Name: Henrietta, Texas
Address: Henrietta, TX

The Quaker, the Kiowa Chief, and a Battle in the Ruins RoadyGoat

On this ground, in the abandoned ruins of Henrietta, two waves of settlers tried to rebuild after the Civil War and paid a brutal price. Dr. Elderidge led a group back in 1865 but was driven off after several of his people were killed. Then in 1870 came Goodleck Koozer, a Quaker who carried no weapons, convinced that if he treated the Kiowa fairly they would do the same. He was wrong. Koozer was killed by the Kiowa chief White Horse, and his wife and daughters were carried off as captives. His son escaped to Montague County, and the rest of the family was eventually released. When Clay County was finally reorganized, the very first act of its grand jury was to indict White Horse for the killing, but the chief slipped out of the county and was never caught. That same year, in the burned-out shell of the town, fifty soldiers clashed with a force of 300 Kiowa. It would be the early 1870s before settlers held this place for good. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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The County Seat That Was Abandoned and Burned RoadyGoat

You're rolling into Henrietta, the seat of Clay County, but in 1860 this was barely a place at all: ten houses, a general store, and a hard edge of the North Texas frontier. The whole county held just 109 people. When Clay County was carved out of Cooke County in 1857, the founding act flatly required the seat be named Henrietta, though nobody can fully explain where the name came from. The town got a post office in 1862, but that was the same year everything came apart. As Civil War pulled local soldiers away, raids grew more frequent, and settlers fled east to Cooke and Montague counties. By 1862 Clay County was completely abandoned by its White settlers and officially unorganized on the map. Soldiers passing through later reported Henrietta deserted, with what they described as strange Indian signs marked on the walls, and soon after, the empty town was burned to the ground. Henrietta you see today is the second one, rebuilt over the ashes of a county seat that simply vanished for nearly a decade. (Source: Handbook of Texas.)

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Henrietta, TX RoadyGoat

Henrietta's strategic location at the crossroads of U.S. Highway 287, U.S. Highway 82, State Highway 148, and Farm to Market Road 1197 in north-central Clay County played a significant role in its development. The town's position made it an important hub for trade and transportation, contributing to its growth as the economic center of the region. Additionally, its role as the county seat and the presence of several railways further solidified its importance in the area.

