Tuesday, July 13, 2010

"In Her Own Words"

My Great Great Grandmother Emma Kelly was interviewed once by another lady whom i have previously spoken of in a past post entitled dominoes and daring do about aunt Florence finley.  In 1938 she interviewed grandma Emma while she was living the sunset years of her life with her son in Sabinal, texas. Here she tells of life in the pioneer days of the Sabinal river valley as they settled the land.  

by
   
   Mrs. Florence Fenley Angermiller, P. W. Life History
   JUN 15 1938
   
SAN ANTONIO TEXAS
   
   Mrs. Emma Kelly Davenport
   
   Sabinal, Texas
   
   The little, gray-haired mother of ten children who, herself, was born
   and reared in the Sabinal Canyon in 1864, and who played as a child in
   the river that is beloved because of its frontier history, is living
   today in the town of Sabinal. Her children, likewise, were brought up
   on the Sabinal River and trained for ranch life just as she and her
   brothers were.
   
   Possessing a more than ordinary education for pioneers of that day, it
   has served her purpose in recording facts and data which her excellent
   memory can now enlarge upon. As a young woman, she had the uncommon
   trait of keeping diaries, keepsakes and historical mementos. Belt
   buckles worn by her father and her husband's father as soldiers in the
   Confederacy; powder horns and valuable documents contribute to the
   interesting lore of early days.
   
   The following incidents are told in her own words:
   
   "My mother, Nancy Williams, was born in Perry County, Illinois, the
   daughter of Milton Williams. Her grandfather, Robert Williams, fought
   under General George Washington in the Revolutionary War. When she was
   very young, her parents brought her to live in Arkansas and there is
   where she later married my father, Chris Kelly, on Dec. 24, 1847 near
   the town of Siercy in White County. In 1851, they moved to Kaufman
   County, Texas, and in 1853 they came to the Sabinal Canyon where I was
   born nearly eleven years later, August 27, 1864.
   
   "You see, she was only about nineteen years old when she came out here
   and though it was about a year before the Indians began giving them
   serious trouble, it became necessary after that, oft' times for my
   mother to go to the field with my father and hold her baby and his gun
   while he worked.
   
   "My parents began ranching as soon as they got to the Sabinal Canyon.
   They had brought their horses and cattle and wagons with them and
   other members of his family had come along, also. In fact, there was a
   train of them. One wagon was provided for my mother and I think it was
   a little finer than the other wagons. She had her own bedding and
   personal things in that wagon. My daddy had a mischivous brother along
   in the wagon train and he tormented everything and everybody. His name
   was Jack Kelly. One day, he was riding in my mother's wagon and kept
   teasing her. She got tired of it after awhile and took off her shoe
   and threw it at him. She hit him right on the nose and it sure drew
   the blood. My daddy would have whipped him right there, but the whole
   wagon train took up for him and wouldn't have stood for it because
   they knew his mischief was all in fun.
   
   "The trip was made in ordinary time but the roads those days were
   simply awful. Scarcely more than a trail over the rough mountains or
   across long-stretches of muddy prairie kept them from making more than
   eight or ten miles a day lots of times. A heap of times, they had to
   lie over for the swollen creeks and rivers to go down so they could
   cross.
   
   "My daddy was always in the saddle and was always with the other
   settlers on the cow hunts. In 1870, he decided to take a herd of
   cattle to California, so he and Gid Thompson went together and threw
   their herds together. Gid's two boys, Hy and Bob, went along. The
   reason for selecting California was because of there being so much
   money out there after that gold rush. Cattle here was fat for
   they had open range and plenty of water. They knew it would take a
   long time to make that trip, so they prepared for it. They bought up
   different small herds around in the country and got together about
   3,000 head.
   
   "Indians had to be taken into consideration at this time because they
   were constantly coming into the settlements and robbing and stealing.
   My father had narrowly missed ambushed by them more than once. He
   decided that it would be safer to leave his family at Uvalde even
   though it was only a village, for there were soldiers down at Fort
   Inge and it was far better protection against the Indians.
   
