On the age of seventeen, Cal Polk joined lawman Pat Garrett’s posse, which was scorching on the path of Billy the Child within the winter of 1880. He instructed the story in a manuscript held on the Panhandle-Plains Historic Museum, in Canyon. “Pat, why don’t you come up like a person and provides us a good combat,” he remembered Billy the Child calling out whereas holed up in a stone shack in Stinking Springs, New Mexico, earlier than his eventual give up and arrest. Polk returned to working with cattle on the LX Ranch, within the Texas Panhandle, after the search, and he ultimately returned to Prairie Lea, in his native Caldwell County, to function constable and deputy sheriff. In 1897, Polk opened a meat market in downtown Lockhart, which occurred to be the linchpin of two of the city’s most distinguished barbecue households: the Kreuzes and the Swearingens.
Two years in the past, I tried to trace Southside Market’s history, because it claimed it had been in operation since 1886 in Elgin, which might have made it the oldest barbecue joint nonetheless in operation in Texas. When trying into this assertion, I gave a number of leeway to what counts as “oldest barbecue joint,” going off the free definition of a retail meat market that, by means of a collection of identify and possession modifications—no matter relocations—ultimately turned a barbecue joint that also exists in the present day. Though I chased the data of the assorted buildings, and much more data of possession modifications, I may solely date Southside’s genesis to 1895. In terms of my analysis on Kreuz Market, the archives appear to put out a path that begins somewhat earlier.
I first noticed the Swearingen household identify a decade in the past, in a June 12, 1930, article within the Lockhart Publish-Register in regards to the historical past of Kreuz Market. “The bottom which the enterprise occupies has been a meat market website 55 years, ever for the reason that late Jesse Swearingen opened a market in 1875,” the article learn. It continued, stating that, “S. B. Swearingen, son of Jesse Swearingen was maybe the primary man in Lockhart to start the common sale of barbecued meats in Lockhart.” Once I first learn this, it piqued my curiosity, however I couldn’t discover any further data to confirm the declare. I put my restricted analysis apart till earlier this yr, after I bought an electronic mail from Phil Norman, the great-great-grandson of Jesse Swearingen, who had some household data and images to share. Fortunately, the digital archive of Lockhart’s historic newspapers had additionally improved, making my search extra fruitful.
Norman lives in San Antonio however grew up in Lockhart. His delivery, in Lockhart’s centennial yr as one of many “well-known Norman triplets,” was native headline information in 1948. His great-great-grandfather Jesse Swearingen, a Missouri native, had arrived on the town a century earlier, in 1848. The 1870 and 1880 censuses listed his occupation as butcher, however the first point out of his meat market within the native newspapers (Lockhart had a number of) was in November 1886, within the Lockhart Information Echo. “Mr. Jesse Swearingen is enlarging his meat market and he’ll proceed to maintain a full provide of the choicest contemporary meats,” the article learn, including that Jesse’s son, Samuel Blackstone Swearingen, who glided by Tobe, was constructing a brand-new retailer adjoining his father’s meat market. Later ads would place each companies alongside what’s now San Antonio Avenue on the north facet of the Caldwell County courthouse.
Tobe had a nomadic way of life earlier than working the shop. His obituary mentions that “in early manhood he engaged in farming and the cattle enterprise, going plenty of occasions up the path with herds.” The well-known Chisholm Path ran by means of Lockhart, and Tobe joined cattle drives that went as much as the railroads in Kansas. After settling down again in Lockhart, he adopted in his father’s entrepreneurial footsteps.
A December 1892 advert was the final point out I may discover of Jesse Swearingen’s meat market, nonetheless on the north facet of the sq., with “contemporary meats readily available always.” Six weeks later, in 1893, Tobe turned a companion within the Swearingen and Mohle Market, on the southeast nook of the sq.. The Lockhart Register used some odd wording to reward the brand new market, writing, “This market is the oldest on the town, is well-known and it’s pointless to say something of their favor.”
Referencing the Sanborn insurance coverage maps from the late nineteenth century, there was just one meat market on block fourteen, which sits southeast of the sq. in Lockhart. It was located in the midst of the block alongside what was then Gonzales Avenue and is now South Commerce Avenue, in the identical location the place Kreuz Market first opened and the place Smitty’s Market operates in the present day. A constructing denoted as a meat market on this similar lot is on each Sanborn map after that, and the 1929 map even notes a “barbecue kitchen” behind the constructing.
