This week’s article is taken for a book titled “Legends of the Pineys” written by Joseph F. Combs in 1965.

Preface: There is a difference between a tale and a legend, though they are closely related. A legend is an unverifiable story hand down from generation to generation and many times accepted as historical. A tale is a story purporting to tell or relate the facts about some event that is either real or imaginary.

Legends are supposed to reflect the truth of events as nearly as possible and are shared by the elderly people who have the most information.

Tales that are included are also from another generation but whether brought down because they are good gossip material or whether they are stories with a background of truth, cannot be established. What is shared in the book reflects the thinking and ways of early settlers and tells of some of their problems and how they tried to solve them.

The Music Box

A very unusual thing occurred at the exact moment of the death of famous minister of the gospel in east Texas.  The story was told to me by my grandfather, Jesse B. Beck, who lived in Shelby County area from 1872, until his death in 1912.

He said the Reverend William C. Crawford (signer of the Declaration of Independence for, in east Texas, which later took on the name of Shelbyville. Soon after his arrival in the regions in 1837, he came in direct contact with murderers, robbers and outlaws of every description. It was his ability to convince them he was interested in their welfare, and had not come as their judge, that won their respect and love.

The Reverend Crawford on one or more occasions is said to have defended criminals who were being hastily tried or executed without the right of counsel. Both the religiously inclined, and the lawless had come to love him as one who was, in truth, a good man.

Throughout his long and useful life he thought only of the other person, and his obligation to the helpless and erring men of the region. He was always ready to help where help was needed, and no questions as to station n life were ever asked. He fell upon his knees at the bedside of the dying thief, or robber, and often walked with condemned criminals on their last few steps to the scaffold.

The Reverend Crawford left east Texas, and went to Camp County, and later to Erath County, where he continued his mission of mercy. And when, in 1895, the time came to face the grim reaper himself. The church members stood beside the non-church members as both tried to offer comfort, and all felt a terrible loss was about to come upon the community. The Reverend Crawford was a great lover of music, and he was especiallyand he was especially fond of the old religious hymns.  He owned a music box, which was a little apparatus containing a mechanism for producing soft, pleasant sounds. It had a steel plate on which brass reeds were attached tuned to scale. These reeds were sounded by small pins fastened properly in the surface of a revolving cylinder.

The cylinders made up of hymns of various kinds were interchangeable and the mechanism was powered by a spring like that of a large clock. The music box was not in running condition. Something had happened to the spring-powered motor several months before the illness of the minister. It sat on the mantel piece in the room where he lay dying.

At he moment the attending physician announced that the Reverend Crawford was dead the music box suddenly began to play “Nearer My God To Thee.” It was the last cylinder the minister had tried to play on the instrument and now it suddenly came alive to play softly and sweety a hymn that all who were present thought very appropriate at that sad hour.