Chasing Our Tales - Zack, Texas, Ghost Town

I am searching all over Texas for ghost towns. I’m not looking for the almost ghost towns, either. I’m not interested in those that still have people living there. And I’m not interested in those that are famous and have been for years. What I am looking for are ghost towns with a good story. Ghost towns where there were murders, or Indian raids, or illnesses. Towns with cemeteries that tell tales. Towns that have stories of interest about how people did, or didn’t, survive. Do you know about such a town? Do you have a family tale of that town? Hey, let me in on your information so that it can be shared around the area with all our readership!

My tale today concerns a ghost town in Central Texas, in Brazos County. It’s the story of a town that didn’t last very long. It sort of came and went in the blinking of an eye. It was there only a mere fifty years, and then it was gone. The town is Zack, Texas, located north and slightly east of Bryan, Texas, between Taylor and Edge on the Ferrill Branch two miles southeast of Cottonwood.

Zachariah R. Guess opened a general store and post office and established the town of Zack on March 29, 1904. It was built on the Colbert Baker Grant, and Guess was appointed post master. But Guess didn’t last long, and he sold his store to Cyrus Koontz on October 23, 1906. This seems like a pretty good idea, as Koontz owned the land on which the store was sitting! Koontz was then appointed post master. Then on October 8, 1910, C. E. Locke was appointed post master.

The general store was open and operating until 1932 when Koontz closed it and boarded it up, a victim of the Great Depression, and after only a few years the building was dismantled. However, the town, or what little was the town, kept a population of about 25 until the 1950’s. A 1948 map shows a school and a few rural dwellings, and by 1988 the town no longer appeared on highway maps of the area. The school was used until the late 1940s when county school were consolidated.

But people, real people, lived in the town of Zack. The names of these people included the following who were listed as residents of Zack, Mr. and Mrs. Zachariah R. Guess and children, Cyrus Koontz, A.D. Locke, C.R. Guest, T.D. Locke, his wife, Fannie Locke, and their six children, E.W. Elliott, Henry Koontz, John Sabo, Mrs. Tom Holden, F.M. Nichols, T.M. Turner, Tom Gallatin, Oscar Turner, Chas. Claydon, Miss Nettie Locke, Mr. and Mrs. S.E. Locke and children, Ed Schram, Bob Batten, Charlie Locke, F.W. Locke, Miss Mary Locke, A.L. Free, Miss Eula Locke, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Martin and son, Cecil, Joe Locke, Miss Maude Batten (daughter or R.N. Batten, married Joe Locke), R. N. Batten (this may be Bob Batten), John Whitten, Jr., Mrs. J.D. Whitten, Sr., Mrs. J.F. Crenshaw, Mrs. Aubrey Moody and Mrs. Dell Fuller. The newspapers that mentioned these names were Bryan Weekly Eagle, Brazos Pilot, Bryan Daily Eagle, and the Bryan Eagle.

And, here are a few more bits of interest about Zack, Texas. Zachariah Reeves Guess was born March 39, 1845, in Attala County, Mississippi, and he came to Texas about 1888, after the Civil War when he had been a Confederate soldier. He had been in the Featherstne Brigade of the 40th Mississippi Regiment, Company D. Guess was the son of Martin B. Guess and Nancy Brister.

Martin Guess was the son of Morgan Guess and Mary Jane Walker. Morgan Guess was the son of Moses Guess and Mary Blair. Mary Blair was the daughter of Colbert Blair and Sarah Morgan.

When Guess came to Texas he was a store keeper, post master, and farmer. He was married to Mattie J. Guess who was born July 21, 1848, in Mississippi. Zachariah was a Methodist, and Mattie was a Baptist.

Zachariah died on March 23, 1932, and Mattie on September 24, 1939. and were both buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin where notable Texans have been buried since 1851. They were living in Wheelock, Texas, at the time of their deaths.

