10-08-01

The Peanut Festival is over for this year; and from all indications it was a huge success in attendance as well as in the vendors selling fish dinners, hamburgers, barbecue and roasted peanuts. I understand that the silent auction brought in over $1,700, which included sales of copies of old photos and various other items donated by local businesses.

Even the Cherokees had a booth and reported brisk sales of their Indian jewelry (one Cherokee said that all of the items in their booth were hand made by the Indians of the Northern Towns District. The Cherokees received an award for originality in historical and antiques. The ribbon was especially appreciated by the local tribe and they are already making plans to enter parades in other events in Denton County.

Several old timers came in the store and talked to us about the past. Among them were Colleta Schmittou, Johnnie Lois Sloan, Gene Ray Reynolds, and Mr. Roy Phillips, who was the son of the Aubrey banker (T. Lee Phillips) during the 1920's and 1930's.

Roy told me how some bank robbers came to rob the Aubrey Bank back during the 1920's. They made their entry through the old round window located on the North side of the building. The windows are now filled in with bricks.

He recalls that the robber got the money and was going back out the window when Mr. Trav Elrod, the local law enforcement officer, apprehended him. Mr. Elrod only had one arm, but many criminals described him as having one strong arm that could not be defeated.

Roy said that a lot of the money in the bank was being stored in a large bank in Fort Worth when the bank crashed in the 1930's.

The Phillips family lived across the street from my grandfather, Wood Goin, he said, that all of the neighbors in the neighborhood had very large barns. Everyone had a large barn in their back yard that was located next to a hand dug well that was used to water the livestock..

Joe Phillips was Roy’s brother. Their family was part of the early day pioneers that made their home in the Loyds community which was just south of the Oak Grove Methodist Church and cemetery.

Roy remembers stories told him by his grandfather about the families building their homes. While the pioneer family was building their rather large log house in the Loyd area, they were cutting logs and hewing the corners out for good fitting on their log home. While they worked on the house, in the middle of the afternoon a large bunch of Cherokee Indians came up to the house and formed a circle around the construction area and watched to learn how to build houses from logs.

The local Cherokees were usually friendly and wanted to be of help to the neighbors and helped in any way they could in the processing of the logs for the early day structures.

Mr. Phillips was a very interesting person to talk to and was very alert in his conversation. He was interested in sharing information with me for this section in the Town Charter. He said that he would be coming back some more in the future.

The old photo is of an Aubrey business that supplemented the livery stables that existed a while after the log houses were such popular dwellings. The Yarbrough and Plummer families were also very early pioneer families that contributed to the development of the early days. Many of their descendants are stilling carrying on in the civic duties of the community.

[ Home ]