ECHO, TEXAS

History on a Pinhead

Memories of Echo

by Brenda Cason Brown

I grew up in Echo, Texas. First on the Dibrell Ranch and later on the Morse-Miller holdings.

The church was located across the highway and next to it was a brick, one room schoolhouse. Dee Smith's son, James D. and I were playmates. The Smiths had the general store and gas station and somewhere I have pictures of it as well. I lived across a cattle guard on the Dibrell Ranch. The house was across the barbed wire fence from the schoolhouse. James D. and I sat under the window of the school house and learned our lessons; so well that he skipped a grade. I, unfortunately, was unable to skip a grade but I could do my multiplication tables in the first grade and write cursive as well. I was later married in the Echo Church. The church was Methodist one Sunday and Baptist the next. The preachers alternated their sermons and the Sunday School alternated the literature and lessons, however the congregation was always the same.


We often had dinner on the banks of the Jim Ned underneath the pecan trees on the Edmundson Ranch. Girls and women swam on the north side of the creek and boys and men to the south. Never together. Mr. Edmunson drove the school bus when I attended Coleman High School.

My great-great grandfather, John Jesse Cason of Rocky Creek was scalped by Comanches near Lake Brownwood (1856). Captain Elkins of the Texas Rangers tracked them to Haskell, Texas and killed them all. There is an account of the scalping in the Brownwood paper of which I have a copy. He is buried in an unmarked grave on the Cason Ranch in Brown County.

I later lived on the Morse-Miller Ranch all the way through high school.

Louie T. Miller was my mentor, bringing beloved library books for me to read from the Coleman library his Mother, Mrs. J.A.B. Miller ran. Later his sister, Doris Miller was my Freshman Literature teacher at Coleman High School.


Iattended Burkett Grammar School and am well acquainted with that community. I also have pictures of the Burkett bridge crossing Pecan Bayou with the beautiful pecan orchard below it. My parents are buried at the Burkett Cemetery. The school has been torn down except for the Gym which is used for a community center.

My Mother was born at Webbville. Maggie Bernice Sanders to Benjamin Franklin Sanders and Mattie Ward Sanders.

Cason, Texas was settled by relatives of my Great-great grandfather and now consists of just a Post Office and a service station.
- Berenda Cason Brown, Shreveport, Louisiana

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