Arthur, Charline

1953

Charline Arthur, honky-tonk musician, was born Charline Highsmith in a railroad boxcar in Henrietta, Texas, on September 2, 1929. She was the second of twelve children of Jefferson Benjamin and Edna Mae (Wortham) Highsmith. Her father was a harmonica-playing Pentecostal preacher, and her mother sang and played piano and guitar. The family moved to Paris, Texas, when she was four years old, and Charline was already showing musical talent at a young age. She made her first guitar out of a wooden cigar box when she was five. She sold soda bottles collected from the roadside to buy her first real guitar for six dollars two years later. She and her sister Dottie wowed audiences with their big voices when they performed at church, barn dances, and rodeos. Charline wrote her first song, "I've Got the Boogie Blues," at age twelve. She was inspired to start a musical career when she met Ernest Tubb , and she landed her first gig singing for radio station KPLT in Paris by the age of fifteen. When a traveling medicine show came to town, she left with it. Her act included slapstick comedy as well as country music . She married Jack Arthur on April 17, 1948, and he became her manager and bass player. Charline was not only a talented country vocalist, she also played lead guitar, rhythm guitar, fiddle, steel guitar, mandolin, piano, five-string banjo, and harmonica. She was performing in Texas clubs and honky-tonks in 1949 when she recorded two songs for Bullet Records, one of which was "I've Got the Boogie Blues." She moved to Kermit, Texas, where she worked as a disc jockey and singer for KERB and made a record for Imperial Records. There she was "discovered" by the legendary Col. Tom Parker who later managed Elvis Presley . He signed her with RCA Victor in January 1953. She recorded twenty-eight songs with RCA. Charline's dynamic stage performances during this time were groundbreaking and controversial. She moved to Dallas to headline the Big D Jamboree , an unusual honor for a woman at the time. She was the first female country singer to perform onstage wearing pants, and was the only one photographed with a cigarette. While other female country performers stood demurely to sing, Charline pranced across stage, climbed on top of amplifiers, or sang lying down. Her shows were rowdy and sometimes racy. "I was shakin' that thing on stage," she said, "long before Elvis even thought about it." Her reputation as a hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking performer with a hot temper contrasted with that of gingham-dress-clad Kitty Wells. She also performed for the Louisiana Hayride , Red Foley's Ozark Jubilee , and the Grand Ole Opry (which censored her music). She toured with artists such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison , and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1955 she was named runner-up (to Wells) as the year's best female singer in Country and Western Jamboree magazine's DJ's Choice poll. Presley paid her tribute as "one of the finest entertainers on stage I've ever seen." In spite of her entertaining stage presence, however, Charline's records were only moderately successful, and her relationship with RCA was tempestuous. She and RCA producer Chet Atkins had very vocal disagreements about what songs Charline should record as well as about artistic style. She preferred bluesy, assertive, and sometimes sexually suggestive songs. Atkins attempted to mold her to the "Nashville Sound" of a subdued "prim and proper lady." Although Atkins won out, when her RCA contract expired in 1956, it was not renewed. Her music career never recovered. She recorded several songs in her trailer home in Dallas for the Coin label in 1957. She separated from her husband about that time, and continued to play in honky-tonks and clubs throughout the western United States and was later joined by her sisters Dottie, Bettie Sue, and Mary. In 1960 she found herself broke in Salt Lake City. Nightclub owner Ray Pellum helped her get a job at a club in Chubbuck, Idaho. For the next fi

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Fence Cutting

1883

Fence cutting in Texas in the summer and fall of 1883 was a part of the conflict between landless cattlemen who wanted to retain practices of the open range and those who bought barbed wire to fence the land to establish themselves on permanent ranches. The fence war was precipitated by the drought of 1883, which made it all the harder for the cowman without land of his own to find the grass and water necessary for his herds. Most of the ranchmen owned or leased the land they fenced, but some of them enclosed public land when they enclosed their own, and others strung their wire about farms and small ranches belonging to other persons. Often the fences blocked public roads; in some instances they cut off schools and churches and interfered with the delivery of mail. This unwarranted fencing led some men whose land was not actually fenced in to join in the nipping. As the cutting continued, it became less discriminate and attracted rougher elements; soon no ranchman's fence was safe. Wrecking of fences was reported from more than half the Texas counties and was most common in a belt extending north and south through the center of the state, the ranchman's frontier of 1883. Much of the cutting was done at night by armed bands who called themselves such names as Owls, Javelinas, or Blue Devils. Often those who destroyed fences left warnings against rebuilding, but these were usually disregarded. In some instances, pastures of the fencers were burned. Some owners defended their property, and at least three men were killed in clashes between fence cutters and ranchmen. Texas newspapers generally condemned the cutting but indicated that not all the fencers were free of blame. Few attempts were made to reconcile the embittered groups, but at Henrietta spokesmen for the fence cutters met with Clay County ranchmen, and the two groups agreed that fences would be removed from across public roads and land not owned or leased by the fence builders, that gates would be provided for farmers' use, and that wire-cutting would end. By the fall of 1883 damage from wrecking of fences in Texas was estimated at $20 million-at more than $1 million in Brown County alone. The Fort Worth Gazette asserted that fence troubles had caused tax valuations to decline $30 million. The clashes discouraged farming and scared away some prospective settlers. Politicians shied from the explosive issue, but on October 15 Governor John Ireland called a special session of the legislature to meet on January 8, 1884. After a deluge of petitions and heated debates, the legislature made fence cutting a felony punishable by one to five years in prison. The penalty for malicious pasture-burning was two to five years in prison. Fencing of public lands or lands belonging to others knowingly and without permission was made a misdemeanor, and builders of such fences were to remove them within six months. Ranchers who built fences across public roads were required to place a gate every three miles and to keep the gates in repair. These measures ended most of the fence troubles, although sporadic outbreaks of nipping continued for a decade, especially during droughts. Texas Rangers were sent after fence cutters in Navarro County in 1888, and for several years the rangers had occasional fence cases in West Texas.

