My great grandfather William E. and Parmelia (Wyatt) Gilmer (14th Georgia Infantry) moved from Coffeeville in Upshur County, to Lampasas County and then to Brown County by 1880. My great great grandfather Samuel Wyatt had a Republic of Texas and patent just north of present day Pittsburgh, Texas in what was then Upshur County, now Camp County. During the war, Samuel had a tannery and made leather goods for the Confederate army.

After the civil war, Upshur County was economically devastated because the region lost so many men in the war. All of the Confederate army regiments raised in that area of east Texas saw hard fighting east of the Mississippi River. Ten years after the war when the Indian problem was over, their families pulled up stakes and moved west to establish farms and ranches on state school lands in Lampasas, San Saba, Mills, Coryell, Hamilton, Comanche, Coleman and Brown Counties.

More strife occurred in that area after the invention of barbed wire due to fence cutting by gangs of outlaws hired by the trail herders. Many of these gangs hung out in the isolated areas along the Colorador River. From 1865 through the 1880s, vigilante groups was the only law in San Saba, Brown and Coleman County.

The first jail break in Brown County was committed in 1875 by Samuel Columbus "Uncle Sam" Wyatt, my great grandmother's brother.Uncle Sam posed as a trail herder and gained access to the jail when he wanted to see the cattle brand log. He then freed his brother at gunpoint who was being held for vigilante activities with the Trigger Mountain Mob near Williams Ranch in Mills County, Texas. The Brown County authorities thought Uncle Sam was John Wesley Hardin but Hardin was in Gonzales, Texas at the time. Uncle Sam Wyatt lived to be 105 years old and died in Brown County.