The Age: How the Sherman Family shaped Lake Charlotte

By Marie Hughes
Director, Chambers County Museum at Wallisville

Nestled near the cypress break just a couple miles north of the Chambers County Museum on Interstate 10 lies a stretch of land known to many as the Sherman settlement. The Presidio San Agustin de Ahumada and the Mission Nuestra Senora de la Luz once dominated the area on the southeast corner of Lake Miller, near this quiet and inconspicuous community. The mission, although an abject failure, was founded in 1756 to guard against French encroachment and minister to the El Orcoquisac Indian tribe in hopes of converting them to Christianity. However, due to unbearable living conditions, the outpost was abandoned just 15years later.

The story of this land continues in 1833 when Dr. Nicholas Labadie purchased a plantation in the area and moved his young bride of two years there. He named Lake Charlotte after his mother, Charlotte Barthe Labadie. Dr. Labadie ceased to own the plantation before 1850, and in 1903, Edward Haven Sherman, son of Jacob Haven Jr. and Sarah Summers, purchased the land. This would become the foundation for generations of the Sherman family to follow.

“Jacob Sherman, Jr. came here from Missouri in 1853, probably by covered wagon, and settled around Lake Charlotte,” said Jesse Romaine “Chipper” Sherman of Wallisville. He added, “Jacob Sherman, Sr. was going to come, but died in Missouri before he could make the trip.”

The loss of Jacob Sr. in 1850 marked a turning point, but Jacob Jr. forged ahead, marrying Sarah Magdalene Summers in St. Louis, Missouri. They arrived in Wallisville the same year, just in time for the birth of their first son, Sidney Scott Sherman. Together, they would have six children. Tragically, Sarah died at the young age of 39, just a few short months before her youngest son, Eddie Haven Sherman, turned 5. Eddie, who would go on to leave his own mark on the area, was Chipper’s great-grandfather.

“They burned charcoal for a living, selling it to folks to heat their homes, and were big timber people,” Chipper explained. The remote nature of the settlement meant that traveling for supplies was a daunting task. “Back then, travel was done on horseback or by wagon. They went to Liberty when they could for supplies, as Anahuac was still hard to get to at the time. Going to Anahuac required crossing Turtle Bayou by ferry. Even going to Liberty was tough during rainy periods, as it was just a dirt road and was so low near the river bottom that it would just be a muddy mess.”

The poor condition of the roads made alternative transportation essential. Many Sherman men turned to the waterways for trade and travel, using boats to bypass the impassable land routes. The 1860 census listed Edward Haven Sr.’s occupation as a sailor—a logical trade for a family selling charcoal and navigating the riverways to Galveston.

In fact, seafaring was in the Sherman blood.

“Many of the Sherman men were ship captains. In 1922, Captain Ezra Sherman, cousin of Chipper’s grandfather, Elder Haven Sherman, piloted the first ship up the Houston Ship Channel at night without a tugboat,” said Chipper.

Ezra’s history with sailing ran deep. He first set foot on a ship at the age of 7 in 1895, traveling on a charcoal schooner from Chambers County to Galveston. This legacy was carried forward by his grandfather, Leverett R. Sherman, and Ezra’s older brother, Hugh—both accomplished captains in their own right.

It was around this time that another chapter in the Sherman family’s history was written—one filled with mystery and treasure.

“Jacob Sherman and his son Edward would use a mule team to pull the cypress logs out of the swamp and float them down the Trinity to the sawmill in Wallisville,” Chipper shared. “They were pulling logs out of the bottoms here in Lake Miller in 1883 when they snagged something, and it turned out to be a ship. Now they didn’t know if it was Jean Lafitte’s ship or not,” he clarified.

This unexpected find set off a series of legends and speculations.

“Jacob and his son Eddie staked out the ship, marking the location by driving a large iron spike into an oak tree. Eddie showed his son, who is my grandpa Elder Haven, Violet Clark, and others where it was, and that’s how the story of Jean Lafitte’s ship in Lake Miller got started,” Chipper said.

