'Clyde Barrow’s Milam Co. Roots' by Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram:

Clyde Barrow’s Milam Co. Roots

by Jeanne Williams - Temple Daily Telegram

December 6, 2010

JONES PRAIRIE - Many famous people have hailed from small Texas towns, but it is highly

unlikely a historical marker would ever commemorate the desolate small-acre farm where

notorious criminal Clyde Barrow’s father, mother and older siblings lived in the early

20th century.

Had Henry and Cumie Barrow’s cotton fields in Jones Prairie been prosperous, it is

probable the obscure farming village would have been tarnished as the birthplace of

Clyde Barrow.

Various accounts place the family living in Ellis County near Dallas when Clyde

Chestnut Barrow, the fifth of seven children, was born in 1909 or 1910.

Jones Prairie was the birth-place of Clyde’s criminal cohort and older brother, Marvin

Ivan “Buck” Barrow, who arrived March 14, 1903, and a sister, Nell, born in 1905.

Jeff Guinn’s 2009 book “Go Down Together, the True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde”

tells of the 1891 marriage of Henry and Cumie Walker in Nacogdoches when the bride was

16, and 10 months younger than her intended. The couple pursued farming after Henry

resigned from a steady-paying sawmill job.

The couple rented a few acres near the town, with ambitions to own a farm rather than

rent. During that era, Guinn’s book stated, some 40 percent of Americans lived on

farms, and in Texas one-third were tenant farmers. Cotton was the crop of choice for

the bountiful harvest and income from a few acres.

Cumie Barrow described their life in unpublished memoirs written after her son

besmirched the family name by becoming a robber and killer. Guinn’s book stated that

Cumie described the first five years of marriage was “bright and rosy then, for we were

young and saw things with the eyes of youth, but we soon awoke to a realization that

life was indeed earnest.”

The arrival of a son and daughter and the need for more income prompted the Barrows to

move to Milam County where they settled on rental property in Jones Prairie, a farming

village on FM 979 about 10 miles northeast of Cameron in northern Milam County.

The Handbook of Texas On-Line stated that the community established in 1853 was named

for 1834 land-grant recipient Joseph P. Jones. The Little River Baptist Church was

founded near the Jones Prairie site in 1849, and a Masonic lodge was organized in 1849-

50. A post office was established in 1876. Area farmers raised and shipped cotton and

corn. By 1884, the community boasted a gristmill, cotton gin, school, three churches

and 150 residents.

A stage stop between Calvert and Cameron, Jones Prairie was destined to become another

ghost town when the railroad bypassed the town in the 1880s and 1890s. Jones Prairie

was a dying hamlet when the Barrows moved in.

Guinn’s book reveals that the Barrow family soon realized “Milam County didn’t prove

any more profitable for Henry than Nacogdoches.”

Cumie would recall in her memoirs that “it got pretty rough.”

“When Henry’s few acres couldn’t financially support the family, they all - mother and

older children as well as father - had to begin ‘hiring out’ to help pick the cotton on

other farmer’s property. It now seemed obvious that Henry Barrow was never going to be

in a position to buy a farm of his own, but still he wouldn’t give up the dream,”

Guinn’s book stated.

The Barrow family packed their meager possessions into the wagon and moved north to the

village of Telico in Ellis County south of Dallas, Guinn wrote. Farming again proved to

be an unprofitable venture but Clyde Barrow and another son were born there.

In the early 1920s the family moved again to an urban slum campground called wWst

Dallas, living under their wagon. Eventually Henry earned enough money to buy a tent,

Guinn’s book stated.

Clyde and Buck became petty thieves. Clyde Barrow first was arrested in 1926 for auto

theft, and soon thereafter for stealing turkeys. Barrow went to prison, emerged “a

hardened and bitter criminal” and was described as changing in prison from “a school

boy to a rattlesnake.”

During the 1930s, Barrow continued a life of murder and robbery. Linking up with

girlfriend Bonnie Parker and gang members who included his brother Buck, the Barrow

Gang earned a living robbing stores, gas stations and banks.

Undocumented stories persist that during the years Bonnie and Clyde topped the 10 Most

Wanted/Public Enemy List, the Barrow Gang hid out in the woods at Buer Springs off

County Road 330 near Milano. Local folklore could be substantiated by the fact that

Milano outlaw Albert Brooker - who spent time in the state penitentiary with Barrow

Gang members - established an elaborate hideout on a boulder-lined gulley near Buer

Springs.

jwilliams@tdtnews.com

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Temple Daily Telegram.
All credit for this article goes to
Jeanne Williams and the Temple Daily Telegram