Bringing family and history together ~~
The Hittson Project
Confederate States of America
Cavalry Commanding Officer Dillahunty, J.H. Capt
Co. A, 1st Front District, Palo Pinto Co Pr. No. 1
Major William Quayle Comm. TST
F.1 -- 64 in Palo Pinto County
Served 13 days at $2 -- $26
Age 34
R&F 76; En Off Capt J.H.Dillahunty; Mus Off
Front
Dist. Decatur, Texas
Co. org & under act of
D.15-63; 3 MR, 1 dtd.F.1
to Je 1-64. January
Necessary discharge due to Indian Depradations in West Texas.

From Panhandle Plains Historical Review of 1944: Two Circles Bar Ranch
"The Stampeded Herd"
Composed by Elizabeth Bond
Near the Double Mountains,
In the County of Stonewall
Bill Hittson owned two thousand steers
We'd gathered up that fall.
Tid Millsap and Prinkle Moore,
And other punchers, half a score,
Were standing guard that stormy night
When those cattle all took fright.

Around the herd we took our stand;
It was too dark to see your hand,
All at once the lightning flashed,
Followed by the thunder's crash.
I think the clouds all sprung a leak,
For rain and hail stones fell in sheets
All the steers threw up their horns
And fled away before the storm.

The lightning played upon their backs
As they fled in terror, track on track,
It seemed that they would never tire
As they splashed on through the rain and mire.
The fittest of the herd survived;
The weak and slow ones lost their lives.
They trampled each other in their flight,
Two hundred steers were killed that night.

Our well-trained mounts were in the race,
And with the cattle they kept pace;
Cowboys yelled 'til they were hoarse,
Trying to change them in their course.
When Prinkle Moore fired a shot,
They began to circle and finally stopped.
It ceased to rain, the storm had passed,
And they were bedded down at last.

We were soaked to the skin and a little saddle stained;
I have never seen a slicker that would keep out all the rain.
The cook kept some whiskey in the old chuck box,
That was good for snake bites and many other shocks;
And we all took a dram to dry up our tears,
That we had been shedding over losing those steers.

