Denison

Photo Courtesy of Donald Hash

This “jail on wheels” is located at the Grayson County Frontier Village near Denison. The Texas State Constitution, adopted in 1876, contained a vagrancy law that defined a vagrant as any able-bodied person with no visible means of support and who lived idly without seeking work.  While the law was in effect, vagrants were often arrested and used to work on the roads.  Road gangs maintained most of the roads in Grayson County, and this particular jail was used until 1931, shortly after the Texas Constitution of 1930 made the practice of forcing vagrants to work unlawful.  At one time each of the four precincts that make up the county had one of these jails and moved them around to the various work sites. There was no central road camp.

The one illustrated above is the only one that has survived through the years.  Its dimensions are 7 feet high, 7 feet wide, and 13 feet 6 inches long (95 square feet).  Three of the walls were made of strap iron cold riveted in a checkerboard pattern.  The door is at the rear of the wagon and was secured with a massive hasp and lock.  The rest of the wall consists of a solid plate of heavy gauge steel.  The top was also made of strips of steel – much like the sides. This is the only example of a cage mounted on a wagon bed in the current sample.  It does not conform to any of the more common floor plans.

The purpose of this jail was to house and transport prisoners to work details on roads, and teams of horses or mules were used to pull it.  When in use, it had a wooden platform halfway up each side that provided space for as many as thirty prisoners for sleeping.  The bunk areas were covered with straw, and one blanket was given to each prisoner.   The photo was provided courtesy of the Grayson County Frontier Village.  J. N. Dickson served the county as a judge for many years, and much of the above information was taken from his journal and pamphlet entitled Portable Jail for Road Gangs: Pioneer Relic published by the Grayson County Frontier Village (no date given).  Another useful source is The History of Grayson County, Texas Volume II: Family Histories authored by the staff at the Grayson County Frontier Village and published by Heritage Publishing Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1981.

Sherman