Bits and Pieces from Eva’s Memoirs
By Eva Hill Lesueur Karling (Sister of Ben and Granddaughter of A.W. Hill)
My hair was dark and my eyes were very blue. The Hubbard Negroes claimed that I had “Hubbard” eyes. The Negroes were proud of “their folks”. They had great pride in their former owner families. The Hill Negroes said I was a Hill.
We children loved the Negroes and they loved us. They called me “Little Eva”. Most of the Negroes called mother “Mistress” or “Old Miss”.
We had a cook named “Fanny” and she lived in a cabin close by. One day she found an old-dirty rag with an earth worm, a black spider, a snail, (I’ve forgotten what all) tied up in this rag under the steps and she turned ashy grey and in a few weeks she died. She was “voodooed” or “conjured” by someone who hated her. She was literally scared to death. There was a good deal of that kind of thing among the Negroes in those years. Superstitious rites and beliefs that there ancestors had brought form the Congo.
About A.W. Hill
Grandpa was the youngest of her (Sarah McGehee Hill) children. He was born while his father (Thomas Hill) was being buried, a premature birth due to her grief. He was so small they put him in a pint cup, and his mother could slip her wedding ring onto his wrist. But he lived and grew to a big man. He went with his Uncle Wylie Hill up into North Carolina and spent most of his boyhood there as the climate seemed to be good for him. When he was 19 years old, his two brothers, Thomas B. J. Hill and Middleton Hill decided it would be wise to investigate Texas which was being so much talked about. They came with the John and Tom McGehee (Cousins) to Texas landing in San Augustine on Christmas day 1835. John McGehee’s wife was their sister Sarah Hill McGehee. The came on to Bastrop which was then called Mina. The McGehees had already gotten their land on the southwest side of the Colorado River.
Grandpa bought 2220 acres from the Edward Jenkins headright paying 50c an acre for it. His tow brothers bought land across the river, each buying several thousand acres a piece. The both had families and went back to Georgia and remained there until 39 or 40. Grandpa stayed and in April the Battle of San Jacinto was fought. And he was in it. He had the lip of his cap he was wearing shot off in the Battle. He had his picture taken in that cap, an old fashioned tin-type, and where in the 1880’s the artist McAudle was painting the big picture that hands in the Capitol of the “Soldiers of San Jacinto” . Someone wrote Grandma and asked her to send a picture of Grandpa. She sent that tintype and he painted him in. You can see it. But his name is not on the plate, neither is it in some of the histories. But there are other records that do list him. Brown’s History is considered authentic and he had Grandpa’s name as a San Jacinto soldier.
I remember when I was a child, he attended several veterans meetings and came home so full of high spirits and enthusiasm from meeting old comrades. We have a rather large picture of him, General Hardeman, and General John R. Baylor and another I’ve forgotten who, taken at a reunion. Cousin Eva had that picture. But I have a picture of him with his San Jacinto badge on.
After the Battle he did some clearing and building on his place and went back to Georgia and married Elizabeth Hubbard, eldest daughter of the Honorable Robert Hubbard of Lexington who was a member of the Georgia Legislature for several years. They were married February 16, 1837 in her father’s plantation home “Clover Grove”. After “Infares” etc (not sure what she meant here) they started for faraway Texas, with slaves and household goods. They landed at Columbia, Texas. High water prevented travel and they did not reach Hills Prairie until June.
(Note…slaves and Mary Ann!)
I never know how many slaves they brought with them and never thought to ask when there was any body living who knew. But one little six year old girl was given them by great grandmother Sarah McGehee Hill with the admonition that she be brought up in the house as a ladies maid. I remember “Aunt” Mary Ann as far back as I can remember. When she was an old woman she had the poise and manners of a lady. She had made trips to Georgia as Grandma’s maid. She loved Papa (Gus) who she had nursed as if he was her own child. He told me that the morning her left home to join the Army she gave him a five dollar gold piece. She was a wonderful seamstress and cook. She told us tales of the Indians. I wish Mama had written some of the things down that she told us. One tale was a time when a semi-friendly tribe came and celebrated a victory over another tribe, down at Spring Branch. They danced and celebrated all night, roasted the feed and hands of some of their enemies and ate them. . There was no sleep for anyone that night, but at daybreak they took up their line of March and did not molest any of the people in the neighborhood. There were many details of the times in the people I wish I could remember.
