Postcard From The Famous Tyler Ginkgo Tree

Tyler, Texas, known by most people primarily for its roses and azaleas, also is home to a famous and rather rare tree. The Ginkgo biloba is a type of tree that was around almost 200 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth and then basically went extinct in the last ice age when the glaciers wiped them out everywhere except China. Buddhist priests brought the trees to Japan and began planting them around their temples. Over time, the Japanese began considering the trees to be sacred. The tree in Tyler, known as The Hubbard Ginkgo, is a living fossil, the only species left of the Ginkgoacae family which itself is not closely related to any living family or group in the plant kingdom.

 A former Texas governor and ambassador to Japan, Richard Hubbard, brought two Ginkgo trees back from Japan as saplings in 1889. He planted one of them on the lawn of the governor's mansion in Austin and gave the other to his friend, Colonel John Brown of Tyler who planted it on his property. 

In 1939, the Brown property was purchased by the city of Tyler as the location for the new city hall. On what is now the southeastern lawn, the 128-year-old tree is over 80 feet tall and in good health in spite of getting hit by lightning in the 1960's.  

The Hubbard Ginkgo on the lawn of the Tyler City Hall

Anyone can visit the tree, gaze on its magnificence and sit in its shade, but the vast majority of people are unaware of the history, drive right by and never give it a second thought. Maybe that's best for its continued good health. Just another obscure historical relic found along Texas highways.

In Japan, the nuts are considered a delicacy and served at
weddings, banquets and social gatherings. The leaves
are prized for their reputedly medicinal properties.

Old Larissa and The Killough Massacre

Old Larissa is an abandoned town-site in Cherokee County in northeast Texas. On Christmas Eve, 1837, the Killough, Wood and Williams families arrived from Alabama and settled on the site. Unfortunately, the very next year, their settlement would go down in history as the place of the largest single Indian depredation in East Texas.

The year before the three families came, the site of Old Larissa and thousands of acres around it were promised to the local Cherokee Indians by Sam Houston in a treaty. The land was promised to them forever in exchange for peace in East Texas. A few months later however, the Republic of Texas Senate refused to ratify the treaty and put the land up for white settlement. When the Killough-led settlers came in, built homes and began clearing the land to grow crops, the Cherokee, who considered a man's spoken words to be a bond, considered them to be trespassing on their land and stealing food from them by killing the game animals they hunted. The settlers knew none of the history of the land they believed they had legally purchased.

For a few months, the Indians tolerated the intrusion, but more settlers began moving in, clearing the forests, planting crops and killing game. By August, 1838, there were 30 people living in the settlement they called Larissa. The corn was ready to be harvested, but the settlers received word the Indians were becoming increasingly disgruntled and were getting ready to go on the war path against them. They managed to let the Indians know they were willing to leave. In return, they were promised safe passage, which they received, and they retreated to Jefferson, a large town that was much safer. In late September however, hearing of no Indian attacks and not wanting to lose the corn they had planted, they decided to return to their homes. It was a grave mistake.

On the afternoon of October 5, a large band of Cherokee, Caddos, and Coushattas attacked the settlement. A number of men, including Isaac Killough, Sr., were caught in the corn field without their guns and were quickly killed. Homes were then attacked. The remaining men and older boys were killed and some of the younger children and several of the wives were kidnapped and taken with the Indians when they left. Surprisingly, twelve people, including Urcey, Killough Sr.'s wife, escaped the massacre by hiding in a barn and in the surrounding woods. In all, eighteen of the settlers were either killed or abducted, the largest number of white fatalities in an Indian raid in East Texas history.

Stone obelisk placed at the site of the massacre

The survivors eventually made their way on foot to Lacy's Fort, forty miles to the south on the Old San Antonio Road. When word of the massacre began to spread, a militia set out to find the perpetrators and rescue any surviving whites. After reaching Fort Houston near the site of present day Palestine, they heard the Indians were camped at an old Kickapoo village near Frankston. Riding at night, the militia found the Indian encampment and attacked the next day. The surprise attack was successful and eleven Indians were killed before the rest made their escape. No white captives were rescued or seen. It was later rumored that the group of Indians the militia attacked were not responsible for the Killough massacre, but it little mattered as it was thought revenge had been in order.

