The Charles Trueheart Josephs of Cove

Thomas Miller Joseph, born 17 April 1822, in Hartford, Connecticut, was the only child of Portuguese immigrant Antonio Jose, later known as Anthony Joseph, and Annis Rogers, descendant of Thomas and Joseph Rogers who arrived from England on the Mayflower, landing at Plymouth Rock. Thomas had a fondness for literature which his parents diligently fostered. He was schooled in the classical schools of New England obtaining his education in Connecticut and Vermont. 

Thomas, in the spirit of his seafaring father who threw caution to the wind in search of a more promising yet uncertain future, left the refinement of Connecticut filled with pomp and circumstance and set out, in 1841, for the sparsely populated Republic of Texas. One can only imagine the perils faced while traveling across the broad untamed prairie where wild animals and Indians still roamed in abundance. He traveled in the company of his mother, his mother’s sister Elizabeth Edgar and her husband Alexander Edgar. His father, for unknown reasons, remained in Connecticut. Settling in Galveston, although not as refined as Connecticut, must have seemed like a rare jewel on the Texas Gulf Coast, a place of promise and opportunity for this young man of vision.

Scottish born Alexander and his family had settled in Texas earlier arriving with Austin’s 300 and making a home at Chocolate Bayou. Edgar served at the Siege of Béxar in 1835 and upon the Mexican armies defeat, accepted the flag of truce from Mexican General Cos. He returned home and later served at the Battle of San Jacinto. For his military service he received three land grants located in Fort Bend, Galveston, and Double Bayou. Alexander’s patriotism, courage, and leadership must surely have been a positive influence in his young nephew’s life and instrumental in shaping the young man’s character.

Almost immediately upon his arrival Thomas began to study law, supporting himself by teaching school. At the tender age of nineteen, in 1843, he was admitted to the Galveston Bar. During his career he served as Chief Justice and County Judge at various times until elected Mayor of Galveston in 1858. He served five consecutive terms as judge. About 1865 he served Galveston in the State Legislature and later in the State Senate. The 1880 publication of the Encyclopedia of Texas states, “He immediately became a practitioner of responsibility and eminence, and from that time to the present, has sustained a reputation for integrity and ability. The many responsible positions of a Legislative and Judicial character which he has been chosen to fill sufficiently attest the confidence and respect reposed in him by his fellow citizens…...As a public functionary he is without spot or blemish.”

Thomas married Mary Minor Trueheart, March 11, 1851, and together they had two daughters and six sons. Although Thomas continued to practice law in Galveston, he relocated his family to Double Bayou, Texas in the early 1860s. Thomas Miller Joseph died, March 10, 1905, at the home of his daughter, Fanny Overton Wiley in Galveston, Texas. He is buried in the Episcopal Yard on Broadway St. The Galveston Bar Association, which held Thomas in high esteem, drafted a resolution of respect in his honor. On the testimony of many who know and respect the Joseph’s of Cove, it is evident to this writer that Thomas Miller Joseph’s legacy of character is intricately woven into the fabric of their lives. 

“My great grandfather, Thomas Miller Joseph, was the mayor of Galveston and he had a summer house in Double Bayou,” stated Charles Trueheart “Butch” Joseph, III of Cove.  “Many of the people in Galveston, who were able, would have a summer house to get away from the city, they called it “going to the mainland,” Butch said with a grin. “Thomas’ last two children were born in Double Bayou.” 

“While living in Double Bayou, my grandfather, Charles Trueheart “C.T.” Joseph, Sr. was an onion farmer,” continued “Butch”. “During the late 1800s there were a lot of epidemics of cholera and other diseases then they were devastated by the great 1900 Storm, it was during this time they made the decision to move to West Chambers County. Grandpa had loaned someone some money and they put up their land in Cove as collateral. When they couldn’t pay the loan back my grandfather took possession of the land to cover the debt and relocated his family there in 1900. We’ve lived in the area since then,” declared Butch. On that land he built and operated the C. T. Joseph Store.

C.T. was not new to the General Store business, as his father, Thomas built a store on Galveston Island and when C. T was old enough, he took over management of it. The store was not destroyed during the 1900 storm, however, the family decided it was time to move on and relocate. The defaulted loan was a perfect opportunity for C.T. to move to higher ground.

