CYRUS M. “CHARLIE” WILSON
Father of Sanderson and Terrell County
by Bill Smith
T
he most colorful character to
walk the streets of Sanderson,
Texas, was Charlie Wilson.
Civil War veteran, frontiersman, gam-
bler and wheeler-dealer, he founded
the community to make his fortune.
Stories of his exploits and antics rivaled
even those of the legendary Judge Roy
Bean.
Cyrus M. “Charlie” Wilson was
born in Fleming County, Kentucky, in
June of 1847, but spent his childhood in
Paris, Edgar County, Illinois. Andrew
Wilson, his father and a blacksmith,
was born in Fleming County, KY and
his mother, May, in Fauquier County,
Virginia. He had a brother and three
sisters, and a half-sister from his moth-
er’s first marriage. Paris was and is a
sleepy farming community on the
Illinois-Indiana border, and his father
was a very busy man. Charlie learned
skills in the blacksmith shop that stood
him well in later life.
At the start of the Civil War Charlie
was far too young to enlist. As soon as
he looked old enough, he enlisted as a
Private in Company H of the 64th
Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 1st
Battalion, Yates’ Sharp Shooters, on
February 3, 1864. He was just 16.
He fought in Alabama and
Tennessee, and then joined with
Sherman’s army in its siege of Atlanta.
In Sherman’s drive to the sea, his com-
pany destroyed railroads and engaged
the Confederacy at every opportunity,
participating in many famous battles.
During the conflict he was wounded
twice, once in the left hand and once in
the throat, but the wounds were not
serious. His regiment marched across
the south, finishing the fighting at
Bentonville, NC.
The distinguished 64th suffered a
casualty count of 242 men, over half of
whom died of illness. At war’s end his
regiment participated in the Grand
Review of the Armies in Washington,
D.C., and then returned to Illinois. He
mustered out on July 11, 1865. He had
attained the rank of Corporal. Here his
military record ends.
16
Charlie Wilson and his pugs
After the war Charlie immigrated to
West Texas to begin the life of a fron-
tiersman. It was a wild and forbidding
place. The Comanches and Apaches
were attacking the sparse settlements,
stealing livestock and taking captives.
Outlaws and criminals used the Big
Bend and West Texas as a place to
escape the long arm of the law. It was
into this dangerous environment that
Charlie wholeheartedly cast his lot.
The 1880 Census for Presidio
County, Texas, shows that he was a
bartender in Fort Davis. This was dur-
ing the Buffalo Soldier years at the
Fort, so it is unlikely that he was soldier
at that time, and he does not show up
on the rosters of officers of the period.
Cenizo
Third Quarter 2016
He was a well-known character in West
Texas from the earliest post-war days.
In the early 1880s, the Southern
Pacific Railroad in the west and the
Galveston, Harrisburg and San
Antonio Railroad in the east were
building a new all-weather southern
transcontinental rail route, which was
scheduled to meet at some location in
southern Pecos County. In that period
Pecos County was huge, encompassing
present-day Reeves, Terrell, Val Verde
and Pecos Counties. Through some
means Charlie saw the surveyors’ plans
and was shrewd enough to figure out
that a division point would be located
roughly half-way between San Antonio
and El Paso. Studying the land along
the proposed route, he decided that the
natural bowl in the topography where
present-day Sanderson, Texas, sits was
a natural spot for a town. He filed
claim on all the available land in the
area. Had he hesitated, the railroad
would have gotten that land for free as
an inducement by the state for building
in the area.
The first thing Charlie built was a
tent saloon to serve the thirsty 3,000-
man rail crews when they got to town.
This won him the enmity of the
Southern Pacific Railroad. For the
next 30 years they waged an ongoing
feud in which he usually gained the
upper hand. Much to the chagrin of
the railroad hierarchy, he delighted in
finding ways to outsmart the corpora-
tion.
Tales of his exploits with the railroad
were legendary in the small, growing
community. When the railroad arrived
they found that they had to purchase
property from him on which to build
the depot, crew bunkhouse and other
company buildings. On top of that, he
(and the whole town) often swiped
wood, coal and water from the rail-
road’s huge stockpile. To control theft,
the railroad banned building on the
south side of the tracks and forced the
people to relocate to the north.
And then there were the property
line disputes. The railroad surveyed
their property by the depot and found
that Charlie’s Cottage Bar Saloon was
sitting partially on railroad property.
Charlie didn’t dispute the fact, but
when they demanded he close his
saloon, he got his own surveyors and
found that the last two stalls of the
roundhouse sat on his property. He
proceeded to close the Cottage Bar and
move his operations to the roundhouse.
He stood his ground until top officials
with the railroad came to make a deal,
allowing him to retain his Cottage Bar
Saloon in exchange for their round-
house stalls.
Then there was the time that Roy
Bean moved to town to open a compet-
ing saloon. In the night Charlie sent