Prairie Plains, another Grimes County ghost town
The ghost town of Prairie Plains and the Abraham Zuber survey have a lot in common, located about two or three miles east of what would become the town of Shiro. Zuber was granted a league of land March 4, 1833. Today the Zuber league is located just inside the eastern Grimes County line. Zuber along with William McGuffin, who was granted his league a few months earlier on November 1, 1832 were among Austin’s original 300 Texas settlers. Today’s survey map shows the Zuber league jutting into the southeastern corner of the McGuffin survey. A Grimes County Historical Commission newsletter dated May 2016, states that the village of Prairie Plains developed over those early years with the families and descendants of the Zubers, McGuffins, Edwards, Mayfi elds, Harmons, Neasons, Franklows, Thomas, Davis and Oliphants. These families were mostly cotton farmers. Prairie Plains, also occasionally known as Red Top, by 1898 had three cotton gins: The Bookman Gin and Store, the Keisler Brothers Gin and Store, and the John Thomas Gin and Sawmill. There was the A.F. Rea General Store, Bederson Jewelry, and Mrs. Stewart grocery store.
There was a nearby five room frame school building as well as a Methodist Church and the historic well-known Prairie Plains Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 1902, a post office was established with Frances Marion Mayfield as postmaster near where the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railroad surveyed through what would become the town of Shiro.
Postmaster Mayfield and Dr. Hamp Franklow gave land for the railroad rightof- way, and the town of Shiro townsite and streets were mapped. Reid Rickard and Lon Norman built a mercantile store, and later a drug store. Meanwhile, the U. S. Postal Department requested a new post office and town site name. Several versions were submitted and rejected. Finally, in desperation, Postmaster Mayfield, who also sold Japanese fruit trees and shrubs, selected the name Shiro from a nursery catalog. The name was accepted by the Postal Department in 1907. In Japanese the word is pronounced She-row.
The railroad was completed in 1908 and Prairie Plains slowly moved to what became Shiro. Soon there was a blacksmith shop, saddle shop, jail and a two-story brick Shiro Independent School District building on a four-acre site given by E. A. Edwards. Prairie Plains had “moved” to Shiro.
In 1909, a final move occurred with that of the Prairie Plains Cumberland Presbyterian church on land donated by Virginia Lee Edwards Mayfield. Virginia was a daughter of Dr. J. Rush Edwards, who arrived in what become Grimes County about 1845. He would marry Abraham Zuber and wife’s daughter, Mary Ann Zuber, and settled in the Prairie Plains community on the Zuber survey.
Dr. Edwards career in the area is a story in itself. Though a medical doctor, he did not practice as such, but was intense on education and one of the 11 founders and charter members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church at Prairie Plains in 1853. The five-room school at Prairie Plains, previously mentioned, was most probably the genuine effort of Dr. Edwards and possibly as part of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Edwards family legend is that his education efforts at Prairie Plains was the embryo that grew into what is today’s Trinity University now located at San Antonio.
When the Prairie Plains Cumberland Church moved to Shiro it eventually merged with the Houston Presbytery. In 1910, with efforts of Dr. Edward’s granddaughter, Jennie Edwards Mayfield, a new church was built. It is now called the Shiro Presbyterian Church.
Dr. Edwards, who was born in Tennessee in October 1820, died in 1904. He is buried, along with his wife, who died in 1881, as well as a few Edwards descendants in the small Zuber Family Cemetery.
(Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation. org for more info and membership).