“Footprints of Fayette”

The Gotcher Trace: 1831-1845

It was the Summer of ’59, and my brothers and I were staying with our grandparents, helping to bring in a late-season cotton crop. We were near the tiny community of Pin Oak, just across the Fayette/Bastrop County line. After a long day in the field, we were standing on a neighbor’s driveway where my Grandfather Andy was telling a story.

Facing south, toward a dry Spaulding Branch, he pointed southeast to a nearby tree-covered hill. “There is where the old Spaulding homestead was located--where as boys, my brother Robert and I would play among the fallen cedar logs,” he said. “You could still see where the gun ports were hand-cut into the old logs.”