Tobe closed his market someday earlier than November 1897, which is when the aforementioned Cal Polk marketed his new meat market, “on the previous Swearingen market on Gonzales avenue,” within the Lockhart Information Echo. Polk had been cowboy and a lawman most of his life, and his time working a meat market was short-lived. In 1898, he and his spouse, Annie, moved north of the Crimson River to the city of Holdenville, within the Creek Nation in present-day Oklahoma, the place he served because the city marshal. Polk died after by accident taking pictures himself within the head whereas cleansing his revolver in 1904.
Again in Lockhart, Charles Kreuz introduced within the Lockhart Register in Could 1900 that he was taking sole possession of a meat market he owned with a Mr. Schlather however nonetheless had “a full line of the perfect contemporary meats.” A location wasn’t famous, although later that yr, Kreuz bought the land the place Polk’s market had sat; he wrote within the Register in August that he had “moved my market within the new constructing one door south of my previous stand for a number of days through the building of my new market constructing.”
Combing by means of historic deed data on the Caldwell County Clerk, I discovered that Kreuz bought lot two of block fourteen on August 20, 1900, from Jonathan Nix, an area lawyer. Although I searched throughout a number of visits to the clerk’s workplace, I couldn’t find Nix’s deed from when he bought the lot. The Swearingens offered tons one, 4, and 5 of that block, however I couldn’t discover a file of them buying or promoting lot two. The direct possession connection from Swearingen to Kreuz I used to be in search of by no means materialized.
Barbecue boomed in Lockhart within the decade after Kreuz Market opened. Poth’s Meat Market, on the north facet of the sq., was the primary to promote “barbecued meats and sausage readily available all occasions,” in 1901. “Wootton & Chesser are fixing up an consuming home subsequent to their market, principally for the aim of serving barbecue and sausage,” the Lockhart Weekly Publish wrote in 1904. The identical paper known as Kreuz’s retailer a “mannequin market” later that yr, when the proprietor put in three electrical followers, an electrical sausage mill, and a marble slab counter. Kreuz’s first advert asking locals to “attempt a few of our barbecued meats and sausages” got here out in 1906. The next yr, Stubbs & Blackwell supplied barbecue and sausage, and a yr after that, C. S. Lay opened the fanciest new joint on the town. “Every part from the barbecue pit to the constructing by which he’s positioned is new and clear,” reported the Lockhart Publish.
Charles Kreuz offered the market to his sons in 1911, and they’d increase the enterprise as the opposite native markets closed. “Kreuz Brothers have put in of their meat market a fridge counter with the most recent appointments for the sanitary show and preservation of meats,” the Lockhart Publish-Register reported in 1921. Three years later, the brothers bought the lot on the east facet of the market, giving them entry to the facet that didn’t face the sq.. The Lockhart Register rejoiced, writing that Kreuz Market would now stop “the ugly means of crossing the pavement in entrance of the market with carcasses of slaughtered animals.”
Kreuz Market bought a dose of nationwide fame in 1926, when Henry Ford’s weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Impartial, printed an in depth profile of this barbecue institution with its unusual consuming customs. “Within the Kreuz market in Lockhart, butcher knives are furnished to chop the meat with and are chained to the tables that they might not be carried away,” the article learn. It additionally contained an outline of the massive brick barbecue ovens and famous that “beef, mutton, pork and sausages are roasted within the ovens and offered scorching to be eaten on the tables or benches close to at hand or taken house.” Kreuz Market moved into a brand new constructing a number of blocks north in 1999, although the remnants of these chains can nonetheless be discovered inside Smitty’s Market, which is housed in the identical constructing the place Kreuz Market resided.
So, is Kreuz Market the oldest barbecue joint in Texas, in keeping with my definition? The documented historical past that leads again to its founding is clearer than the circuitous path that results in Southside Market’s. I can hint the lineage of meat markets on the plot of land the place Kreuz Market was based again to 1893, when the Swearingen and Mohle Market opened. That’s two years sooner than the primary documented thread of Southside’s historical past as a retail market.
The issue with figuring out which is the older barbecue joint is that I can’t actually nail down when both began serving barbecue. There’s an commercial for Kreuz’s barbecue from 1906, which already marks the enterprise as promoting barbecue earlier than the primary point out of Southside doing the identical, in 1917. However I nonetheless assume the query of the oldest barbecue joint in Texas is up for debate.
The excellent news is that, regardless of which of those two barbecue joints has been round longer, they will each hint their lineages to the nineteenth century. I don’t know one other state that may boast that.