Civil War History of Big Thicket National Preserve

Honey Island, Texas: Jayhawkers Big Thicket Hideout

Tucked away in the Big Thicket, about 35 miles northwest of Beaumont, is a community in Hardin County called Honey Island, situated on the high ground between two creeks. In heavy rain, the water rises, and the land in between forms a temporary island. Hence, the name.

Until around 1999, families and teens, slathered in Coppertone, would pack picnics and radios, and drive to Honey Island to jump into a large spring fed pool of cool, fresh, turquoise water surrounded by tall green pines, under a blue East Texas sky. Although the concrete pool is closed now, the water still runs strong, and remains the freshest ever tested in Texas.

The timber industry of the early 1900’s grew the town of Honey Island, but it is the town’s Civil War history that makes it unique.

When Governor Sam Houston tried, and failed, to keep Texas out of the war back in 1861, he wasn’t the only Texan who balked at joining the Confederacy. Ol’ Sam had many followers who felt the same way. As one local put it, “Back then, everybody was poor here, both blacks and whites, just trying to survive. So as far as the war went, many families just didn’t have a dog in that hunt.”

There were about 75-100 men who refused to fight for either side in the war, and chose to hide out in the Big Thicket of East Texas until the conflict was over. Because they used the call of the bluejay as a secret signal to each other, they were dubbed “Jayhawkers.”

The Jayhawkers were not one large group of men, but several small bands scattered through East Texas and the Big Thicket. One of these bands of Jayhawkers hid out on the land that later became known as Honey Island.

I bet you wanna know why it was called Honey Island, don’t you. Ok, just tuck your thumbs in your overall straps, be patient, and chew a piece of straw for a minute. Take a load off.

Three brothers, Warren, Stace, and Newt Collins, were the leaders of this particular band of Jayhawkers. They were described as ‘big and raw-boned.’

Interestingly, Warren Collins was born and raised in Jones County, Mississippi, and his brothers who stayed in Mississippi, Jasper, Riley, and Simeon, as well as a brother in law James Valentine, were officers in the guerrilla uprising known as the “Free State of Jones.” (alright alright alright)

The Collins brothers in Texas (William, Stace, and Newt) lived along the bottoms of Bad Luck Creek, Doe Pond Creek, and Union Wells Creek, about 12 miles northeast of Honey Island, near the Polk County line. (guess what else is in that vicinity…. haunted Bragg Road. Oh, and a settler was shot in the back around there; that’s why the creek is named Bad Luck creek. You gotta agree… getting shot in the back is some serious bad luck)

Anyway, everyone knew that the 15-20 men in the Collins band were Union sympathizers, and knew how to survive in the Thicket. They lived off the land, surviving by cunning and ingenuity. If they heard soldiers were headed their way, they retreated to the safety of their Big Thicket hideaway.

To get drinking water when the creeks ran dry, the men dug three wells in the woods. This area was later called Union Wells. It is said that the wells were so perfectly camouflaged that a person would fall into the well before they ever saw it. The dirt they removed from the dig site was concealed in deer hides, carried off secretly, and dumped in a nearby pond to avoid drawing attention to the well site.

Well armed and skilled in survival, the Jayhawkers caught fresh fish in the creeks, hunted deer, wild pigs, turkeys, and other Big Thicket game. What they did not have, was corn, coffee, salt and tobacco.

Because they were ‘draft dodgers’ and deserters, they couldn’t go into town and buy supplies; the local militia was always hunting them. So they came up with a plan.

The lush vegetation of the thicket provided pollen for bees, and the trees were filled with thousands of hives, dripping with honey. The Collins band would take honey from the hives, and stash it at a secret exchange site between the Big and Little Cypress Creeks, on a 500 acre “island” of thick forest that later became known as Honey Island.

The Jayhawkers’ practice of leaving honey at this exchange site earned Honey Island its name. (see? that didn’t take long) The underbrush in the Big Thicket was almost impassable, and covered with a canopy of vines, virgin pine, magnolias, oaks, hickory and gum trees. The men, their hideaways, and the honey drop off site were very well concealed.

