If you were a youngster living in Spearman, Texas, Morse, Texas, or Gruver, Texas, in the 1960’s, you might have remembered the “Old Tyler Place” as haunted.
But if you were an older person, he or she would tell you a different story. In a country rich in historical lore, the “Old Tyler Place” holds an imminence that few houses ever attain.
Located in a vast grassland on the Palo Duro Creek, south of Gruver, the Tyler home was one of the area’s first stone buildings. The Victorian mansion was built in 1891, at a time when the area’s homes were mostly sod dug-outs or one room frame shacks.
With solid rock walls and a high gabled roof, the two-storied mansion was an impressive sight to early day cowboys and settlers.
Built in a land and time when reinforcing iron was difficult to acquire, gothic arches were of necessity and were used above each window and door.
The house had a floor plan that is impressive by standards 129 years later. It had seven bedrooms, a parlor, a dining room, kitchen, and a full basement.
The owner, Judge Stanley Cushing Tyler, imported a stone mason and a carpenter from Dodge City, KS. It took the craftsman and eight cowboys a full year to complete the job.
The stone was cut with a large cross-cut saw and hauled about 3 miles from the quarry to the building site. The nails, window glass, hardware, and lumber were hauled from Dodge City, by covered wagons. Large cottonwood logs, brought from the Canadian River by teams, were placed in the basement for support.
The furnishings, also brought from Dodge City by team, had originally come from the East. Mrs. Tyler had an ornate marble-topped table that was the only one of its kind for hundreds of miles.
A few years after the house was built, the Judge traded a cowpony for a huge slate-topped pool table that more than impressed his ranch hands. Old timers fail to recall how the Judge moved the pool table to the ranch, but it must have taken several teams.
Life in the Tyler Mansion was different from modern living standards, particularly during winter. When the north wind whistled across the bare Texas prairie and piled boot-high snow against the house, the four Tyler children slept in the unheated upstairs. O.S. Tyler, Stanley Cushing Tyler’s son, now deceased, remarked that when a bad blizzard hit, it sure got cold upstairs. The downstairs was heated by stoves and two fireplaces.
In the early years that the family occupied the house, all food, with the exception of meat, had to be hauled from Dodge City.
O.S. Tyler remembered that the family always had fresh beef, and that his dad shot a lot of antelope and prairie chicken. The family also ate red beans and sowbelly the throughout the years. O.S. Tyler also remembered that for the most part this was an enjoyable life. The Tylers had many parties and dances in their home. The neighbors would come from miles around bringing extra food and blankets for their children to sleep in the buggies.
Game was plentiful and provided both sport and food for the Tyler family. Jos Arnold, county clerk, paid Judge Tyler a bounty for several dozen “prairie dog scalps” in April of 1892. It must have been a hard winter.
Tyler settled on his Gruver ranch in 1877, moving here from Lowell, MA. His physician told him he had “consumption”, and he needed to find a high, dry climate. Tyler was educated at Harvard College and when Hansford County organized, he served as one of the first county judges.
Upon his arrival he bought four sections of land from the state for $1.00 an acre and another four sections from a man named Myers for an undisclosed sum. He also leased 100 sections of grassland from the state which he kept until1900 when homesteaders settled the area.
The 100 sections were on the Coldwater Creek, west of the present town of Gruver. It was completely fenced and was an excellent pasture.
The first improvements Tyler built on the Palo Duro were a small two-room sod house, a pole barn, and corrals. Because rock was easier to find than wood, a major portion of the corrals were made of rock. The family lived in the sod house until their stone mansion was finished. O.S. Tyler and his sister, Fanny, were both born there.
Tyler registered his first cattle brand, VZ bar, in 1879. It was later inset on the wall of his new house.
Tyler had 300 acres of alfalfa on the creek bottoms near the sod house. In a good year, five of six cuttings of hay could be taken from the plot. The hay was carefully stored and used to feed the cattle during the winter storms.
Ghost stories on the great house probably originated with an incident in the winter of 1905 or 1906. While the family was away for the winter, two young cowboys, Milo Capel and Art Easterlin, cared for the ranch. On dreary winter days, they dreamed up ways of entertaining themselves and built several noise-making contraptions of buckets and chains. When a visitor came to spend the night, they would rattle the chains and make weird noises frightening the guest. On one occasion they dressed a friend in a mask and sheet to imitate a ghost.
Historians have been interested in the famous house. Wiley G. Price, now deceased, from Borger, Texas, was a student of history. His hobby was the building of minature historic homes in the area. He built a model of the Tyler home. Before he took on that project, he studied old photographs, and a painting by Gwenfred Lackey, now deceased, of Spearman, Texas. Wiley also conferred with the Hart family who purchased the Tyler Ranch property in 1948. The Tyler House model is now housed in the Hutchinson County Historical Museum in Borger, Texas. Clay Renick, the curator there knows a lot of history about the Tyler Mansion and has shared his knowledge with many Tyler descendants.
Edna Woodland, from White Deer, Texas, had great memories of the Tyler Place and thought it should have been restored and made into an historical site. Stinson Gibnor, from Spearman, Texas, has been working with the Hansford County Library trying to preserve pieces of history of this area. One project was to digitalize historical newspapers which are now online as part of the Southwest Collection Archives at Texas Tech. One of his interests was to research the Tyler Family history.
Tyler descendants would be interested in knowing if there are other people that have memories of the Tyler Mansion. Please call or text Angie Hoover at 806-662-3876, or send an email to Angie79065@gmail.com. Thank you for your help.
Some of the Tyler descendants include: Tyler Latham, Guymon, Okla., Owen Tyler, Granbury, Texas, Byron Tyler, Lindale, Texas, Leonene Gribble, Guymon, Okla., Stan Tyler, Austin, Texas, Joyce Field, Guymon, Okla., Mirna Hale, Guymon, Okla., Lynda Gibson, Guymon, Okla., Angie Hoover, Pampa, Texas, Louis Latham, Guymon, Okla., Beth Fountain, Norman, Okla., Carol Lee Hopson, Ft. Collins, CO, Roger Gribble, Watonga, Okla. and Deborah Peppers, Brenham, Texas.