   "John Davenport (whom I was later to marry) and others of the
   neighborhood stayed up at the ranch headquarters the night before the
   herd left on the trail. They went with the outfit for one day's
   travel. The last night we stayed at home, which was this same night,
   the boys were all camped around to start before day the next morning.
   The camp was awakened by my father singing that old song: "'Wake up,
   wake up, you drowsy sleepersWake up, wake up, it's almost day!How can
   you lie and sleep and slumber When your true love is going away!'
   
   "I guess that was pretty hard on my mother, for she realized that he
   would be gone a year or two, if he came back alive at all. No one knew
   whether they would ever get through or not and it was hard to give
   them up.
   
   "It took them two days to go from headquarters, here on the Sabinal,
   to Uvalde and we camped one night with them on the way to Uvalde. I
   remember that one of the cowboys caught me up and stood me up on the
   sugar barrel next morning. It was a barrel of brown sugar they were
   taking along with their provisions.
   
   "My father left us a new wagon and team of horses and money enough to
   live on two years. He left us in a rented house and after he was gone
   about two months, my mother built a new house in the west part of town
   near where the Main Street School is now. We had taken everything we
   had from the ranch except a few milk cows and some hogs.
   
   "I was soon old enough to go to school and my first school days were
   at Uvalde. My teacher was Old Judge McCormick. He was gray-headed and
   a middle-aged man then and all his days, didn't change his appearance
   much. He was tolerably strict in school but he was a great sport when
   it come to attending horse races or other sports. He was a great
   drinker too. I remember he was always ready for ball games and he said
   that John Davenport could throw a ball farther than any man he ever
   saw.
   
   "He told me that he never went to school over six months in the year
   in his life and that a boy could get a good education if he would go
   six months and really try to learn. He said his school came in
   three-months sessions at a time. He taught many a person in this
   country and he trained lots of men to different trades. He was a good
   surveyor and he taught that trade to John Davenport. They surveyed out
   many a section in this country and my understanding is that they
   helped survey out the town of Uvalde. He had a fine compass and
   Jaco 's :DEL] Jacob's staff and chain and before the old Judge died,
   he presented that very same compass to my husband and now it is owned
   by my son, Rollie Davenport. It is a fine instrument and as good as
   ever.
   
   "After my father was gone awhile my sister, Sarah, married George
   Dillard and George's sister married at the same time so they had a big
   double wedding and 'infair.' That was down in the Patterson settlement
   on the Sabinal. I think everybody in the country came and helped
   celebrate.
   
   "It was at this very place, later on, that George Dillard dubbed me
   a tomboy because I could run like a race horse. I could outrun
   any of the school boys in the whole country,/ unless it was Charley
   Harper and I could run right with him. George Dillard decided to put a
   pair of pants on me and I had always been taught it was a disgrace for
   a girl to put on men's clothing, so naturally I felt that I would be
   disgraced for life it such a thing were done. Well, he set out after
   me one day to catch me but he would have had to be horseback to have
   done it. I took to the open pasture and I remember going/ over hills
   and down them as I circled around to get back to the house. He found
   out he couldn't catch me. Not having any sisters near my age, I had
   played with the boys in their games till I was a good runner.
   
   "Not long ago, Ben Biggs from Seattle, Washington, came down here and
   he said he often thought of me because of a broken finger he got when
   we were kids and he was chasing me and fell. We were playing school
   and he undertook to catch me as I crossed the road close to the school
   house. He fell as he went across and hit his finger on the ground and
   broke it. The finger grew back crooked as a rememberance to me.
   
   "We stayed down at the Patterson settlement a few months after my
   sister married. We felt safer down there than we did at Uvalde. We
   were scared to death the whole time we lived in Uvalde. That certainly
   was a wild place if there ever was one. Rangers and soldiers would
   come in there and get on wild sprees. They would get into fights and
   shoot up the town. It surely wasn't safe to go up town after dark.
   I've gone under the bed many a time when I was little and all that
   shooting was going on. Once, there was a terrible commotion and
   shooting up town and the next morning we found out the cause of it.
   Two gamblers by the name of Asberry and Young were killed. They
   were men who had not been living there long and had no families. They
   were hard drinkers and gamblers and got into a fight with each other.
   Men would fall out with their very best friends in a gambling game.
   One of the men drew his gun and killed the other and they took both of
   them to jail -- the dead one and the wounded one. But someone went to
   jail and killed the other one.
   
