Salado Village Voice - April 12, 2007
By Chris McGregor
Staff Writer

Charlie Turnbo was not born in Salado. He did not attend Salado schools, nor did he spend any significant span of time in the town prior to retiring here with his wife Beverly a few years ago.

And yet it did not take long for Turnbo – formerly a federal prison warden – to develop a well-cultivated interest in Salado’s past. For Turnbo, it was a nearly instant intrigue. He wanted to know all about the town’s history – its personalities, possibilities, and why it was that a little frontier village seemed to attract a particular kind of settler, gaiving the town a character apart from its neighbors, even in its earliest of days.

Thus, a research mission ensued, one that would trace four years and culminate in the publication of a new addition to the canon of Salado history. Titled Salado, Texas: Frontier College Town, Turnbo’s 300-page work recounts the village’s beginnings, at around 1850, and stops in 1925, shortly after the Salado College building burned for the third and final time. Unveiled April 2 to a packed house at a meeting of the Salado Historical Society, Turnbo’s book did not begin as a complete history of the town, the author says. “I was going to write a book on Salado College, but its history is so intertwined with that of the village that it’s hard to do one without doing the other,” Turnbo explained. In that, Turnbo has a point, for without Salado College, Salado as a town might never have existed. And though a light sprinkling of settlers called the Salado area home prior to 1859, the founding of the college attracted a new kind of settler: one interested in the type of formal education largely unavailable in most parts of Texas at the time. “Many of these people came here because of the college and especially its openness to female education,” Turnbo said.

For that reason, among the early families of Salado are found many distinguished names, a point which Turnbo emphasizes through the book. Divided into three ‘eras’ of the town’s history, the book relies on the testimony of many of those first settlers for its historical veracity. “I tried to write the book as narrative, and I decided to tell the story through the people who lived it,” noted Turnbo.

To achieve that, Turnbo made great use of the Robertson Colony papers – compiled by Dr. Malcolm McLean and housed at the University of Texas at Arlington – as well as the archives of the Salado Historical Society and those of the Central Texas Area Museum. But those sources, for all their worth, left some holes unfilled. So Turnbo turned to others for help, particularly families descended from former Salado residents or students of Salado College or the Thomas Arnold School. The response, says Turnbo, was gratifying in its completeness. “People just began calling me, offering photos, or stories, or graduate certificates,” he recalls. “I have received a lot of contributions from people I have never met.” In that way, Turnbo said that while working on the book, it began to feel more like a communityproject than the work of just one man. “Without all the help from others, I would not have been able to finish the book. So this project really belongs to the community,” Turnbo says.

Handsomely bound in a hard cover and featuring premium binding, the book – at 317 pages - boasts numerous rare photographs and extensive documentation, all detailing the first 75 years of Salado’s existence, spanning the good times…and the not so good. Because of its thoroughness (the indices comprise over 100 of the book’s pages) Turnbo notes that he wrote the book with two audiences in mind: the casual reader, as well as the amateur historian or anyone interested in genealogical research, for that matter. “I wanted to put [the book] in the hands of people it would be helpful to,” he explains.

Issued through Turnbo’s own Yardley Publishing company, the book is being sold for not a penny over its production cost. A portion of all proceeds will go to Salado organizations with an interest in historical preservation, Turnbo points out. In fact, all the money earned on book sales at its April 2 unveiling went directly to the Salado Historical Society. “I am more interested in getting the story out than making any money off of this,” said Turnbo. “Salado has a rich legacy of writers, artists, poets, doctors and others, and this is pointed out in its history.”

Apparently, many others agree with Turnbo’s sentiment. Having been available for only a short time, almost one-quarter of an initial printing of 1,000 books have already been sold. And if you missed him April 2, Turnbo has a few other speaking engagements and book signings scheduled. He will appear at the Texas Historical Commission Book Fair, April 13 in Austin, and at the Bell County Museum 5:30 p.m. April 26. Museum members will receive a 10 percent discount of the book’s purchase price at that latter engagement.

Salado, Texas: Frontier College Town is available locally by contacting Turnbo at 947- 8329, or online at www. turnbobooks.com. It can also be ordered through the mail by writing to: Charlie Turnbo, Yardley Publishing, P.O. Box 1319, Salado, TX 76571.

This article is used with permission by the writer.