Hardscrabble

Hardscrabble. Settled 1852. , The first white settler on Ten Mile Creek, then called Pleasant Run, in what later became Dallas County, then in Robertson County was Elder Roderick Rawlins (1776 1844) who led a party of approximately thirty persons from Greene County, Illinois, to Texas in the fall of 1844. This consisted of his wife and unmarried children, his sons-in-law, Pleasant Taylor, Valentine Wampler, David Lewis Hall, Samuel Keller, and Carlos Wise, their wives and children, plus John Kiser, John Mullican and Benjamin Cox, these not being relatives and Cox being a single man who did not remain in Texas., The immigrants rested upon arrival in Lamar County while Rawlins, Taylor and Keller went ahead to locate a favorable place for settlement. After selecting this area for the purpose, they returned to Lamar County for their families. The entire party arrived on January 2, 1845, and established a winter camp, which they called "Hardscrabble," on high dry spot approximately one-half mile southeast of what is now the Lancaster Town Square. Here they were in close proximity to wood and water, grazing for their oxen was adequate on the frost-killed grass and Indian raiders could not approach unseen. From this place they spent the remainder of the winter selecting individual homesteads, 640 acres to each head of a family and 320 acres to each single man., During the winter they carefully conserved supplies, living on game and fish insofar as possible. As spring arrived each family moved to its permanent location. Small tracts were enclosed with wooden rails laboriously split during the winter, the prairie sod was broken, and the first crops planted with the corn and other seeds so carefully hoarded during the cold weather. Other immigrants, some kinfolk or old friends, arrived throughout 1845 and early 1846, these included numerous others of the Rawlins family, Middleton M. Perry, Jones Greene, Thomas McKee Ellis, William Lavender, John Little, Thomas Campbell, A Bledsoe, Madison Moultrie Miller and others., Hardscrabble ceased to exist except in the recollection of those who stayed there for several months and a story of hardship and determination handed down to their children.