   "It wasn't an uncommon thing for a cowboy fight or soldier and ranger
   fight to occur up town. There was saloons and places for them to have
   trouble and it often happened. There were so many outlaws and bad men
   in through here then, that men in this section went armed for years;
   the old and young -- even boys 12 and 13 years old had pistols buckled
   on them. Many a time when a killing occurred, the killer ran away and
   more often than not, made a clean get-away.
   
   "My mother's life was a busy one after we moved to Uvalde. She had a
   bunch of children to care for and the cooking, mending, sewing,
   soapmaking, washing, ironing and milking cows went right on. She
   started a garden right at once after we moved there and she bought the
   first cook stove I ever saw. It didn't lack much of being the first
   one in the town, either. That stove had the regular four-eye too but
   two back eyes were elevated about four inches. I remember the fine
   bread and cakes she could cook on it.
   
   "When cool weather came along, mother wanted to go back to kill her
   hogs up on the ranch and put up her meat and lard. Mrs. Thompson
   decided to go along too, for she had moved to Uvalde to live while Mr.
   Thompson was gone, the same as we had. They got two neighbor boys to
   go along horseback and they put all us children in the wagon and we
   started out. We had gone about forty miles up in the canyons and when
   we reached Nolton Creek on Uvalde Prairie, we noticed a mounted
   Indian leading another horse. I remember that the horse he was leading
   seemed a little crippled and I think he tied/ him and stopped to try
   to make out what we were doing or how many men there were. My mother
   told my two oldest brothers to get out and get two long sticks and get
   on the horses that were hitched to the wagon. They did so and then she
   told the two boys that were horseback to tie their lariats to the
   tongue of the wagon and start out. She had all of us children sit up
   in the wagon with hats on to make us look like men or big boys. Mrs.
   Thompson was frightened and was afraid that we were all going to be
   killed, but my mother told her to have faith in the Lord and all would
   be well. She was a courageous woman and one of the calmest and most
   serene persons I ever knew. She wasn't easy to get ruffled. Her scheme
   worked like magic because the Indian couldn't tell for sure how many
   men there were for it looked like there were four mounted men, armed
   with guns. Indians knew that men with rifles could do business in
   those days.
   
   "My mother finally sold her home in Uvalde and moved back up to our
   ranch before my father ever returned from California. I was going to
   school up there, then. I have heard them talk about my father coming
   home by boat, so I suppose he took a train from California to St
   Louis, and then went by boat down the Mississippi to New Orleans and
   then around by Galveston for I do know that he landed at Galveston and
   came on up to Houston. It took him a long time to make that trip and
   we hadn't had a letter from him in no telling when. The day he came
   in, my mother had gone down below to stay all night with my oldest
   sister. She rode horseback down there and left me at a neighbor's
   house. I saw two men come up the road horseback but I never knew it
   was my daddy till he went on home and my brother came down in a run in
   a little while and told me that he was there. We had looked for
   him so long, I ran like a race horse to get to where he was. I had
   forgotten about an old mean, fighting cow we had. We always had to
   keep out of her way for she would run you or fight anything. Well, I
   ran right into her face before I saw her. She tossed her head and I
   tossed over the fence. Gracious, I sure did run then. When I got to
   where I could see my daddy, he was standing in the door and when he
   saw me, he reached up and caught the top of the door facing and began
   dancing. I tell you we were all so happy we couldn't behave. He got on
   his horse then and rode on down to my sister's where my mother was.
   They said it was a great meeting with mother crying and clinging to
   him. She just couldn't stop crying.
   