Another time when Grandma was peacefully sewing, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the spread of the bed near her moving. It was being gently drawn toward the window by an Indian. They were thieves. Grandpa had some narrow escapes. The one he considered the closest was one time when he rode up to his sisters, spent perhaps an hour on his way home at a certain place in the road, the fine mare he was riding began to plunge and tremble and would not stay in the path. He knew what that meant for she, even more than most horses and was deathly afraid of Indians. So he quickly turned and struck through the woods for home. The next day they found where a bunch of Comanche’s had lain in wait for him, a little further on, and if it had not been for that horse’s keen since of smell, he would have ridden right into them. This was a time when they had begun to feel more or less free from the fear of Indians.
To go back to Grand pa and Grandma and their landing in Texas, he just 21 and she 19 years old. Their log cabins were built about a mile from his sister Aunt Sarah Hill McGehee. (Note: Sarah McGehee Hill was mother of A.W.Hill and Sarah Hill McGehee was sister of A.W.) She was a very forceful and practical woman and gave Grandma much help and advice in managing her household and slaves in Texas. Her husband John McGehee came home from a trip to Houston feeling very sick. It developed that he had small pox. Grandpa nursed him all alone and when he died, made a coffin and buried him. He did not let anyone come near him or the house. They brought him clothes and food and left them on a big log some distance from the house. Grandpa had a slight case of small pox called verilock(sp). He also nursed a man with bubonic plaque-Mr. Lance Trigg but did not take it.
Grandma was a little delicate woman who usually weighed around 98 pounds. She must have truly loved that adventurous husband or she never has endured the life here in the wilds of Texas those first years. She had some real frights from both savage and friendly Indians. There were times when she and other women and children and slaves were hurriedly gather into the strong stockade while the men drove the Indians out of the Country. One time she was sitting sewing when a friendly bunch came. They demanded that she give them whiskey. She told them she had none, but they didn’t believe her. She was so frightened she ripped out all the tucks she had put in her little daughters dress not realizing what she was doing, but trying to appear calm before the slaves and also the Indians. There was a wild plum thicket back of the house. She told “Becky” a Negro girl to slip out and run through the brush to Mr. Holderman’s and tell him to come. She said that the girl must of gotten wings somehow for in a few minutes Mr. Holderman rode up with his gun and told them to “vamoose” which the did. But they had stolen every bright colored garment off the line that had been washed that day. (Mr. Holderman lived where the Cliff Hubbard home now is.)
Grandma told us of a time when she felt she could not stand the strain and fright and anxiety any longer. She wrote a letter to her father – asking him to come and take her home. She gave the letter to an old bachelor cousin who was with them for awhile , and asked him to get it posted for her. The she repented and prayed most fervently that the letter might be lost that her father would never receive it. She waited for a week or ten days and then this old “Cousin Billy” asked her to mend the lining of his coat. He played with her little daughter while she took the coat to mend and in the ripped lining she found her letter. She thanked God over and over but never mentioned finding it to the old cousin tho’ she knew he had given her the coat to mend so she would find the letter. Mama wrote that up in a little story that was published in a magazine “The Old Homestead” which was published during the 1890’s in Savannah, Georgia.
The time of the Indians and Slavery was pas in gone when I came to Texas. Even the “carpet baggers” were over. But there was some evidence of their work and influence. Some of the Negroes were good workers but many others would not work. They would start a crop and get in debt and leave it. They could not be depended on to stay. So several planters in Hills Prairie sent to Alabama and brought out some white families. The Williams, Wilson’s, Claytons, Wilders, and Bells were some of them. Miss Kate Bell cooked down at Grandpa’s. I know I must have tried her patience for I had a swing between the kitchen and the dining room and was always swinging in her way. She married Mr. John Young who had been one of who had been one of Grandpa’s overseers before the war. Young School House Dorm near Upton was later called for him. I remember Old Mrs. Wilder with her turkey tail fan, and black sun bonnet and her grand-daughter "Miss Nonie" who married the "one armed" school teacher, Mr. Thompson. These families I have named were good religious people and were all for the years, community leaders in the neighborhood (Hills Prairie). My little brother, John Holmes was born on the 14th of September 1874 and I was three years old on the 24th. Three children and the oldest not quite three years old. Uncle "Tommy" and Uncle Ben Holmes came out on short visits. Uncle Ripley and Uncle Tommy came and lived down at Grandpas and Uncle Ripley ran the cotton gin for Grandpa. I can remember Papa took me up there one day and let me roll down the great mounds of cotton. Little Negro boys were riding and driving the mules that were hitched to the levers that made the machinery of the gin work. They cracked long whips and shouted at the mules and it was a noisy and exciting place.
