our history: PC GHOST TOWNS (Part 7)
Places of Parker
County Past
BY MEL W RHODES
Pulling a fast one on sin;
a pretty girl’s name; and a
heroic Knight — Garner and
Adell … and a bit more
GARNER
30
Like many other frontier communi-
ties, Garner, located 14 miles north-
west of the county seat on FM 113,
put down tenuous roots in a hard
land. In the mid-1850s when West
Parker County settlement began,
hostile Indians were still very much a
part of the frontier equation. Settlers
put up cabins in clearings fringed by
blackjack timber and kept a rifle at
the ready to fend off, hopefully kill,
Comanche or Kiowa raiders trailing
through the area.
Some 20 families set up house-
keeping in the wild place and by
1877 had built a church and named
the place Trapp(e) Spring. (The site
was located in the John C. Trappe
Survey.)
During the 1880s the commu-
nity grew up about a half-mile from
the original site, and in 1890, the
Government granted the town’s peti-
tion for a post office.
The name Trappe Spring, didn’t
cut it with the Postal Service, so,
in recognition of a local cotton gin
operator’s prominence, townsfolk
chose the name “Garner.” (The
man was not named “Garner,” but
“Bumgarner,” C.B. Bumgarner. It’s
a guess as to why they dropped the
“Bum.”
Once the tracks of the
Weatherford, Mineral Wells &
Northwestern Railway reached
Garner, up until then a church and
school center, the town developed
into a retail hub and shipping point.
But it never amounted to much,
numbers-wise … unless you count
42.
William A. Thomas, 12, and
Walter Earl, 14, of Garner (Trappe
Spring), reportedly came up with the
popular domino game “42.” Here’s
how it goes: In 1887, William and
Walter were caught red-handed #
playing cards in a hayloft, and their
devout Baptist parents were not
amused; they took a dim view of
card playing,
which to their
mind was sinful
and associated
with gambling
and likely
strong drink and
loose women.
The boys were
chastised for
the indiscre-
tion but soon
were working
feverishly to figure out how to play
cards without cards, by using domi-
noes. By fall they’d done it: created
a four-player, trick-taking domino
game with bidding and trumps. The
boys’ folks cottoned to dominoes,
presumably a more godly gaming
medium than cards, and thought the
new game a splendid idea. To say,
“the dot-counting game caught on,”
would be an understatement. Today
it is referred to as “The National
Game of Texas.”
While Garner is well known
for its contribution to the world of
gaming, it is also remembered for a
war hero who called it home, one
Jack Llewellyn Knight. The Medal
of Honor recipient, born in 1917 on
a farm four miles north of Garner,
graduated from Garner High School
and in 1938 from Weatherford Junior
College. During World War II, he
and his brothers enlisted in Troop F,
124th Calvary, in Mineral Wells. The
Texas National Guard unit was called
up in 1940 and posted to India, given
the task of opening a road between
India and China — the Burma Road.
During one of the last battles fought
on the road, on Feb. 2, 1945, Knight
distinguished himself on the field of
battle.
According to the medal cita-
tion: “Lt. Jack Knight was leading
his troop against heavy concentra-
tions of enemy mortar, artillery,
and small-arms fire. After taking the
objective they encountered a nest of
enemy pillboxes. Preceding his men
he singlehandedly knocked out two
pillboxes and killed the occupants in
several foxholes before being blinded
by a grenade. Jack’s brother Curtis
rushed to his aid but was himself
struck down by a Japanese bullet.
Jack ordered his men to Curtis’s
aid, while he continued to lead the
assault until he was mortally wound-
ed. His gallantry was responsible for