Individual Details

Angleton man was colorful character
By Marie Beth Jones | Posted Jul 23, 2007
In the 1960s I visited for a couple of hours with Joe “Pop” Jamison of Angleton who was then in his 80s.
A ham radio operator, Jamison was a colorful character whose personalities and interests made for an enjoyable interview and resulted in a pretty good human interest story.
To my mind, though, the activities involved in his hobby paled in comparison to the information in his unpublished memoirs, which he called “Reviewing the Past 75 Years.”
Born in 1880 near Oyster Creek, about a mile west of what later would be Angleton, Joe was a grandson of William Jamison, one of three brothers who came to Brazoria County from Ireland as young men and spent the rest of their lives as ranchers here.
Joe was one of several children born to William’s son and daughter-in-law, Sloan and Sarah Bruner Jamison. When each of their children was born, Sloan registered a cattle brand in the baby’s name and branded a calf to start that child’s herd, “so by the time we were grown we had a few cattle of our own,” Joe wrote.
During Joe’s early life, children reared on area ranches began riding horseback long before they started school, generally riding what their elders later would refer to as “kid horses” — animals chosen particularly for their calm and gentle dispositions, making them less dangerous to the youngsters.
Jamison wrote that a horse named Button was the first several of the family members learned to ride.
If the rider was one of the younger and less-experienced children, he said, Button would “kick up and refuse to go” any direction that didn’t suit him, but an older rider could climb up “and grab him with spurs, and he would take off.”
At the age of 5 or 6 years, Jamison began to ride out alone each day to drive in the cows that furnished the family’s milk.
“All of our cattle were Longhorns, including the milk cows,” he said. They gave very little milk — from a quart to maybe one gallon a day, leaving some for the calf.
To get enough for their family, it was sometimes necessary to milk eight or 10 cows a day.
Brazoria County was unfenced from Houston to the Gulf and from Alvin or Galveston Bay on the east back to the Brazos River on the west, except for plantations along the Brazos River and Oyster Creek and small pastures around each ranch, where the families pastured a few saddle horses and milk cow calves.
In that era the Columbia Tap, which ran between Houston and East Columbia, was the only railroad in the county, and was among the earliest in Texas.
The line’s small steam locomotives burned wood as fuel and operated at a speed of between 5 and 15 mph when everything went well.
“When we had a wet season, the ties and rails would bog down in the mud, as there was very little elevation of the roadbed,” Jamison wrote. “In that case the train would often get off the tracks,” and it would take a whole day to cover the 50-mile distance between Houston and the line’s terminus on the east side of the Brazos River.
During Jamison’s childhood, wild game was abundant and no limit restrictions were in effect. Jamison’s father often killed more wild ducks than were needed for the family, so he would give Jamison a pair or two to take to the rail line to sell to the train brakeman.
“When we heard the train whistle two or three miles off, I would get on my pony and gallop over to the railroad,” he wrote.
“The brakeman would jump off the train, run over to me and buy the ducks for 50 cents a pair, then run back, and jump on the train.”
At the speed the train operated, the brakeman would have plenty of time to get back aboard.
One of the days he recalls as the most exciting of his childhood occurred during the summer when he was about 7 or 8 years old. His father had taken the family to Houston in their two-horse buggy.
When they met a Houston streetcar pulled by a mule, it was a sight so unusual that it scared the Jamisons’ horses, which came near to breaking the tongue out of the family’s buggy.
“Daddy yelled to the streetcar driver to stop the thing,” Jamison wrote, but even though the driver applied the hand brakes, the mule, accustomed to stopping only at street intersections, refused to stop.
“Daddy yelled at the driver to use his lines, so he did, and saved us from a wreck,” Joe remembered, explaining that this occurred about 1887, on the old wooden bridge on Franklin Street.
On the Jamisons’ return trip that afternoon, they had reached a point about 10 miles from Houston when they saw the Columbia Tap freight train stopped at a water tank.
These tanks, which provided water for the steam engines, were located at intervals of about 10 miles, all along the tracks.
Noticing the Jamisons, the conductor called out to them, offering to let the two boys, Joe and his brother, who was 10, travel with him on the caboose. Thrilled at the prospect, the boys quickly climbed aboard.
“Daddy drove on in the buggy, but before we got to the next stop the train overtook him,” Jamison wrote. This continued until late in the evening, when they reached Anchor and the boys rejoined the rest of the family in the buggy.
Although Jamison wasn’t sure of the year, he remembered that when the railroad from Anchor to Velasco 0was surveyed, the surveying crew — led by George W. Angle for whom Angleton was later named — stayed in his family’s home.
He particularly recalls that when the men came to dinner they would put the surveying instrument, which had a telescopic lens, “across the bed in the front room, and us kids would move it around, and point it out across the prairie, and look at cattle at a distance.”
Story in "The Facts", Brazoria News Paper
http://thefacts.com/article_87bafa17-3906-59b4-906b-2843173630ba.html?mode=jqm

