BIOGRAPHY: Evalena Farmer, Fremont County, Iowa Copyright c) May 2001 by Terry Girardot. This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives. ************************************************************** USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material,must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legalrepresentative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWebarchivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. ********************************************************************* Evalena Farmer Born 03 Nov 1871 - Hamburg, Fremont, Iowa Died after 1971 - Canadian, , Texas CANADIAN - When Mrs. Eva Black, in the company of a few friends and family, celebrates her 100th birthday this afternoon at the Abraham Memorial Home here, more than likely her memories will be wandering back into an era that the rest of us know only from motion pictures and history books. Mrs. Black came to Lipscomb County in 1881 at the age of 10 and, by all accounts, is the oldest pioneer Panhandle resident. Her memory spans five generations of Panhandle history and she can tell first hand of Indians, of buffalo, of sod huts, of prairie fires, and ordeals by blizzard. When Mrs. Black’s family unloaded their covered wagons west of the present town of Lipscomb, Amarillo was unthought of - only a place that someday would be on the then vast, unpeopled plain. At the time, only about 1,700 people lived in three small settlements (Claredon, Mobeetie and Tascosa) or on a handful of ranches and homesteads scattered across a veritable sea of grass. Mrs. Black has been confined for the past few years to the nursing home. Even now, attendants say, she reminisces of bygone days such as her elopement at the age of 16 with a cowhand from a neighboring ranch. From an earlier interview, Mrs. Black recalled the occasion, noting how her mother and stepfather were opposed to the marriage plans because she had not finished school. She was instructed by her boy friend, Hiram, to sneak out of the house when he signaled her by tossing pebbles at her window. After several successive nights of tossing pebbles and failing to rouse Eva, Hiram caught her outside picking plums and the two ran off to the Connell Ranch where Hiram worked. Borrowing a bridal dress from Mrs. Connell, Eva shed her plum picking clothes, donned the long white lace dress and together with another couple (unmarrieds had to have a chaperon back then) set out in a fringe-topped surry to find a circuit preacher. I don’t know how I looked in it, she reminisces, but I do know one thing - we were gone so long getting a license and getting married that I had to wash and iron that dress. We headed north, she continued, going from ranch to ranch until Hiram finally found a preacher in Meade, Kansas, on the other side of No Man’s Land (the name for what is now the Oklahoma Panhandle. Sometimes Mrs. Black’s memory is jogged even further back in time and she talks of the trip from Burnet County to the Panhandle. She particularly remembers the time the family wagon became so bogged down while crossing a river (probably the Canadian) that they could only watch helplessly as a feather bed floated down the river. Records show that Evalena Farmer was born in Hamburg, Iowa, on Nov. 3, 1871. Her grandfather was deeded land in Tennessee by the King of England. The will dividing the estate gave each heir a section of land and a slave. Landless and slaveless, Eva’s mother moved to Iowa after the Civil War where she met and married G. W. Farmer, postmaster of Hamburg. After Eva’s birth the family traveled by train, stage coach and wagon to Central Texas. Mr. Farmer died shortly afterwards and Eva’s mother married H. T. Eubanks, sheriff of McCulloch County. In 1881 the family made their three-week trek across the state. Laughing, Mrs. Black recalls another incident on the trip. The last night out my mother took sick and it was for me to make the biscuits. I remember very well how my father told me he could have knocked down a mule with them. Not all of her memories were of hardships and sickness. She tells of revival camp meetings, cattle roundups and dances that lasted two days and one night with cow hands from all around and girls brought up from Mobeetie. She remembers our first Christmas that we spent in this country. We ate at the Bar C Ranch and had wild turkey. Following the elopement the couple returned to Ochiltree County. We built a dugout up the river. My first child was born there. Our barn was a fence made across a deep draw, she said. Often Mrs. Black would shun domestic work and ride herd with her husband who was for a while a ranch foreman. I did a lot of riding after cattle. I think no woman has ever done more. I rode out, literally wore it out, too, one new saddle and some others partly worn out, she said. Mrs. Black’s sole surviving child, Mrs. Nina House of Higgins, proudly displays a side saddle Mrs. Black used to ride in Higgins’ Will Rogers Day celebration. Mrs. Black rode in the parade until recently. The story is told that one day some East Texas dudes were visiting a ranch when Mrs. Black rode in on a horse with a live coyote on the end of her rope. The men, a relative recounts, couldn’t believe their eyes. As a straw boss Hiram was often gone on cattle buying trips that would take him to New Mexico for as long as several months. In addition to the cattle, Hiram would bring back a load of fruit and vegetables that he had bought in Santa Fe. While Mrs. Black longed for her husband’s return she craved even more the rare luxury of tasting the produce he brought back - especially the Mexican-grown sweet onions. Once, Mrs. Black recalled, she ran out to meet the wagons, past the outstretched arms of her husband and to the chuckwagon, whereupon she began munching on an onion. A cowboy who witnessed the scene later recalled, Old Hiram stood there with a possum grin on his face, realizing crystal clear that he was playing second fiddle to a Mexican onion. Mrs. Black said it was several years after her elopement before her mother ever forgave her or her husband. Once, in fact, Mrs. Eubank caught Hiram at a cattle branding and threatened to kill him with the 30-30 rifle she held in her hands. One way that Hiram and Eva made amends to her mother was by agreeing that Eva would go back to school. The family moved to Lipscomb and Mrs. Black attended school - graduating with her daughter, Lola. In the late 1890’s the family moved to a small ranch south of Lipscomb and later moved to a location eight miles west of Higgins. This became the family home until 1928 when Hiram Black died and Mrs. Black moved to Higgins, the home where she now resides. Relatives attribute Mrs. Black’s longevity to her even tempered disposition and hearty appetite. Mrs. House said her mother remained calm even in emergencies and always fixed a big meal - even when she lived by herself. She was a prodigious consumer of coffee often drinking a gallon a day. Today, Mrs. Black joins an elite group of centarians estimated to number about 13,000 in the United States - far less than one hundredth of one per cent of the population. Appetite and disposition aside, Mrs. Black’s family has a history of longevity. A few years back, said Mrs. House, herself a septuagenarian, although she won’t admit and certainly doesn’t look it, we counted six in our family over 90 - all women. Mrs. Eubanks, Eva’s mother, lived to be 96. She died in Glazier in 1946. If the women in the family are long-lived the men make up for it in hardiness. The stories told about Hiram (he was 6 feet 4 ½) and his feats of strength are legend. Mrs. House relates how he would win foot races against even the fastest horses. The race consisted of a 100-yard run to a pole and back again to the finish. Lots of tenderfeet lost money betting against my father, she said. Even at the age of 60 Hiram could jump a 6- foot-high barbed wire fence, she added. Eva Black’s grandson, Robert, himself a grandfather, bears wounds from a tribal war in Africa and once worked in a Peruvian silver mine three miles high in the Andes. A former State Department officer, he will be attending Mrs. Black’s birthday party before departing for Kuwait, and, eventually, he hopes, to own a ranch in Australia. We don’t plan a big celebration, said Mrs. House in reference to today’s birthday. She (Mrs. Black) is not up to it. We would like for her friends to send her a card which I’ll read to her, Mrs. House continued, adding, I guess now they would be her friend’s grandchildren.