Copied off the blog, some duplicate stories from Eva:
Papa and Mama’s Wedding by Eva Hill LeSueur Karling
(Augustus Middleton Hill and Sarah Elizabeth Holmes)
The date for Papa’s and Mama’s wedding was set for October 27th 1870, the day before her birthday which was the 28th. Grandfather Holmes gave Mama $400 to buy her trousseau. She went with a cousin Mary Arnold who they thought had fine taste in clothes to New Orleans where they would get the latest in good and styles….
It was to be a big wedding. The kin folks came from far and near, some of my mother’s college friends and Dr. John Stewart, President of the College. Grandfather insisted that everybody be invited, not a mill hand’s family should be slighted. So everyone for days were up to their eyes in work preparing for it. There were hams to bake, turkeys to bake, cakes, and chicken salad to make etc. The last morning before the wedding, the last two cakes were iced and put on a shelf on the back porch to dry, when what to was the horror of someone to see, two hound dogs standing on their hind legs licking the icing off the cake. The thrifty stepmother brought them in scraped and shaved off the parts the dog had licked and the iced them again, and only the ones who had seen it knew of it. I was shocked when as a child Mama told me, but she said there was no time to bake more and there were so many people coming.
After the wedding, they went up to Shreveport and down the Red River and the Mississippi River to New Orleans on a steamboat. That was a most delightful and luxurious way to travel in those days. In New Orleans they went to the theater and the opera and other places of interest and they had their picture taken, he in his broadcloth clothes with shining boots, she in a black silk dress with lace undersleeves, overskirts, and with curls lying on her shoulder. They crossed the Gulf of Mexico in the steamer to Galveston and from there via train and stagecoach came to Bastrop where they were met by Grandpa Hill's carriage and brought to Hill’s Prairie.
They spent three months in Texas being wined and dined by all the kinfolks and family friends. Papa had been persuaded to settle in Belle Bower and it must have seen a fine location for him at the time. When the time came for them to leave Grandpa Hill loaded up big wagon with household furniture, with everything that could be jammed into it with two strong mules to pull it and two riding horses for Papa and Peter Early, a Negro man to be their first “Man Friday”. They set out on their trip through the country to Belle Bower.
Mom wrote that the trip up in a good size notebook. Swollen streams and bad muddy roads delayed their travel and it was spring when they reached there. Grandpa Holmes had bought 300 acres from Mr. Holland Sinclair, with a nice house for Papa and Mama. Papa had it freshly papered and an office built in the yard to receive his patients in when they came for treatment. With all the practice he could do among the neighborhood people and mill hands the time moved with swiftly by. They had an old maid Miss Phoebe Warren to live with them and be company and protection to Mama when he was called out at night. I used to hear them laugh and tell of queer and funny things Miss Phoebe said and did. I wish I could remember them well enough to tell some of them……..
When I was not quite 16 months old my little sister was born and named Mary Emma, for Papa’s sister, Mrs. Mary Watson in Texas and Mama’s sister Emma Holmes. April was in with all the beauty of spring in Louisiana and though only a few years after the war it was every promise of prosperity in good times and for all. But without warning, a blow fell that changed the condition and trend of their lives. As grandfather was returning his sawmill and commissary one evening around dusk he fell while crossing a little ravine and injured himself internally. Papa knew as soon as he examined him that he was seriously hurt. And he sent a man on horseback to Shreveport to tell Uncle Burwell Holmes to come home, but to see the grandfather’s life insurance was paid up-to-date before he did. They had doctors from Mansfield and Keachie in consultation but there was no help and he died within the week. The shocking grief to the family can hardly be imagined. He had been counselor and adviser for the whole connection and his death left them stunned and bewildered. The community was left without a leader. They say there were hundreds of people there for his funeral from all the churches came preachers and prominent men. I’ve heard Papa say he was one of the most perfect man he ever knew.