Occupation: Machinist-Foreman
Birth: May 11, 1880 Brazoria County, Texas, USA
Death: Mar. 6, 1969 Angleton, Brazoria County, Texas, USA Death place: Precinct No.1, Angleton, Brazoria, Texas Gender: Male Race or color (on document): white Age at death: 88 years Marital status: Widowed Father name: Sloan Jamison Mother name: Sarah Jane Bruner Occupation: Machinist-Foreman Residence: Angleton, Brazoria, Texas Cemetery name: Angleton Burial place: Angleton, Brazoria County, Texas Burial date: 08 Mar 1969Film number: 2137442 Digital GS number: 4029608 Image number: 819 Reference number: 31086 Collection: Texas Deaths, 1890-1976 Spouses: Stella Bruner Jamison (1881 - 1937) Myrtle B Jamison (1900 - 1968) Burial: Angleton Cemetery, Angleton, Brazoria County, Texas, USA

Birth	11 May 1880	Oyster Creek, Brazoria County, Texas
Census (family)-shared	15 Jun 1880	(Sloan Jamison and Sarah Jane Bruner) Brazoria County, Texas
Census (family)-shared	19 Jun 1900	(Sloan Jamison and Sarah Jane Bruner) Brazoria County, Texas
Marriage	17 Dec 1901	Brazoria County, Texas - Stella Bruner
Census (family)	25 Apr 1910	Brazoria County, Texas - Stella Bruner
Draft registration	12 Sep 1918	Humble, Harris County, Texas
Census (family)	5 Jan 1920	Houston, Harris County, Texas - Stella Bruner
Census (family)	14 Apr 1930	Houston, Harris County, Texas - Stella Bruner
Marriage	14 Sep 1941	Fort Bend County, Texas - Myrtle Bell Ward
Draft registration	1942	Houston, Harris County, Texas
Census (family)	3 Apr 1950	Real County, Texas - Myrtle Bell Ward
Death	6 Mar 1969	Diabetes - Angleton, Brazoria County, Texas
Burial	8 Mar 1969	Angleton Cemetery, Brazoria County, Texas

Spouse	Stella Bruner (1881 - 1937)
Child	Wesley Willis Jamison Sr. (1916 - 1984)

Spouse

Myrtle Bell Ward (1900 - 1968)

Father	Sloan Jamison (1852 - 1929)
Mother	Sarah Jane Bruner (1857 - 1904)
Sibling	Clephane Vanburn Jamison (1877 - 1877)
Sibling	William Thomas Jamison Sr. (1878 - 1962)
Sibling	Sloan Vanburn Jamison (1882 - 1885)
Sibling	Morris Wesley Jamison Sr. (1884 - 1923)
Sibling	Elora Byrd Dula Jamison (1886 - 1974)
Sibling	Lula Ivy Jamison (1888 - 1890)
Sibling	Walter Bruner Jamison (1891 - 1965)
Sibling	Edith Josephine Jamison (1892 - 1976)
Sibling	Edna Avaline Jamison (1892 - 1893)
Sibling	Samuel James Jamison Sr. (1896 - 1968)
Sibling	Fletcher Sulivan Jamison (1899 - 1899)

Notes