Vengeance in a Small Town: The Thorndale Lynching of 1911

Vengeance

in a

Small Town

The Thorndale Lynching of 1911

GEORGE R. NIELSEN

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Vengeance in a Small Town

The Thorndale Lynching of 1911

Copyright © 2011 by George R. Nielsen

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-8796-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8797-5 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 1/28/11

God made the country and man made the city, but the devil made the small town.

—George J. Beto and others.

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Names and Terms

I. THE MURDER AND LYNCHING

II. EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT OF MILAM AND WILLIAMSON COUNTIES

III. THORNDALE 1878–1911

IV. THORNDALE’S LEGACY OF VIOLENCE

V. THE ARRESTS AND TRIALS

VI. THE MEXICAN CONTEXT

VII. AFTERMATH

Notes

Illustrations

Charles Zieschang, 1911

Route taken by McCoy and Gomez from the Bank Saloon to the calaboose

Routes likely taken by Wilford Wilson and the mob from G. W. Penny’s house to the site of the lynching

Map of Milam and Williamson counties

International and Great Northern Railroad route

Immigrants Home: The Illusion

Immigrants Home: The Reality

The Liendo Grant

The Thorndale Thorn office

Thorndale Mercantile Company, circa 1909

Thorndale Main Street, circa 1914

Contemporary view of the Michalk building

The Oil Mill

Sanford Map showing the Oil Mill

Zieschang in a hot air balloon

Charles Zieschang, Albert Moerbe, and Otto Zieschang

Smith-Bunting advertisement in Thorndale Thorn

Ezra A. Stephens

Postcard sent from Mrs. William Stephens to her son in jail

Davila’s Broadside

Karl Zieschang’s tombstone

Preface

Anyone who has grown up in a small town has learned two facts of life: people know who you are and word travels fast. Nothing, one would conclude, could be kept secret. Yet, paradoxically, small towns abound in secrets. Usually these secrets are about some major violation of the Ten Commandments or a disgrace to the family name. Older people do talk about these things, but they suddenly change the subject when little ears are seen approaching. Or, if anyone did ask, the usual standard response was, Some things are better left unsaid.

I grew up in a small town, Thorndale, Texas, population 898. It was a typical small town with all the attendant advantages and liabilities. But Thorndale also had a secret that dwarfed all the other secrets—something about a murder and a lynching. On several occasions I heard that a lynching had taken place on the corner of Highway 79 and Main Street just in front of Moerbe’s Mobile gas station. Other than hearing that a lynching had happened, I never learned any details. No one I knew ever said anything about it. I assumed that there was not much to it, just another Southern-style lynching widely practiced at that time in order to keep the black minority in its place. Much later I learned that the victim was not an African American, but a Mexican, and that it was not for social control, but for instant, albeit illegal, retribution.

Although many newspapers, including the New York Times, carried reports of the lynching, once the trials were concluded, the issue faded from the public press. National and world affairs such as World War I, the Depression, and World War II attracted attention. Even county and local histories written after the incident made no reference to the lynching. Instead the accounts were sanitized with extensive listings of churches, schools, and civic groups. Not until 1974, after the African American civil rights focus had widened and invigorated the Chicano movement, was the subject raised. José Limón, in an article tracing the origins of the Mexican American civil rights struggle, listed the Thorndale lynching as one of the sparks that ignited it.¹ Since then other books and articles have referred to the incident and their authors have repeated Limón’s material without further research, and none has questioned the assumption that the Thorndale lynching was a racist act.