When they began to look into the business of the estate they found there was no will. There were none of his son’s that could or wanted to carry on the business Uncle Burwell had a good position in Shreveport, Uncle Tommy (John Robert) had been in New Orleans in medical school that year. Uncle Jimmy did not want to undertake it, and the other sons were too young. And so the estate was settled at great sacrifice. The place he had given Papa and Mama had not been deeded to them and they gave it up. The older children gave up their interest in the estate to the stepmother and her two young children. The four youngest of the older set of children were to share in the home and live with the stepmother.
Grandpa Hill sent Grandma and Uncle Bobby Hill’s wife to Louisiana to persuade Papa to move back to Texas. So when I was 17 months old and Sister Emma just six weeks old, we came to Texas to live. Grandma, Aunt Lou, and little Charlie, Mama’s sister Emma and I on the train and stagecoach, Papa riding “old Jim” and Peter Early driving the wagon of household goods coming back over the route they has to travel less than 2 ½ years before.
There was one thing on that wagon that had not made the trip to Louisiana. That was a walnut cradle or crib as we called it. Most of us were rocked in it. Ben was not for Mama had given it to “little Jim (Holmes)” Emma’s first. The four poster bed, that Sallie has, made the trip both ways.
I do not remember that time but strange as it may sound I do remember when I did remember some of the things that occurred then. It was at Marshall TX that I tasted my first ice cream and thought it burned me.
Into the big colonial house and Grandpa’s, we came that spring of 1873. In this home besides Grandpa and Grandma there, Mary Watson, Papa’s older sister with her three children cousins; Emma, Lee and Bob. Although she had a fine farm of several hundred acres and a very nice home, she had come back to Grandpa to live when her husband Dr. John Watson had died. Mr. Allie Watson her brother-in-law was also living there and teaching at the Hills Prairie School.
This home of Grandpa’s had been built the time of peace and prosperity and was furnished with the best quality and style of furniture and carpets. The parlor carpet was a deep pile plush, which was bought in New York and was on the parlor floor over 60 years and when I had it puts on an upstairs floor in 1917, it still had much wear in it.
The other bedrooms had what was called “ingrain” carpets. One upstairs room, the two long halls, and the dining room floors were stenciled. Some of this stencil can still be seen. The patterns of it looked very much like the designs of linoleum. The parlor furniture was carved with a rose design, with horsehair upholstery. A big square Steinway piano, a marble top center table on which a steriscope with pictures of famous places, a paperweight with calla lilies inside of it, and beneath the table lay the most wonderful thing!! A big counch shell, pink lined with the roar of the ocean still in it. Grandpa would hold it up and tell us of the ocean. The window shades were opaque with different scenes painted on them; a street in Venice, the Pyrenees, and other mountain scenes. Lace curtains were over them. Upon the wall over the mantle hung the oil portrait of Grandpa’s mother, Sarah McGehee Hill. He was very proud of this portrait of his mother who he told us had been a great lady and when she was young was considered the prettiest girl in Georgia. I was very much in awe of this great grandmother’s picture, for no matter from which side of the room I looked at her she would be looking straight at me!!
Hills Prairie
Hill's Prairie was a very aristocratic neighborhood. Grandma had three brothers living there. The oldest, Uncle Miller Hubbard, was very dignified and pompous. He had been married twice. Both wives were dead. The first wife was Miss Beavers, sister to Earl Erhard and Mrs. Mary ____ grandmother. His second wife was a sister of Mr. R.J. Price. They had three children: Bennett, Frank, and Cousin Millie who married Judge B. J. Neighbors.
Everybody laughed about some of Uncle Miller's ways. He just must have the first new potatoes and the first English peas in the spring. They said he gathered a few pods of peas and dug a few tiny potatoes, and had Sophie his cook to cook them. Then he rode around the neighborhood and informed everyone of his early garden. Uncle Ben Hubbard was also a widower. His wife was Miss Ann Hoard. His children were Cousin Mary, Bobbie and Annie, who was about my age. His widowed sister, also Grandma's sister, had come out from Georgia when her husband Dr. Lawrence died, and was keeping house and trying to be a mother to his children. Cousin Mollie (Uncle Miller's daughter) lived there at Uncle Bob's.