The legend grew over time. Chipper continued, “I never saw it, but daddy did. Some recall seeing the mast, but daddy told me there was an old steamboat in there, and its mast was still visible when he was a young man, so they are probably confusing the steamboat with the ship my great grandpa snagged.”

With the passage of time, the landscape changed, and the lake gradually receded.

“It was on the northwest corner of Lake Miller, and it is covered up by 10 ½-15 feet of dry land today. The lake would have to come up quite a bit to put it underwater again,” Chipper said.

Efforts to recover the ship were met with resistance.

“G.C. Chambliss and some others had plans to shore the thing up, pump it out, and raise it, but the government brought all that to a halt,” Chipper said.

In the book The Treasures of Galveston Bay by Carroll Lewis, there is an account from 1949 when Molly Clark and her brother, Eddie Haven Sherman, contacted B.J. Krigar and Leo T. Behne, who had a metal detector for locating buried treasure. After a two-month search, they found the ship, which had sunk eight feet into the mud of Lake Miller. The outline of the ship measured approximately 75 feet long by 35 feet wide, roughly matching the measurements of Lafitte’s flagship, The Pride. Stories of five bearskins full of gold and a 43,000-word manuscript journaling Lafitte’s exploits circulated, but the State of Texas halted any further exploration.

Even in more recent times, the lure of treasure has drawn fortune seekers to the area.

“A friend of Donald Lancon, my brother-in-law, had a dredge and was dredging for a pipeline somewhere in the neighborhood of 1965,” Chipper shared. “When he was going across Old and Lost Rivers, the dredge got hung up, and they had to pull it out. When they were cleaning it out, they ran across gold coins—either 323 or 328 gold coins, I cannot remember exactly, but 328 sticks in my mind.”

Three hundred and twenty-eight coins had to have weighed quite a bit and today would probably be worth over a million dollars. Though they tried to retrace their steps, the exact location was lost. The friend, along with the coins, disappeared shortly after the discovery.

This settlement, steeped in history and mystery, was connected to the Trinity River through what was known as Lake Pass, in Liberty County, though locals referred to it as Markum Pass.

“If you go up the Trinity River there was a pass that took you to the mouth of Lake Charlotte, on the south side, just above Lake Miller.  Everyone called it Lake Pass but it actually had a name.  Pop referred to it as Markum Pass.  On the East side of Lake Charlotte over to 563 was the Sherman settlement.  We used to walk over to the lakes, and it was nothing but swamp, we called it the cypress break for obvious reasons.  Just above Lake Charlotte, in Liberty County, is another lake that was cut in half when they built the Sulphur plant.  They made a cut from the Trinity River to the Sulphur Plant so barges could access it.  Fact of the matter is, some of the barges that blew up Texas City came from the Texas Sulphur Plant,” he said.

Today, the legacy of the Sherman settlement endures—its stories intertwined with the landscape and its hidden treasures resting beneath layers of time and soil.

“Edward Haven Sherman married Nellie Shelton, and together they had 9 children. Daddy called Nellie ‘Old Mamma.’ I believe Aunt Winnie was their oldest child, and my grandpa, Elder Haven Sr., was the second oldest. Edward Haven Sherman is buried in the Sherman Cemetery on Lake Charlotte Road,” noted Chipper.

This corner of Chambers County was more than just land; it was the Sherman family’s legacy.

“This was grandpa’s neck of the woods. He knew Wallisville backwards and forwards,” Chipper exclaimed proudly.

Elder Haven married Clara Munger, and together they had four boys. Chipper’s father, Romaine, was the second oldest. The family’s land holdings were once vast.

“At one time, Pappa had about 800 to 1,000 acres of land situated in the N. D. Labadie survey and the James Allen survey. He sold some of it to make some money. They also kept cattle on their land where the Gulf Sulphur Company used to be. They branded and ear-marked their stock—our brand number was 22T. They fed the family from their beef stock and sold cattle to make money. There was no industrial revolution down here yet, so you had to have a noggin that knew how to make money,” Chipper declared.

When times were tough, creativity and resourcefulness kept the family afloat.

