Bernard Pyron
One of the topics of local history in the area in and near Somerset, Texas is the Old Bexar settlement, two miles west of Somerset.
My mother, Mabel Moote, was the school teacher at Old Bexar during the early 20th century. The original County Examination taken by Mabel is dated December 1911. And the original letter of recommendation for Mabel Moote which reads, in part: "I unhesitatingly recommend her to any position to which she may aspire and am sure she will make good." signed L.L. McDonald, Sutherland Springs, Texas, is dated May 6, 1912. She and Blake Bernard Pyron were married May 20, 1915 which apparently ended her career. She probably began teaching at the Old Bexar settlement in the fall of 1912. Mabel Moote was born on March 12, 1894, and was only 18 when she began teaching at Old Bexar.
Jessie Pyron, sister of Blake Pyron, and daughter of A.M. Pyron, married Will Kenney, son of Patrick Kenney, who once owned the land that became Old Bexar and also the coal mine. Jessie Pyron Kenney is my aunt. First cousin Nellie Mae Kenney included a list of the main families associated with Bexar in something she wrote in the eighties. She mentions the McMonagals as being one of these. William McMonagle, the father of James Connell and Shorty, or Kenneth, lived in or near Bexar. The grandson of William McMonagle and son of James Connell McMonagle, James Joseph McMonagle, known to me as Joe, was a classmate in the Somerset grade school in the early forties. Joe is a graduate of Notre Dame and retired as a Marine Corps Major General.
On Google Earth the area between Bexar and Benton City Roads, which apparently was the heart of Old Bexar shows just an empty field. Yet many pioneering families of the Somerset area had roots or associations in Old Bexar. Most of the institutions of Old Bexar began moving to New Somerset after the First Town Site Company began selling lots that became the new town some time after about 1910 to 1912. Mabel Moote was the school teacher in Old Bexar in its last years. In 1905 A.M. Pyron was a Trustee of the the Old Bexar school. His son, Blake Pyron, Jessie's Pyron Kenney's brother, married the teacher in 1915 of the school he went to earlier.
Patrick Kenney owned the land that became Old Bexar. Patrick was the father of Tom and Will Kenney, and Will Kenney married Jessie Pyron, daughter of A.M. Pyron, the older sister of Blake and Milton (Casey) Pyron. My sister Louise said recently that our mother once lived with aunt Jessie and Will Kenney in the area of Old Bexar when she taught school there. The father of Patrick Kenney was probably John Kenney, age 46 in the 1860 census of Bexar county, Texas.
Online Bexar county land transactions show that on September 28, 1893, Patrick Kenney deeded an acre and a half to John Conoly, out of the Clemente Bustillo survey. The deed says the land joined "...the Bexar school lot on the west...beginning at a stake on the Benton City Road." Patrick Kenney deeded on March 22, 1881 a tract of land to Jane Kirkwood, out of the eastern half of Survey No 134, known as the coal mine tract.
One interesting land transaction of Patrick Kenney was a tract of land he sold to the Elm Creek Comet Band on March 29, 1889, from Survey No 348 granted to Clemente Bustillo.
On May 18, 1891 Patrick Kenney deeded land to the Bishop of the Diocese, one acre of the Clemente Bustillo grant. This land may have been for the purpose of building of the St. Patrick's Catholic Church, a branch of the first Catholic Church at the Medina River community, then called Garza's Crossing. Nellie Mae Kinney's History of Old Bexar, The History of Somerset and the Old Bell at Bexar (1986), says that St Patrick's Catholic Church was built in 1892.
And on August 2, 1883 Patrick Kenney deeded two acres of land out of the Peter (really Petra) Bustillo, widow of Domingo Bustillo, of Survey No 348, for $37.50, for the purpose of establishing a public school. The deed is in Book 34, page 6. This may have been for the school which was built at Old Bexar.
On an October 13, 1905 Bexar county land transaction, the trustees - like members of a school board - of the school district number 33 of Bexar county, which was Old Bexar, were H.P. Drought, B. McConnell, A.M. Pyron, and J. C. James, probably Jessie Christopher James, the father of the younger Jessie James (1897-1942).
The Online Handbook of Texas, http://www.tshaonline.org/
, says of Old Bexar that "was first settled by John Kinney (also spelled Kenney), an Irish farmer and rancher, in 1854. In 1868 Kinney and other area residents founded San Patricio de Bexar Catholic Church. By the mid-1880s the Kinney family was operating an open pit coal mine in Bexar. Coal was originally transported to San Antonio by ox-cart. The Bexar post office opened in 1883 in the general store, which was painted bright red. For this reason, the town was known by the Hispanic workers as “La Colorada” or “La Mina de la Colorada.” In 1894 there were thirty to forty-five small houses, a general store owned by John Conoly and Dr. James A Matthews, a doctor’s office, a theater, a post office, a cotton gin, a dance hall, a cantina, and three churches. In 1909 the Artesian Belt Railroad came through the area and bypassed Bexar. The town of Somerset was established two miles to the east on the rail line and most of Bexar moved to Somerset. A spur was eventually constructed to connect the coal mine."
First cousin Nellie Mae Kenney in her article, The History of Somerset and the Old Bell at Bexar (1986), says that the main families living in or associated with Old Bexar were the "... Connoly's, the Matthew's,
McMonagles, Longs, McCoys, Malones, James's, Scanlons, McConnels,
Pyrons, Kenneys, and the Norris's who owned the land where Somerset is
now located."
I mentioned the McMonagle family above as having lived in and near Old Bexar. Joe McMonagle, son of James Connell McMonagle, and grandson of William McMonagle, was in grade school with me in Somerset during the early forties. The house and land where Connell McMonagle, wife and Joe, and the grandfather, William (listed in the 1940 census), lived in the thirties and forties was on Kenney Road just south of Highway 81 (I-35) about four miles north of Bexar.
The James family was another significant Somerset area family with roots in Old Bexar. In the forties and fifties Luther James lived on Kenney Road just south of the area that was Old Bexar. Luther James ran hounds after coyotes and often hunted north of the Old Bexar area. Jessie Garfield James. (1897-1942) was the son of Jessie C. James, (1859-1919) .Luther Martin James (1888-1963), cousin of Jessie C. James, was the son of John William James (1854-1896). There is a very good chance that Clara Muriel McCoy, the wife of the younger Jessie James, who was a student of Mabel Moote at Old Bexar, was part of the McCoy family Nellie Mae Kenney lists as being among the Old Bexar families.
Frank L. James (1909 - 1985) was an older son of Luther James and brother of Bill James, or William Marshall James ( 1915 - 2004), who was long the superintendent of the Somerset School.
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