The House That Compassion Built

©  Kathy Duncan, 2020

This is the house that compassion built for my great-grandmother Maggie (Cawthon) Chapman and her children.

The informational label reads: "This house was built in April 1904 by neighbors in Titus County, Texas five miles west of Mt. Pleasant for Maggie Chapman and her two children, Mattie, thirteen years old and Billie, eleven years old who lived in this house until November 1911. In 1914 traded house and one acre of land for milk cow and $20.00. In 1921 cyclone blew the house completely away. (W.S. Chapman)"

This information came from my grandfather Willie Sargent Chapman Jr. and was typed by my aunt Louise (Chapman) Lennon.

Maggie Cawthon's father, Rutherford Porter Cawthon, died in 1880. Her step-mother had predeceased him. At that point, Maggie was 22, and her elder sister Leona Cawthon was 25. Neither of them had married yet. They were left alone to raise their six younger siblings. The youngest, Charlie Dallas Cawthon, was only two years old. I know they survived by taking in laundry. Leona married John Thomas Chapman, had three infants, and was deceased along with them by 1886. Where and how all of them made their home,  I do not know other than they were in Titus County, Texas in the vicinity of the Damascus Cemetery.

Maggie probably did not marry until after Leona's death. Maggie's real name was Mary Charlotte Cawthon but her brothers teased her because she cried easily, so they nicknamed her "Maggie." Maggie was the name of a popular fictional character who cried a lot. That nickname suggests how difficult life was for a young woman who had six younger siblings to raise. Maggie married Willie Sargent Chapman, the younger brother of John Thomas Chapman. At some point, the extended Chapman family, including the Meadows family, took the Cawthon siblings under their wing so that the Cawthon children referred to Maggie's mother-in-law as "Grandma Chapman" (Martha Frances Meadows Chapman) and to "Grandma's" brother Simeon Meadows as "Uncle Sim."

Maggie and W.S. Chapman had two children: Mattie and Willie Sargent Chapman Jr. However, disaster struck when my grandfather was nine months old. While on a hunting trip in 1893, W. S. Chapman Sr. was hit by a falling tree limb and killed while raccoon hunting with a group of men. Sim Meadows had climbed up into a tree and was shaking a tree limb when it broke off and fell, killing his nephew, W. S. Chapman Sr. Up until that point, my grandfather's name was unsettled. He was alternately called Baby or Johnson. After the death of his father, he became W.S. Chapman Jr.

After she became widowed, Maggie and the children lived with various family members. Sometimes they lived with her mother-in-law, Martha Frances Chapman in Titus County, and sometimes they lived with her brother Wille Porter Cawthon in Collin County. In October of 1904, brother Willie Porter Cawthon died under tragic circumstances. This was probably also around the time that Martha Frances Chapman was selling out her place. Various families in the neighborhood offered to take Maggie's children because they were old enough to work as farmhands, but she refused to allow that. Instead, she was determined to keep a garden, chickens, a hog, and her little family together.

The men in the community came together to build a house for Maggie and her children, donating their time and materials. They brought two wagon loads of lumber from the local sawmill to build this little house. Little Bill Chapman dropped out of school when he was in the third grade to help support his mother and sister.

By 1911 the Chapmans had moved to Red River County, Texas. My grandfather had decided to relocate there to work for his cousin Tish (Chapman) Dorer and her husband Alfred Dorer, who lived near English, Texas. They owned a large farm near Jackson Cemetery. Tish was a daughter of John Thomas Chapman and his first wife, whose identity is unknown. The Chapmans lived in an old falling down house on the Dorer property.

At the age of nineteen (about 1911) and at the invitation of the teacher, Bill Chapman entered the one-room school in the Jackson community of Red River County. He sat with the third-grade students where he left off his education and then moved quickly up through the other grade levels. Within a year he had completed his education.

A year later Alfred Dorer, still a young man, died. The creek between the Dorer property and Jackson Cemetery was swollen. The men in the community gathered near what was then Jack Pope's house to carry Alfred's coffin to the cemetery. They lifted his coffin onto their shoulders and waded across the creek. This was a striking scene that my grandfather never forgot.

In less than a year, Tish (Chapman) Dorer married Oliver Phelps, and the Chapmans moved just east of what was then Jack Pope's house to the Aubrey farm and lived in one of two spare houses on Mr. Aubrey's farm (this was later the Leon Cox property).

In 1914, the Chapmans received word that there was a problem with the little house and property back in Titus County. Either payments were not being made on it, or there were squatters in it. My grandfather Bill Chapman road a horse back to Titus County and traded the house and an acre of land for a cow and $20.  He and a friend led the cow back to Red River County.

Within two years the cow was struck by lightning and killed. In the long run, the Chapmans came out $20 ahead, and they avoided a Texas tornado.

Revised March 8, 2020