Gregg County pioneer recalled long-ago days
By Van Craddock
It's said, "No prophet is accepted in his hometown." However, that apparently didn't apply nine decades ago to Lorenzo Wooley when he returned to Gregg County to reminisce with old friends.
"This is Mr. Wooley's first visit back to his old home in several years. He appears much younger and with a mental vigor that is indeed refreshing," said the Longview Daily News in October 1924. "To talk with Mr. Wooley, and to draw information from his memory's storehouse, is like hearing a roster read of pioneer families."
Lorenzo "Ren" Wooley (sometimes spelled Woolley) was indeed a Longview pioneer, having arrived even before the town was incorporated in 1871.
The Daily News said Wooley had been among "those stalwart early citizens who carved the destiny of an empire out of a wilderness … determined to make homes and develop the county, to span the rivers, and … to endure isolation from their fellows, to forsake the comforts."
The Civil War veteran had married Amanda Killingsworth in 1868, was a successful farmer and businessman, and from 1909-1913 was Gregg County Precinct 1 commissioner.
In his mid-70s, Wooley moved to Hearne, northwest of Bryan, to live with his daughter and son-in-law.
But he missed his friends in Longview, so in 1924, at age 79, he rode the International and Great Northern Railroad to visit his old hometown for a few days. The local daily took the opportunity to interview him.
"When I arrived in this section of the state, what is now Longview was Mr. Methvin's corn field," Wooley said. "Methvin Street and other streets were then planted in corn."
His earliest pleasant memory of the Longview area was a December Christmas dinner in 1867 with "an 18-inch snow that day."
Wooley remembered casting his first presidential vote in 1872 for Horace Greeley. "I was forced to ride 16 miles to Gilmer in order to register and then make a similar trip to vote." (Longview was in Upshur County for two years until Gregg County was created in 1873.)
The old-timer noted that in 1870, as the railroad prepared to enter the new community from the East, Longview "was given its name by Mr. Long, a construction engineer of the T&P (Texas and Pacific), after his wife, standing on a hill, had remarked, 'What a long view.'"
(Mr. Wooley's tale goes against the generally accepted story of O.H. Methvin, the "Founder of Longview," standing on Rock Hill with railroad surveyors. When one of the men remarked about the "long view," Methvin noted that would be a fine name for the new town.)
Wooley recalled "counting 18 saloons" on Tyler Street and several early newspapers, including the New Era and the Longview News. "I purchased a paper from Jim Hogg, afterward governor of Texas, on the streets of Longview in the early days," he said. "(Hogg) was not only editor of the paper and his own printer, but engaged in the task of selling them."
The 1924 Daily News said folks were "doing all in their power to make Mr. Wooley's visit a pleasant one and to prolong his stay. Friends and relatives have missed him greatly since his departure from this county after over half a century of residence here."
Some locals didn't recognize Wooley because, since moving to Hearne, he had shaved his trademark long white whiskers. Asked why, he said his little great-granddaughter "could not be induced to kiss him as long as the whiskers remained."
"Ren" Wooley was born Oct. 30, 1845, in Bibb County, Ala. He joined the 20th Alabama Infantry, Co. B, during the Civil War, fighting from Vicksburg to Atlanta. In his final years he lived at the Texas Confederate Veterans Home in Austin.
Wooley died July 12, 1935, at age 89. Wife Amanda died in August 1927. They are buried in Austin's Texas State Cemetery.