The drinking water at Grandpa's had to be brought from the spring. Quite a distance from the house, and Julie, or Easter or some of the Negros were always being sent for a fresh bucket of cool water. It was a great treat to be allowed to go along. Grandpa kept a barrel around the spring and steps cut in the bank. It was a pretty place with ferns growing around. They had the neighborhood picnics in the grove between the house and the spring. He had tried for good water several times in the past and now was having another well dug. Mr. Joe Home was digging it and one day in some way he fell back into the well and was being drawn out and his leg was broken. He was laid up with it quite a while. And, my little sister and I were happy to go upstairs and visit him. One day, we started down by ourselves and Emma stared to fall. I grabbed her dress and yelled, "Miss Lizzie, Miss Lizzie" for Mama. I was praised for saving Emma from a bad fall. Cousin Eva did fall part of the way downstairs and broke a pitcher she was carrying down. That was exciting and Lee bewailed the broken pitcher.
I must go back to grandma's brothers. For I failed to mention Uncle Gus. He and his wife Aunt Martha had a pleasant home where I loved to go. His oldest daughter Anna, had married Major Woods Moore, and had a baby boy Woodie, about my age, and had died. His next daughter was Cousin Emma, and I remember going to her wedding (she married Mr. Wamble (?) and lived in Waco, sitting on the sofa with Uncle Ripley Holmes a being served "syllabub".
Then came Cousin Lizzie, one of the beauties of that time, and cousin Martha who was also a beautiful girl, she died when about 18 and her death was one of grief’s of my childhood. He also had two sons Robert and Cliff. Cliff lived to be 80 and died on the old place leaving Clarence and Lizzie an old bachelor and old maid in the old home. They have the graduating address that Uncle Gus delivered when he graduated from Mercer College in Georgia. It’s quite witty and interesting.
Grandma’s mother had moved out to Texas with her sons after her husband’s death. The stone over her grave reads Mrs. Nancy Hubbard born 1790 died 1870 age 80 years. There is a grave by her side which reads “Demarius” wife of John H. Pope and here also lies her infant child Willie. She was Grandma’s youngest sister. I have a letter that she wrote Grandma-dainty and beautifully written. She must have been a lovely young woman. I have been offered $2.50 for the letter, but I will not sell it. John H. Pope was my Grandpa Holmes first cousin. After Aunt Demarious’ death, he married another rich wife, Miss Mary Caldwell, and Aunt Lou Hill’s sister. His son John Burwell Pope is dead but he has a son, Burwell Pope who lives in Austin. Also another grandson Arthur Watson.
Across the river Grandpa Hills brothers lived. Thomas Baytop Jefferson Hill. His wife was Aunt Scott or “Auntie”. She was his first cousin also his stepsister. She had been educated at Morovian College in North Carolina and was an unusual woman. A shouting Methodist. Thrall’s History of Methodism says of Grandma, Aunt Scott, Uncle Middletons’s wife Aunt Julie, and Grandma Caldwell “they are ‘the elect’”.
They lived in the town of Bastrop for awhile after they came to Texas but in 1854 they built a home on their plantation. It was very much like Grandpas and was built by the same carpenter. After the railroad came to Smithville his son. Cousin Cap was persuaded by his wife, Cousin Nanny Aldridge to have it torn down a moved to Smithville. I’m sure he regretted it and his son Ollie told me that he wished it had not been done. But they are all gone now so it doesn’t make much difference. Cousin Cap had another son Walton who died in 1897 or 8 and his daughter Susie married Gruder Jones and died about 1903 or 4. I named all my dolls Susie for several years when I was small.
Uncle Tom’s oldest son was Cousin Tom Anderson Hill. He was a banker in Weimar for many years when he began to get old he had the bank federalized because it is still the T. A. Hill Bank. It was his pride that no man ever lost the dollar entrusted to him. He was at a military school in Georgia when the Civil War broke out and he went in the army and was a Lieutenant from there. He was captured and lay in a Yankee prison for some time. He married his cousin, Sally McGehee, a sister of Cousin Pollie Oliver and they have three daughters and two sons living. T.Y. Hill of Llano, and Mrs. Pearl Kindred of Columbus, Mrs. George McCormick and Mrs. Stephen McCormick of Weimar and Tom Hill of Weimar.
Grandpa’s other brother was Middleton Milledge Mead Hill. He had quite a large family. They had told me that he was the handsomest of the three brothers and that Yerger Hill one of his grandsons resembled him. He was married twice, had no children by the first wife who was half-sister to his second wife. Mrs. Paul Goldman of Austin is one of his grandchildren.