“Back when things were a little lean, my grandpa, also known as Pop or Pappa (Elder Haven Sr.), had a mail boat. He would leave Lake Charlotte with the mail or cargo—whatever needed to be transported—and travel down to Smith Point. Joe Nelson and his father, Cornelius, would meet him at the point with mail or cargo they needed transported to Galveston. When he returned from Galveston, he would bring back mail and merchandise people asked him to pick up.”

It was a lifeline of sorts, a connection to the wider world beyond the murky waters and dense forests of the area.

One day, Chipper recalled, he asked his grandfather a question that had nagged him for years.

“I asked my pappa, ‘What fool got out there and cut those cypress trees off up there seven feet in the air?’ He said, ‘Well, the fool’s name is Elder Haven Sherman.’ I asked him why he did that, and he told me that was the best way to get them out.” The family made use of the cyclical nature of the lake levels. “Most of the trees they cut were just below the house in the bottoms, and they would wait for the water to come up. When it did, they would cut the trees down and float them out to the sawmill. During hurricanes like Carla, the water level would rise between 15 and 16 feet in Lake Charlotte, and when they let the water out of the dam just recently, it raised it about 20 feet,” Chipper said.

The family’s preference for cypress was no accident.

“Most of the trees they cut were cypress ‘cause that’s what grew there. Most of the old homes in this area were built with cypress boards,” Chipper explained. The durability of cypress is legendary, a fact underscored by Chipper’s chuckle. “Some of those slabs of cypress made boards three feet wide. I’m 76, and the stumps are still back there, and they were there when my grandpa was a boy. So, I think cypress gives a pretty good show of just how long it lasts.”

As the years passed and the family grew, timber became a major enterprise.

“My grandpa, Elder Haven Sr., when he got old enough, started into the timber business. Fact of the matter,” Chipper continued, “that Doyle Scribner measuring stick I gave you to display here at the museum was his. Pop used to go to different places and assay their timber to calculate how much they had, how much they could get for it, so forth and so on. He could calculate how many board feet were in each tree by using the Doyle Scribner scale. Not only did he assay the timber, he also cut timber to sell. I imagine Jacob Sherman had a lot to do with the logs being sent to the Cummings Sawmill in Wallisville.”

Family, history, and resilience are woven into every anecdote, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

“Fat Grandma, my mother’s mom, was married to A. B. Cross. She divorced him, and he would not give her any alimony or any form of support. A.B Jr. lied about his age and went into the army. He was about three years older than momma. Momma and Aunt Benny Leah were put in a children’s home. The children’s home people, Mr. and Mrs. Moore, were super Christian people. They ran a tight ship. Momma had to learn scripture every morning before she went to school. She was thirteen at the time and had to make sure the other children learned their scripture and could cite it to Mr. and Mrs. Moore.”

The hardships faced by previous generations shaped the family’s character and work ethic.

“She stayed in the children’s home for about three and a half years,” Chipper shared. “Grandma was quite a seamstress; she did all of the fur work and alterations for The White House department store in Beaumont. She could do anything with a piece of cloth,” he proclaimed, pride shining through his voice.

His parents, Romaine Sherman and Bernice Cross, married Sept. 21, 1940, and together they had six children: Judy, Sibbie, Janet, Chipper, KK, and Leslie.  Although, both parents instilled the love of God and taught their children the importance of leaning on Jesus Christ as our Savior, Bernice was the driving force.  Her desire to keep her children close and Godly was due to the experiences she had faced in life as a child.  She was the glue that cemented the family together.

“Every year, we’d have a big family gathering at Lake Charlotte with all the families—the Shermans, the Worthys, the Welches, the Mungers—the whole kit and kaboodle, and there was a bunch of them. We lived in the Eminence Community, which was made up of the areas of Eminence, Wallisville, and Lake Charlotte. Our home was at Lake Charlotte, which was not very far, and we went to church at Eminence. About 1938 or ’39, my dad went to work for Standard Coffee Company out of New Orleans, La. He stayed with them for 19 years. His territory included everything between Longview, Texas, and Brownsville. He got to be a ‘big dog’ in the company with salesmen working under him. They sold more than just coffee; they sold large bottles of vanilla extract and things like that,” he said.

