Mollie Grove Smith

Edith L. Crawford, 

Carrizozo, N. Mex. 

Date: February 17, 1939. 

Words: 1883 

Topic: Pioneer Story. 

Source of Information: 

Mollie Grove Smith[,?] 

White Oaks, New Mexico. 

[FEB ? 39?]	[2 ?]

PIONEER STORY. 

I have lived in the State of New Mexico for about forty-five years and in 
Lincoln County about twenty-five years. I was born September 15, 1878, near 
Memphis Tennessee. My father was J. O. Grove. He was born July 25, 1854 on a 
farm near Memphis Tennessee. My mother was Mattie Hill and was born September 
18, 1856, in Mississippi. I do not remember the place. My mother and father 
were married in Middleton, Tennessee, October 26, 1873. They moved from 
Middleton, Tennessee, to Brown County, Texas, in 1878. I was about six weeks 
old when they moved and had an older sister and brother. My father farmed in 
Brown County Texas, but they did not like it very well there so in the summer 
of 1884 they moved to New Mexico. 

There were six of us children then. We moved in a covered wagon and had all of 
our household goods and a coop or chickens, besides the family. A family by 
the name of Willis left Texas with us for New Mexico. They also had a covered 
wagon. I do not remember much about them, they left us when we got to 
[Pecos?], Texas. I was six years old at that time. I remember that my father 
and my oldest brother, Herbert, slept on the ground and Mother and the rest of 
us slept in the wagon. Mother cooked on a camp fire. I remember gathering 
fuel. After we got on the plains we had to gather cow chips to cook with. We 
had three horses. I do not know how long it took us to make the trip. 

When we got to Pecos, Texas, my father joined two other families who were on 
their way to New Mexico. One man was named F. M. Evans. He had a wife and ten 
children and about a hundred 

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head of cattle. The other man was named George Castleberry. He had a wife and 
seven children. Both traveled in covered wagons. My father and brother, 
Herbert, helped Mr. Evans to drive his cattle. 

We traveled slowly and grazed the cattle along. We came to the Lower 
[Peneasco?] and to the Upper [Peneasco?] and on to James Canyon where we 
camped for quite a while. At that time this was in Lincoln County, New Mexico. 
This was a lovely place to camp with lots of grass and water. My mother told 
my father that she had found the place where she wanted to live, right there 
in James Canyon. All three families decided to locate there so each man filed 
on one hundred and sixty acres. My father homesteaded his one hundred sixty 
acres to include the spring where we had camped. Mr. Evans located about a 
mile above us and the Castleberry family about a half mile from Mr. Evans. 

Each family got a tent and we lived in these tents for several months until 
the men got houses built for their families. The houses were built of hand 
hewn logs with the roof made of boards rived by hand. At first the houses were 
just one big room with a large fireplace. I remember that my mother cooked on 
this fireplace and we depended mostly on the fireplace for light as well as 
warmth. Each man cleared a field and fenced it with split rails. My father 
cleared about twenty-five acres at first and enlarged his field each year. My 
father planted oats, irish potatoes and all kinds of garden stuff. The grass 
was about waist high then and my father cut grass hay with a hand scythe, to 
feed his horses through the winter months. I remember that we used to thrash 
out our seed oats with a pole or flail, as we called it. My mother and we 
children did most of the work on the farm. Father had good horses and he 
decided that he could make good money freighting. At first he had only one 
wagon,

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but before very long he got another wagon and team and my oldest brother 
Herbert helped him and drove one of the wagons. 

One winter a man by the name of [Groeley?] came through by our place looking 
for a place to winter some cattle. My father had a lot of hay out so he 
decided to winter these cattle on halves. I do not remember how many of the 
cattle there were at first but my father got thirty-five head for his share in 
the spring. We were so proud of those cattle. 

After we had been on our homestead for about three years three other families 
located not far from us, two families named Hunter and one named Holden. That 
gave us quite a settlement. We had a post office then called Pine Springs and 
the first [post-mistress?] was Mrs. [Caleb?] Holden. I remember that an Indian 
carried the mail on horseback. I was just dreadfully afraid of him and he 
often stopped at our house to warm and sit. I always hid behind Mother's big 
quilt box until he left. Mother used to knit socks and mittens and sold them 
to him for fifty cents a pair. 

The men of the settlement built a log school house. I do not remember the name 
of the first teacher that I went to school to, but he was fat and bald headed. 
I remember at one time that at one time the Hunter, Holden and Grove family 
(ours) had a governess by the name of Elvira Kinney. There were sixteen of us 
that she taught and each family boarded this governess for a week at a time 
and she would go from one family to the other. Her salary was ten dollars a 
month and her board. She taught us for two summers.