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Earhart, Joseph Bonaparte

1843

Joseph Bonaparte Earhart, pioneer entrepreneur of North Texas, was born in Pennsylvania on April 15, 1812. He married Mary Ann Quesenbarry on January 18, 1843, and they had seven children. In 1843 Earhart was a trader at Fort Washita, Chickasaw Nation, and operated transport boats on the Red River. By 1847 he had moved into Texas and was operating a ferry at Rock Bluff. In 1849 he was employed to establish Colbert's Ferry farther down the river on the Indian Territory side. After moving back to Texas around 1850, he built a steam mill on Iron Ore (now South Denison) Creek. He was active in the Hedgcoxe War , a protest of settlers against the Peters colony . Around 1855 he moved to Hog-eye Prairie, near Cundiff, Jack County, where he ranched and operated Earhart's Station on the Butterfield Overland Mail route. Earhart was reported to be one of the first ranchers in Clay County. His headquarters was near the mouth of Post Oak Creek on the Little Wichita River near the site of present Henrietta. He died in Grayson County on February 28, 1869, of an illness that began on a northern cattle drive, and was buried in Knobs Cemetery, now in west Denison.

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Cambridge, Early County Seat

1860

(Early County Seat) Founded 1860, but abandoned to marauding Indians, 1863. Settlers returned in 1870 and installed a grist mill. Developers surveyed townsite in 1874; school, church, shops, and hotel were built. Post office was established and Fort Sill-Fort Richardson military telegraph line came through in 1876. First newspaper in county was founded there. Rapid growth halted when town was bypassed by Fort Worth and Denver Railroad in 1882. By then place was known as Henrietta -- the name retained when county seat was moved here. Cambridge Cemetery still exists (a mile north of historic townsite). (1971) Incise in base: Erected by Clay County Historic Survey Committee, 1971.

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Clay County

1862

Disorganized in 1862 because of Indian raids; reorganized August 4, 1873. Henrietta, headquarters for buffalo hunters until 1878; the first Hereford cattle in Texas were brought to Clay County 1875 from Beecher, Illinois by William S. Ikard. Original county seat Cambridge moved to Henrietta 1874.

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Sanzenbacher Ranch Headquarters

1873

The Sanzenbacher Ranch began in 1873 when German immigrant Johann (John) Sanzenbacher (1797-1879) bought land in south Clay County near the Fort Richardson- Fort Still military road and the Little Wichita River. Sanzenbacher descendants have continuously operated the ranch since that time. The ranch has operated under several brands, including the original Circle J (1875) and the Cross Turkey Track (1899), which is still in use today. This home was constructed in 1890; the original design was a two-story I-plan house built of dressed stone with arched windows, with two rooms on either side of a center passage. Additions including a two-story rear extension and the front facade columned portico were added by 1910. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2009

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Henrietta, Texas

Music in Henrietta

Songs About Henrietta

Artists From Henrietta

Rivers & Roads in Song near Henrietta

History of Henrietta

The Quaker, the Kiowa Chief, and a Battle in the Ruins RoadyGoat

The County Seat That Was Abandoned and Burned RoadyGoat

Henrietta, TX RoadyGoat

Arthur, Charline

Fence Cutting

Earhart, Joseph Bonaparte

Cambridge, Early County Seat

Clay County

Sanzenbacher Ranch Headquarters

Everything Near Henrietta