~

William Hittson
Though the truism, "Once a stockman, always a stockman," may not prove universal in its application, it certainly applies with force and directness to the records of William Hittson and his father and brother. There are few men whose histories are more closely identified with that of the cattle industry of Texas, and their names are known and respected in every cow camp between the Red River and the Rio Grande. William Hittson is a native of Tennessee, having been born in Murray County, October 15, 1834, but by education and training is a typical Texan, as well as a successful one. He is at present a resident of Mineral Wells, Palo Pinto County.
Jesse Hittson, the father of William, was a Virginian by birth, but drifted through several of the Southern States before finally locating in Texas. He was married in Tennessee to Miss Polly Beck, and after his marriage moved to Mississippi, then to Rusk County, and in 1855 to Palo Pinto County, where he died six years later. He had followed farming in the older States, but upon his arrival in Texas he purchased a stock of cattle and adopted the J E - S brand, which afterward became quite well known along the Brazos. After Jesse Hittson's death his stock was managed in the interest of his widow by his son, John. Mrs. Hittson's death occurred in 1883.
William Hittson was quite small at the time of his father's removal to Texas, and though he attended school for a short time in Rusk County, his chances for acquiring an education were limited. He was married in 1854, when but twenty years of age, to Miss Martha Brown, of Rusk County, and to this union eleven children were born: Ann, now the wife of Elijah Maddox; Jack, at present living in Palo Pinto County; Polly and Jennie, twins, the former now dead and the latter wife of John Millsap, of Stonewall County; Roy, living six miles west of Palo Pinto; Lou, the wife of Charles Bowen, Palo Pinto; Nannie, wife of T. Brown, of Palo Pinto; Will and Mattie, both single and living at home; Bettie, who was married to W. A. Moore, and Polly, married to Sam Edmonson. Both of the daughters last named are now dead. Mrs. Hittson died in 1888. She was a woman of many admirable traits and sweetness of disposition, and her death was a severe blow to the family and a loss to the community at large. Mr. Hittson's present wife was formerly Mrs. B. J. Young, of Sweetwater, Nolan County, and was married to Mr. Hittson in 1890. Under her capable supervision his pleasant home has grown doubly attractive, illumined as it is by her presence and that of their only child, Adele, a lovely little girl, now in her fourth year.
When William Hittson first reached Palo Pinto County, in 1855, he had nothing in the way of property besides two horses and a wagon and $300 in money. With this sum he made a trip to Hill County and purchased sixteen cows and calves, as a first start in the cattle business. During his first few years of residence in the West he followed farming to some extent, and he also made some money by opening small farms and disposing of them to the settlers who were then coming into the country, and were only too glad to get hold of a place upon which the first rude improvements had already been made. His first location was by land certificate upon 160 acres, afterward sold to Ward P. Nolls for $1,000 worth of cattle. Some years after Mr. Hittson's first purchase of cattle he joined company with J. B. Matthews, now of Albany, and went to Stephens County, each taking with them 300 head of cattle. They settled on Hubbard Creek, and their herds increased until, at the beginning of the war, they numbered 3,000 head each. An outbreak of Indian hostilities and the long years of disorder consequent upon the war caused a temporary abandonment of peaceful pursuits, and the cattlemen of Western Texas became soldiers, with little time for any save warlike thoughts. Mr. Hittson served, with many of his fellow stockmen, in a ranger organization in protecting the frontier, and later on joined a company which was raised for service in the Confederate army, but disbanded by its Captain's command, upon being ordered to cross the Mississippi.
When peace again smiled upon a reunited country, and the war-worn veterans returned once more to their several pursuits, Mr. Hittson invested heavily in cattle, drove his herds northward, and established a ranch in Colorado, where he remained two years and disposed of his stock to a good profit. In 1871 he drove a second herd from Palo Pinto County to Colorado, over the New Mexican trail, and upon his return moved his family to Palo Pinto town, partly for protection, but chiefly that his children might have the advantage of the school facilities. He had located the ranch on the Brazos, where he now lives, in 1870, and he returned to that place from the town of Palo Pinto in 1873. A few years of farming followed, but he found that there was, comparatively, but little to be made at this, although he raised one corn crop of 10,000 bushels. Going back to the cattle business, he put his son Jack in Stephens County with 1,200 head of cattle, and these increased so fast that when the Indian troubles came to an end, seven years later, he was enabled to move to the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos with between 5,000 and 6,000 head. Five years later Jack Hittson sold out his holding for $50.000 and bought a ranch in Stonewall County, which he subsequently sold for $75,000 and 22,000 acres near the town of Palo Pinto. It would be impossible to give an instance illustrating more forcibly than this the profit that was then to be derived from a carefully managed ranch. Mr. Hittson had sold to his nephew, J. J. Hittson, all his holdings of cattle, the price involved being $125,000. Afterwards we find him starting again in the business on a small scale putting his son in control of the herd, and a few years later on we find the son closing a cattle deal that runs high in the thousands, while the father is managing a business of scarcely less importance in another county, his Palo Pinto range being then well stocked with cattle wearing the brand " H I T," which he has latterly adopted, to the exclusion of others owned by him at different times. There are few countries in which such success can be achieved in pastoral pursuits, and there are but few men who have won success to such a degree, even in Texas.
William Hittson has led a stirring and adventurous life, and the incidents which have befallen him on the plains and amid the hills of the West would fill a good-sized volume. At one time his brother and himself, with 25,000 head of cattle in charge, were attacked by Indians within four miles of Ft. Griffin, and both wounded. They had gone a short distance from camp to round-up a bunch of cattle, and were accompanied by two boys and a negro herder, and the Indians surprised them, scattered the cattle, and forced the party to take shelter under a little bluff, using the horses as a breastwork. The negro was killed in the run for shelter, John Hittson was wounded through the thigh and William received a flesh wound in the hip. Yet they fought the Indians from midday till dark, and finally escaped. The horses they were riding were killed, but, with a party of twenty five cowboys to aid them, they recovered all the cattle next day. A son of Hittson's former neighbor, Matthews, now owns the land upon which this fight occurred. From '70 to '73 a great many cattle were stolen from Texas ranches and driven to New Mexico, and "Colonel John" Hittson was appointed by their owners to attempt their recovery. It was an undertaking which few men would have fancied or accepted, but, armed with power of attorney, Mr. Hittson made a number of trips to New Mexico, and at the risk of much personal danger, was instrumental in recovering and returning fully 10,000 stolen cattle to their owners.
William Hittson possesses all the qualities and attributes of a successful man, and while caring for his own interests has always possessed inclination and ability to aid his relatives and friends over the rough places in life. He is known as a staunch friend of the poor, and no deserving man has ever gone to him for a favor in vain. His popularity is second to that of no man in Palo Pinto or adjoining counties, and though he has lost, in the years that are past, a great deal of money through the signing of security notes for friends, such experiences have left no trace upon his ever generous nature. He has been for more than forty years a member of the Baptist church, and practices as well as believes in the precepts of Christianity, in evidence of which fact it is only necessary to point to the school buildings which he has donated to the poor of his neighborhood. As is usually the fact, his generosity has won its reward, and his thousands of friends take pride in rather than envy him his marked success in life. He is a Master Mason, having received that degree in Palo Pinto in 1874.
Mr. Hittson is now farming quite extensively in connection with grazing and breeding cattle. One thousand acres of his 6,000-acre ranch in Palo Pinto County is in cultivation, and those rich bottom fields on the Brazos River yield enormous crops of corn and cotton. He has now at this ranch 200 head of stock cattle and as many more of steers which he is feeding for market. They are nearly all finely graded short horns, and would be considered a remarkably fine herd in any portion of the country. He has also on this ranch some fifty head of stock horses and 200 hogs, the latter thriving well in the brushy brakes that overlook the river bottoms. He has also a ranch in Fisher County, upon which he is holding about 1,500 head of cattle. The married children of Mr. Hittson are all in comfortable circumstances, and have comfortable and tasteful homes, nearly all of them in the county where their parents have lived for so many years, and where the mother now sleeps beneath the waving grass, in the little family burial ground. Misses Will and Mattie Hittson, are two beautiful girls, the youngest children by the first marriage, now completing their education at institutions in Eastern Texas. (Source: Historical and Biographical Record of the Cattle Industry and the Cattlemen of Texas by James Cox, Published by Woodward & Tiernan Printing Co, St Louis, 1895

~

DALTON, GEORGE
Mr. George Dalton, a well-known cattleman of Palo Pinto county, died in Bell county Sunday and was buried at his home yesterday. Dalton was one of the most successful cattlemen in this portion of Texas. [Fort Worth Daily Gazette (Fort Worth, Texas) August 20, 1889.