Chipper’s memories of a tightly-knit community colored every anecdote, tinged with nostalgia for a simpler time.

“I loved growing up in our community. The day I would love to have back was when we visited folks back then—on Sunday, everybody had a cake baked. We always had coffee. There was V.R. McManus and his kids, Charlotte and the Mungers, and so forth, and we might meet down at J.C.’s. It was just laid back. Fact of the matter, Interstate 10 didn’t even exist. Wallisville had everything we needed back then. In fact, most of our grocery shopping we did with Edwin Speights. The post office was right there on the river in Wallisville; Mrs. Riggins used to run it. Mr. Edwin Speights had a pretty good-sized grocery store. You could get the coldest drinks there. He’d get ice from Anahuac every morning and put it in those chests out front, and I tell you what, I loved Nesbitt orange, and he had some of the coldest that there was,” Chipper said, closing his eyes as he savored the memory.

“We had some great times there. Like I said, Wallisville was so laid back. There was an old man that lived in Wallisville along the edge of the river. His name was Rufe Dutton. The men used to all meet up there at Edwin Speights’ store, and Rufe was one of those who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut—a good man, just didn’t know when to be quiet,” Chipper chuckled. “They were sitting up there one day, and Rufe said, ‘Anyone who doesn’t vote the way I do is a [expletive] fool.’ Everybody looked at him, and someone raised their eyebrow and said, ‘Just what exactly do you mean by that, Rufe?’ Rufe said, ‘Well, I vote like I [expletive] well please, and I suggest you do the same thing.’ There were some characters back then.”

His stories meandered from house to house, as if following a path well-trodden by childhood feet.

“Mrs. Dunman lived down the road from here. There probably wasn’t a better baker in Chambers County at that time than her. That lady knew how to bake. When we would go to her house on Halloween, she would always give us some home-baked goods—cookies, muffins, and things like that. Man, we loved it. She’d have a little basket for each one who went by there,” he said.

Reflecting on the fifties, he grinned and shared more about the community’s interactions.

“We used to ride our bicycles up and down Interstate 10 when they were building it and try and race those trucks. Some of them would mess with us—they’d put ’em in gear, and, shoot, we couldn’t keep up with them for nothing. We’d get up on top of the Trinity River bridge before they finished the approaches. Robert Thomas and myself would get on top and, phew,” he gestured with his hand, “down we’d go. That was fun.”

The family’s legacy extended beyond gatherings and anecdotes.

“In October of 1958, Trinity Valley Lumber Company in Anahuac decided they were going to go out of business, Daddy and his older brother, Arthur, formed the corporation of Sherman Brothers Lumber Company at that time.  Daddy did a lot of building on the side, building homes but mostly commercial work when he could get it.  Where the row of buildings used to be going to the courthouse which included Million Brothers, Vogt’s, and so forth, that’s where the post office was.  Mrs. Nelda Miles’ Dar-Len Shop was there for a while, There was a furniture store there and at one time there was a Crocker’s Jewelry Store.  between there and the post office is where the drug store was.  On the end, we built the Outfitters,” he said.

“The Quonset hut at the lumber yard was built in 1946 or ’48, Goonie Willcox owned it and sold it to daddy in ’58 when we went into business.   We started adding property until we reached from the Quonset hut to Main and south to where the bail bonds offices were.  That was ours until 2016 when I sold it and you see how much property it covers now.   After I retired, Bubba had it for a while then decided he didn’t want to run it, so I bought him back out and handled it until I sold it in 2016,” he continued.

His own initiation into the family business came early.

“I was 10 years old when I started working at the lumber yard. I was chief flunkie,” Chipper said with a laugh. “I had to make sure the roofing felt was standing up, and I had to pick up the 90-pound roofing squares. Remember the old brick siding that came on a 120-pound roll? Oh, that stuff was heavy!”

His early years were filled with hauling and hefting, laying the groundwork for a work ethic that would last a lifetime.