The purpose of this study is not to deny or to bemoan the existence of racism, bigotry, or lawlessness in our nation’s history. They all existed, and there is no defense for a society that spawned lynching. But neither should every act involving a racial minority be viewed as a racist act. Carrigan and Webb² concluded that racial prejudice was the primary force in fomenting mob violence against Mexicans. However, if we apply their statement to the Thorndale case, that would make us the hangmen of the lynchers. Thorndale in 1911, the year of the lynching, was a community that had not cut the threads connecting it to the earlier times and instead of condemning the citizens as racists, I would like to describe society as it existed in Thorndale’s neighborhood one hundred years ago and how the lynching was a logical consequence. So neatly manicured were the neural pathways of those citizens that when the stimulus of a murder occurred, lynching was the immediate response, without any thought to either the act of retribution itself or to the race of the victim. White, black, or brown, none was exempt. A life for a life.³

At the same time while Thorndale was linked to its past, it was also making strides to enter the modern era. And that look to the future, which in Thorndale meant material wealth and such civic features as more brick stores, concrete sidewalks, and electricity, also required newer attitudes of justice and order that were not in harmony with previous practices. In the tug-of-war between the mindsets of the old and new centuries, Thorndale’s old traditions momentarily prevailed and a lynching resulted.

Just as the press and local histories buried the event in the vault of the past, contemporary individuals could say, Some things are better left unsaid. But after one hundred years it is time tell the story—as thoroughly and as accurately as possible. Our failures are as instructive as are our successes. On June 19, 1911, two lives were taken by good people in a community built on good will. Perhaps this history will help us understand how such an aberration could happen and also how this single incident influenced society far beyond the city limits.

Thorndale itself was not an actual victim of the lynching but the town changed as it moved further into the twentieth century. Beginning with the Great Depression Thorndale, like scores of small towns along the railroad, began its slow decline. Dirt roads and horses and buggies were replaced by paved roads and automobiles; and the agricultural economy, Thorndale’s major resource, was weakened by economic hard times. Thorndale had seen its heyday, and although its business sector declined, after one hundred years the commercial block and the residential community cling to life.⁴

Steve’s Cash Store occupies Thorndale’s oldest brick building, built in 1902, Butt’s Dry Goods, founded in 1932, continues to attract customers, and the Bank of Texas, current occupant of the Thorndale State Bank building with its polished brass, marble, and mahogany, still preserves the ambience of security and stability. Nevertheless, there are a few grassy lots where formerly a store stood, and antique shops now occupy some of the brick buildings that previously sheltered hardware stores and barbershops. The antiques, artifacts, and used furniture all serve as nostalgic symbols of Thorndale’s past. And somewhere in that collection of old furniture, there is a wardrobe with a skeleton in it.

I acknowledge with gratitude certain individuals who have supported my efforts. Patricia Swayze Larsen first called my attention to on-line references of the lynching; Bill E. Biar, Roy H. Zieschang, and Weldon Mersiovsky supplied newspaper clippings, photos and other data; and Eleanor Eifert assisted with the translation of documents and newspapers written in Spanish. The gracious staffs at the University of Texas’ Dolph Briscoe Center for American History and the Benson Latin American Center must be mentioned; as well as specific individuals such as Sergio Velasco, research assistant at the Texas State Archives and Alejandro Padilla Nieto and Jorge Fuentes at the Archivo Histórico Genaro Estrada in Mexico City. During the years of research the librarians at the Rapid City Library answered many of my requests for books through Interlibrary Loan, and I benefited from the resources of the Lucy Hill Patterson Library in Rockdale, Texas. Karen DeVinney provided invaluable editorial assistance. And finally, I must acknowledge Richard Maxwell Brown, of the University of Oregon, who influenced my thinking through a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on violence in America.

Names and Terms

Gabriel Gamez—Father of the lynching victim. He signed his name as Gamez.

Antonio Gomez—Lynching victim and spelled as newspapers and documents spelled it.

Charles Zieschang—victim of the stabbing also know by his German name, Karl.

Mexican American or Tejano—Texas citizen of Mexican descent.

Mexican—Citizen of Mexico, person of Mexican descent whose citizenship is not known, or a group of Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

Anglo—White American generally in contrast to Mexican.

I. THE MURDER AND LYNCHING

June nineteenth, the date of the murder and lynching, is also a significant date for African Americans in Texas. That is the date in 1865 when the Union officer, General Gordon Granger, in charge of the newly arrived army in Galveston, read a general order ending slavery in Texas. Ever since then Juneteenth has been a holiday for Texas blacks, and in recent years it has become a date to remember for all blacks in America.