Grandpa’s sister Mrs. Sarah Hill McGehee was a charter member of the Bastrop Methodist Church. After her husband’s death she married the Rev. Josiah Whipple, a pioneer Methodist preacher who was brought to Grandpa’s house where he made his home until he married great aunt Sarah. It was Bishop Morris in 1844 who drove up two Grandpa's with this young preacher and told them that under the big trees by the house was a good place for him to study. I wrote this up Centennial year for “The Advertiser” and it is among my clippings. Uncle Whipple was a great preacher and Thrall’s a says of him “when he prayed he seemed to be holding the ____ of the altar and that the door of heaven were opened”. He loved to come by when he was an old man and talk about early times.
There was a Mr. Russell who had been overseer for Grandpa. He lived down at Major Moore’s and looked after the garden, fruit trees and raised very large watermelons. He weighed 340 pounds and had a very deep rumbling voice. He came one day and brought grandpa of very large melon. I was about three years old and was very interested in the melon. He looked at me and said, “I believe I will cut that melon open and put you right in the middle of it.” I was so frightened I thought he meant to cut it open, put me in the middle and shut me up inside it. I can remember that. I am sure I would have understood is an ordinary person had said that to me but he was so terribly big. Several years later, children and the grown-ups, as well, had a hard time trying to keep from laughing out loud in church when Mr. Russell went up to the mourners bench during a Baptist revival and went to sleep. Someone had to wake him and help him to get up.
One day Grandpa looked out and saw a bunch of buzzards swarming in the pasture he said just look at those devils. He said that because they would find a sow with little pigs and eat them all up. But I thought the name of the big blackbirds was devil and it took some persuasion to convince me that it was not.
Cousin Eva, Cousin Sallie Powell, and Cousin Marry Hubbard were sent to Stausiton (sp?) Virginia to Wesleyan Female College in the fall of 1875.
In January, and Mary Watson had a spell is something like flu, but to was much better and as it was usual a lovely warm spring light day she was sitting up a while. Someone had remarked that the weather, not too warm and balmy for this time of year that it was a “weather breeder”. In the late afternoon the wind began to blow in puffs and veer from one direction to another. The North turned a dark blue and before they could pull the windows down, “the Blue Norther” arrived, above freezing with its first breaths.
Aunt Mary soon complained of the pain in her chest and side. Papa gave her something to try to ease the pain and Uncle Ripley went for Dr. Sayers, He came and all was done that they knew how to do, but she died that night as so many died these days after pneumonia and flu. I remember that Uncle Ripley’s mustache has frozen and his ears were frostbitten from that ride facing the North wind.
I remember the strange and terrible misery of death in the house, and Grandpa’s grief. She was his oldest and best loved daughter. She had graduated from the college in Marietta GA and married Dr. Watson soon after she returned home. I was a little over three when she died. I remember grandpa sitting holding the sister Emma and his lap and of being lifted up to kiss her cold cheek and tell her goodbye. She was laid under the big tree besides her husband where I had often gone with her to put flowers on his grave.
Cousin ___ did come home for her mother’s funeral it was a long way from Texas to Virginia in those days and she and cousin Mary spent the vacation with her Watson relatives in South Carolina and attended the college another year. Sally Powell spent her summer of Holly Springs Mississippi with her father’s people and went back to the college another term.
The Watson brothers; Lee, Bob, and Charlie McGehee, Tom Price and Bennett Hubbard went to A&M College. I can remember how fine those boys looked in their Confederate gray uniforms with gold braid and gold buttons and black stripes down their trouser legs. Charlie McGehee died there that spring and the second-year Tom Price became very sick Mr. Price went and brought him to Austin and he died and Uncle Bobby Hills home.
Mom’s brother Uncle Jimmy and his family moved to Texas and he took the Watson house and farm. Papa was managing the farm for Grandpa Mr. Powell, and Sally’s husband, had been sending wagons and hauling cotton from the gin selling it and turning over to Grandpa whatever he pleased. Grandpa did not seem able to stop this high-handed way. That year Papa was running the place and Uncle Jimmy was running the Watson place. One day Papa happened to ride up to the gin and find two of Mr. Powell’s four mule wagons, with Negros loading his (Papa’s) cotton bales on them. He made the Negroes unload the bales and there was a lot of tension and the indignation on both sides. Uncle Jimmy, I think only lived there one year and moved to West Texas. He has several children living in Abilene one grandson Durwood Holmes is writing a history of the Holmes family.
