without specifically referencing the Spanish Flu.Meanwhile, the Sun also offered readers remedies: advertisements full of extravagant promises of cures for influenza and other ailments. An advertorial touted Irontic Tablets, "or that well-known herbal tonic, Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery." Cascara Bromo-Quinine admonished you to take some at the first sign

of a cold. And Vicks VapoRub was in short supply due to massive demand - or so claimed a large ad while promising to restock the shelves soon.The front-page headlines on November 16, 1918 announced the World War had ended a few days before. The Sun didn't believe in large flashy headlines but did write that "The great struggle is now over and our boys will no doubt be coming home soon. God bless their noble and patriotic Souls." Also on the front-page, Mr. and Mrs. Landrith posted a note of thanks to the town for the sympathy shown them during their daughter's fatal influenza. World War One killed 9.5 million people. The 1918-1919 Spanish Flu killed at least 17 million. The 2020 Coronavirus has killed over 775,000 at this time. Stay safe out there. Larry Groebe


Dallas Love Field soldiers lined up for treatment in 1918

http://history.org



San Gimignano, Italy

2020 Pandemic vs. 1918 Epidemic History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,

Mark Twain

http://history.org

who was bob jones?€¦ · grapevine’s newest public art piece on main street the northeast...

Documents