   "He brought back a mint of money from that trip and told many an
   interesting experience they had on their way out there. He said that
   Old Man Ben Biggs and his boys, Jim and Billy, were several hundred
   miles ahead of them with about six-hundred head of cattle. They had
   about the same experiences crossing the desert and strips of country
   without water as the Biggs outfit had had. I heard him say that when
   they got to California and they needed to go into town--I think it was
   San Diego--and they were all so ragged and torn up and threadbare that
   none of them would have dared try to go into town looking like that.
   Not a one of them had a decent pair of pants left to go into town
   after provisions and clothes for the other fellows. But John Taylor
   met the emergency. He took the wagon sheet and cut out a pair of pants
   with a butcher knife. I suppose his leggings hid the stitches. I think
   they had a needle or two and some twine or coarse thread along. The
   boys thought it was a good idea. They were all so shaggy, with long
   hair and beard and so dirty they were longing to get into town for a
   clean-up. Well, John Taylor saved the day and went into town with his
   handmade duck pants and he bought clothes for the other boys and
   brought them out so they could all go in to town.
   
   "Even after my father got back to Texas, the Indians were still
   pilfering and stealing horses. He was taking us across the country one
   time from Uvalde to the ranch and we stopped at one of our places at
   the Blue Water hole for the night. There was a house there and we were
   going to spend the night there before going on in home. We unloaded
   the wagon and went into the house and my father turned the horses
   loose and they hardly got ten steps before the Indians had them. We
   didn't know it until next morning, but we saw by the tracks what had
   happened. My father had to walk about ten miles to get another team to
   take us on up to our home.
   
  " after his return from California, my father began making
   preparations for another trip up the trail -- this time to Kansas with
   a herd. Our lives were pretty easy from that time on for he made the
   trip and made lots of money. Then when he began making plans for a
   third trip, my mother set her foot down on it. She told him she was
   tired of staying alone and raising babies and calves while he was
   always gone. He didn't make the trip either.
   
   "As my father was strictly a stockman, he lived on a ranch till his
   death. In a few years after his cattle drives, he began experimenting
   with sheep and was very successful in handling them. I was partly fed
   on sheep meat and as my winter clothing came from the sheep's back, I
   like sheep to this day. I remember that sheep shearing time was surely
   a busy time for us. Sometimes there would be fifteen or twenty
   shearers come at one time and if the weather was good, they could soon
   do the work. They were generally Mexicans and there nearly always was
   a musician with them. They are great people to sing and play a guitar
   and we always loved to hear them. Once, there was a shearer with the
   crew who could imitate any kind of animal or bird he had ever
   heard. All of us children tried to do the same thing and we certainly
   made a racket if nothing else. One day one of the shearers spoke to me
   in Spanish and said he was going to cut off one of my curls. I didn't
   understand him, and made a dash for the house, scared to death, and
   told my mother that he said he was going to cut my head off. After
   they found out why I ran, they laughed at the joke on me, and tried
   every way to make friends with me but I stayed off at a distance and
   watched. Even their gifts of peloncilios (pe-lon-cios) sent to me by
   my brothers didn't win my confidence any more.
   
   "I went to school mostly up where Utopia is now. As I grew up, I took
   part more and more in the programs we usually had on Friday afternoons
   and we nearly always had visitors. Boys who liked certain school girls
   were pretty sure to be there. Two of my girl friends and myself got to
   where we expected certain boys to be there for the program. John
   Davenport always came after me on Friday evenings and he would get me
   and his girl cousin in the buggy and go to the store. He would buy a
   pound of candy for us and it would be wrapped up in paper as we had
   never seen candy put up in boxes then. We would drive on to his
   cousin's house and let her out, then we would go back to my home. I
   lived a mile north of the school and she lived a mile south of it and
   though he always drove pretty, fine-trotting horses, I noticed he
   didn't hurry them after we let his cousin out of the buggy and started
   back to my home.
   
   "Our parents were always strict about letting us go anywhere and we
   weren't allowed to go to parties on school days; only on Friday or
   Saturday nights. I was thinking lots of John Davenport about then,
   even though I was only 14 years old. I thought he was the handsomest
   thing I ever had seen and I felt sure that he wanted to marry me, but
   he hadn't asked me yet. There was another girl over about
   D'Hanis that I knew he had been interested in and I would hear
   different reports about it at times, but he seemed so much in love
   with me when we were together, I would always forget that there might
   be someone else.
   
