While sometimes I wish I’d lived in times past, I can’t deny that I’m fortunate to live in an age where I can dig up an astounding amount of history from the comfort of my own laptop. It would, for instance, be fantastic to see steam locomotives operating on a regular basis, but historical research would be much more challenging!
This past Sunday evening I was able to find an incredible amount of information just with the names of the men on the First Christian Church building committee, all over a few hours at the Starbucks in Hutto while Margie and I sipped our coffee (and James sipped his formula– we aren’t planning on starting him on espresso until December).
Yesterday I posted a bit about Colonel Charles P. Vance, who served on that building committee. I’m still trying to run down more information about one interesting tidbit from the digitized book that I linked to in that article… and that is Col. Vance’s ties to Lee County.
There’s only one sentence about that tie: “He raised money to build the only school house in the town of Lexington, Texas.”
I still don’t know much about that part of his story, but I found another digitized book this morning that devotes several pages to Vance.
Turns out that he purchased a ranch near Lexington in 1855, operated a store in town until 1857, and remained in the area until around 1858-59 when he moved on account of a severe drought in the area. Then from 1865-1873, he again operated a store in town.
I’m guessing it was during the latter period that he was involved with the building of the school, but it remains to be seen.
There’s quite a bit about Vance’s various business activities in the book – check it out! (The bit about him starts at the bottom of the left column on the page that appears when you click the link.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=4EZEAQAAMAAJ&lpg=PA728&ots=vWdsJMkI__&dq=vance+lexington%2C+tx&pg=PA727&fbclid=IwAR3DjPyU6W13Qd2wlniig2G7B5D5PKo5ygAGutl0VMcpjra7DnhZ8PkdJ1E#v=onepage&q=vance%20lexington%2C%20tx&f=false