Copyright © 2009-2010 Bishop Centennial Celebration, Inc. All rights reserved. Updated May 2, 2010
May 14 - 16, 2010
Bishop, Nueces County, Texas 1910 - 2010  One Hundred Years of South Texas Heritage!
~~A. S. Harlan Family~~
[The following stories are from the Bishop News of 1960 in a series written by Mrs. Gail Tubbs for
 Bishop's then upcoming Golden Jubilee celebration.]
Mr. A. S. Harlan sold his farm holdings at Grandview and bought a large acreage
northwest of Bishop in 1914. In the early winter he came down with chartered rail cars of
livestock, farm implements and household goods. Mrs. Harlan and youngest son, Sankie,
who was wearing a brand new knickerbocker suit bought for the train ride, arrived Dec. 9,
1914.
"The weather was cold and it rained for weeks," writes Sankie, who at 15 had the job of
driving six mules to the wagon hauling lumber through the mud the 10 miles from Bishop
to build the first farm home.
The other members of the family, H. Grady Harlan, now of Brownwood. Wm. A. Harlan of
Bishop, Pierce Harlan and Era (Mrs. Ernest Robertson) now of Kingsville, were in school.
They took turns staying out of college a year or so to help with the farm work.
Wm A. lined up farm years as follows: "The fall of 1914, with the start of WWI in Europe,
cotton prices skidded; Good crop in 1915; 1916 was a year of drought and destructive
hurricane; 1917-18 better crops were made; 1919 brought another hurricane, taking
crops and many buildings; things were fair until 1925, a year of almost total drought;
depression years came and cotton prices went lower and lower; 1932 to 45 were better
years.."
Grady and Era became teachers. Wm. A., who had taken his law degree at the University
of Texas, and Pierce began operation of the First State Bank in the middle 20s. Wm A.
also served as Justice of the Peace for Precinct 3 for about 13 years and Pierce was
mayor of Bishop for 13 years until he moved to Kingsville.
Sankie assisted his father in operation of the farm. In order to finish high school in Bishop
for two years he took a job, for board and room, as a bell hop at the then very fine Bishop
Hotel. His first duty was to meet the morning and evening train with a two-wheeled cart
which he pushed, to haul the drummer's bags to the popular hotel. He recalls that the
ones with the heviest and most numerous bags were the poorest “tippers”. Other duties,
before and after school, were answering the telephone, carrying ice water to the rooms
and sometimes waiting on tables.
Nevertheless, he had a bit of time for other things and was the first boy from Bishop to go
to the State Track Meet. He entered, in 1918, the 100-yard dash and 220-yard sprint.
Time at home for the 100-yard dash was 10 seconds, but he failed to place in Austin -- he
had walked so far to the track field that he ruined his arches.
The elder Mr. and Mrs. Harlan have passed away. the Harlan farms are today operated
by the third generation, Sankie's three sons, and a fourth generation of Harlans show
promise at their early ages!
~~Ernest L. Miller Family~~
"Come to Bishop and drive car," was the wire that brought 18-year-old Ernest Miller to Bishop in 1912, when there were few
cars, fewer drivers, and every driver often had to be his own mechanic.
Ernest's father, R. J. Miller, had come down to look over the new country. F. Z. Bishop, driving him around to see the raw land
and new plowed sections, remarked that he "just had to find a chauffeur somewhere."
"I've a boy at home who has been driving since 1909, and knows how to keep the engines running," Miller told him.
The telegram was the result, and it proved a puzzle to Ernest and his mother. They finally decided that Mr. Miller wanted his
son to drive their Overland to Bishop. He made it from Coolidge to Houston, and found that to be the end of the line as far as
roads and information was concerned. Meanwhile, Mr. Miller got back home, and made haste to locate son and car. So the
teenage driver got into Bishop on the morning train Nov. 8, 1912.
By that time Mr. Bishop's first prospector's car was out of the picture. It had been a double chain drive "Moonbuggy" with
wooden wheels, solid tires, and motor underneath, handled by a steering lever like the old electric cars.
It was a seven-passenger Oldsmobile in which young Miller drove Mr. Bishop and the homeseekers around over the fresh
graded dirt roads. There were times when the car had to sit in the garage because roads were a morass of mud.
Within a year after he reached here, Ernest's father and family joined him, to build the big farm home which still stands four
miles north of Bishop. Other Miller children were Bina, Hugh, Arnold, Bailey, Loyd and Marie (Mrs. J. P. Atkinson).
During World War I Ernest Miller found the rain-soaked roads of France even worse than Bishop mud when he rode  his
motorcycle over them. He and the motorcycle came out unscathed until almost the last when Ernest came out of a tangle with
a broken ankle. Right about then, too, it seemed the commissary department had bought up all the salmon on the Pacific
coast, and the doughboys had to eat gold fish and more gold fish.