My little sister Annie Scott was born and Grandpa named her for one of his sisters Ann Scott. Mama was getting very anxious for a home. There was so much company at Grandpa’s. Grandpa had always intended for Papa to have the home place. He had given the other three children farms of several hundred acres each. But it seemed that it had to be home for the Watson children as both parents were gone.
So he gave Papa a little place upon the creek. I think it was perhaps 200 acres with the house on it. It was winter when they made plans to move, so I rode behind Papa up there one day and I remember that people were sitting around a big fire and there was a pretty young lady, Miss Cassie Cain, who was on crutches, she had but one leg. As soon as they moved out, Uncle Ripley and Uncle Tommy did some repair work and we moved in. After we moved a new to dining room and front gallery were built. That was a time of high adventure for us children. There were long golden shavings which sister Emma and I hung on our heads for golden curls. I walked the sills of the room they were building high above the ground (perhaps a foot in a half were two feet). The little pink winged doves flew right to the steps and were not afraid of us. Everything was new and different. There was a big wild grapevine that made a canopy over two trees under which we built our playhouse of little blocks of wood and almost anything lying around. The grapevine made a swing but we had a rope swing too. There were too big walnut trees that bore big black juicy walnuts. Mama started her flower garden and had a wonderful success.
The woods back of the house in the spring were filled with millions of bluebonnets, phlox, and Indian blankets. We’d love to take Annie Scott in the little wagon to gather the wildflowers while Papa would hunt “ginny eggs”. He would always use a long handle spoon for if you put your hand in the nest the “ginny hen” would quit it and make another nest.
Cedar Creek was near and we love to go fishing. While the grown folks fished we played on a big palette with the baby and found pink and green pebbles mussel and snail shells and were happy when we could wade in the shallow water of the creek.
When the creek was on the rise one would see it on the high bluff and logs come rolling and tossing with the foam and once or twice we saw a cow and a hog floating by. There were so many wonderful things to see.
A man that owed Papa bills made us some chairs- there were too little chairs with arms. I have one of the chairs; yet, they were made of Hickory with rawhide bottoms Uncle Ripley decided to go back to Louisiana. We hated to see him go. Mama cried when he left. Uncle Burwell and Uncle Tommy both had good positions in Shreveport and Aunt Emma and Ida had been there with them several years. They had made a place for themselves in the best circles of society and were members of the church and sang in the choir of the Methodist Church. Uncle Burwell married Ms. Katie Battle, so Mama wrote for Aunt Emma to come to make us a visit. She came and after she had been here a few weeks, Mama suggested she stay and teach the Hills Prairie School. They went to see the trustees who were glad to give it to her. Emma played the piano and sang but we had no piano. There was a big Steinway at Grandpa’s and another piano at Uncle Bob’s. A melodeon at Uncle Gus Hubbard’ and Mama wanted to piano so bad. She knew that “Miss Bee” Major Moore’s daughter had not taken the Chickering piano from Major Moore’s when she married Mr. Lee Burleson and moved to San Saba. So she wrote to her and asked her what she could take for it. She came home on a visit soon, and Mama traded her gold watch that her father gave her and the long gold chain that Papa gave her, that you can see the in picture, for the piano and oh what a happy time it was- music morning, noon, and night and Emma played and sang. She played and sang with us children, the young people of the neighborhoods came nights and Sunday afternoons and sang.
Mama suggested that in the get up a concert to buy Miss Cassie Cain a cork leg. She did with the assistance of all the young people of the neighborhood man. I posed as Little Red Riding hood in Annie Scott’s red cloak antenna to that Mr. Rim Castleman, a merchant in Austin, had sent her by Papa. Cousin Mary Hubbard presented “Rock of Ages” Clinging to the Cross with Mrs. Sarah Jane Organ. She and Aunt Emma were great friends. She was principal of the Colorado Institute in Bastrop. In one of the Christmas concerts I was autumn with leaves all over my dress. My little cousin Annie was the was summer. I was quite a singer at the time and sang songs and said speeches and was in dialogues. On Friday afternoons we had spelling matches using the “blue back” speller. The trustees and parents of the children often came for those Friday afternoons