   "The school days wore on toward an end that year and I must confess
   that I made my worst grades. I had always made such good grades but
   the last year, I nearly failed. My mind was on John Davenport too
   much. However, I was very enthusiastic toward the close of the term
   and tried to catch up on my grades and practiced speeches and parts
   for the programs to be given at the close of school. One afternoon, I
   was sitting under the arbor out at the side of the schoolhouse and I
   don't suppose any one knew I was there. I happened to be looking right
   down the trail when I saw Andrew Spencer meet his stepfather and kill him.
It was an old score settled for Andrew said
   his mother had been terribly mistreated and he had told his stepfather
   that if he ever attempted to speak to him, he would kill him. Andrew's
   mother died and his stepfather married again and was living with his
   second wife when Andrew killed him. I don't know what they said to
   each other but Andrew shot him down and there was a terrible confusion
   around there then and somebody gave Andrew a horse to leave on. He
   pulled out right over to Uvalde and gave himself up. He didn't stay in
   jail very long and when he was tried, he came clear.
   
   "Well, at the close of the last year of my schooling, we had a May
   Party. On a vote, I was elected queen and all the attendants were
   chosen. I remember that I was all dressed up in a white organdy with
   fluted ruffles. They took our old piano box and decorated it up with
   flowers for a throne. I had flowers on me too and my attendants were
   all decorated with flowers. When all the girls came in and made
   their speeches to me and handed me their septres and wands, I jumped
   up and said,
   
   "'AMEN!
   
   And heaven support us too!
   
   'Tis much we mighty people have to do --'
   
   There was more to it and I went right through the whole speech, but my
   eye was roving over the crowd to see if a certain cowboy had arrived.
   Being fixed up my prettiest, it was natural that I wanted him to see
   that ceremony where I was crowned queen. A little later that evening,
   I got a letter from him saying that on that day he would be taking a
   bunch of cattle to San Antonio and didn't thing he could possibly get
   there. I was the worst disappointed girl in the world. But after all,
   he did get there before it was all over and we went to a dance from
   there. We didn't stay late because my father objected to dances at a
   public place.
   
   "They never let us to to every dance that come along, either. I
   remember I had a hard time getting to go to all the dances I wanted
   to. I have gone with my brothers horseback, far and near, and have
   even ridden behind them on their horse just to get to go. Of course,
   that would only be for a short distance, but no matter how close a
   dance was, we most always rode horseback to it. My parents gave a
   dance occasionally and they were always largely attended. It was
   customary to dance nearly all night and they would serve coffee and
   cake or cookies through the night to the guests. And how they could
   dance! They were always so graceful on the floor and I do know that
   John Davenport was the most graceful dancer I ever saw. I just thought
   I was IT if I could dance with him.
   
   "He was rather timid in his younger days and while he was with me, he
   didn't ask me to marry him. He waited till he left and was on a cow
   hunt down the country, then wrote me a letter. He said he had
   meant to ask me but his heart failed him and he had been told
   that my parents objected to my marrying anyway. I wrote him back that
   I intended to marry whom I wanted and would not try to please my
   parents about it if a question arose. We considered ourselves engaged
   then and I was only 14, as I told you. He came to see me as often as
   he could but he nearly always came in a buggy so he could take me
   places.
   
   "While we were engaged, myself and two other girls and our three boy
   friends, chaperoned by my married sister and her husband, took a trip
   to San Antonio that summer. We rode in two hacks drawn by horses as
   there was no railroad west of San Antonio then. Our first night out,
   we stayed at Hondo with a friend. The boys spent the night in the hack
   and used the blankets and pillows we carried along. The rest of the
   party slept in the house. The next night found us in Castroville and
   we secured rooms and a place to put the teams. We went then to see the
   Catholic churchhouse which was practically new. It was a stone
   building, and beautifully decorated on the inside. I see that same
   church now when I pass through there going to San Antonio and though
   it shows marks of age, it still serves the purpose for which it was
   intended. I think that church was the first to be built west of San
   Antonio.
   