One of the first days he was back in Bishop, Mr. W. R. Sims, and old friend from Coolidge, insisted Ernest go home to dinner
with him and phoned Mrs. Sims. She suggested something from the grocery -- it was gold fish and the retired soldier had
politely to eat it.
The war had deferred wedding plans for Ernest Miller and Sue Taylor, but they were married soon after his return, lived for a
time in Kingsville, then returned to farm here. In addition, Ernest Miller drove a school bus here for years.
Their three children, Ray, who is with the FBI, Betty (Mrs. B. W. Huntington) and Joy (Mrs. Doye Bridges), grew up on the farm,
but didn't stay there. Their parents are still on the farm northwest of Bishop, but have retired from working it -- it is more fun to
be free to visit the grandchildren.
~~Emmit Ransom Boswell Family~~
Mr. and Mrs. E. R. Boswell and children-- Margie, Fred, Hal (Whistle), Robert (Doc), Alpha and Omega (twins) arrived in
Bishop in January, 1920 by train from Midlothian, Texas.
Four of the girls became school teachers and two of them taught in Bishop at one time. Lucille taught for 2 years and Dorothy
served in the Westside School for about 10 years. All of the boys have farmed in Bishop -- Whistle and Doc still do. Fred and
Doc are champion 42 players and Whistle claims to be. They may be found almost every cold or rainy day at the domino
table in the back of Foster Pharmacy or Becker's Feed Store. One girl, Alpha, still lives in Bishop and is married to a farmer,
George Plocek. Lucille and Omega live in nearby towns. There are 18 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren, and many
of them live in Bishop or nearby. Mr. and Mrs. Boswell, Margie and one grandchild are dead.
L. C. Smith, superintendent of  schools about 1928, went through the classes asking youngsters where and why they had
smoked their first cigarette. At least 15 boys and girls said they had taken their first puff in the ant clearing in the Boswell
cane patch. Ants had cut away the cane in the middle of the field, and the Boswell youngsters sneaked their friends there to
treat them to cigarettes made of cedar bark wrapped in corn shucks.
Mr. Boswell purchased a weaning colt mule in 1995 in Midlothian and she came to Bishop with the family. "Old Kate" served
the family faithfully pulling the plow in the field or dragging the wagon over muddy roads. Sometimes the wagon was
overflowing with school children and at other times it was loaded with hay or cotton. Finally, Kate grew so old that Mr. Boswell
retired her to the pasture and told the tax collector that he refused to pay taxes on a mule that had outlived any mule he had
ever heard of. Mr. Boswell died in 1934, but Old Kate lived until after World War II -- well past her 40th birthday.
Strong family ties bought the children and grandchildren to family reunions at least 4 times a year until Mrs. Boswell died in
1957. In the 1930's and 40's when the grandchildren were still with their parents, there were usually around 40 attending the
get-togethers and Mrs. Boswell was never satisfied unless everyone was there.
Christmas was the outstanding family event of the year. Santa really came on Christmas Eve to distribute the gifts that filled
half the room and were stacked halfway to the ceiling. After Santa left, the grandchildren (sometimes as many as 12) were
bedded down on a  long "pallet" on the floor of the big back bedroom. Each hugged a new doll or cork gun and was covered
with Grandmother's hand-pieced quilts. The women crowded into the 3 beds in the room with the children, and the men
scattered on the beds in the rest of the house. After much giggling and "shushing", everyone slept only to awaken before 5
o'clock for Christmas breakfast.
During the morning, the children built "houses" for their new toys in the bedrooms while the women prepared the Christmas
dinner and the men told hunting stories and drank egg nog. The adults spent the afternoon in a favorite Boswell past time --
argument. The favorite subject during these years was raising children by the book (psychology) versus raising children by
the board (paddle). No real conclusions were ever drawn, and everyone departed for home about 4 o'clock in order to do the
evening chores.
~~John H. Bolland Family~~
John H. Bolland came from Minnesota in 1914 to be foreman of the King Ranch dairy. Bishop farm land looked good to him
and he bought a farm east of town the next year.
When he moved to the place in 1916 the first thing he had to do was repair hurricane damage to all the buildings. "Then there
came a drought with only six inches of rain in 17 months; 1918 was normal; 1919 brought one flood after another, with roads
almost impassable, and a second hurricane in September," Mr. Bolland writes.
Members of the family, in addition to Mr. and Mrs. Bolland, are their daughter Katherine of San Antonio, and son Ernest, who is
farming here.
"In 1919 friends from Riviera came over on Aug. 1 to surprise Mrs. Bolland on her birthday," Mr. Bolland  writes, "but the
surprise was on them. They bogged down in the mud. I had to hitch four mules to a wagon to get them to our house and back
to their truck which had been left at Butts Gin. Mosquitoes played the birthday music for that party.
"A few years later, just before Christmas, I went to Bishop to get Christmas presents for the Concordia school children. We left
Bishop at 6:00 p.m. for the seven mile trip, got home at 1:30 a.m., leaving the truck a mile from home. Next day I pulled it in
with four mules."