I love a mystery. Unfortunately, I don’t really have the time or cash to spend a lot of time in Texas, where all of my favorite mysteries are, but I did manage a trip during the first week of January with my dad. Rather than explore old Texas towns as we usually do, this trip was full of courthouses and documents—those led to old Texas towns, but that wasn’t what we set out to do. The mystery at hand was Robert E. Howard’s vague reference to the “Wichita Falls country” in his circa October 1930 letter to H. P. Lovecraft:
Why, by the time I was nine years old I’d lived in the Palo Pinto hills of Central Texas; in a small town only fifty miles from the Coast; on a ranch in Atascosa County; in San Antonio; on the South Plains close to the New Mexican line; in the Wichita Falls country up next to Oklahoma; and in the piney woods of Red River over next to Arkansas.
This laundry list of locations was repeated close to a year later in a letter to Wilfred B. Talman:
I was born in the little ex-cowtown of Peaster, about 45 miles west of Fort Worth, in the winter of 1906, but spent my first summer in lonely Dark Valley among the sparsely settled Palo Pinto hills. From then until I was nearly nine years old I lived in various parts of the state — in a land-boom town on the Staked Plains, near the New Mexico line; in the Western Texas sheep country; in San Antonio; on a ranch in South Texas; in a cattle town on the Oklahoma line, near the old North Texas oil-fields; in the piney woods of East Texas; finally in what later became the Central West Texas Oil-belt.
Now, let’s connect the dots. Peaster, Dark Valley, and the “Palo Pinto hills” require no explanation. The “South Plains” and “Staked Plains” near New Mexico are references to Seminole, where the Howards lived in 1908. “Western Texas sheep country” must be Bronte, where the Howards lived in 1909. For San Antonio and Atascosa County, we turn to Dr. I. M. Howard’s November 7, 1936 letter to his sister-in-law, Jess Searcy:
I well remember when Robert was only four years old we spent the winter in San Antonio and the spring months in Atascosa County, some thirty miles south of San Antonio.
Robert turned four in 1910, and it is then that we find Isaac M. Howard registered in Atascosa County, mailing address at Poteet. This appears to be the location of the “ranch in South Texas.”
The “piney woods” are located in Bagwell, Red River County, where the Howards lived starting in 1913. The “Central West Texas Oil-belt” is the region surrounding and including Cross Plains. That leaves us with only two unidentified locations: “a small town only fifty miles from the Coast” and the “cattle town on the Oklahoma line, near the old North Texas oil-fields,” i.e. the “Wichita Falls country.” I have yet to do much traveling near the coast, so let’s see what we can find near the Oklahoma line.
“Wichita Falls country” has been a problem for biographers starting with L. Sprague de Camp. In Dark Valley Destiny, he handles it this way:
The Howards’ next move was to a place near Wichita Falls. Although there is no record of Dr. Howard’s medical registration in the District Clerk’s Office in any of the three nearby counties—Wichita, Clay, or Archer—Robert later told Lovecraft that his family had made their home in a little cattle town near the old North Texas oil field, which lies in the Wichita Falls area.
Turns out de Camp was wrong on at least one point, but we’ll get to that later. Some time after DVD was published, Howard fans started focusing on Burkburnett as the most likely “little cattle town.” A quick look at a Texas map will show that it is in Wichita Falls country and certainly near, if not on, “the Oklahoma line.”
Due to its format and intended audience, the next big work, Rusty Burke’s A Short Biography of Robert E. Howard, bypasses the issue completely: “Isaac Howard seems to have been possessed of a combination of wanderlust and ambition that led him to move his family frequently in search of better opportunities. By the time he was eight, Robert had lived in at least seven different, widely scattered Texas towns.” However, in Seanchai 111 (REHupa mailing 197, Feb. 2006), Burke notes the following:
Robert himself seems to suggest that, during at least some part of this three-year period [1911 to 1913], the Howards were living near the Oklahoma line, in what he calls “the Wichita Falls country” in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft, and told Talman was “a cattle town. . . near the old North Texas oil fields.” Thus far no documentary evidence for this has been located.
Burke ends the section with this:
In 1911 the North Central oil fields produced almost 900,000 barrels of oil; in 1912 the figure was over 4 million and in 1913 over 8 million barrels. Either Electra or Burkburnett might qualify in REH’s mind as an “ex-cowtown,” since both had their beginnings in association with large ranches. Unless some other evidence comes to light, we will never really know whether Howard lived in the “Wichita Falls country” at all. If he did, it would have given him his first experience of an oil boom town.
