Time to read
2 minutes
Read so far

Heavy rains uncover 100-year-old buckle

0 comments

By Lynsi Musselman

Items from long ago can pop up anywhere and anytime, reminding people of history and how life was once lived, and sometimes found items can bring life full circle. 

After the recent heavy rains in Albany, resident Gerry Cates, who lives at the Stasney Palm Ranch just outside of town, found something that has been buried for at least 70 years, probably much longer.

Cates said he was walking from the house to the barn to feed one day and veered off his normal path while walking through the mud.

“Out of the corner of my eye, a sliver of something caught my attention,” Cates explained. “I picked it up and took it to the water trough to clean it off and noticed it was a small belt buckle that had some deteriorated leather attached where a belt probably once was and the initials FNP engraved on the front of the buckle.”

There was an engraved stamp on the back of the buckle piece reading “Marsh Sterling PAT Aug. 21-17.” 

According to similar items found on Ebay, Marsh Sterling with that patent date produced and sold several buckles during the 1920s.

Cates said he contacted Stasney-Cook Ranch general manager Lance Thomas to see if he might know who FNP was. They determined that the buckle must have belonged to one of the Palm family members who homesteaded the ranch and sold it to the Stasneys in 1967.

Cates said the Palm family has a plot in the Albany Cemetery, and there is a Frederick Nelson Palm Sr. who was buried there in 1979. 

Cates reported that after he, Thomas, and Cindy Parsons did some research, he determined that the buckle belonged to either Frederick Nelson Palm Sr. born in 1891 in Shackelford County or to his son Frederick Nelson Palm Jr. born in 1927 in Jones County. 

The buckle being patented in 1917 makes it unlikely that it was made for the younger Palm, who had not yet been born. 

Frederick Nelson Palm Sr. moved from Albany in 1950 for Silva, Colorado and then to Ismay, Montana along with his wife Johnnie Hazel and two sons Frederick Nelson Palm Jr. and Wally Palm.

The buckle is also leaving Texas – some 70 years later.

Cates said he was able to locate a phone number for Wally Palm, who is a son of Frederick Palm Sr. and brother of the junior. He called Wally a few days ago to let him know he found the buckle and would mail it to him.

Wally, who is 85 years old, lives in Sheridan, Wyoming. His brother Frederick Nelson Palm Jr. died in Surprise, Arizona in 2013.

Palm Family in 

Shackelford County 

Through obituaries, ancestry.com, and findagrave.com, information was found about the Palm family and their mark on Albany.

The Palms are recognized as early pioneers in Shackelford County.

Parents of Frederick Nelson Palm Sr. were Henry Palm and Valina Dobbs Palm. The couple had six other children, all born in Shackelford County between 1880 and 1891 on the Palm ranch.

Henry was postmaster for Albany during the turn of the twentieth century.

The oldest son Oliver Jon Palm also served as postmaster for Albany.

Frederick Nelson Palm Sr. was the youngest of Henry and Valina’s children and attended school at the Reynolds Academy in Albany. He then attended the University of Texas at Austin.

After studying at UT, FNP Sr. became active in ranching and was an independent oil operator and drilling rig contractor.

He also raised registered Hereford cattle.

One of Henry and Valina’s two daughters, Mabel Palm Kindred, passed away at the young age of 31 after complications from appendicitis surgery.

Their oldest daughter Mary Corrine Palm looked after the ranch after her parents were gone and her brother FNP Sr. moved away. She was killed in 1965, two years before the ranch was sold, in a car accident while visiting her brother in Montana.

Another brother Sidney Jay Palm died in 1957, and the third youngest child Henry Chester Palm lived in California for 30 years before moving back to Texas in 1970.

Henry Chester Palm lived in Abilene, Texas and passed away in 1975.

The officiant at his funeral service? 

It was the Reverend T. Gerald Cates, pastor of Highland Park Baptist Church and father of none other than Gerry Cates.