Country stores were an essential part of rural life in America for many years, their quaint welcoming atmosphere becoming a place of camaraderie for local residents. In a 1948 Houston Chronicle article, staff writer Chester Rogers gave a picturesque description of the Joseph Store. “I like to meet people and I like to talk with them." That just about sums up the philosophy which has guided Mrs. Ola G. Joseph through the 38 years she has served in a typical country store, which is a vanishing part of the American scene. Such an institution near Houston is the C. T. Joseph Store at Cove, in West Chambers County, on the edge of the Trinity River bottoms.” 

“Customers of this store can buy anything from sewing machines to overalls, washtubs, liver remedies, rat poison, ribbons, cold drinks, and staple groceries. They can even borrow a book, and besides all that they can visit with neighbors while they take advantage of daily mail service.” 

“All of our merchandise came here by boat from Galveston,” she related, "and it took many packing cases of foodstuff to serve the residents here. We used to serve residents from Wallisville and Anahuac, too. That was in the days when a road from Wallisville extended across the present Trinity River bottoms and came over to this side, right opposite Freeman McKay's house where a hand-drawn ferry made the transfer across Old River Lake.”

"The highway across the bottoms and the ferry as well, were wiped out by the 1915 storm. The same storm caused a big flood on the Trinity and the flood waters cut a new channel on the east side of the river bottoms."

“The Joseph Store has served as a center of cultural development for the community, too,” continued Rogers. “Years ago, the Joseph's started a lending library and some of these books are still on the shelves. They provided the best reading material available in past years and offered a source of information for many youngsters in the community anxious to explore further education.”

“Daily mail service, in and out, arrives at the Cove post office about 1:30 p.m. daily. Residents of the area anxious to receive or send mail try to make it to the store at this time, creating a mild traffic jam in the parking area. If they arrive earlier than the mail, they sit and talk with other neighbors on a gossip bench placed in the lobby of the store. On this seat they exchange the latest neighborhood news, pass the time of day, and find out what is going on down at the other end of Cove. In the event they arrive later than the mail, there is usually someone else who arrived late, too, and they still get in a neighborly visit--an event of no small importance among residents of the Cove area.”

“Grandpa used to pick up German POWs from the POW camp near where the present-day Walmart is in Mont Belvieu,” said Joel. “It was actually a little north of there,” added Butch. “My brother got to be really good friends with one of them, he was probably eight or nine years old at the time. The German’s who worked for my dad were farmers back home.” “He used to have a lot of letters he had received from them after they returned home,” said son Joel. “He had the same two guys who worked for him every day and they stayed in contact for a pretty good while. There was one other prisoner who came with them one day who tried to sabotage the thresher because he didn’t was to work. He never came back. Grandpa’s main two said they had to work all the way back to Germany after they left here,” said Joel with a smile. 

Above photo of unknown farmer using a moldboard

“I started rice farming for myself in 1966,” said Butch. “I grew up farming with my dad. I’ve always enjoyed farming, I don’t think you could stay in it if you didn’t like it,” chuckled Butch. “I graduated from Lamar Tech in 1966, I took a lot of biology classes while there which were helpful. Two years before I graduated from college I married Mary Ellen Thomas from Baytown. This year marks sixty years we’ve been married. We had four children but lost one son in 2001. 

“It was tough when I first began farming. The equipment we had then was small compared to what they have nowadays, that’s the biggest change I’ve seen over the years.  The first year I farmed we used moldboards which are plows that cut and flip the dirt over, then we retired those and just started using discs. We had 4020 tractors, and each one pulled a three-bottom moldboard. I figured up how far it was on one of those fields we were working. I figured we went 270 miles to moldboard that field. It was a slow-go,” laughed Butch. “At that time we were farming about 250 acres. Dad owned a third of the original 640-acre tract and we leased the rest of it. We didn’t purchase more land because money was in short supply back then. Dad had a chance to buy some land for $25 an acre, but he didn’t have twenty-five dollars, boy howdy! I think that same land is selling for about $30,000 an acre now,” exclaimed Butch. 