Both Electra and Burkburnett are in Wichita County, with Wichita Falls serving as the county seat. Any investigation of Howard’s claim would have to include a stop in that county, but before we hit the road there’s one more source to check.
The most recent biography, Mark Finn’s Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, tells it like it is: “The years 1911 and 1912 are somewhat confusing. Howard mentions [. . .] that he lived in the Wichita Falls area up next to Oklahoma.” After recounting Howard’s description of the area, Finn adds the following:
The evidence suggests that Isaac pulled the family out to the burgeoning Burkburnett Oil Field to see if it suited him. When oil was struck in 1912, the town became swamped as a torrent of people invaded the area in what had become the usual boomtown fashion.
Finn goes on to say that the Howards then returned to the Palo Pinto area before moving on to Red River County and Bagwell.
With all the bookwork finished, let’s look at the map. Howard’s use of “Wichita Falls country” leaves lots of wiggle room. De Camp says he looked in three counties— Wichita, Clay, and Archer—maybe by expanding the net to include nearby Wilbarger, Baylor, and Montague Counties, I could find something. Montague County was especially enticing: Dr. Howard had registered there in May 1900, could a return to familiar stomping grounds be the solution? Me and my dad made our plans and hit the road on January 1, 2012.
After spending some time near Waco, we headed up to the Wichita Falls country: first stop, Montague County. After searching several courthouses in the days preceding our arrival, my dad and I were old hands at searching for what we were after. We scoured the land purchases from 1899 to 1915 and found nothing. Neither the County nor District Clerk knew anything about a physician registry. Strike one.
Over in Henrietta, the County Seat of Clay County, our luck changed. We walked into the courthouse and found the District Clerk. She informed us that the County Clerk’s office was located across the street. While we were there, of course, we asked about a physician registry from the early 1900s. “No one has ever asked for that before,” she said, but had no trouble producing it. I opened it up to the section marked “G H” and there it was: “Howard, I. M. – 51.”
Breathless, I turned to page 51 and received part of the answer to the riddle of the Howards’ whereabouts from 1911 to 1913: on December 19, 1912, Doc Howard was standing right there in the Clay County courthouse, presenting his credentials (click thumbnail below).
Now, funny thing about these physician registries: they don’t actually tell you when the physician began practicing in the county. For example, while researching for Dark Valley Destiny, Jane Griffin learned that Doctor Howard had started recording births in Gains County (Seminole) as early as February 1908, but he did not present his credentials to the county until September [UPDATE: A document found in Bexar County indicates that this registration was actually in Coke County, not Gaines]. If this is how things worked, the Howards could have been living in Clay County for a long time before Isaac registered in December, but where in the county? A typed statement signed by Doctor Howard said that his “post office address” was Byers, Texas (a scene from Byers in 1910 heads this post).
I turned to the clerk: “Do you know where Byers is?”
“Sure,” she said. “It’s up north on 79, about five miles from the Oklahoma line.”
As I chatted with the clerk, my dad took several pictures of the book and its pages, with two different cameras. When he was finished, we crossed the street to the County Clerk’s office. No land records for I. M. Howard were found. Next stop, Byers.
The town (above) will require a little more looking into, maybe there’s a newspaper or library, but based on what we saw in our drive-by I doubt it: lots of crumbling buildings and abandoned storefronts. Next stop, Wichita Falls.
I could go on, but there’s nothing more to tell. The Wichita County library and courthouse had no information. The District Clerk looked at me like I was crazy when I asked for a physician registry; the County Clerk had never heard of one but did spend some time looking around, to no avail. From there, we went to Burkburnett and found nothing useful in their library. At Electra (seen below in 1912), we found a superior library, but no information on the Howards. Wichita County was all tapped out.
Despite the lack of evidence in Wichita County, Isaac Howard may well have worked in Burkburnett, too. Without a physician registry, there’s no way to rule it out. He was, after all, always trying to expand his territory, and what’s a county line to a country doctor? But at least we now know—without question—that I. M. Howard practiced in Byers, near “the Oklahoma line,” and we finally have the evidence to back up Robert Howard’s claim that he once lived in the Wichita Falls country.
Now, what towns are fifty miles from the Coast?
