EDITOR’S CORNER
At the end of the great John Ford western “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” the newspaper editor says: “when legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
That’s a great quote, but it assumes a knowledge of what’s legend and what’s fact.
Forever—well, at least ever since Rockdale has been around—it has been assumed our town was named by Mrs. B. F. Ackerman of Cameron.
As the story goes, she was given naming rights because her husband donated much of the land on which the new town was formed. She supposedly was impressed by a prominent rock along the way and that’s how our town got its name.
There’s a locally famous photo of a lady named Ruby MacMillan Petmecky sitting on THE rock.
The Reporter runs a 100 Years Ago section at the bottom of this page. And exactly 100 years ago this week, on May 8, 1919, to be exact, a much different version of how Rockdale got its name was published.
The paper printed a history of First Baptist Church and the author was identified as Miss Gussie Rowlett.
Now Miss Gussie had some impressive credentials. She was the granddaughter of Rev. B. B. Baxter, the founding minister of First Baptist in the 19th Century.
And she states Rev. Baxter was on the first passenger train to reach Rockdale on Feb. 16, 1874. So there’s some knowledgeable source material right there.
Miss Gussie—I suppose a real historian would write “Miss Rowlett” but I just have this feeling everybody in 1919 Rockdale called her “Miss Gussie” so that’s what I’m going to do—tells the naming story this way.
It’s well-established our town was founded when this area was for two years the terminus of the International & Great Northern Railroad, building from Palestine toward San Antonio.
But Miss Gussie’s history asserts that Rockdale was already named on paper before the tracks even got here and well before Mrs. Ackerman made her famous trip to the new town.
“The road (railroad) was built on paper (on which were) located many imaginary towns,” she wrote.
“One of these was Rockdale, so named, I understand, from a large rock and many small ones nearby about five miles southeast of this town.”
Did you get that? Southeast. That’s not between Rockdale and Cameron.
Furthermore, Miss Gussie said Rockdale didn’t even end up in the place it was penciled in on the railroad’s map.
“The road missed the paper town, ran into a sand bank early in 1874, the crew set up camp and called it Rockdale.”
Wow. Talk about revisionist history.
This is, of course, the kind of things historians deal with all the time, evaluating their sources and deciding who to believe.
So, who do we believe, the Ackerman Story or Miss Gussie Rowlett?
I, for one, would be sorry to see the Ackerman tale discredited. I’ve been on two hunts for “the rock,” about 50 years apart. In both cases we found one. In both cases we couldn’t prove that was the rock beyond just hoping it was.
Where does that leave us? I don’t know, but the more or less official Rockdale Centennial Book from 1974 prefaces the Ackerman story with the phrase “according to legend...”
One more thing. Aren’t newspaper editors supposed to say: “When legend becomes fact, print the truth?”
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