our events: SHAW-KEMP
36th Annual Shaw-Kemp Open House sure
to have the Nebo hills crawling with history
hunters and fun seekers alike
STORY AND PHOTOS BY MEL W RHODES
were quite utilitarian. “When we
bought that in 1975, we were (still
are) in the propane business — Texas
Propane — running that; so it didn’t
matter what we made down there.”
Then one day, she discovered that
the structure that had fallen into neglect and been repurposed as a barn
was in fact the original 1856 doublepen, cedar-log cabin built by T.J.
Shaw, an expert carpenter. Shall we
call it love at first sight? “That cabin
just stuck in my head!” Mary said, as
if discovering it had bumped her onto
a new course. It was in her husband’s
head as well, but as a place to stack
hay, not a restoration project. “I told
him what I wanted: to fix that cabin
up and get a marker for it,” Mary said.
One day in 1980, Mr. Kemp announced that he’d built his barn and
the cabin now was Mary’s to do with
as she pleased. Big smile from Mary.
“We finished the restoration on
the cabin later that year and in 1982,
dedicated it with a historical marker
APRIL 2016
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
At 88, Mary Kemp is sharp as
a tack and generally ready to talk
turkey, provided the turkey is local
history — she can spit out dates and
names with the best of them. Mary
came by these history bits quite
naturally growing up in the Mt. Nebo
Community south of Weatherford.
These days Mary is Nebo Valley, and
if it’s on the map, she’s kept it there.
For three and a half decades s he has
hosted the Shaw-Kemp Cabin Open
House, an afternoon of frontier frolic
and dress-up fun and entertainment
in and around Miss Mary’s patchwork
town standing in the shadow of Nebo
Mountain. This year, the 36th for the
gathering, the date is slated for the afternoon of Saturday, April 9, 1-5 p.m.
The Shaw-Kemp Open House
story began, of course, with pioneer
Thomas Jefferson “T.J.” Shaw and
wife Louisa Ann who arrived in the
area from Tennessee around 1854.
Shaw’s first cabin stood a mile west
of the Shaw-Kemp Cabin and currently is part of Log Cabin Village in
Fort Worth. It was in 1856 that Shaw
built the log cabin Mary fortuitously
came to own many years later. She’d
grown up on an adjoining property,
a child of the Great Depression. She
remembers dresses made of feed
sacks, being poor but not knowing it,
and many kindnesses from the Shaw
family.
“I grew up a fourth of a mile
from it [the cabin],” Mary explained.
“Our land (Carnes) joined their land;
but we only had a hundred acres —
they had 400 acres ... .” According
to Mary, Shaw’s daughter — Molly
Staggs — saved her family when she
allowed her father to work the land as
a sharecropper.
The families remained close and
decades later Mary had a surprise.
“In 1975, Mr. Acme Shaw, one
of the last Shaw’s to be there on the
ranch, was dying,” Mary recalled.
“He called me and he said, ‘Mary
Estelle, I’m going to die within two
weeks, and I want you and your
husband to buy my ranch.’ I said ‘Mr.
Shaw, how in the world, I don’t even
know what kind of money you’re
talking about.’ He said ‘you don’t
have to worry about it, I’ve got all the
plans made, they’re already worked
up. You go see Sam Pickard and J.W.
Ford and they’ll have them ready.’”
Mary and husband V. Kemp, Jr.
signed the papers, made the payments
and Mary “loved the place.” But she
did not know the log cabin was there,
hiding behind a dusty veil of desuetude. And she had no burning desire
to reclaim the place for Parker County
history, etc. That was yet to come.
“No, no, no,” she said. “We had
a hundred head of cattle on it. It was
just a neighboring place. At that time
that land joined my land.” In other
words, her designs on the property
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