Lubbock's history, wider than West Texas, has been built by families who converged here from all points of the nation.
And some of the leaders of the pioneer families were giants for their time. Judge William D. "Will" Crump, third judge of Lubbock County, was one of those.
He was strong enough as a young man to influence a developing region, yet gentle enough in later years to sing to his young granddaughters and tell them stories about his capture in the Civil War.
Crump apparently began his long journey to Lubbock as a student at the University of Kentucky in the early 1860s.
When he announced plans to drop out of school and enlist in the Confederate Army, his mother was stricken with grief, according to a phenomenal five-year research project completed in 1992 by Danella Dickson of Lubbock.
Dickson, who became interested in Civil War soldiers after she learned that Confederate veterans were buried in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, named the book she wrote, "Stories On Stone: Lubbock County Civil War Veterans."
Crump and five young friends had joined Gen. John Morgan's 3rd Kentucky Cavalry in February 1863.
Dickson's research contains this account:
"In July of that year, 2,500 hand-picked men were led by Morgan on a daring raid into Federal territory. Assigned scouting duties, Crump was frequently involved in skirmishes. Once he was reported killed."
During the battle of Buffington Island, Ohio, Crump was captured by Federal troops.
In an interview for the June 26, 1938, edition of the Avalanche-Journal, Crump described how he and other enlisted men were taken prisoner:
"We were looking for a favorable place to ford the Ohio River. We knew it was fordable at Buffington Island. We started down toward the river. There was a rail fence there, and we knew we had to take down a part of the fence to get over. We planned to swim across. Just about the time some of the boys started to take down some rails, Federal soldiers came along and we were captured."
Crump and the others were taken to Camp Douglas in Illinois, near Chicago.
It wasn't a pleasant place for POWs.
"The men imprisoned at Camp Douglas suffered from cold and lack of food. They were often reduced to eating rats, cats and dogs. The crowded and unsanitary living conditions caused disease to spread among the prisoners," Dickson found in her research.
Apparently, Crump's parents and perhaps a sister, were allowed to visit the prison and take some provisions, but not allowed to visit him personally.
His granddaughters, Novella Hart of Lubbock, and Mary Lou Koehler of Portland, Ore., were small children when they and their parents lived with Crump in his home in Shallowater before he died at age 95 in 1940.
Hart confirmed, "When he was a prisoner of war in the Civil War, his mother could go visit him."
And Koehler remembers, "He talked about them coming to see him, but they wouldn't allow him to talk to them. He could hear their voices and knew they were there, but he didn't get to see them."
Koehler recalls, "He said they ate rats, and one time a man came around with a little dog - that dog disappeared."
There were also small comforts: Crump's parents had never allowed him to smoke, but while he was in the POW camp, they took him a pipe and tobacco.
Near the end of the war, he was sent to Virginia in an exchange program, and he and others with him walked most of the way to Kentucky.
In 1874, Crump moved to Dallas County, where he married Mary King. Hart said her grandfather and her dad, Bob, traveled to Lubbock by way of Benjamin. And Dickson said the year was 1890.
"Mr. Crump and his sons, Dave and Bob, established a camp near the site of the present Lubbock Country Club. Crump immediately became involved in the effort to establish a town," Dickson wrote.
In following years, he also worked with others to attract a railroad, and to procure an ice plant, a hospital, and eventually, Texas Tech.
He donated his time, money and town lots, according to Dickson.
The Book, "Stories on Stone," which has been turned over to the South Plains Genealogical Society, can be ordered from the organization at Box 6607, Lubbock, 79493. Information is available by e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org. It is priced at $45 for a simply but neatly published book on standard paper, and is filled with detailed information about Civil War veterans who later lived in Lubbock County.
The research shows that Crump was elected Lubbock County Judge in 1898, and served two terms. In 1900 he moved to a ranch in northwest Lubbock County, and lived there until 1917 when he moved into Shallowater.
According to The Handbook of Texas, Crump also helped establish that town, which was at the northeast edge of the ranch.
"With others, he set up the Ripley Townsite Company, which established the town of Shallowater," Roy Sylvan Dunn wrote for a history article in The Handbook of Texas.
He also maintained a Lubbock County library in his home.
In 1938, at 93, he traveled with his son, Bob, to Gettysburg, Pa., to attend the Blue and Gray Reunion. At Gettysburg, he stood in a lateral line of former Confederate soldiers, and facing them was a corresponding line of former Federal troops. But no guns this time. Instead, the two aging armies shook hands across the line and put away the Civil War.
Despite the magnitude of his accomplishments in circumstances that often were adverse, he was after all, a grandfather.
"He was a very kind person, and he enjoyed people a lot," Koehler remembers. "He was very respectable and respectful of other people - just a good friend to lots of people, young and old. He lived to be 95, and we had a birthday party every year. People from all over the county came for his birthday."
She said, "I was his first grandchild. Novella and I lived there in the house with him, and he had that long white beard so people would call him Grandfather."
The granddaughters were especially close to the man who survived the Civil War and helped build Lubbock and Shallowater.
"He and my uncle played chess. They used to sing to Novella and I, and we loved that," she remembers.
"For his exercise, there was a long sidewalk in front of the house, and he would walk that and tell us stories ... and he would keep candy, too."
Memories for a lifetime.
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