   "The third night found us in San Antonio. We went out window-shopping,
   then took a ride on the street car which was drawn by little Spanish
   mule. The little mule had a bell on its neck which was a good signal
   that the street car was coming. He didn't have to pull the car all the
   time as they had other miles stationed along the way so that they
   could put fresh ones to the car at different stops and let the tired
   one rest. Sometimes the passengers would have to push to get the car
   started if the car was heavily loaded.
   
   "We were out for a sight-seeing, so we went up to San Pedro Springs on
   the street car. The fare was cheap but the travel was slow. I'll say,
   though, that the street car reached its destination safely. We were
   anxious to see the zoo that was out there. It was a pit dug about ten
   or twelve feet square and contained a bear, a wolf and a coon. I don't
   remember any other animals, but they had just what we had seen all our
   lives and we thought it was a splendid zoo. There were water fowls,
   such as ducks and geese, and a good collection of fish.
   
   "But mosquitoes! I couldn't sleep at all. There were no screens, of
   course, for we had never heard of anyone screening their houses then.
   Well, we made it through the night and was glad when it was over. We
   got up ready for more sight-seeing. We felt that we should spend one
   whole day in the city to make our trip more satisfactory. We were
   determined that we would visit an ice cream parlor and eat some ice
   cream. As for myself, I had never seen any ice cream in mid-summer. I
   had been having a slight toothache that day and was trying to forget
   it, but the first bite of ice cream I took, settled the fun with me
   till I went to the dentist.
   
   "We went to see the Government tower that day. It wasn't finished but
   it was the tallest building I had ever seen. We went straight up the
   stairway, then the steps began to wind. It looked too high for me and
   there was so much unfinished woodwork, that we decided to come down.
   We went over to Frost's National Bank and then to Oppenheimer's store
   and a few other places where we bought some new things for one of the
   girls who was going to get married later on.
   
   "It was just such a trip as this that my mother and father took to San
   Antonio after supplies once. It took five days to make a trip to San
   Antonio and back and if it was muddy, it took a whole week. Well,
   they loaded up their wagon with the necessary supplies and they
   started home. My mother had bought a great assortment of dry goods and
   of course, on the way back, it was a long trip and many a hour of just
   plodding along watching the road. Having to stop to cook meals along
   the way and to let the team eat and rest, my mother wanted something
   to do. She hadn't brought her scissors along, but she hit on another
   plan of making a dress out of some of the material she had bought.
   Here is where another butcher knife came into play as a dressmaker's
   tool. She just cut out her dress with a sharp butcher knife and
   started to work on it and had the complete dress made by the time they
   got home.
   
   "John Davenport and I married in 1878 and the first two or three years
   of our married life, we lived on a cow ranch. We had stock of our own
   and were on my father's place on the Sabinal River. I reckon I have
   lived on, at least, seven or eight different places on the Sabinal
   River. We run the J W D brand, which was John's brand when we married.
   The J was on the shoulder, the W on the side and the D on the hip. My
   brand was EMA on the side, for you see I had stock of my own on my
   father's ranch too.
   
   "John continued on the cow hunts. The country was not entirely fenced
   up yet and they used to go on roundups and take pack-horses along.
   They would take a sack of biscuits, some bacon and coffee, sometimes a
   frying pan and coffee pot. If it was a lasting job, they probably
   would take two pack-horses to the outfit and maybe a wagon. They would
   round up from the head of the Sabinal and go down the country a good
   ways and meet other outfits that were on the east and west. I have
   seen many a roundup thrown together and I have seen the ranchmen
   marking and branding at the roundups and driving their stock home.
   Everybody was after the Mavericks. The first man to get his rope on
   him got him. They have penned in our corrals many a time but they
   hardly ever come to the house for their meals because they had their
   own camp outfit with them. You would see all those cowboys and
   men with their guns on them working right along in the hot dusty pens.
   Most ranchmen kept their girls and wives away from the pens when an
   outfit was working there, and most of them hardly ever went to the
   pens except for some home work where they were needed awhile.
   