Zack is no a forgotten place, a ghost town, with nothing to show for its ever having been there - not even a cemetery. Some Texas ghost towns have an old building, or a wall or two standing, or brick lying around a pasture, but, sadly, others have nothing left at all, except a name, and, perhaps, a memory. And those memories are, sadly, failing very quickly.

In doing my research on Zack, I did find some other interesting stories about the area around Brazos County. Here is one:

“Wilhelm SCHULTZ (or SHULTZE), a subject of the king of Prussia, declared his intention to become naturalized on 25 July 1859 (Brazos Co. District Court Civil Minutes,vol.B, pp.259-260). Wilhelm was naturalized on 25 July 1859 (Brazos Co. Probate Minutes, vol.C, pp.59-60). ‘Wilhelm Albert SCHULTZE, Sr., his wife Dorothea Kurten SCHULTZE, and his son, Wilhelm, Jr., better known as Billy arrived in Galveston in the summer of 1854. It is apparent that the SCHULTZE knew Henry KOONTZ in Germany, for he went to see him in Cottonwood and obtained an ox cart from him to carry his family and belongings from Galveston to the KOONTZ farm.’ (Janice J. SCHULZ, A Time for Planting, a Social History of Selected Rural Communities in Brazos County, Texas, masters thesis, Sam Houston State Univ., 1973, p.46).”

As we have Bullocks in our area, I thought this might be of some interest:

“According to the index a William Bullock died in the City of Bryan in Brazos County, Texas, in December 1982. He was born in Texas on 23 August 1923. Where? Who were his parents? What were their ages, and where were they born? If he lived here for some time was his family on the census, for (what) year? I'm trying to run down some Texas Bullocks, some of whom were born in Indian Territory, Oklahoma.”

And yet another Brazos County genealogical query:
“According to something written by Laura Logan: This information was taken from a letter written to my Great Aunt Minnie Lee Hood Moore in 1982: James M Hood's father married the second time a widow Gandy who already had two children: 1. Mattie- who later married her stepbrother James M Hood 2. Bill. The second marriage was with his stepsister Mattie Gandy. She didn't get along with her stepchildren because they were all about her age. I would love more information on the Gandy family - particularly Widow Gandy - so I can be sure to find the right James M Hood as the father of my James Monroe Hood (1813-1902).”

And here is the answer:

“James Monroe Hood married Mary Jane Conway on September 27, 1837 in Harris County Georgia. He married 2nd to Martha ‘Mattie’ Gandy Brasher Davis on July 9 1873 in Brazos County Texas.She was his step sister. James Monroe Hood's father married the 2nd time to a widow by the last name of Gandy. Who already had 2 children of her own.

1. Martha Gandy, she married 1st William M. Brasher in May 31, 1866 Brazos County Texas. Her 2nd husband was T. G. Davis.3rd husband was James Hood.
James & Mary Conway Hood had the following:
1. James Hood
2. Nancy Alice Hood, she married Isaiah Douglas Fuller
3. Mary " Fannie" Francis Hood, she married Jessie P. Lloyd
4. William Sylvestor Hood, he married Mary ‘Molly’ Jane Zimmerman
5. Lucy J. Hood, she married Peter Thomas
6. Almeda Texas Hood, she married Herbert A. Meredith
7. Ada Byron Hood, she married John M. Hickman
8. Emma Rebecca Hood, she married Elzie Coleman Elliott
James M. Hood & Martha Gandy Brasher Davis had the following:
1. infant Hood
2. Edwin G. Hood, he married Lillian ‘Lillie’ Zannie Brister
3. Leah " Abbie " Hood, she married James Martin Kenny.
4. Cora Hood
5. Dee Hood, he married Willie Almira Badgett
6. Willie Hood

John Monroe Hood is buried in the Stockdale Cemetery in Wilson County, Texas.”

Are you interested in discovering more about your ancestors? If so, send me a letter at P O Box 61, Mineral Wells TX 76068-0061. See you next time!

©2010 Sue Seibert