Wives and relatives of the band would go to the secret drop off site, gather the honey left by the Jayhawkers, barter it in town for whatever the men needed, and place those supplies at the same spot where the men had left the honey.

The bartered corn provided food for the Jayhawkers, but was also used to make whiskey called Thicket Lightnin’. The salt allowed them to cure and season the wild game.

To cure the tobacco leaves, the Jayhawkers would cut a block out of the side of a big tree, place the tobacco leaves inside the hole, and replace the block. A tourniquet tied around the tree would hold the block in place. After a few weeks the men would return and collect their cured tobacco.

Occasionally, as true love requires, the men would sneak out of the woods to visit their wives and girlfriends. State militia was stationed at the nearby town of Woodville, ready to grab the men; several skirmishes occurred, but the Jayhawkers always gave them the slip.

The leader of the state militia was a constant thorn in the Jayhawkers side, Captain Charlie Bullock. His men were known as Bullock’s Cavalry. In the fall of 1864, Bullock received orders to flush out the Jayhawkers. He succeeded in capturing some of them, including one of the leaders, Warren Collins. The prisoners were marched to Woodville under guard, and secured in a wooden shack ‘prison.’

But you ain’t gonna pen up a Big Thicket man that easily: Collins had a small, pearl handled knife in one of his boots, and he used it to whittle away part of a board in the wall until he could swing the board away, squeeze through, and skedaddle. (side note: if you have a knife, and want it to become famous, make sure it has a pearl handle, that seems mandatory for knife stories)

He didn’t skedaddle right away, though, first he ran to the front of the shack/prison and taunted the guards who scrambled up and gave chase. So focused were they on the wise cracking Collins, that they didn’t see the mass escape of the other Jayhawkers, through the same loose board. Collins and the other men hid out in the woods until nightfall, then ‘slipped off into the woods and escaped.’

The Jayhawkers continued to outsmart and embarrass the local militia; their reputations grew, and they became local ‘heroes.’

Orders were soon received: “Do something about those Jayhawkers.” In the spring of 1865, a company of Confederate soldiers stationed in Galveston under Captain Jim Kaiser was told to eliminate the Jayhawker problem: either return them to the Confederate army, or shoot them.

Kaiser was a “tough young officer, and a non-Texan.” The South’s high command suspected the Texas militia had not tried very hard to wipe out these Jayhawkers. They assigned Capt. Bullock’s company to assist Kaiser in this round up.

Hence was fought “the skirmish of Union Wells.” There are two versions of the incident. One states that Kaiser offered the Jayhawkers money to turn themselves in and join the Confederate cause; the second version says Kaiser warned them to surrender or he would burn them out of the thicket.

Whichever was the truth, the Jayhawkers refused to comply. So Captain Kaiser set fire to the Big Thicket, something no Texan would have done.

Two of the Jayhawkers died in the flames, and 3000 acres of the beautiful Big Thicket were destroyed. The thicket cane brake was permanently gone.

Except for the two lost souls, the rest of the Jayhawkers escaped, and the Kaiser campaign was such a failure that the Jayhawkers lived out the remaining months of the war in peace.

The destroyed section of the Thicket became known as the Kaiser Burnout. According to the Beaumont Enterprise, the blaze left the acreage so devastated that the effects of the fire were still visible in the 1930’s.

Legend has it that after the war ended, Jayhawkers leader Warren Collins crossed paths with his old enemy, Captain Bullock, in Woodville one day: a day with the scent of revenge in the air.

The history books tell us that the last battle of the Civil War was in South Texas, at Palmito Ranch. Maybe so. But the most colorful matchup was after the war, when militia captain Charlie Bullock got the living daylights beat out of him by Warren Collins, a big raw-boned Jayhawker from Honey Island.

So the next time you drive through the Big Thicket, or take a Halloween trip to Bragg Road, listen for the call of a Bluejay…. and remember that the woods have eyes.

Credit to Chamber County Historical Commission

https://www.facebook.com/ChambersCountyHistoricalCommission