DUANE
Duane's take
Well, the marker tells it this way, and I'm just passin' it along as best I can. About a mile south of where you're sittin' right now, down on Donaldson Creek, there was a rough lumber school — the kind folks called a rawhide schoolhouse — and inside that building, in 1877, a man named John R. Allen started something that would echo clean across the nation.
He called it the Pleasant Valley Farmers' Alliance No. 1. The first chapter of the Farmers' Alliance in all of Texas. Right here in Lampasas County.
Not in some city hall, not in a statehouse — in a rawhide school on a creek. That detail alone ought to tell you something about who these people were and what kind of life they were livin'. The purpose was plain: improve ruinous farm living and economic conditions.
Ruinous. That's the word the marker uses, and it earns every syllable. Now here's where the story gets a little flavor to it.
To protect their members and keep the operation honest, the Alliance had two secret officers. They were known — in hushed tones, you understand — as the Grand Smokies. Their job was to trace missing livestock.
Two men, no names recorded, movin' quiet through the county following the trail of stolen animals. By 1887, the movement had grown so large that three thousand sub-alliances merged together with the Farmers' Union. Three thousand.
What had begun in a rough lumber schoolhouse on a creek had spread into one of the strongest arms of the national agrarian reform movement of the era. And it didn't stop there — those alliances helped spark the Populist Party drive of the 1890s, a political fire that burned across the whole country. But fires, even big ones, burn down eventually.
By 1900, they had died out. The Grand Smokies gone quiet. The rawhide school long since weathered away.
Just a creek, a mile south, and this marker to say that once upon a time, it all started here.
What the marker says
First chapter of the Farmers' Alliance in Texas. Founded 1877, it became one of the strongest arms of the national agrarian reform movement of the era. The group was begun by John R. Allen on Donaldson Creek (1 mi. S) in a "rawhide" (rough) lumber school. Its main purpose was to improve ruinous farm living and economic conditions. Missing livestock were traced by 2 secret officers known as "Grand Smokies". In 1887 the 3,000 sub-alliances merged with the "Farmers' Union", then helped spark the Populist Party drive of the 1890's; but by 1900 they had died out.