TOMBSTONE TUESDAY: Lant Gaines (1886-1984)

One of the beautiful things about history is the ability to put oneself in another time for a little while. Imagining what life was like both momentous and mundane. Reflecting over the decades of my life, I realize I have been richly blessed to bare witness to more than my fair share of watershed moments. Lant Gains lived a life that saw such things. Some we share and some I would have loved to have seen. 

Alonso Gaines, born in Indiana and Amanda Josephine Wilson from Monroe Louisiana married each other in Calhoun County in the year 1874. The couple welcomed 7 children, girls, Bessie and Lizzie, and boys, Luther, Lonnie, Lester, James, and Alansing Lant. The family lived on Matagorda, Island in1886 when Lant was born. 

He told many stories of the memories he had of growing up in Calhoun County, and it was a time of many substantial changes. The first one he went through was when he was only 5 months old. He grew up learning about it through the experiences told to him by his mother, father, and siblings. 

When his parents had moved to Calhoun County they landed in the bustling port city of Indianola. It rivaled Galveston with more than 5,000 people and growing. It had a big shipping line and the railroad connecting it to the rest of the world and the city had all the amenities a person could ever want in a place to live. One year later, a Hurricane with a huge tidal surge wiped the city out. Many left while others stayed and rebuilt. The Gaines moved to Matagorda, Island. For many years they lived on the island happily raising their family and made friends with the other families that inhabited it. Things did not stay that way long. 

When Lant was just 5 months old, a powerful category 4 hurricane hit Calhoun County. It is still known today as “The Storm of 1886.” The winds were more than 150 miles per hour sustained. It finished off Indianola for good. The storm hit the island even harder. The storm surge was 4 ft. And the cast iron Matagorda lighthouse filled with 4 feet of water inside. The wind vibrated the tower so fiercely that one of the fensel lenses fell to the bottom of the tower and shattered. The keepers had to take refuge inside it while their homes and outbuildings were wiped out. 

The Gains family soon realized this was going to be a powerful storm. They decided to head out and began making their way to the lighthouse and Mr. Forester’s, the keeper whose home that was next to it. They also tried to get to Saluria to the Hawes place. Will, Walker, and Kelly Hawes families lived there. The other close place of refuge in Saluria was the Coast Guard Station where Capt.Rasmussen was. The wind was blowing so hard it was hard just standing up, little Lant was tucked tightly in the chest and arms of his parents. They went single file holding tightly to each others' hands, each one put their head in the back of the one in front of them and pushed forward. They told of people they passed who had drowned, and homes where the entire family had drowned and were swept away. The Gaines family made it through that night of fear and horrors alive. A blessing to be sure. 

Life on the island wasn’t easy, but it was interesting and fun. “I remember when I was a little tot out there, we was used to a kind of wild life.” Lant went on, “When someone would come to see us, we would take over the sandhills like a bunch of wild rabbits. We wasn’t used to people, that’s all.”

When the Gaines children wanted to go to the Gulf Beach to fish, they had to walk about 3 miles across the island. Lant said his parents taught them to put down stakes with throw lines on them. “It was pretty smart fishing, but our parents told us to do it that way so they wouldn’t worry about us tying it to ourselves and a big shark pulling us into the gulf.”  Redfish, then like now, were a most desired catch, and the Gaines kids were good at catching them. Lant told of a redfish his brother caught that had to have weighed 35 to 40 lbs. He said it was a chore getting it over those sandhills and back home. 

There were no grocery stores on the island so the people that lived there had to take sailboats to Port Lavaca or Rockport to get groceries and supplies. In those days fish, seafood, geese, ducks, and every other kind of wildlife were plentiful. Many local hunting and fishing yields were well documented in photographs during those years. When Lant was about 12 years old he said people would hunt wild ducks for market. They would load them on sailboats and take the to Rockport to sell. Lant told of one hunt that stuck with him for good reason. “Late one evening, Jim Brown shot about 60 ducks out on the bay. The way he got them to shore was to push them, like a barge. Turns out…ducks will float!”

In 1901, at the ripe age of 15, Lant worked on an oyster boat. The boats didn’t have oyster dredges then, so hand tongs had to be used to harvest the oysters. In Port Lavaca there were around 150 working boats. These boats were market boats. Lant and Needham Dierlam ran a market boat by the name of “Express.” They worked a route to Tiger Island, Grass Island, and Half-Moon Reef. They would then sell their oysters for 50 cents a barrel, and many times carried upwards of 90 barrels on board. The Express was a sailboat, and it would give them some rough rides depending on the weather. The worst ones were Nor-Westers, but they would make it through them ok. In 1901 Lant and Needham found themselves out on Carancahua Bay loaded down with oysters. While there, a Nor-wester blew in fast and furious. It was one of those banner and memorable years of winter that are rare in south Texas. The water froze and the boys had to kick the barrels overboard so that they could keep the boat floating enough to get to shore. That was known as the Big Freeze of 1901.

Lant had a nephew who was named after him. When it was time for his nephew to be born, he was given the job of going to Port Lavaca to fetch the doctor as there weren’t any in town. He borrowed a horse and hurried out on the dark, cold, and stormy night. On the way the horse stumbled, and they both ended up covered in mud. They succeeded in getting there in time though, mud and all. 

