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STEPHENVILLE, TX -- It’s easy to see
why Sherri Knight was an award-winning history teacher. As she
speaks of an ancestor’s “trouble-filled life,” she makes the
time-period come alive – her sentences punctuated with passion and
enthusiasm. That same enthusiasm carried Knight through several
years of research and, ultimately, through the publication of her
first book, “Tom P’s Fiddle.”
Tom P.’s Fiddle examines the life of
Tom P. Varnell, Knight’s great-great uncle -- for years regarded as
the family’s proverbial black sheep. Through exhaustive research,
Knight was able to separate the legend and lore from the facts and
truth and weave it all into a compelling read about a man who was
charged with rape and murder, and spent his last few years on earth
as a fugitive.
Along the way, readers learn first hand
of the “love, betrayal, revenge, trials, escapes and family
loyalties” that was the life of Tom P.
 Despite
the fact that research, writing, publishing and publicizing Tom P’s
Fiddle has dominated several years of her life, Knight said she
didn’t actually set out to write a book.
“My cousin came to me after I retired
and wanted to know if I’d be willing to help with a family reunion,”
she explained, adding that at the time she agreed to do a
commemorative DVD for the reunion.
“I had no background in family
research,” she said, “but of course I knew about it. When I was
teaching honors-level history I had students do something called
History Fair. In History Fair, you research, doing primary sources.
And since I had to force my students to do it, I decided I needed to
know how to do it. So I had the background in that kind of work – I
just had not turned it toward genealogy.”
Knight retired from teaching in 2005,
after having taught for 31 years. “I’ve taught every grade but
first,” she said. “But most of my teaching was as a high school
history teacher.”
Once she started genealogy research on
the DVD, Knight said it didn’t take her long to realize she’d have
to narrow her focus.
“My grandfather had nine brothers and sisters --10 siblings in all
-- so what I decided to do is to stop with those 10,” she said. “In
other words, they were at one end, and I went back from them. I felt
like the family somewhat knew the history from those 10 siblings
forwards, but they didn’t really know the history going backwards.
So that’s what I concentrated on – when did the family come to
Texas? Where did they settle? That sort of thing.”
It was at this stage of the research
that Knight became fascinated by one ancestor in particular.
“I found out that my great-great grandmother’s brother was Tom P.
Varnell,” she said. “He was someone the family whispered stories
about. The only thing I could tell for sure from these stories was
that he’d killed a man. I didn’t know if he was a good guy or a bad
guy. I just knew that the stories had been kept alive – I didn’t
know exactly what had happened.”
Knight decided that once the DVD
project was complete she’d continue her research on Tom P. Varnell.
“He wouldn’t let me rest,” Knight said.
“I went ahead and put him into the DVD, and I told the family
stories about him. But now when I look at the DVD, about half of
what I reported on him, based on old family stories, is just not
accurate.”
About two years of research went into
the book, according to Knight. “At first, I was not saying ‘I’m
writing a book,’” she said. “At that time, I just wanted to find out
who the real Tom P Varnell was. I asked my cousins (the same ones
who’d roped her into the family reunion preparations) to meet me for
lunch. I told them I wanted to find out who the real Tom P was, and
they encouraged me to do so.”
Much of Tom P’s story took place in
Hill County. “My cousin, Jerry Templeton, lives in Hillsboro,”
Knight said, “and he’d already done some research on him.”
Knight admits that when she first
looked at the documents that her cousin had unearthed, district
court minutes, she did not understand them. “It’s not like reading
testimony,” she said, “and I had not researched enough court
documents to really understand them. I’ve since found out quite a
lot.
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Sherri Knight, courtesy photo
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The thing I didn’t realize is that they
don’t have files in which they keep all the testimony from the
trials. All they have in the files, if they have files, are
subpoenas, bail information and indictments. I had to learn all this
legal jargon.”
Knight said there was no actual file at
Hillsboro on Tom P.
“All they had on Tom P was the court
minutes, it was like trying to decipher a foreign language,” she
said, “but I was finally able to do it.”
For most research, Knight said a
timeline is crucial, and the book on Tom P. was no different. “I sat
down and started a timeline,” she said, “and I put every verified
date on there that I had. Not knowing when certain things happened
made it difficult to look anything up in newspapers. When I first
started, it was about a half page long. Now it is eight pages, front
and back.”
Knight said that she’s proud of the
fact that she was able to go “from someone who didn’t know anything
about it (genealogy research), to someone who’s able to help
others.”
“I give genealogy workshops now,” she
said.
The timeline Knight completed was
helpful in both her research and writing, but at first there were so
many gaps.
