Mrs B M Howard at 503 Bryan Street

This photograph at the DeGolyer Library's digital collection (SMU), labeled "Mrs B.M. Howard 503 Bryan Street," sent me on an afternoon's quest to learn more about the house. Along the way, I found out more about Mrs. B.M. aka Cammie Thompson Carrick Howard (George Cook Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU).

The George W. Cook Collection at DeGolyer Library (Southern Methodist University) has a whole slew of random portraits of people that were taken over a century or more ago. Most of the photos are described as depicting an "unnamed" or "unidentified" woman/man, with a description of their clothing, and a bit of detail of their surroundings. So the photos are not very... usable, at least not to someone who is not a fashion historian.

So when I came across a photo of Mrs BM Howard 503 Bryan Street, with a date range of 1900 to 1909, I was surprised -- a name and an address! As a person highly interested in the built environments and material culture, this was made for a fun afternoon of historical sleuthing. I initially just wanted to figure out what became of the house in the photograph, assuming it is the same one as in the photo's caption. But I learned so much more, including a direct tie to the Red River Valley of Louisiana.

Of course it helped matters that this lady was from a solidly middle class station; it was easy enough to find her and her family in newspapers and censuses and city directories. But first, as per usual for women in this era, she had lost her "identity" in the caption of the photograph: "Mrs B.M. Howard." On the back of the photo was written, "Mother of Dr. Manton Carrick." What was her first name? My first destination in the search was in the Dallas City Directory of 1909 (the latest year of when the photo was estimated to have been taken). And sure enough! There she was:

The entry for Howard Cammie (widow B M), r 503 Bryan in the 1909 Worley City Directory of Dallas. "R" stand for "resides in" or "rents."

This was Cammie Howard, a widow, who resided at 503 Bryan Street. But since she's the mother of Dr. Manton Carrick, the marriage to B.M. Howard was at least a second one for her. Interesting! Since I had now three names to search, a geographic location, and a date range, my next step was to check on Ancestry (this is the reason I have a subscription -- I'm nosey as hell). This is where I was lucky to find her death certificate. She died in 1915 of appendicitis at St. Paul Sanitarium on Bryan Street in Dallas, less than a block from the address listed in the city directory. Find-A-Grave placed her tombstone in Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas.

Her records told a story where her she's born in De Soto Parish, Louisiana in 1852 after her father obtained a public land grant of 49 acres there. Her mom was a housewife, and her father, Dickson Thompson, was a physician. The family enslaved four people -- it appears these four people were also a family unit. The 1860 census found the family living in Pulaski, Panola County, Texas, a place that can no longer be found on modern maps. Once Panola County's seat, the government moved to Carthage in 1848. Panola briefly revived "when it became an inland port for shipping cotton down the Sabine [River] in order to avoid Yankee-occupied New Orleans" during the Civil War (History of Panola County, 1935 and Lawrence Sharpe, 1940).

In 1867, Cammie Thompson graduated from Mansfield Female College. It makes me wonder if she had been witness to the bloody aftermath of the Mansfield Battle of 1864, or at least heard stories about the carnage. During the war, the college served as a makeshift hospital. Amputated limbs were collected in a shallow trench at the base of the dormitory, a pit still slightly visible in the parking lot of the college (now a museum) today.

In 1870, Cammie Thompson married White Carrick, a farmer, and moved to Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas. By 1880, she had already given birth to three children, and also had an eight-year-old African American servant, Tennie Hopewell, living in her household who attended school.

In 1884, Cammie's husband committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Sometime after, Cammie married Benjamin M. Howard, the superintendent of Waxahachie School, who in 1885 left that profession and instead became an agent/manager for University Publishing. Cammie and her children moved to Dallas to be with Benjamin, where they resided at 184 Live Oak Street. The couple never had children of their own. Benjamin Howard died in 1903 and was buried in Waxahachie.

White Carrick, a Civil War veteran (CSA), committed suicide in February of 1884 (Brenham Weekly Banner).

Cammie Thompson Carrick married Benjamin Howard sometime after 1885 and resided at 184 Live Oak in Dallas.

My next quest was to figure out which house was in the photo with Cammie. Might it be the house at 503 Bryan, the address that she shared with her now-grown children in 1909?