   "If the cow hunts went on longer then was expected, John would
   generally ride in again in two or three days and get some more
   biscuits. He kept a sack tied on his saddle. They would ride all day
   and when they went to eat, they would always have fresh beef and
   biscuits.
   
   "We pre-empted a place of our own and went to running sheep with our
   cattle. I was used to sheep and loved to handle them. We nearly raised
   six of our children on that place for they were old enough to go to
   school. The children were always tickled to death when their daddy
   would ride in after he had been gone awhile. I always felt like I was
   one of the children myself, I was so young when I married. At least,
   he petted me as much as he did one of the children and we were
   sweethearts all our married life.
   
   "We stayed in the sheep business on up to the last few years of his
   life. While the children were small, we would have to move closer to
   school at times or maybe to town, then move back to the ranch. But we
   kept a teacher at home when they were right little. We had a governess
   there the time we lost our little boy. We had gone out on the river
   that day and the children were all playing around. Little Georgie went
   to climb up on a log while they were running around, and there was a
   rattlesnake lying under it. It bit him on the ankle and we grabbed him
   up right then and bound his leg and started for the doctor. One of the
   boys ran to the house and got a chicken and we split it open and laid
   it on the bite. John drove the horses in a run and I sat in the back
   and held him and I also held that chicken on his little ankle.
   We got to the doctor and he had everything that could be done or that
   he knew to do. We worked with him all night but we lost him just at
   sunrise the next morning. I talked to that doctor later and he told me
   he had never lost but one other child from a snake bite since that
   time. My next baby was a girl and I named her Georgia as a namesake of
   the little one we lost.
   
   "We used to do lots of our visiting after supper. Many a time, we have
   gone to see my mother or John's mother after supper or maybe to some
   neighbor's. We always went in a buggy or a hack. I think back now on
   how I used to go with John down to his mother's place east of Sabinal
   and the next morning, we would be hurrying to get off and I never
   helped with the breakfast dishes or any of the work. She insisted that
   she would clean up after we got off, but I wouldn't do that now if it
   was to do over.
   
   "John loved to sing and he loved music in every way. His mother liked
   music the same way and she could play the violin pretty good. She
   always loved to see her children and grandchildren come and always had
   something good for them to eat. She lived on the highway between San
   Antonio and Sabinal, about two miles east of the present town of
   Sabinal. For years she kept a store there and the freighters and
   travelers always stopped with her. There is where I saw so many ox
   trains and mule trains pass by. Freighters hauled cotton to Mexico in
   season and I have seen bales piled up on the wagons as long as they
   could get one on. Sometimes the Mexicans would come by from Mexico
   with [paloncillos?] and [quinect?] to sell. And I have seen them
   peddling red-birds -- just ordinary red-birds that are wild. You could
   put them in a cage and feed them cracked corn and water, and they
   would just whistle and whistle for you. Those peddlers oft' times had
   fancy needle-work and beautiful drawn work that must have taken them
   weeks to make. It was always rather cheap too. The country was getting
   more thickly settled then and the menace of Indians was over.
   
   "We stayed in the sheep business up to the last few years of John's
   life. We put in a two-hundred acre farm at the foot of the hills and
   continued on with our cattle and sheep. Later, we leased out our farm
   and ranch and moved to Sabinal to this home I live in now and where
   John died in 1926. All of our ten children were there: Jim, Raymond,
   McCormick (Connie, who died a short while after) Rollie, Lila,
   Georgia, Ira, Davie and Newell. Since he passed away, I have been
   blessed with having the children all around me. I miss the old life
   and I love to see all the old-timers in this country whenever we [?].
   I have long wanted a record made of these things I have told you and
   that is why I have preserved dates and other data which I have showed
   you."
   
  
 


1 comment:

Bekah said...

Thanks for posting this Dad. I'm so glad that these stories can be preserved.