“The first date I was able to come up
with was the day he shot the man, March 5, 1883, the day that
changed his whole life,” she said. “I was able to find the date, and
get the particulars. I didn’t realize it at the time but the
newspapers had so sensationalized the story that the truth of what
happened got dropped by the way-side, and Tom P was unable to tell
his story because he ended up on the run.”
Knight said she found herself thinking
that Tom P should have stayed and explained what happened instead of
running. “And let the truth will-out,” she said. “But I’ve since
learned that when men were charged with as heinous a crime as he was
-- that anybody that did something as bad as that, some people
didn’t believe he deserved to have a trial. Because not only was he
charged with first degree murder and with rape, but the man he
killed was trying to save his daughter’s honor and Tom P just blew
him away. I came across this editorial that out-and-out stated that
Tom P should not have a trial, and that the minute they found him he
should be strung up.”
Knight said that another thing that
made research difficult was having no idea where Tom P ran. “All of
that was a bit daunting,” she said. “But I kept plugging away. I
knew he’d been tried, I knew he’d had more than one trial -- the
first conviction had been overturned. I found out later that it was
overturned because the judge was so biased against him.”
Knight said she was “very meticulous”
with her research. “I was very careful with this book,” she said.
“The truth, or as close as I could get it, was very important to me.
And I felt like the newspapers didn’t bother to get very close to
the truth.”
It’s evident from her tone, that Knight
became very attached to her relative from long ago. She even got her
immediate family involved in the book on Tom P’s life.
Sherri’s husband, Arden Knight, served
as editor for the book. And her children, Bill Oxford, Jr., 39, and
Julie Moeller, 36, had a hand with the book as well. “Julie designed
the book’s cover,” Sherri Knight said. “She teaches software
application at Weatherford Community College. The cover art is
really three photographs morphed together –with the text applied to
the top. I told her the concept I wanted and she designed it. And
the figure with the fiddle (in silhouette) is actually Bill.”
The fiddle plays a prominent part in
the book – just as it did in Tom P’s life.
“Tom P had two ‘positive constants’ in
his life,” Knight said. “He had the love and loyalty of his mother,
LaDocia Varnell, and his music,” she said. “Even when he was on the
run, it seems, his music kept him company. Research revealed that
not only was Tom P a uniquely gifted fiddler – even composing his
own tunes – but that he came from a whole family of fiddlers. Knight
was even able to locate Tom Ps fiddle, as well as his hand-written
original compositions, at the Hill County Cell Block Museum (in the
old county jail house) in Hillsboro.
Although she traveled a great deal
while doing her research, Knight’s biggest break-through occurred
right in her own hometown of Stephenville, at Tarleton State
University. While going through old newspapers on microfilm in the
university’s library, Knight found more than 100 pages of
information on Tom P, most of them from the Dallas Morning News.
“From there I was able to completely
set up his time-line,” she said, “and I got major dates. And with
those dates, I could go to other newspapers. I was able to find out
when, and where he was captured, and what happened. He was in
Magdalena, New Mexico on his sweetheart’s doorstep. I found out that
the second trial, which took place in Ellis County because of a
change of venue, ended with a hung jury, so I got to do my ’12 Angry
Men’ chapter. It was just amazing the things I found out. There were
jail breaks – two of them.”
Knight said that there was so much
negative press about Tom P that sometimes she wondered if she was on
the right path.
“The newspapers were so negative about
him that it sort of colored my thinking,” she said. “I’d wake up in
the middle of the night and think ‘maybe he really was the terrible
person they’ve made him out to be.’ But then I would stumble across
another little clue to his true character.”
Among the things that Knight believes
pointed to Tom P’s true character is the fact that he had people who
risked everything to help him.
“He had an awful lot of friends and
they protected him,” she said. Knight also offers up another example
of Tom P’s moral fiber when she tells of him entering a farm house
and taking food (after a jail break) but leaving money and a note.
“I believe he had a code of honor,” she
said. “It was a cowboy’s code of honor, where he believed in loyalty
and hard work.”
Without revealing whether Tom P’s story
had a happy ending or not, Knight admitted that he never found the
“normal” life of which he dreamed.
“But I think the journey itself was
interesting,” she said. “This is the quintessential story of a man
accused of a crime, and how it shaped his life. You’ve got
everything. I’ve had people read the book and say that it’s better
than a ‘western’ because it all really happened. You have sheriffs
and posses and shoot-outs and jail breaks. You have all the things
that made the west really wild -- and it really happened. He talked
the posse into leaving. That didn’t make the paper, but the family
knew about it. He does find love in New Mexico. His story, his
odyssey, his journey to try to find a normal life, all makes for a
fascinating story, as does the fact that he never finds it – but he
had such a resilient spirit.”
For more information on Sherri Knight,
or Tom P, or to buy a copy of Tom P’s Fiddle go to
www.tompsfiddle.com. |