It was not until 1846, when the Indians in the area were subdued and removed that any further settlement was attempted. Over the next few years, the settlement of Larissa grew into a thriving community with a number of business's, churches and even a college. When the Civil War came, Larissa began to decline as the local men and the male students left to fight. After the war, Reconstruction hit the town hard as it did everywhere in the south and the college was forced to close. In 1872, the railroad bypassed the town by eight miles and more people moved away. A meningitis epidemic then hit and a number of the remaining residents died. The death blow for the town hit in 1882 when another railroad bypassed the town by three miles and a new community was founded along the rails. Most of the few remaining residents moved to the new town of Mount Selman.

The stone obelisk surrounded by the victim's graves

Today there is very little remaining to even suggest there was once a prominent, thriving community at the site. A Texas historical marker was placed where the college stood and a stone obelisk was erected at the site of the massacre by the Work Projects Administration in the late 1930's. The peaceful site is at the end of a remote, rarely used dead-end country road barely wide enough for 2 cars to pass each other. You won't find it by accident. The only sounds to be heard are the birds in the trees and maybe a small animal rooting around in the underbrush. The obelisk is surrounded by the graves of the victims marked by mounds of rocks and crumbling markers barely legible. A few scattered modest homes and barns of small farms are found in the area, but none have any connection to the possibilities or the horror that once was there.

Buried Gold in a Ft. Worth Cemetery

Greenwood Cemetery entrance

In the late 1840's, Charles Turner, a Mexican War veteran and former Texas Ranger, established a large farm on land that eventually became today's Fort Worth, Texas. After building a home for his family, he expanded into the retail business and opened one of the first general stores in the growing community. His store gained fame when hundreds of people from all around the area came by over a few days in December,1860 after Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been kidnapped almost 25 years earlier in the Fort Parker massacre, was recaptured from the Comanche Indians and brought there by Texas Rangers while returning her to her family. She still wore her Indian clothes and sat quietly holding her infant daughter, Prairie Flower,  as people lined up to stare at her.

Talk of secession filled the air in early 1861. At his store, which had become a community meeting place, the slave-owning Turner expressed his desire that Texas not leave the Union. He said he could see no good that would come of it and gave his opinion that if war came, the south, with no manufacturing base, would lose and economic disaster would inevitably follow.

The Turner Oak

Later that year, when the state voted to secede and join the Confederacy however, Turner confirmed his allegiance to Texas and even paid to raise a company of Confederate soldiers. When war was declared, the Confederate government ordered its citizens to exchange their gold for paper currency. Before exchanging his gold though, Turner, along with his most trusted slave, "Uncle Ben," took a large cooking pot filled with gold coins and buried it under a live oak tree on his farm.

As the war continued, people suffered. Men were killed in battle, people went hungry and nobody was immune from the suffering. Some of Turner's family passed away and were buried near the oak tree which hid the pot of gold. Soon, people from the area began being buried on the same piece of land and a cemetery began taking form. The population of Fort Worth dropped to only 175 residents by the time war mercifully came to an end.

Marker at the base of the Turner Oak

The hard Reconstruction years followed and the citizens of Fort worth felt the pain like everyone else in the south. The economy was devastated when their Confederate money became worthless. People were left with next to nothing. And that's when Charles Turner came to the rescue of Fort Worth. He retrieved that pot of gold coins hidden beneath the live oak and used the money to pay for food, construction of new buildings, and the needed infrastructure of a city. Today, Fort Worth is prosperous and the 16th largest city in the United States with a population of almost 900,000, but who knows what would have happened if it were not for Charles Turner and his hidden pot of gold.

Near the Turner Oak is the grave of Luse Wallenberg,
marked by a female figure atop a pot of gold coins which
commemorates the story

The live oak tree which once was the caretaker of Fort Worth's future, is still alive and well. Known as The Turner Oak, it has been officially named a Living Witness tree and is listed as a certified Historic Tree of Texas. It is located about 200 yards inside the main gate of what became today's Greenwood Cemetery on White Settlement Road in Fort Worth.

Close-up of the Luse Wallenberg
grave statue