The community known as Mukewater, about 4 miles west of Bangs, can’t exactly be described as a ghost town, as it was never much more than a loosely defined neighborhood. Nevertheless, Mukewater had its own school, church and at least one general store. According to newspaper accounts, there was a baseball team from Mukewater (which once beat the Bangs Kid Nine team in 1908–apparently quite an accomplishment as Bangs was known for its great baseball). Mukewater boasted a quilting club, a sort of home economics club and the occasional political rally as well. .

Mukewater was host to the Brown County Singing Convention’s semi-annual session in 1921, where ‘The Mukewater people “…did themselves proud and furnished entertainment for every person who came.” The event hosted 1,500 people. In the early 1900s, there was a reporter for the Brownwood Bulletin called “The Mukewater Scribe” who sent in regular updates to the paper regarding community activities and events, mostly weather and farm reports. If it seems not much happened in Mukewater, there are a few stories I was able to find, the first involving a local ‘madman’ who was terrorizing the community.

Written in dramatic prose, the story “Maniac Attacks Brown Co Man”, found in Ballinger’s Banner-Leader, published in April 1912 describes this disturbing event. “A crazy man is terrorizing the citizens of the Mukewater community several miles west of Bangs and near the Coleman county line, and an organized posse of armed men have scoured that section in an effort to capture him,”

“Tuesday morning Homer Mosier, a well known citizen of that section of Brown County, was painting his buggy near the carriage house when he was suddenly grabbed from behind and hurled to the ground. Over him stood a tall figure garbed in a white robe. This man’s face showed a sickly sort of pallor, his hair was tangled in a mat on his head, a beard of several day growth on his features and he was wild eyed with the look of a madman.”

“Several days prior to this, a party of little school children were badly frightened when they saw a ghostly approaching figure among a clump of trees. Wednesday, W. C. and E. L. Riordan of the Mukewater neighborhood visited Brownwood and brought the first details of the crazy man’s actions in this city, although Sheriff Denman had earlier proceeded to the scene of the man’s operations.That whole section of the county is wrought up over the occurrences, and every effort is being made to capture the man who is supposed to be a resident of Coleman County,’ the story concluded. There is not, to my knowledge, any followup to this creepy report.

On a lighter, but still slightly strange note, is the tale of a young Mukewater couple who eloped, apparently because they were considered too young to wed. “The Bangs Enterprise reports the marriage of Leslie Riordan to Miss Myrtle Peyton in the Mukewater community, which occurred on December 19, but the marriage was kept a secret for several days before it was made known to the parents of the couple. The unusual part of the romance is that the bride and groom were pupils in the Mukewater school, their ages being respectively 15 and 17. Just school children. According to the Enterprise, Dr. Atchison married the couple in the road and that after the bride’s father found out their secret, he sent for the groom to come and get his wife. They have taken up married life in the usual way and are receiving the good wishes of friends and neighbors,’ related The Pioneer Exponent, in January 1910.

While the Riordans were apparently married in the road, the church must have been close by. The location of Mukewater Baptist Church was not something I could discover, although Danny Bowden in Abilene thinks there was an old building at the Mukewater Cemetery, and I think it’s possible that was the church. Bowden said that building might have been a school. Perhaps the church and school were one and the same structure? There were several schools called Mukewater, as the building was moved several times. Bowden recalled one of the Mukewater schools was on his grandparent’s property. “I understand the original school building was moved between farms before the final building by the cemetery. At one time, I understand, it was on my great-grandfather’s farm at what was called “Cross Roads.”

It seems no one knows how Mukewater got its start, but Danny Marney of Bangs says its decline happened when the train depot was put where the now town of Bangs is. Marney has more to tell about Mukewater, which I will share with you another time.

We don’t know if they ever caught the pitiable local madman that was terrorizing the locale, or if Riordan and his child bride had a successful marriage. It seems all there is left of the original community is the Mukewater Cemetery. I wandered around out there for a bit. There is a scattering of old bricks and masonry that looks like it was probably a building, perhaps the very schoolhouse where our runaway couple hatched their elopement plans. I didn’t think to look and see if they are buried at the cemetery. While today, it is a quiet spot, I bet if the graves there could talk, we’d have a lot more stories to tell about the little community of Mukewater.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com. Comments regarding her columns can be emailed to [email protected].