The blacks in Milam County celebrated their day in 1911, but in Thorndale, nothing out of the ordinary took place, and for the white community, it was business as usual. During the heat of the day, outside activity slowed down and people looked for shade. The few shoppers preferred the western side of Main Street where the store fronts with the verandas offered the most shade against the afternoon sun. In the evening as the residents called the late afternoon, activity picked up and continued until twilight. On that day the sun set at 7:34.

At about seven o’clock, Charles Zieschang, owner of the Thorndale Garage, which was located on South First Street three doors off of Main Street, walked eastward toward the Old Bank Saloon, also known as the Bank Saloon. To his left, across the street, was the Thorndale Mercantile Company’s building, the oldest brick commercial building in town, and to his right was a drug store. The Bank Saloon occupied the ground floor of the corner building, while part of the second floor housed the telephone switchboard, a real estate and insurance business, and a medical office. Earlier that day Zieschang had stood in front of the saloon between the Lone Star Beer sign and a telephone pole and posed for a photograph. The photo must have been a spur-of-the-moment event because Zieschang wore his work clothes: a loose fitting shirt and trousers. And instead of the straw hat worn by farmers, Zieschang wore a workman’s cap.

Charles Zieschang, 1911.

Photo taken on the day of his death at the place where he was stabbed

Courtesy Roy H. Zieschang

As he approached the corner he stopped to talk with some men who were standing near the entrance. One was Constable Robert L. McCoy, age thirty-eight, single, and the owner of a livery stable. Another was William S. Stephens, Zieschang’s close friend and owner of the saloon. And there were two local men, Johnny Davis and Wallace Young. As they were talking, Antonio Gomez, a fourteen-year-old Mexican lad, came walking along the sidewalk, whittling on a wood shingle and scattering the curls of wood on the walk. Stephens said to him, Quit littering up the sidewalk, as fast as I clean it up, you mess it up again, and grabbed Antonio in a playful manner, scuffled around a little, and turned him loose. Antonio then backed off a bit and resumed his whittling.

Zieschang said, I can make the damn little skunk quit whittling, and snatched the shingle out of Antonio’s hand and took it with him into the saloon. The other men remained outside and discussed whose duty it was to keep the sidewalks clean. A few minutes later Zieschang came back out and said something to the effect that If the son-of-a bitch did that in front of my store, I would paddle his ass with it. Antonio, about three steps away, lunged at him with his knife and struck him in the left breast below the collarbone.

Antonio pulled out the knife and threw it to the pavement. A bystander picked it up and said to Zieschang, There is blood on the blade of the knife; that boy has stabbed you. Zieschang replied, No, you are mistaken, he hasn’t stabbed me. But then the blood began to gush from the artery above the heart where it had been severed. The constable grabbed the boy while the others took Zieschang to the adjacent drugstore and called for a physician.

When the physician arrived they took Zieschang to a room above the saloon, quite likely the physician’s office, near the telephone switchboard. Nothing could be done to stop the hemorrhaging and Zieschang died in approximately twenty minutes, at about seven-thirty.

As Zieschang lay bleeding to death Constable McCoy took Antonio north along Main Street, crossed the railroad tracks and then across the Taylor to Rockdale road, known as N. Railroad Street, and locked the lad in the town calaboose. The calaboose could hardly be classified as a secure jail, but served more as holding pen for rowdy imbibers. While McCoy was locking up Gomez, word of the incident spread across town, and soon Main Street and the side street were filled with townsfolk waiting for word of Zieschang’s condition. When McCoy returned to the crime scene he sent word to all five of Thorndale’s saloons to close their doors and they remained closed for the night.

Route taken by McCoy and Gomez from the Bank Saloon to the calaboose.

When Zieschang’s death was announced, the crowd, estimated to number between one and two hundred, became agitated and there were words of violence and cursing. McCoy, when he heard the announcement of Zieschang’s death and sensed the anger in the crowd, left for his home to pick up his coat and gun. Thirty minutes later at about eight o’clock he arrived at the