Sometimes things happened that had to be attended to doctor or not. Once when he was riding a mule, Lant cut his foot on a barbed wire fence, and he had to walk through tall grass with dew on it. Lant explained that back then folks thought that dew poison was about the same as blood poison. His mom sat him down got her sewing basket and then Jim Hatch, the mail carrier, sewed it up for him with a needle and thread. 

Did you ever wonder how Swan Point got its name? Well, Lant could tell you. “The way Swan Point got its name was, thousands of Swans would stay there all the time. The swans would make so much racket at night, the people living nearby had a hard time getting to sleep and rest. The old pioneer people told me that the whole country from swan point on down was nothing but a big cane break. There was lions, wild mustang horses, and all kinds of wild animals. The swans are all gone now.”

Old Settlement went back years, but he remembered well when surveyors Hertel and Frick laid out the City of Seadrift in 1910. As the town grew the first building built was the Lafitte Hotel, followed by churches, grocery stores, 3 banks, and a big pavillion on the bay. Mr. McIntire had a grocery store. Mr. Miers had a bakery. Mr. Maxwell sold eyeglasses. Will Belcher had the blacksmith shop and Mr. Lance and Terrys had a dry goods store. Mrs. John Dierlam named Seadrift. 

The Seadrift council voted to make Seadrift a dry town. I like this story not only because Seadrift was built by Germans, and seriously, do you know, or even know someone who has heard of Pearl City? Well According to Lant, when that happened, A.O. Smith went right out of the city limits, about 4 and one quarter miles down the road to Port O’Conner and built a wholesale house and opened up for business. Yes, you guessed it, many people from Seadrift would go out and visit the place and drink a brew or two in Pearl City. There might on occasion have a few fights or a few wrecks, but that was the only building in the little “city.”  

Walter Dierlam was the Commissioner that built many roads. Mules were used to build the roads. Spades were used to dig ditches and put in culverts. Lant said back then they worked from sun-up till sunset and got paid a dollar and a half a day. Mules were hitched to a scraper, and the roads were built up that way. The roads were not good in those days, when it rained the roads were so muddy that they had to hitch more animals on wagons to get out of the mud holes. When trips were made to Port Lavaca by wagon, buggy, or horseback, they would just cut across pastures. 

In the 1920’s Lant had a little grape orchard. One night he could hear some boys in the orchard getting in his grapes. It was a moonlit night, and with his shot gun he started following the sound of their voices down the edge…when he got about 20 feet from them, he raised the gun to the sky and fired off a shot! He said all he saw was was a white streak running! He lost his cap and his tobacco pouch. It was Berney DeForest, he was just a kid and Lant knew him. He knew Lant too and they didn’t have any more trouble over it. Berney thanked him for it one day when he got older too. 

Lant passed away July 24, 1984. He was 98 years old! He rests today with his family in Seadrift Cemetery. There are so very many wonderful stories of adventure and daily life just waiting to be told to anyone who just wants to take the time to listen. Sadly, we have a way of letting that time slip away and those stories too. To find a man sharp of mind who has lived just shy of a century is a treasure, and to the ones who knew the value of his stories enough to write them down is gold. 

His many stories were about the places we all know so well. When times were hard, dangerous, uncomfortable, and death was well known. When things began taking shape, and what it took to get us to the life of luxury we now enjoy. Because of Lant we don’t have to wonder what it was like. We know. 

He lived through the Storm of 1886, the Great Storm of 1900 that destroyed Galveston and still stands as the worst natural disaster in U.S. History. He lost two of his brothers who drowned in the Hurricane of 1919. He lived through Hurricanes Carla and Beulah. When the day of infamy speech came across the radio and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Lant was listening. When President Harry S. Truman announced the end of the war in Japan because of the two atom bombs we released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.    He was drafted in both WWI and WWII and still lived to see the Korean and Vietnam wars. He remembered the crashing of the Hindenburg, the Sinking of the Titanic. Then lived through the Great Depression when the 3 banks in Seadrift went under with the rest of the nation, the decade of the Dust Bowl, and Prohibition. The inventions of automobiles, the radio, television, moving pictures, and the years of the Industrial Revolution. In his lifetime 18 Presidents occupied the Oval Office, from Grover Cleveland to Ronald Regan. While he was born in a year Queen Victoria sat on the Throne of England, he was alive through the reigns of King Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI, and Elizabeth II. He was alive when the Berlin Wall was built. He lived through the Assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy. He heard the first sound barrier broken with a boom and watched the first rocket launched into space. He was there watching, as the entire world watched, the first man to orbit the earth, the first moon landing. He was here when Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis and Emilia Earhart disappeared. The first flight of man in a plane. Haley’s Comet, eclipses, meteor showers. Mount Rushmore Carved and National Parks created. He was there when phones came into homes and when they began giving way to the amazing world of early computer and technological marvels such as we now have. He watched the building of skyscrapers like the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers, thankfully he was spared the absolute tragedy and anger that was felt worldwide when they fell to the ground on 9/11. His life ran the gambit of the era that has seen the most growth and change than any other in history, and what a life it was. Thank you for sharing your stories with us Lant.

Victoria Advocate

www.newspapers.com 

Calhoun County Shifting Sands

Seadrift Memories: Old Settlement, Lower Mott, Seadrift 1848-1986