This week’s article is taken from the “Timpson, Texas Area History 1800-2002” written by Marcille Hancock Hughes.

Around the turn of the century, W.M. Waterman moved his sawmill to the sleepy little community on the Attoyac River. It soon became a boomtown and before long had the reputation of a wild and woolly place.Like other sawmill towns, Waterman only existed due to the vast forests nearby.By 1918 the great virgin forest was cut over, and Mr. Waterman decided it was time to “Cut Out and Get Out” leaving just the sad sound of a silent mill whistle. The railroad was taken up in the mid-30s leaving the few old families with not even the lonesome wail of the train whistle.Before the timber was cut, it was a beautiful location and many years ago the Texas light-skinned Caddo Indians lived farmed and fished on the Attoyac. Then the Spaniards came and took the land from them. Spain made an agreement with France; they would not cross the Atoyaque River (as the Spanish called the Attoyac) if the French would stay on the East side of the Sabine. This made the land between the two rivers a bumper strip. The Attoyac had a natural crossing, a rock-bed that the water ran across, call the Rocky Fjork. A rich Spaniard named Manuel Bustamonti made his home on a high bank on the west side of the river crossing. His Anglo neighbor across the river was Thomas Jefferson Adams, a fighting old frontiersman.

All the Spaniards took large grants on the river, some as much as eight leagues. Gil Y-Barbo land reached from the Attoyac to the Sabine. Joaquin Cordova took eight leagues and named his home on the Attoyac, Los Aycitos. Today it would be near the crossing of FM 138 near the Robert Griffin farm. After Cordova died, he left everything to his wife and sons. She could not read or write so she asked Bustamonti to interpret for her. He advised to sell her eight leagues of land to the man that had offered her 50 pesos. She did this and the only thing she asked was for her sons Manuel and Jose to have the right to graze their livestock on the land. When Texas won her independence from Mexico, the old Joaquin Cordova Grant was no longer valid. Hardy Hancock, a new settler in Texas, took some of this land to live on for three years before he could take legal claim to it. Sam Houston signed the patent deed for Hardy Hancock’s 160 acres and then Edmond Davis, governor of Texas, signed a deed for another 160 acres. The Hancocks now have eight generations on that same land.

More and more settlers moved into this area, some were the Hughes, Hancocks, Powdrills, and Bryce children and many more. The first school was built near the Allstreet Spring. Ms. Annie Rhodes taught there. (Note:  A spur of the Santa Fe Railroad was constructed to the town, and by 1914 Waterman had a population of 476. Gradually, however, the timber owned by the company began to play out, and Waterman Mill closed abruptly in 1912 or 1913. Mill owners left for Wascom, where a new mill was built. Waterman Mill and all its land was sold to Frost Lumbering Industries in 1920. Most mill people were gone by the end of World War I. The post office was closed in 1926, and by 1938 Waterman was a small church and school community that served a scholastic population of fifty-seven. The school district was consolidated with the Center school district by 1955, and in 1990 Waterman had a population of fifty-three. The population remained the same in 2000.)

Later, a new school was built in the Waterman town site. The old church building was already there, because it was said to be haunted by Spanish soldiers looking for gold (so Will Mora thought). He told “at night they would ride through the building, on black horses, searching for a dead soldier who was hidden in the attic. His head was cut off, blook running down thru the cracks in the ceiling.” Will Mora was a remnant of the “old” Spanish family that once owned the Old Stone Fort. Miria Mora was the one who walked with Gil Y’Barbo back to Mexico City asking for the right to return to Nacogdoches. In 1932 we moved from the old Hancock settlement to Waterman so Daddy could work on the railroad. When I started school Miss Mary Sapp was in charge. Some of my teachers were Miss Mohea Jerry, who later married Curtis Savage, Miss Irene Childs, who married Sam Lane, and Miss Alma Woods, who married Robert Moore.

Note:  In 1903, T. W. Grammer and V. F. Hayes were the foreman and engineer, respectively of the sawmill. In 1905, W. M. Waterman sold an interest in his mill to the Vandervant Lumber Company of Kansas City, MO, for an investment of $85,000. Additionally, “The new company will build a new planer at Waterman, a station to be established on the Texas and Gulf Railroad (the Waterman tram road), 16 miles south of Timpson, a few miles E of the Attoyac River.” By 1909, the company had an electric light plant and telephone system to Waterman. Eventually, the lumber plant consisted of the sawmill, the planing mill, a boiler house, powerhouse, a machine ship, water works, electric light plant, houses, buildings, structures, and steam machinery.