“In rice farming you do different things in different phases. Getting the ground ready was tough, watering was also tough back then. You watered using a shovel, nowadays they use boards and boxes and all kinds of stuff. Back then we used a shovel to make cuts in the levee, that was time consuming, and it was work,” said Butch emphatically but I could hear in his voice and see in his eyes as he recalled it that it was work he loved doing. Most Gulf Coast farmers, including Butch, have known the heartache of working long hard hours looking forward to reaping their rewards only to have a hurricane destroy their crop in a days’ time “Hurricane Carla came in on us pretty good in 1961. As far as hurricanes that was the worst one on us. We had already cut most of our crop by the time she hit, but we still had some in the field. The hurricane didn’t affect our fields for the next year because we are at a high elevation on the West side. When they built Lake Livingston Dam it was a big help to us. There were several years when we had limited rainfall and the saltwater would start encroaching into the waterways, but they would open the dam in Livingston and send water to push the saltwater back out and provide water for the canals. In the mid fifties we had several years of drought and the dam saved us during that time. Originally there was 16,000 acres of farmland on the West side, watered by the Old River Irrigation Company, but that acreage has dwindled down.  As time went by it just got less and less as more and more people moved into the area. We were one of the last ones farming on the West side a couple of years ago,” noted Butch sadly. “Alan Waldrop of Dayton still farms the Frost farm in West Chambers County,” added son Joel. 

“When they started allowing landowners to take subsidies without farming commodities, that was really the downfall of our area,” said Joel. The Clinton administration was involved in that. He was tied in with Stuttgart and Riceland Mills in Arkansas. Riceland Mills owned a lot of rice ground and they wanted to be able to get to that payment, so they changed the policy so it allows landowners to take the payment. That took a lot of power away from the farmers,” noted Joel sadly. “A lot of this was established to try and throttle production. When Arkansas got involved, they had 3,000,000 acres of rice and they blew everybody else away. This year Arkansas is probably going to plant everything in rice, so our rice price is going to drop really low because core prices went down. They really affect our prices, but you just ride it out,” said Joel who has obviously ‘been there done that.’ “Any program they come up with to throttle the industry, it just backfires, it’s tricky. It all started when they started embargoing Cuba, Russia, and Iran. They were our biggest buyers and when they embargoed them that’s how the subsidies got started,” he explained. “The only good advantage the farmer has,” expressed Butch, “is that people are always going to have to eat, so the government needs to make sure the farmers are able to raise enough food for the country. “I think they want to push the farming to third world countries where they can do it cheaper,” said Joel, “and make us dependent on someone else for food, which is really dangerous. That’s my fear for my children, are we going to have to be dependent on some third world country to produce our food, then if they get mad there’s no telling what will happen.” 

“One thing that really took my dad and grandpa through the really hard times is they put in their own dryer system,” said Joel. “Grandpa didn’t believe in going into debt because he’d seen too many people do that and then lose everything, that’s why he didn’t buy more land when he could have. When they put in their own dryer 

system it allowed them a little more freedom to dry their own grain and control the shrinkage. They were scared when they put it in because the water system had a large rice dryer in Houston, they told them if they put in their own dryer they wouldn’t supply them with water. They put in the dryer and everything was fine, but that was one of the things they were scared of while building it.”

 THE FARMER TAKES A WIFE 

“I married Gary Nelson’s daughter Trish,” said Joel, “and between the two of us we have four children. She came from a farm family, there’s not many farm girls out there and I got one of them,” said Joel with a chuckle. “Dad and I farm together about 1,300 acres. We bought the old farm that Lester Hankamer and his brother had on FM 1941 and Fairview, where the old Parker pens are.” 

Dad and I grow regular rice, but we also grow seed rice for Rice Tech. We grow a male strip and a female strip which crosses and makes a hybrid. Dad and I have been in hybrid seed production for a good while. They started producing the hybrid rice back in the eighties when the Prince of Liechtenstein had a vision to feed the world and poured in a bunch of money to develop the hybrid rice. His son is running the program now. Without his money it would not have been done because a university wouldn’t have been able to afford to do it.  

This Joseph father-son duo, who have been farming as a team for twenty-six years, continue to farm rice, weaving a lasting legacy for the generations that follow. If you find it difficult to nail them down this time of year, extend them a little grace, for they march to the dictates and demands of the planting season. These hard-working cultivators of the soil are part of the backbone of America, providing the very basic essentials of life, and for that we say THANK YOU!