“If we were putting a house on a slab, I would have to help dig the ditch to put the plumbing in. Everything that was in the store had to be counted every year, so when I inventoried, I learned the difference between a Phillips screw and a regular screw, a number 10 and a number 7, or 12 or whatever. We had everything in the store it took to build a house, so that’s how I grew up learning the trade—either on the ignorant end of a shovel or the ignorant end of a board going up a ladder,” he said.

Pain punctuated his laughter as he recounted the toll those years took.

“Fact of the matter is, that’s why I have a bad back today. One day, a truck came in, and I unloaded 80-pound bags of concrete. The guy would put it on the edge of the 18-wheeler deck, and I would move it inside the shop. I moved about 500 bags that day. You know what came next! The next day they brought in a truckload of roofing. There were two hundred squares on a truckload—two hundred times three, that’s 600 bundles. I unloaded one bundle at a time and stacked them. I told my dad, ‘Look, Dad, if you want me to last, you’re going to have to get a forklift,” Chipper said. “Two days like this I can’t go.’  I was lean and mean, I didn’t have an ounce of fat on me.  Between that and when we came home, we had the garden to tend to, but I got through it with just a few back problems and neck problems.”

As he recalled those grueling days, there was a mixture of pride and pain in his voice.

“We worked in Anahuac, but I grew up in the Wallisville area.  I used to ride up and down this road on my bicycle when it was still a dirt road.  The bus route started at the county line with Charles McManus (J.C. McManus’ boy), and Peggy McManus (Hill.)   It started there and came all the way up Lake Charlotte Road to FM 563.  We had to walk about a quarter of a mile to the bus stop, rain, shine, sleet or snow, it didn’t make any difference, we had to get there,” laughed Chipper.   “Judy, Sibbie, Janet and myself all went to Eminence School through the third grade. There was one teacher, Ms. Gregory, who came from Paris, Texas, and she taught all three grades.  KK stayed two years and then they disbanded it and everyone went to Anahuac. After the bus picked us up, we traveled down No. 9 Road coming around and picking up the LaFour’s and Mayes’ then we went into the town of Wallisville. The old hanging gallows were still there, in kind of bad shape, but still there.  After we picked everyone up in Wallisville, we headed to Anahuac.”

At Turtle Bayou, the road didn’t go straight across back then. Chipper recalled how sitting in the back of the bus was always an adventure because the driver, Nicolas Clayton, would hit the bump just right, and phew—the bus would bounce so high they could almost knock their heads on the roof.

“We picked up kids all the way to what is now Otter Road,” Chipper said. “We had a 72-passenger bus that was packed to the hilt. Sometimes, it was so crowded that we had to stand up.”

“When I started fourth grade in Anahuac, I got into it with Mrs. White because she insisted on calling me Jesse. She’d say, ‘Jesse Sherman,’ and I wouldn’t answer` her. She said, ‘I’m talking to you!’ and I’d tell her, ‘No, ma’am, that’s not my name—I’m Chipper.’ Daddy didn’t like the name Jesse anyway. He called the superintendent, T.P. White, and said, ‘You better tell your wife if she wants him to cooperate in school, she’s going to call him Chipper. Is that understood?’ ‘Yes sir, Romaine,’ and that was it,” Chipper finished with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

The story drew to a close on a note of love and peace.

“I graduated from Anahuac High School in 1966.  When I was in school, the farm kids would have their rifles, twenty-twos for the most part, and shotguns hanging in their trucks, they’d leave the windows rolled down.  No one ever worried about theft or someone hurting someone.  I always carried a knife with me, my grandpa showed me how to sharpen it,” he added.  “We’d be in science class . . . chemistry, and Nick Clayton would say, ‘Chipper, let me see your knife.’  He’d borrow my knife and give it back to me.  That’s just the way the school was.” 

“I love my heritage and the people around me. When the doctor told me I had cancer, I said, ‘Oh, well, nothing I can do about it. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding… Take it out of your hands and put it in His.’ He appointed my day before the foundation of the world. This may not be my day, but if it is, I’m not worried about it,” concluded Chipper with the utmost peace, his voice carrying the wisdom of a man who had lived fully and was prepared for whatever came next.

