DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the one driving you through it. Now, Matagorda County has got more than its share of stories buried under the coastal plain, and this one starts with a man who traveled about as far as a man can travel to plant roots in Texas soil. William Erastus Moore came from New Jersey — clear up in New Jersey — and he made his way down to Indianola sometime in the 1850s.
You wouldn't think that's where a Texas ranching legend begins, but here we are. Then the Civil War came calling. Moore rode with Terry's Texas Rangers, and it was out there on that long hard road that he crossed paths with Colonel Henry M.
Ashby, a Tennessee field commander. Something about that service stuck with Moore — the way it sticks with a man who's been through something real alongside somebody worth knowing. So when the war was done and Moore came back and settled on land northeast of what would become Blessing, he named the agricultural community growing up around him in honor of Colonel Ashby.
That's the kind of thing a man does when words aren't quite enough. Now Moore didn't just sit on a porch after that. He ran a ranch in the community.
He operated a general store. He housed the post office right there inside it and served as postmaster from 1890 until 1902. And here's the detail that'll catch you — he freighted supplies by boat.
Why? Because the Colorado raft was still in place. That logjam, that great tangle of logs blocking the Colorado River, made the area creeks — creeks like Wilson Creek — surprisingly navigable.
You couldn't run a steamboat up the Colorado proper, so you ran your flat-bottomed freight through the backwaters instead. Moore worked that angle. He also donated land for the Ashby Methodist Church and the Ashby Cemetery.
A man who gives land for a church and a cemetery is a man who's thinking about the long haul. Meanwhile, something equally important was taking shape right nearby. A group of freed slaves established the Wilson Creek Community.
They organized the Christ Chief St. Mary's Baptist Church and built themselves a sanctuary — and in that sanctuary, just like in the Methodist and Baptist churches over in Ashby, local children attended school. Two communities, different origins, building something side by side.
By the early twentieth century, the combined Ashby-Wilson Creek Community was showing real economic promise. Cotton gins, stores, warehouses — the kind of infrastructure that makes a place feel permanent. But then the thing that had made Wilson Creek possible in the first place became the thing that undid it.
When the Colorado raft was cleared and the river became navigable, Wilson Creek itself was no longer viable as a freight route. Plans for a railroad connecting Wilson Creek to the Colorado were drawn up — and then abandoned. The economic downturn that followed hit hard.
And in the 1940s, wartime population shifts pulled people toward other towns, and they didn't come back in the numbers the community needed. What's left now is sparse habitation, and the quiet weight of what was. Descendants of those early residents still remain in the area.
The memories of the men and women who made their lives here — in Ashby, in Wilson Creek, in both — they remain too. Some places get a railroad. Some places get a river.
This one got both, in the wrong order, at the wrong time. And still, people stayed.
What the marker says
Ashby-Wilson Creek Community William Erastus Moore, a New Jersey native, settled in Indianola in the 1850s. After serving with Terry's Texas Rangers in the Civil War, he returned to settle on land northeast of Blessing and named the surrounding agricultural community in honor of Col. Henry M. Ashby, a Tennessee field commander with whom he had served during the war. Moore operated a ranch in the community, as well as a general store that housed the post office where he served as postmaster from 1890 until 1902. He also freighted supplies by boat at a time when the Colorado raft (logjam) made area creeks, such as Wilson Creek, more navigable. An active member of the community, Moore donated land for the Ashby Methodist Church and the Ashby Cemetery. Concurrent to Ashby's development, a group of freed slaves established the nearby Wilson Creek Community. Residents there organized the Christ Chief St. Mary's Baptist Church and built a sanctuary where, as with the Methodist and Baptist churches in Ashby, local children also attended school. The combined Ashby-Wilson Creek Community showed economic promise in the early 20th century, with cotton gins, stores and warehouses, but the population gradually declined. When the raft was cleared and the Colorado River became navigable, Wilson Creek was no longer viable. Plans for a railroad connecting Wilson creek to the Colorado were abandoned. The resulting economic downturn, coupled with wartime population shifts to other towns in the 1940s, led to the now sparse habitation of the area. Still, descendants of early residents remain, as do the memories of the many men and women who made their lives here. (2002)