Rockwall, Texas

My ancestors were true pioneers.  The Wades came in a covered wagon from Missouri to establish farms and lay out a town, the first in this part of North Texas.  There were still buffalo and Comanche Indians roaming around where the skyscrapers of Dallas now stand guard over one of the largest cities in the U.S.   I was born in Fort Worth and grew up there, but my roots were 20 miles east of Dallas in the small town of Rockwall. .

A few years ago I was a member of a writer’s group which met at the senior center in Garland.  One day a man read a piece on the establishment of Rockwall which he had “researched” on the internet.  He wrote about the “rock wall” which was the basis of the name of the town.  Every “fact” in his paper was incorrect. 

This man was always writing pieces attacking someone or something.  Previously I had been incensed by his essays claiming all Muslims were terrorists and another in which he claimed President Obama was a secret Muslim planning to overthrow the government and turn the U.S. into a Muslim caliphate. 

I learned from others that he had tried to be a fundamentalist Protestant preacher and had failed to obtain a following.  He was bitter and frustrated and vented his anger by grabbing any excuse or false rumor to attack other people and organizations.  His paper on Rockwall was a diatribe against geologists and archeologists for “not properly investigating” the rock wall.  I was outraged when he quoted my Mother as saying she went through a hole in the wall and discovered a series of rooms, a settlement built by pre-historic Indians.  Mother never said any such thing!  My brother Don, who disagrees with me on many things, agrees with me: The man’s quotation from Mother was a lie.

This is what I know about the naming of Rockwall:

When my great-great-grandparents, Grandpa and Grandma Wade, arrived in North Texas, they unloaded their covered wagons on a hilltop overlooking the east fork of the Trinity River and decided to lay out a town.  Another family, whose name I forget, joined them in this project, all of them envisioning the beginning of a great new city.

There was a dispute with the other family over what to name the settlement. Each wanted the town named after his family.  Wadesville and whatever.

Despite their disagreement over the name of the town, Terry Wade and a man from the other family agreed to work together to dig a well.  After digging through several feet of thick black top soil their shovels struck a massive rock formation.  Those early well-diggers thought they had discovered a wall built by pre-historic Indians.  The two families decided to compromise and call their town “Rockwall.” 

As a child, when we went to Rockwall to visit my grandmother’s sister, Aunt Lou, we passed Cousin May’s place on the highway with a sign in front saying, “See the Rock Wall.”   Once we stopped to visit Cousin May, and her husband let me go in for free since a I was a relative.  Usually he charged 10 cents for visitors to go down the steep steps, smelling of mildew, like going down into my Grandmother Pattie’s backyard fruit storage and storm cellar (Remember The Wizard of Oz). Far underground I saw a section of rock that truly looked like a man-built wall of neatly stacked oblong shaped blocks of stone. .

Geologists say it is a natural formation with layers of stone with cracks that look like a man-built walls.  I saw similar formations in cliffs in New Mexico.  I was still learning things when I was 55 years old – and am still discovering new ideas in my 80's.   

On that hill overlooking a branch of the Trinity River, Rockwall remained a small town, while 20 miles to the west on a hill overlooking another branch of the Trinity, James Neely Bryan laid out the town he called Dallas.  No one has explained to me why Rockwall remained small while Dallas expanded like a balloon, quadrupling in size within my own memory.  Below Rockwall the Trinity has become damned to become Lake Ray Hubbard, and Rockwall is a suburb of Dallas where Realtors advertise lakeshore lots with a view of the distant Dallas skyline.