Long before there was a Texas County Fair, old settlers were reuniting every year in Houston. And when they did, they went all-out.
While the current version of the county’s big annual summer event goes by the name Texas County Fair and Old Settlers Reunion, the second half of that title remains as a traditional leftover from years gone by rather than an invitation to any actual activity. But the reality is, the fair is in “only” its 63rd year, while the reunion dates back 103 years.
By the time the fair was added in 1951, the “reunion” was already pretty much a fair in its own right. In fact, in a pre-reunion issue of the Houston Herald from Aug. 3, 1950, there is documentation of several circus-like attractions for people to enjoy Aug. 9-12 at “the reunion grounds,” like De De Dawn, an abnormally agile individual known as “the girl who sits on her head” (who had been written about in the popular Ripley’s Believe It Or Not column), a man and woman who would perform acrobatics atop a 110-foot high pole and a five-legged calf born in Beulah.
Also included at that year’s reunion was the Yippie-Ki-Yah Rodeo at the Houston Ball Park, featuring bucking broncos and mules, horse racing, brahma cattle and bulls ridden by “Daredevil Cowboys,” and “many other spectacular and dangerous events.” Admission to witness the spectacular danger was 60 cents for adults and 35 cents for children (qualifying age of children not listed, so it must have been judged on a case-by-case basis).
Baseball fans could take in a four game set played by the Houston Merchants, who put their 18-4 record on the line in night games against Thayer on Wednesday, Patton Creamery Thursday, and a squad from Poplar Bluff Friday and Saturday (each with an 8 p.m. first pitch). Potential patrons were coaxed to attend the ballgames with the statement, “Houston has a good team, the best floodlights in this area and an excellent playing field and grandstands.”
A bunch of ads in that week’s Herald stated that businesses hoped the four-day reunion that was “bigger and better than ever,” and invited readers to “pay us a visit at the reunion.” But some ads also included more specific incentives. Brown Motor Company (“your Chevrolet and Oldsmobile Dealer”) advertised a “guessing contest” with a prize of $10 (your guess is as good as anyone’s as to what the subject of the guessing was), and Watson Hardware offered a free 32-piece set of china (“a $24.95 value”) with the purchase of any Hardwick or Tappan gas range, “$89.75 and up.”
That year’s post-reunion issue of the Herald from Aug. 17 chronicled how an estimated 23,000 people attended, more than any reunion in the “recent past.” A Saturday afternoon horse-pulling competition was witnessed by a whopping 1,400 fans, as Jack Farrar’s Texas County team of buckskins (“with stout backs and stouter hearts”) took the $100 top prize in the “duel under the sun.”
Prior to the epic equine battle, streets were jammed on Thursday afternoon as the Nebraska National Guard Band and Iowa National Guardsmen paraded down Grand Avenue. Among the “free acts” patrons enjoyed during the four-day event was Mildred Fallin, who performed her “slide of death,” hanging by her teeth from a “tightly stretched wire.”
One of the highlights of the 1950 reunion was when S.D. Brown of Eunice, J.S. King of Houston, and Annie Pittman of Success were presented rocking chairs for age-related recognitions among registered “settlers.” A lifelong county resident, Brown was 89 years old, and was deemed both oldest man at the event and the man living in the county longest. Also a lifelong county resident, Brown was runner-up in both categories, and Pittman – a county resident for 65-years – was tabbed as oldest woman.
With the beginning of the Texas County Fair In 1951, livestock showing and carnival-style rides became part of the annual rite of summer. While those attractions are now the primary focus of the event, the memory of the much more diverse sights and sounds of the mid-1900s Old Settlers Reunions lives on in the minds of the few folks left from that era. And thankfully, in the cyber-world of the Houston Herald archives.