M.E.B. Jones Is Swindled Dec. 1909
Compiled by Nancy Quillin Long
Feb 2016
Paper work was located in an old trunk that belonged to M.E.B. Jones.
These papers were giving to
Nancy Quillin Long by Martin Frank Jones. M.E.B. was Martin Frank Jones's
great-grandfather. M.E.B. Jones is my
g-great grandfather.
Found among the papers was an old abstract of title to lots in Progress City, being part of THE WM. POOLE SURVEY of 1280 acres in Brewster Co., Texas. Also found among these papers were two receipts of tax payments to Brewster County in 1911.
It didn't take long with a
Google search to find that Progress City was a nonexistent town in Brewster
County, Texas. M.E.B. had been scammed,
along with others.
M.E.B. Jones was forever taking notes in small memo books. An interesting find among the pages that I have, M.E.B. wrote down the words, "Alfilerea, Ariz., good for grazing." When I googled Alfilerea, my best guess would be that he misspelled Alfilaria defined as a weed grown for forage in the dry regions of the southwestern U.S. —called also pin grass. This makes sense because he was planning and hoping to use this desolate land in far west Texas.
Texas History, Genealogy, Old Photos, Postcards, Maps, and Information.
Progress City, Texas Brewster County
Progress City, a nonexistent town in Brewster County, was invented by swindlers to dupe residents of other parts of Texas into buying town lots. On February 8, 1910, the Brewster County grand jury, with Joseph D. Jackson as foreman, called the plot to the attention of Judge W. C. Douglas of the Brewster County District Court in Alpine. The grand jury reported "with deep regret" the presence of an outfit called Progress City Town Site Company, "which seems to be an organization having for its purpose the swindling of unsuspecting citizens of the State by a sale of so-called town lots in an imaginary town in our county." The putative site of Progress City was on "San Diego" (Santiago) Mountain, forty miles southeast of Alpine. It would have been, according to the grand jury, "accessible only by horseback and then along a difficult and little used trail," and was "totally uninhabited and uninhabitable, and wholly unfit for the situs of a town. In fact, the land is susceptible of no use whatever except that of grazing livestock."
The Progress
City Town Site Company consisted of John L. Mauk as president and Lee R. Davis
of Waco, who had acquired the title to the land from the original grantee,
William Poole, as owner and secretary, respectively. By the time of the grand
jury report, the three had already sold more than 1,000 lots, usually for $1.50
apiece. Though the price was of little concern to an individual buyer, the
grand jury pointed out, in the aggregate it could add up to a substantial
amount; "but even this is small in comparison with the great injury that
will result to this section of Texas from the perpetration of such swindles
upon the people when those who have been duped discover the fraud." The
report admitted that prosecution of Mauk and Davis was probably pointless,
because each swindle constituted a separate offense and because the
perpetrators almost certainly acted through agents to avoid legal
entanglements. The grand jury did, however, recommend making clear to the
public the innocence of the people of Brewster County in the matter and sending
a copy of its report to each district court in McLennan County, in which Waco is located.
