The tale of the stolen election Retired educator channels ancestor to tell historic story
When George Frost Jr. puts on that floppy gray hat with its gold satin band and walks with a cane upon the stage, he channels his great-grandfather of 125 years ago.
He is J.H. “Jim” Frost, with an an engrossing story to tell of how Jim Frost had a Cass County election stolen from him in 1894 and yet how the values he fought for became part of the national Democratic platform nevertheless.
George Frost Jr. is a retired teacher, coach and historian, so he’s used to being on stage as an educator. He likes to see his students or team put on a performance. The stolen election story, once lost to history, is now a family heirloom.
Frost family members have held public office through the years. Most recently, Stephen Frost was this area’s District One state representative. But it was not until someone discovered some old newspapers containing the 1894 Frost election story that George Frost Jr. really got excited about politics and history, excited enough to become a stage actor.
“The story I uncovered was all about J.H. ‘Jim’ Frost and the time the populist movement was trying to be established in Cass County, more than 100 years ago,” Frost told an audience of the Linden Heritage Foundation recently.
“That was the year J.H. Frost had apparently won an election as the county’s state representative. But he and six other Cass County populists, who also apparently won, would not get to serve. It seems Democrats were in power and power politics prevailed. My research shows that year’s election became fraudulent.”
Here’s a bit of the background.
It seems that J.H. Frost was not only a member, but also a leader of the populist Peoples Party. The populists arose because they thought Democrats weren’t doing enough for the common man. Some of the populists’ concerns were:
■ A growing disparity in wealth between rich and poor.
■ Tight money. Banks were unwilling to lend.
■ School year was six months long, with standardized books furnished.
■ Railroad Commission with power to set just rates.
■ Railroads compelled to pay employees monthly in lawful currency.
■ Fair elections.
■ Reform in punishment of convicts and equal treatment for races.
■ Elective lien law to protect artisan, mechanic, labor and material men.
■ Eight-hour legal work day.
“My great-grandfather Frost told the story of the Populist Party in Cass County from 1889 to 1904 in letters and columns he had written for the Linden Standard. Those columns and letters had vanished and were unknown to me until now—unknown until the newspapers were uncovered in a barn,” Frost said.
He has since written and published an historical monogram about the newspapers and the election story as “The Writings of J.H. ‘Jim’ Frost, the Son of a Slave Owner: A Personal View of the Populist Movement in Cass County 1889-1904.”
The central part of the story is that although Populist Party candidates got the most votes in several county voting boxes, including Springdale’s that year, several voting boxes got their totals changed or otherwise invalidated by county election officials, all of whom were Democrats.
George Frost Jr. goes to lengths to explain this story with an illustrated stage presentation. His research was more than a year in development and includes the lengthy, front-page news article that is a letter from 150 Springdale citizens to the state legislature asserting their election box totals were improperly changed.
The election challenge ultimately ended with a vote in the Texas State Legislature. That vote went the way of the Democrats, too, not surprising since the body was composed primarily of Democrats. The populist candidates—and Jim Frost—were not elected.
But the populists, nevertheless, gained some far-reaching results.
Most of their concerns became part of the People’s Party and its twin, the Farmers’ Alliance, and would be ultimately enacted nationally by Democrats, the same party that had originally denied Frost his county election, Frost said.
He also enjoys explaining why he likes to bring up this subject and portray the past.
“I grew up in a time when people visited each other in the evenings, sitting on front porches talking and telling stories until it was cool enough to go to bed. I don’t want this period lost.”
Frost majored in political science and social studies in college and loved local history.
“After I retired, I read ‘The Path to a Modern South: Reconstruction in Northeast Texas’ by Walter L. Buenger. He mentioned fraud in Cass County, so I went to the courthouse and began reading records starting with 1890. But still they didn’t tell the story.”
When the Cass County Genealogical Society began in 1974, Frost joined. From the society in 1994, he learned that someone had looked in an old barn and found Linden newspapers from 1887 to 1904. J.W. Erwin was editor.
“They were fragile but were able to be sent to University of Texas, which opened and recorded them. I began to go through them. There I found Jim Frost had written many letters and columns to explain himself and elections. So many and so well written, I wondered where he had gotten his education. It is one wellschooled farmer that I get to portray.”
“The story I uncovered was all about J.H. ‘Jim’ Frost and the time the populist movement
was trying to be established in Cass County, more than 100 years ago.”
—George Frost Jr.