There was a Baptist preacher in the community that we all called Parson John 
Hunter. I have often heard my father tell this tale on Parson John. Once just 
before Christmas when my father had gone to Roswell with his freight wagons to 
haul our Christmas 

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supplies, Parson John joined him with his wagon on the home trip. They had 
heard that there was a case of smallpox on the road at a store run by a man 
named Kennedy. Parson John had one of his children along who was sick and the 
Parson was just sure the child had smallpox. As the wagons neared this store 
Parson John stood up in his wagon and yelled: "Everybody strike a lope! 
Everybody lope your teams by this store! Hurry' everybody hurry!" My father 
thought that was so funny. 

There was no doctor in the settlement. I remember once that my brother Luther 
got very sick and we did not know what was the matter with him. My mother and 
a neighbor woman took Luther and went to the [Mescalero?] Indian Reservation 
to a doctor. When they got there they found that the doctor was a negro. My 
mother was horrified but the baby was so sick that she decided to let the 
doctor prescribe. The doctor said that Luther had bone [erisipilas?] and that 
the bones would work out of his foot. Sure enough they did and my brother is 
crippled in that foot to this day. My mother was the mid-wife in our community 
and often was called on to doctor the minor ailments in the settlement. 

As we children got older my mother worried about not having better school 
advantages for us so she decided to move to Las Cruces and send us to school. 
We lived there for three years. 

When my father was freighting I used to go with him once in a while on his 
trips. I remember once that my oldest sister Olga and I went with father to 
White Oaks. Father had oats, potatoes, garden stuffs, butter and eggs, to 
trade for groceries and clothes. One of the merchants where Father traded gave 
Olga and me each a little breast pin. We thought they were the 

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grandest things and were very proud of them indeed. We thought that White Oaks 
was the biggest city in the world. Another time I went with my father to El 
Paso. I saw my first street cars there. We went into a restaurant to sat and I 
went with my father into a small room to wash up. I saw a big fat chinaman 
standing behind a door pulling a rope. I could not imagine what he was doing 
and was very frightened. Afterwards I found out that the rope that he was 
pulling operated some fans over the tables in the restaurant. 

There were ten of us children, Olga, Herbert and Mollie, born in Tennessee, 
Sissala, Jimmie and Willie, born in Brown County, Texas, John, Howard and 
Luther, born in James Canyon, New Mexico, and Eppie Jean, born in Las Cruces, 
New Mexico. Seven of us are still living. 

In 1895 my father sold his place in James Canyon to Colonel J. E. Edgington, 
who was head of the New Mexico Military Institute at Roswell, New Mexico. We 
moved back to Texas and lived at Sipe Springs, [Comanchie?] County, Texas. 

I was married in January, 1898, to William Lee Smith. We have two sons, Leo 
and Orris, both born in Sipe Springs, Texas. 

In 1900 my husband and I left Sipe Springs, Texas, and moved back to New 
Mexico. We lived in James Canyon, in the same house that my father had built 
on his homestead and had lived in for eleven years. We rented the place from 
Colonel Edgington and farmed it for five years. In 1905 my husband went to 
work for the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad Company and we moved to 
Alamogordo, New Mexico. My husband ran on the mountain division from 
Alamogordo to Cloudcroft, New Mexico. On March 19, 1924, a log rolled off a 
flat car and hurt him very badly, injuring his back. He had to give up working 
on the railroad and was sent by the railroad company to

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Carrizozo, New Mexico, as caretaker for the railroad club house at Carrizozo. 
We lived in Carrizozo for eighteen months, but Mr. Smith was very dissatisfied 
so we leased a ranch about eight miles from White Oaks, New Mexico, and lived 
there for five years. In 1932 we moved into the village of White Oaks and are 
still living there. 

Edward W. Grove, who was president of the Paris Medicine Company of Saint 
Louis, Missouri, and who put out Grove's Chill Tonic and Grove's Laxative 
Bromo-quinine, on the market, is a first cousin of my father. I have a letter 
dated December 23, 1913, from Edward W. Grove to my father in which he sent a 
check to my father for $100.00, an a Christmas gift. 

My father and mother moved from Sipe Springs, Texas, to German, Texas, in 1910 
and they were living at Gorman when they died. Father died on March 3, 1936, 
and Mother died September 3, 1938. Of the seven children left, I am the only 
one who lives in New Mexico. The others all live in Texas. 

NARRATOR: Mollie Grove Smith, Aged 60 years. White Oaks, New Mexico. 

Edith L. Crawford, 

Carrizozo, New Mexico. 

CORRECTIONS ON PIONEER STORY OF 

MOLLIE GROVE SMITH. 

MAR 16 1939 	[2nd?]

Page 4. Paragraph 3. We moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, in August, 1891. 

Page 6. Paragraph 2. I have a latter dated December 23, 1913, from Edward W. 
Grove to my father in which he sent my father a check for $100.00 for a 
Christmas gift. This Edward W. Grove was president of the Paris Medicine 
Company of Saint Louis, Missouri, and was a very wealthy man. He was my 
father's first cousin and visited in our home once in a while. I do not know 
just how many checks he sent to my father at different times but the total 
amount was rather large. 

Credit: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project 
Collection.

Lincoln, Dona Ana, Otero