Carroll Family Prominent in Early BG and Dresden History
by Tim Campbell · first published 10 November 2017 · his original post
One familiar with the geography and history of Blooming Grove might recall that the waterway west of the village is named "Carroll Creek" or as it is listed on maps today, "Carroll Branch". This stream is mostly dried up now, some say owing to the tremendous growth of trees along its banks which was once simple prairie. Carroll Creek begins just northwest of BG and proceeds southward until it reaches Post Oak Creek. The Old Town Bridge just west of the old Gradyville area was the crossing place in the old days. According to my father the water flowed in the creek most of the year at one time, and was about 9 to 12 feet deep where the bridge crosses it, whereas now it is only a few feet deep due to being filled with silt.
Another landmark bearing the Carroll name but now long gone was Carroll Schoolhouse. This was located about 2 miles south of Blooming Grove at the intersection of county roads NW 4010 and NW 4020. The old school building was moved off the site quite some years ago when the country schoolhouses were consolidated into Blooming Grove School District. Look for another post coming on TFTG about the Carroll Schoolhouse.
The progenitor of the Carroll family of the Blooming Grove / Dresden area of Navarro County was a fellow by the name of Benjamin Franklin Carroll, Sr. Family historians show him as born in 1809 in Colleton District, South Carolina, the son of Absalom Carroll and Elinore Robinson. He married Huldah Harper in Mississippi where he was in the state militia and in 1847 the state legislature. He came to Texas in 1848 and moved to Navarro County about 1851. He was also elected to the state legislature in Texas. When a committee was formed in the mid 1850’s to rename the town of Melton/Spanky it was Ben Carroll Sr. that headed the committee that chose the name Dresden then passed around a jug to celebrate and seal the deal. B.F. Carroll Sr. and Huldah raised 12 children, 6 boys and 6 girls, being Emily, Mary, Martha, Benjamin F. Jr, William E., Absolom G., Jefferson D., James Alexander Texas, Euphemia, Dinah, Huldah, John. They had at least 46 grandchildren. The Carroll homeplace was less than a quarter of a mile to the east of Carroll School. B.F. Sr died in 1869 and is buried in the Carroll family cemetery on the old family farm, north of the homeplace.
As of 1900, two of the sons of BF Carroll Sr and Huldah Harper were living side by side with their families at the Carroll homeplace. These were B.F. Carroll, Jr., who married Georgia Ann Stokes, and James Alexander Texas Carroll, who married Alice Pevehouse. These men and their families / descendants were active in the Blooming Grove area for many, many years.
B.F. Carroll Jr was a renowned farmer, raised and sold exotic chickens, ran a very successful apiary, served as Postmaster, Justice of the Peace, and wrote articles which were published in the Galveston newspaper. In one of them he states that he is a descendant of Charles Carroll who signed the Declaration of Independence, however current research seems to have disproven any direct link. In another article he tells interestingly of people of the Blooming Grove / Dresden area going all the way to Brownsville, Texas to sell their wool and cotton during the Civil War days. (Reference the Saga of H.P. Darlin posted on Tales from the Grove at an earlier date). He mentions Michael Welch, my great great great grandfather, who owned a 600 acre tract of land out of the Noah Byers tract at the northwest quadrant of the intersection in Dresden, and who went to Brownsville and brought back a special variety of red wheat which was shared with local farmers. B.F. Carroll Jr. was a Confederate veteran, having served in the 4th Texas Cavalry under Col. William H. Parsons til the close of the war.
As Justice of the Peace, B.F. Carroll Jr. was responsible for passing judgment on what I believe was the last public hanging in Navarro County. The story goes that a traveling salesman had come through the Dresden area and camped by the side of the road. A local man raided his camp overnight and killed the salesman, robbing him of a number of possessions and wares from his inventory. He was quickly caught, given a trial and promptly hung on one of the big oak trees surrounding the Dresden Methodist Church. I believe the tree is still standing and was known for many years as the Justice Tree. An article was also found where B.F. Jr. was responsible for the trying of a murderer named Bone, (see attached). In those days, conviction was the easy part. Transporting such a man to Corsicana without him being lynched was a difficult row to hoe. Frontier justice was much more expedient.
B.F. Jr. and wife Georgia had numerous children. Their son Willis married Tennessee Lewis of my own family (daughter of Margaret Jane Campbell). Willis and Tennessee had a son named Thomas E. "Red" Carroll who lived across from the Campbell farm when my father was a boy in the 1930s. Red liked baseball and was locally famous as an umpire of many a hotly contested baseball game in the early days of the Grove. He would invariably take heat from fans on both sides for calls he made and would always come back with the phrase "I call ‘em like I see ‘em, if you don't like it get somebody else." Thomas E. "Red" Carroll's grandson, David Carroll, was a tremendous athlete in the Corsicana baseball and football programs a few years back. David is both my cousin through his father's Carroll lineage and a cousin to my wife through his mother's Owens lineage.
James Alexander Texas Carroll, younger brother of B.F. Jr., had sons who operated the Carroll Brothers Meat Market in Blooming Grove in its very early days. The meat market in Blooming Grove traded owners early and often. Jesse Thomas Spires was an early butcher in BG who at times owned the market and other times worked there for others who owned it. In the photo of Carroll Brothers Market, I believe Jesse Thomas Spires is in the middle. One of the Carroll boys is, I think, on horseback. The cowboy gent posing at left I believe to by Volley Jaynes, one of the early owners, but I am not positive. One of James Alexander Texas Carroll’s sons, Roger Carroll, had a daughter named Georgia who became a movie star in Hollywood and married Kay Kyser, the famous band leader. Many folks in Corsicana were probably well acquainted with the Carroll brothers who were longtime veterinarians on 2nd Avenue. These two were descendants of James Alexander Texas Carroll.
The only remnant left of the old Carroll plantation is the family cemetery. It is not visible from the road and is all but abandoned now as the Carroll descendants are scattered across the globe. When I was a boy, my father purchased a metal detector and on the weekends he and I would go to old homeplaces, with the permission of the owner, and look for buried treasure. We visited the Carroll homeplace one afternoon. At that time (1960s) the old cedar hand hewn foundation timbers of the house were still in place, although that was pretty much all that was left. I remember standing on them and walking toe to toe from one end to the other. My father told a tale of the old Confederate Cavalry swords belonging to to B.F. Carroll Jr. hanging over the family fireplace, and that they had somehow been lost in a fire. I am not certain if it was the Carroll homeplace that had burned or some other home where they were being kept, but we looked for them without any luck in finding them. I am also not sure whether my father might have fabricated that story to keep a certain 9 year old interested in the treasure hunt. If so, it worked amazingly well.
Special thanks to my cousin Jeana Chowning for providing many of the fantastic photos for this article.