A Call to Remembrance
Sample section
Chapter One
Before I Was Born
Back in 1910 my father was borrowing some money from a bank in Snyder, Texas, when the manager of the bank said, "Mr. Cornett, your name is the same as mine --'Canute'. You should be proud of that name. King Canute was the much loved ruler of Denmark and England at the beginning of our tenth century. The first Canutes who came to America in the seventeenth century took the name you now use, 'Cornett'. Why? never know."
That bit of history enchanted me, even as a boy, and I kept wanting to get into a city with a good library where I could check out the banker's story. As a lad, fighting that damnable drought in 1910 and 1911 on Poverty Ridge, I often wondered if it could be true that I was the descendant of a king!
In 1923 I moved to Los Angeles, and at my first opportunity I went to the L.A. Public Library and asked if they had anything concerning the name "Cornett." The young lady brought me a sketch showing direct lineage with "Canute." So the little Snyder banker was right!
Early in the eighteenth century, some of our family investigated our family tree, and found that when the Canutes landed in Virginia they not only changed their name, they also married into the family of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, injecting Indian blood into the Cornett family strain.
My father was born in Goliad, Texas in 1857, just twenty-one years after Santa Ana murdered the heroes of the Alamo, on the Goliad battleground. My mother was born in Coryell County in 1866 and married my dad in 1884. The Civil War began in 1861 and the Confederacy needed men badly. They took my grandfather and his brother George. My grandmother was left with six children, aged six months to eight years. But their family had given a home to an old Mexican man a few years earlier, and he was a big help to the family. The children helped, too, as they grew older. Grandmother held them all together, and gave them a good home, as many mothers did in those troublesome years.
Dad was doing a man's work by the time the war ended. He was eight years old by then, and his brother was seven. Early that year, they roped a maverick calf on the old Fannin battleground and put the family's registered brand, a double TT connected, on his left side. That was quite a feat for kids their ages. Too bad they put the brand on upside down!
A few years after the war was over, Grandpa and his brother George decided there was not much they could accomplish around Goliad. They had been thinking about their Indian blood, and in 1867 decided that they would take their families and head for the Indian Territory. There they would file on land. Grandpa told the old Mexican man, Juan, that he could go with them, but he declined and it was arranged for him to stay with a neighbor, a Mr. Alfred Greer. By this time, old Juan had endeared himself to all of them.
Two wagons were loaded with the two families, but one was a bit overloaded and Grandpa told my father that he could ride his pony. That thrilled Dad, but what about a saddle? The only saddle he had ever known was a rawhide thrown over a horse's back with straps hanging down with loops at the end as stirrups. But that was fine, as long as he could ride horseback. Grandpa told Dad that when they got to Fredericksburg, he would buy the boy a saddle. Wow! What a treat for a ten-year-old boy in those times.
Plans were to bypass San Antonio and replenish supplies at Fredericksburg. They did that and Dad got his saddle. He was so pleased that he silently hoped that their journey would never end. Somewhere southwest of Fort Worth, the two wagons stopped a day for a rest, and their horses were hobbled to graze. In the afternoon Dad and his brother George went out to bring the horses in. They heard a clamor of horses' hoofs just over a ridge to the northeast and at once knew it was Indians on the warpath. I heard my Dad say many times that he literally flew, his feet never touching the ground until he reached the wagons, with George close behind him, "flying" too. The alert pioneers put their fires out and did not speak above a whisper until the next morning. They learned later that, indeed, the Comanches had raided a small settlement that day at that spot, killing five whites and burning their houses, driving their stock away. Our families thanked God for being spared, and quietly plodded on their way, finally arriving at the Choctaw Nation, and filed their claim for homestead.
While waiting for the reports on the applications, Dad's father rode horseback to Joplin, Missouri, two hundred miles to the northeast, and brought back the first iron-spindle wagon to ever enter the Indian Territory. Up until that time, wooden sockets had been turned out on wooden spindles. While Dad and his father were gone to Missouri, the families had been shocked by bad news: their applications for homesteads had been turned down for lack of enough percentage of Indian blood! What could they do about it? Nothing but fold their tents and quietly steal away.
Back in Goliad, Grandpa was asked to have the family's friend, old Juan, again, and everyone was glad about that. Mr. Greer said that all the time he kept Juan, the old fellow would not go outside the house in daylight, and he acted as if he were constantly frightened. When Grandpa questioned Juan about this, the old fellow said "Senor Enrique, I am sorry I did not confide in you long ago. I thought of it many times but we were all so happy together, I could not bring myself to disturb that happiness. But just after you left to go north, I began hearing rumors in the Mexican section of Goliad that two strange hombres from Mexico were asking of anyone there knew a crippled old man named Juan. Some people, of course, did know me, and I became badly frightened. I didn't want to tell Senor Greer of my past. I hadn't even told you, but I must tell you now.
You know all about how General Santa Ana was so badly defeated at San Jacinto. And I have to tell you that I was badly wounded there in my right leg. When our army was allowed to go home, I went with it, and later found myself in a hospital in Matamoras, Mexico just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. I was allowed to stay in the Mexican army, in spite of my slow recovery, but with no promotion above sergeant. The other soldiers called me "Old One-Leg." The younger ones said the officers favored me and a lot of bad feelings developed around me. However, time passed and after a few years, I began hearing that Mexico was having trouble with Texas again.
By this time, Texas had joined the United States and both of them were claiming that the Rio Grande was the western boundary of Texas. In spite of the fact that Texas had been occupying the territory that far west, Mexico, now ten years later, claimed that the Nueces River was the proper boundary. General Arista ordered an army to occupy the disputed territory. Our army in Matamoras was ordered to join it and carry $250,000 in silver to finance the expedition. Fifty donkeys, each carrying $5,000 in leather bags crossed the Rio Grande, just above Brownsville. A small company from our division was dispatched to guard it and I was in that group.
We moved leisurely along, the officers and men all thinking we had no opposition, but we were caught napping. Your General Zachary Taylor was disembarking an army on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, a few miles east of Brownsville. A small reconnoitering unit from that army encountered our rear guard and a skirmish followed, in which three of our donkeys were killed. I ordered my men to take the loaded bags off the dead animals, and rush them away so the enemy would not learn that a fortune was at their fingertips. However, we could not recover the loaded bags because of the heavy fire from the enemy. Our higher officers rushed aid to our rescue and held Taylor's forces back while we, obeying orders, buried the remaining forty-seven loads of silver. I am sure Taylor's men were more interested in getting their army ashore that chasing a small contingent of Mexicans at that time. I was told to make proper notes of where we ...
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