Edinburg Heacocks Remembered
By Izora Skinner
Edinburg Bicentennial Commission
Edinburg Daily Review, Page 5
Sunday, May 30, 1976
Edinburg, Texas
J. W. Heacock Home, 718 West McIntyre
When Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Heacock and their children came to their newly acquired 20-acre farm west of Edinburg in June 1913, they lived in a tent for ten days while the above house was built by Mr. Doty. The house was only a shell at first, with no partitions. Until the windows arrived, blankets were used to keep out the wind and rain. Facing east, the house set on mesquite supports. At the southwest corner of the house was a shed. Behind it was brush. The road to the house came up behind it from the south. A canal ran along the east side of the house and beyond the canal were the fields. To the west, some distance from the house was the hole for the trash. The house was located approximately where Emilia Schunior Ramirez Hall of Pan American University now stands. On Dec. 31, 1915 Mr. Heacock bought from the Edinburg Townsite Company Lot 2, Blk. 225; on Feb. 12, 1916, Lots 1 and 3, Block 225. By the end of February, this house had been moved to these lots and had the 718 W. McIntyre address. Steven Heacock recalled that Jess G. Ramsey moved the house by jacking it up and placing in on dollies; “big ropes were attached to a windlass. The team was going ‘round and ‘round and the big flat wheels creaked as the house moved up to the pegged-down windlass.” A fence had to be taken down and a ditch leveled before the move was completed. The house underwent changes through the years with additions inside and out. Some of the Heacocks lived in the house until 1963. It was sold to Urban Renewal in 1970 and razed.
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| Heacock Home 718 W. Mcintyre |
Mr. Joseph Wilson (Wils) Heacock, son of Joseph John Heacock and Luella Heald Heacock, was born on July 25, 1877, in West Branch, Iowa. His earliest recollections of life in Iowa were “prairie fires and countless quail and prairie chicken eggs roasted in the nests. Indians looking for nice fat dogs, dead horses etc., sticking their noses to the window panes and scaring us kids.” As he grew up, he worked at his father’s store and mill. On June 21, 1899, in Kingsley, Iowa Mr. Heacock married Fanny Knowles, daughter of Ianthus Shaler Knowles and Mary Dodge Knowles. The first eleven years of their married life were spent in Kingsley; Omaha, Nebraska; Ruthton, Minnesota and West Branch, Iowa. In 1910, they talked about a move, either to Missouri or Texas, but moved to Marion, Iowa. It was not until 1913 that their household goods, their car (a big, red National) and the family came by train to their future home, Edinburg. “Papa” Haas hauled their goods in his wagon from the railway station to their farm. The children saw their first cactus, a stunted one growing near the tracks and noticed the heat and dust.
Mr. Heacock raised a variety of crops on his farm — huge sugar beets, cane, many vegetables, and even tried to grow peaches, blackberries and sweet potatoes on the canal banks. The market for the produce was poor. Every Saturday in the little black buggy Richard, sometimes with Dorothy and Esther, made his rounds selling their vegetables which had been washed and neatly tied. If they sold as much as $5.00 worth, they were rewarded with a chocolate bar apiece. Some of the regular customers were Mrs. W. B. Barton, Mrs. Henry Klossner, and Mrs. A. E. Chavez.
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| Edinburg Bandstand |
In 1915 Mr. Heacock organized some 18 or 20 men into a town band which performed on the bandstand on the southeast corner of the square. Richard stated that his father “directed with one hand and played the cornet with the other.” Mrs. E. C. Umland and Richard played clarinets. The members wore “white shoes, sox, pants, shirts, cloth hats and black ties and belts.” Mr. Heacock also “directed the first choir cantata in the Methodist Church.” Music was part of the Heacock family life. Esther played the piano, Dorothy, who had taken lessons from Mrs. W. R. Montgomery, played the violin. Richard, from time to time, played with a dance band in McAllen. To get there he rode the pony he had bought with his earning of 50 cents a day for his work at his father’s hardware store.
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| Heacock Hardware |
For some thirty years Mr. Heacock was in the hardware business. His store was at the corner of 12th Street and Cano. One side of the store had hardware; the other, furniture. In the beginning, he even sold caskets. In 1944 he sold the store to Vela-Mora.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Heacock were very active in the Methodist Church. On Sundays, in the early days, the family would either walk or ride the mule to church services. Mrs. Heacock served many years as a teacher and counselor. Mrs. Heacock’s home was the setting for weekly Camp Fire Girls meetings and Epworth League meetings.
Mr. J. W. Heacock died Nov. 2, 1958, in Edinburg. Mrs. Heacock died March 14, 1972, in Edinburg. Both are buried at Valley Memorial Cemetery. Their youngest child, Joe W. Heacock, was killed during World War II and is buried in England. Their surviving children are Richard K. Heacock and Steven M. Heacock, both of Austin; Mrs. Esther H. Sterling of Schulenburg; Mrs. Mary H. Hunter of Bartlesville, Okla.; and Mrs. Dorothy H. Bair of Edinburg.
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