TX BIOS:  Mrs. G. J. Nunn
   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
   Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
   
   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
   For more information about this text and this American Memory
   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   0001
   
   [?]
   
   Interview with Mrs. G. J. Nunn, 1619 Tyler, Tuesday, June 28, 1938.
   
   January 1, 1904, Mrs. Nunn came with her husband, the late Dr. G. J.
   Nunn, pioneer educator of the Panhandle, to Amarillo, where they set
   up housekeeping at 701 Jackson, in the building which was formerly the
   first Methodist [??] in the town and in which the first religious
   services for other denominations were held. Since its use as a church
   building, the house had been remodeled and [converted?] into an
   apartment house. Mrs. Nunn still recalls with a shudder the "granite"
   wallpaper with which every room in the building was decorated.
   
   In January, shortly after their arrival, Dr. Nunn established the
   Amarillo Academy in his home. Students from out of town roomed and
   boarded in the same building. In the summer of 1904 he bought a
   down-town building which he moved to the academy grounds and used for
   school purposes. Soon the purchase of another building was required by
   the growing student body - an old paint shop which was moved to a new
   location at 705 Monroe Street. This [building?] was utilized as a
   dormitory for boys attending the academy and was also occupied by the
   primary department of the school. Boys took their meals in the Nunn
   home at 701 Jackson, where girl students stayed. After the academy was
   closed, the building at 701 was sold to a Dr. [?] and converted into a
   rooming house which later burned.
   
   Dr. Nunn,, who had dabbled in real estate more or less before entering
   the professional field, carried on this business intermit ently while
   he was teaching in Amarillo, finally giving up school work to devote
   his entire time to the real estate enterprise, [which?] was more
   profitable than the educational field. (Page any teacher and they will
   tell you the same).
   
     NOTE: [??]
     
   00022
   
   During the first term of the academy, Dr. Nunn and his wife did the
   teaching, Mrs. Nunn taking charge of the music and helping with the
   intermediate work, while her husband taught the [higher?] subjects.
   The following year W. B. Quigley, who died in May, 1935, was added to
   the faculty. The late Dr. David Fly also [?] taught at one time in the
   old academy.
   
   The first graduating class was composed of Morris and Mary Browning,
   Bill Herring's sister, and others. [One?] of Mrs. Nunn's first pupils,
   whom she taught spelling and grammar or arithmetic, was Bascom
   Timmons.
   
   Miss Laura Buchanan of the academy's [art?] department did the /
   covers of Holland's Magazine for several years.
   
   As Sula Orr , Mrs. Nunn came to teach in the old Goodnight College in
   1901, taking charge of the music department a year before Dr. Nunn,
   who was then president of Polytechnic College in Fort Worth, came to
   assume the presidency of the college at Goodnight.
   
   Dr. McIlhany, to whom Dr. Nunn had gone to school and under whom Mrs.
   Nunn had studied as a young girl of fourteen in Stephenville, was the
   founder of Goodnight College and persuaded his former pupil to come to
   the young plains institution. In 1902 Dr. Nunn took charge of the
   college established by the philanthropic Colonel Goodnight and his
   wife, who was a school teacher before she married the colonel.
   
   In the summer of 1903 Miss Orr and Dr. Nunn were married, coming to
   Amarillo in January of the following year.
   
   The Goodnight College at the time was still housed in the old church
   building. The boys' dormitory had two stories, facetiously known as
   the "Upper and Lower Dives".
   
   Clarendon College was evidently older than the Goodnight institution,
   although the latter is often spoken of as being the oldest college
   [???] 00033in the Panhandle, because, as Mrs. Nunn recalls, the
   buildings of the former [were?] of older, substantial brick
   construction.
   
   Contemporaries of the Panhandle were the Amarillo, Clarendon,
   Goodnight, Hereford, and Canadian [?], with perhaps a few years
   difference in their beginning and ending. The oldest [?] home in
   Canadian was formerly one of the Canadian Academy buildings. Addison
   or Randolph Clark was president of the Hereford College, as Mrs. Nunn
   recalls..
   