I found the addresses in the Sanborn maps of the era, but they puzzled me. Here are Cammie and two friends (I don't know which one is Cammie) in front of a macadamized street, on the porch of a brick two-story home. Neither map indicates that the house was brick -- whether 503 Bryan or even 184 Live Oak Street, where Cammie lived with B.M. Howard. Instead, both maps show the addresses as being two story, frame homes. Also, Bryan Street was macadamized whereas Live Oak Street was paved with wooden blocks.

Cammie's children lived with her, or rather she with them, at 503 Bryan Street. The "h" means home owner, indicating that Eva Carrick, Cammie's daughter, purchased the home.

So the original research question I posed --- "Is the house in the photo 503 Bryan Street in Dallas?" --- remains unsolved because today, there is no trace of the residences that once were in this area of Dallas at all. 503 Bryan Street (re-numbered to 3027 Bryan Street sometime after 1915) is now an apartment building, and 184 Live Oak has become the parking garage for the downtown Sheraton Hotel Conference Center.

Benjamin Howard and Cammie Thompson Carrick Howard lived with Cammie's children, Eva and Manton, at 184 Live Oak Street in Dallas in a town home. The layout for this home looks like the one in the photo at the beginning of the article, but note that it's indicated to be a frame house (on Sanborn maps, brick buildings were colored in pink). This was a German immigrant neighborhood, as the German Methodist Episcopalian Church (a denomination created for German immigrants in the 1830s) at the corner attests. Note that Live Oak Street is "wood block paved." In Dallas, the pavers were made of pine (1899 Sanborn map, Perry Castenda Library, UT).

By the 1900s, Cammie and Manton lived in a house owned by her daughter, Eva Carrick, at 503 Bryan Street, which had been "macadamized" (an improvement process of fine round gravel on a raised roadbed). Her house stood very near St. Paul's Sanitarium, where Cammie, sick from appendicitis, died in 1915. Across the street from St. Paul's Sanitarium was a saloon and a bowling alley. The Germania Street was renamed to Liberty Street during the Great War, although Adolph Street did not suffer that fate in WWII (1905 Sanborn maps, pieced together, Perry Castenda Library, UT).

But there's more to the story:

Cammie's most famous child was her son, Dr. Manton Carrick, who was born in 1879 in Keatchie (Keachi), De Soto Parish, Louisiana. He developed diabetes that sometimes debilitated him, but with mother and sister's support, he brought sanitation and public health awareness to Texas in a career that spanned 26 years. In 1921, he became the state's first Public Health Officer. He curbed TB and diphtheria epidemics as the Director of Public Health in Dallas in 1927, where he campaigned against the use of "common drinking cups." He even has an entry in the Handbook of Texas! I'm impressed.

Between ca. 1875 and 1930, public health became a major concern in the Progressive era. Men and women reformers, the latter mostly unpaid, brought attention to the public that germs, dirty water, and crowded living conditions spread disease and death (they also campaigned against vice and human trafficking). Progressive women of the Dallas Mothers Council established the Wesley-Rankin House, modeled after Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, to assist Mexican immigrants who had recently fled from the revolutionary war. The immigrants settled along Pearl and Field streets on the northern edge of downtown Dallas. The Wesley-Rankin House Council ensured that the immigrant children could attend the [white] public school, Cumberland Hill, which also was the public school that served the well-to-do children who lived along Ross, Live Oak, and Bryan streets.

A few blocks from this school, which was built around 1880 and still stands, was also St. Paul Sanitarium on Bryan Street. It was a "convalescent" home for white Dallasites, and this is where Cammie Thompson Carrick Howard died of appendicitis in 1915. She was laid to rest in Waxahachie. A special Interurban train ferried mourners to her burial, and later, her children planned to dedicate a fountain at Waxahachie's public library in her memory. I don't believe that was ever completed, though.

With Cammie's background at Mansfield around the Civil War, her experience in dealing with the suicide of her first husband and the chronic illness of her son, living in a neighborhood that included many immigrants, and the high esteem afforded to her upon her death, it makes me wonder how influential she was in her son's zeal to bring sanitation and health to Texas and Dallas. The photograph of Cammie Thompson Carrick Howard, aka "Mrs B M Howard," became a real deep-diving history lesson!

The site of St Paul's Sanitarium on Bryan Street in Dallas is now jumble of single family homes and apartment complexes. This postcard from 1911 belongs to the Texas Medical Association (Portal to Texas History).