“When they started the Wallisville Dam Project, they took seven acres of our land and eight acres of Arthur’s. They took a 300-foot buffer zone at mean high tide and told us this land was going to be eminent domain. They wouldn’t give it back when they downsized everything, and they wouldn’t let us buy it back,” Chipper recalled, his voice tinged with lingering frustration.

Yet, despite the losses, some stories born out of that land have become family legend.

“There was a cotton farm at the end of Sherman Road on land owned by Mr. Collins,” Chipper began, setting the scene of the farm from his childhood. “Mr. and Mrs. Wright farmed the land and took care of Mr. Collins. There was about 180 acres in cotton, it was sea island cotton, and they grew it for about three years, I think.”

As a young boy, Chipper couldn’t resist the urge to try his hand at what seemed like an adventurous job.

“I was just a kid and I wanted to pick cotton… I picked cotton… you can have all the cotton you want!” he said with a wry smile. The experience, however, proved more challenging than he anticipated. “Those cotton balls! You better have you some gloves on, or you better have some real tough hands, ‘cause it would cut your fingers!”

Determined to give it a go, Chipper persisted, enduring the harshness of the cotton fields.

“I pulled that sack, and pulled that sack all day long,” he said, shaking his head at the memory. “Heck, I didn’t know anything about picking cotton, but I made six cents… for ALL DAY!”

The day-long struggle left him questioning his choice.

“I thought, heck, I can get on my bicycle and put a bag on each side of it and ride up and down the road picking up Coke bottles and Nesbitt’s and make two cents a bottle,” he said, his voice still carrying a hint of disbelief at the realization. The lesson was clear: there were easier ways for a young boy to earn his keep.

“There’re some big gators back in that pit where the dynamite holes are. I’ve seen one not long ago that was about 15 feet—it made a mud slide three feet wide.” Chipper leaned in as he described it. “My grandson, Colton, said, ‘Pappa, I’ve heard about the dynamite holes all my life. Will you show them to me?’ I hadn’t been feeling very well, but I was feeling pretty good that day, so I told him, ‘Alright, I’ll take my pole, you carry the rifle, and I’ve got my pistol.’ I didn’t trust going in there without weapons. I had put a camera up in that break area, and there were bobcats, foxes like you wouldn’t believe, coyotes, and probably 30,000 coons,” Chipper said with a laugh. “We got out there, and Colton said, ‘Pa, there he is, is that him?’ I told him, ‘Yeah, that’s him.’ I’d never seen a gator that big—not live, outside of TV. I looked at him and measured him off. I’ve been in the lumber business all my life, so that wasn’t hard to do. He was massive.”

Chipper paused, as if to savor the memory, then continued, “I told Colton, ‘Put the rifle down and take my pistol. I’m going to go up there and get as close as I can.’ He said, ‘What if he comes at you?’ I told him, ‘You see that pistol? And I know you’re a good shot—put six bullets right there in his head, and he won’t be bothering me anymore.’ I got up there close, and Colton said, ‘Pappa, don’t you think that’s close enough?’ I told him, ‘No, not yet, I’ll get’im.’” Chipper chuckled at the recollection. “I started taking a few pictures. I got real close for one, and he was between two trees with his head sticking out, and his hind feet were still in the water, so you know there was at least five or six feet of tail in the water.”

“About that time, that gator started moving, and Colton hollered, ‘Pappa, Pappa!’ I told him I was out of the way. That thing turned around to get back in that dynamite hole,” Chipper laughed heartily. “Colton’s eyes got that big around—he didn’t want anything to happen to me. I showed him a lot about Lake Charlotte that day.”

The fondness in his voice softened as he looked back on that moment. It wasn’t just about the thrill of seeing the gator; it was about passing down a piece of his own heritage, one adventure at a time.

“I love my heritage and the people around me. When the doctor told me I had cancer, I said, ‘Oh, well, nothing I can do about it. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding… Take it out of your hands and put it in His.’ He appointed my day before the foundation of the world. This may not be my day, but if it is, I’m not worried about it,” concluded Chipper with the utmost peace, his voice carrying the wisdom of a man who had lived fully and was prepared for whatever came next.