   The Amarillo Academy had students, however, from [both?] Hereford and
   Goodnight, [therefore?] therefore the colleges at those places must
   have been discontinued before the opening , or established after the
   closing , of the Amarillo institution.
   
   The Lowry-Phillips Academy was established in the building which is
   now occupied by the Children's Home after the Nunn college closed. The
   De [?] girls, who had gone to school to Phillips in Blue Mountain,
   Missouri, had a kindergarten in Amarillo, perhaps in connection with
   the Lowry-Phillips school, after the Nunns came to Amarillo. Mrs.
   Estelle Scott, [teacher?] in the Amarillo schools, was one of the De
   [?] sisters.
   
   Mrs. Bertha MacGregor of 1004 Harrison also [taught?] a kindergarten
   about this time.
   
   In the course of his real estate operations, Dr. Nunn, perhaps as
   early as 1904, acquired a part of the farm which was / later developed
   as Edgefield additon to Amarillo. Later, the whole of the farm was
   added to his holdings. Early in the development of this / property,
   Mr. Nunn brought a Dallas realtor to Amarillo to put the acreage on
   the market, several lots being sold in it at the time, many of which
   were paid for, others reverting to the owner, Dr. Nunn. About 1926 in
   the expansion days of the oil boom, the addition was formally opened,
   street laid 00044off, lots put up for sale, and the project promoted
   to a greater extent than in the first venture. The addition was named
   by the Dallas agent who promoted the first sale of [lots?] in the
   additon, perhaps because the land had been farm field on the edge of
   the town.
   
   Mrs. Nunn remembers some of the old buildings of early Amarillo which
   are still doing service in the town. The H. B. Sanborn home, formerly
   on the block now occupied by the Municipal Auditorium, now stands at
   1311 Madison, in the same condition, except for a coat of paint, green
   and white to replace the [favorite yellow?] original yellow. The coach
   house in which Sanborn kept his tally-ho still stands, converted into
   a dwelling. The old office [building?] in which he worked was also
   moved away to an uncertain location, but both coach house and
   [office?] are parts of other buildings in Amarillo today.
   
   The first Amarillo public school building, the former frame courthouse
   which served Potter County before the first brick structure was
   erected, stands at the corner of Ninth and Van Buren streets, the old
   schoolhouse [?] to and changed until a thing of its former shape and
   appears once [?] but two of the tall, old fashioned schoolroom windows
   to [?] identify it.
   
   Mrs. Nunn recalls an interesting incident in connection with her
   association with the late Colonel [?] Goodnight. Once when she was
   showing visitors from out of the state over the [??] Goodnight ranch
   in the Palo Duro Canyon, she drove a new car with great trepidation in
   the wake of the [irascible?] old colonel, who [?] led the way across
   the trackless pastures with a curt, "Turn left" or "Turn right", never
   looking back to see if the inexperienced driver could follow where his
   horse went. Down a road only wide enough to permit the careful passage
   of a vehicle. Mrs Nunn drove her car 00055down a declivity at the
   bottom of which was a sandy arroyo, where the motor immediately
   stalled in the quicksand, refusing to budge any farther.
   
   The impatient old cattleman rode back to seed what was detaining her,
   [?] exclaiming, "Any good driver could have made it. Why didn't you
   give it the gun?" Wheezing from the asthma which was aggravated by his
   exasperation, he went over and sat down on a nearby hillside, from
   which his sterterious breathing could be painfully heard by the
   occupants of the car, who went in search of the [?] nearest telephone
   to call someone to come after the stalled automobile, which Mrs. Nunn
   refused to [?] attempt to extricate from [it's?] the [?] [?] sand.
   Later, Mrs. Nunn, who was a sincere friend of the old plainsmen, joked
   with Goodnight about the scare he gave her with stalled car, his
   asthma, which [DEL: he :DEL] she feared would be the death of him any
   minute, and his gruffness.

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