"WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE"

As I approached the massive building on my first visit to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., I was struck by the engraving in the granite, which said, "What is Past is Prologue." I first thought that this succinctly explained why historians and genealogists become so preoccupied with the past. My broader observation is that while many people enjoy recorded history, few are crazy enough to be near downtown Washington D.C. late at night trying to re-create it.

John Soule's editorialized admonition in 1851, popularized by Horace Greeley, has been accomplished by countless "young men," and told in infinite volumes. Men, women and children have been hearing the call to "Go west, young man" since the nation was first settled. The reason: land played out, disease struck, the family grew, or simply they got the itch to go. A new settlement, before long, became a place to leave, in search of whatever.

West Texas is still a child as we measure the maturation of settled lands. It was born late in the westward movement to the Great Northwest and to California. Its history is read mostly in the context of the great cattle ranches and the cowboy, the famous trail drives, the Indian, and the outlaw. These are great, rich stories, not to be detracted from.

This story, however, is mostly about farmers--where they came from, and who came after them. It is about a comparatively unglamourous people who wanted to own, clear, and turn their own sod, raise a family, worship God, and die at peace with God and with mankind. As with humankind, it includes neighbors who forsook their God in what they felt was a God-forsaken land.

I do not know why George and Susannah left their Maryland/Virginia homeland and matriculated a thousand miles through Missouri and Tennessee to East Texas. It is mere conjecture why Maranda Amanda left the East Texas soil that held her husband's grave and ventured out to rather desolate country in West Texas to join her grown sons. But I do know the reason Kay and Marie went "up on the Plains"--and why they returned to the mesquites "below the Cap."

There remains more to wonder about than to tell. Such is history. Fickle recollections seem to capture mostly the best parts--the adventure, the drama, the fun. More obscure are the mundane details of everyday living, and the reasons why people did what they did.

This is a family history as best I could put it together. Like most who do this in hindsight, I regret the lost opportunities to have captured more. I've tried to clothe my own feeble and fragmented notes in a broader context of time and people as documented by others. Therefore, it is partly communities' stories. It is partly about friends and neighbors who shared common dreams and hardships.

Like most who do this sort of thing, I have borrowed liberally from other histories, as cited. Perhaps the same sense of sharing that has enabled the settlers of each generation to prevail will also be the forgiveness of this borrower as I try to reconstruct and preserve the era of my people, their places, and their prevailings, as a prologue for the children that follow.

Charles Ronald Brantner
1998