EASONS - Coke County, TX

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Submitted 12 Jun 2000 by Mary Love Berryman - marylove@tyler.net

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TALES ABOUT HER PARENTS TOLD BY THEIR DAUGHTER 
Emma Lucinda EASON (Mrs. Albert) BAZE

Submitted by Albert Eason Baze, Ft. Worth, TX 76116

The two middle fingers on the left hand of I. G. EASON were shot off 
during Civil War.  He was captured by Union Forces during the same 
battle and put in a dungeon like prison, without much ventilation.  
There was one small open window where blow flies came In.  His wound 
did not have medical attentlon, but was wrapped up In a torn shirt.  
The flies got under the so called bandage and left their blows in the 
would.  The worm like larva kept the wound clean of infection. Other 
men who were wounded in the same battle but not subjected to the flies 
died from blood poison.  (My note:  I have read that secretion from 
maggots are used today to make medicine to treat blood poison.  The 
flies may have saved my grandfather's life.)

Some men, supposedly Indians, stole her father's horses.  The trailed 
them for a few days and when he caught up with them they shot him 
through his lungs.  He recovered from the gun shot wound, but his 
lungs were left in bad shape.  Some time later he took pneumonia and 
the weakened lungs caused his death.  Mother said no one believed the 
men were Indians but renegade white men dressed as Indians.

Mother said her father invented a riding plow but his lawyer beat him 
out of it.	She said the lawyer sold the drawings and specification 
to the John Deer Plow Company, and they manufactured the plow under 
their own name. (Patent No. 446,965 to Thos. G. Eason for the T. G. 
Eason Plow, Issued by the U.S. Patent Office.  Application filed 12 
July 1890.)

Mother said that her father built rock fences around farms and ranch 
pastures all over Kimble and Menard Counties.  Some were as far away 
as Burnet County that are still standing today, ninety years later.  
I have snapshots of them made in 1956.  He also built rock hay barnes 
and implement sheds out of the native rock in that area.  About 1954 
Uncle Ed wrote a series of "Reminlscinings" in the newspaper at 
Menard, Texas.  One story is here quoted:

   "After a complete failure at making a corn crop on the Denman farm, 
   we moved to the L C Ranch on Bear Creek where we moved Into a 
   hastily built log house.  There my father built a rock fence for 
   the ranch.  In the Spring of 1880 we moved to Menardville.  We 
   stopped the wagon and team under the shade of the blq live oak 
   tree that stood for many years in the middle of the street there.  
   Supplies were purchased and we went out to the Wm. J. Vaughn ranch 
   on Elm Creek where my father built a rock fence for Mr. Vaughn.  
   From the Vaughn ranch my father's next job of building a rock fence
   was on Celery Creek and that was where we knew Captain Roberts and 
   a few of his company rangers---that I think was in the winter of 
   1880-81.  Next we moved to the Black ranch just above Fort McKavett.  
   My father's job there was to build a rock spring house over the 
   spring which furnished the domestic water for the homes there.

Later my father found use of his ox team when he moved much of the 
Army equipment from Fort McKavett to Fort Concho.  Likewise the 
bodies of Soldiers who died at Fort McKavett were disinterned and 
moved also and reinterned at Fort Concho."

Mother told me of her father moving the bodies of Soldiers.  She said 
many of them were in all sorts of shapes when disinterned, just 
like they had been dumped Into a hole without "caskets."  She, said 
some, appeared to have been buried while still alive.

Mother also told me about her father hauling hay to Fort Concho from 
the farms in the Kimble-Menard County area.  She said that venture was 
very profit­able and she was able to purchase a "grown~up" ladies dress.  
I have her picture in the dress and it is very pretty.  Mother was 
pretty also.

Mother told me that her father, planned., designed, surveyed, and built 
the first irrigation system in the Kimble-Menard area.  It consisted of 
a rock and morter dam across a stream, several canals and water gates.  
She said her brother, Will, was the "ditch rider" but he schemed her 
into cleaning out the, moss and weeds like Tom Sawyers fence deal.
She said her father subscribed to the first edition of the San Anqelo 
Standard in 1884.  She, at the age of 9 then, read all of the news and 
advertisements to her parents from each issue and she thinks that may 
have been the basis for her talent some time later as a school teacher 
in rural communities in both Kimble and Irlon Counties.  Also it 
helped her to be a type setter by hand in her brother Edmund's 
newspapers.

Mother remembered aunts Devie and Hattie In Junction City.  Aunt Devie 
came to Kimble County as a widow of Andrew J. James and married Jim 
Armstrong. Later she married a Mr. Widden.  I think it must have been 
a Mr. Whltt, because she signed an affidavit by that name in her sister, 
Jane Eason's pension application.  In Jane's application for the 
pension Aunt "Hattie" signed as Hattie McDonough.  I have a picture of 
Jim McDonough.  Mother said he was her cousin.

In Coke County'during the 1910s. Graney Eason would spend part time 
with my Mother and part time with Uncle Ed in Wlnters.  Uncle Ed had 
a motorcycle with a side car.  Granney Jane Eason would ride in the 
side car when Uncle Ed transported her back and forth.  I remember 
about the same time when me and my brothers would walk with stooped 
shoulders Granney would whack us across our back and say "Stand up 
straight  look at your Daddy how straight he is."

I remember the day that Granney died.  My older brother, Mike, and I 
were coming home from school at Valley View on horseback, riding 
double.  We saw our Model T Ford coming down the road to meet us.  
The driver, some one from the oil well that was being drilled a mile 
north of the ranch house, stopped and said our Grandmother had died.  
Mike continued then just in a trot.  I said let's go faster, get the 
horse into a gallop, which he did.  It was snowing with a stiff north 
wind.  I buried my face in Mike's back to keep the sting from my face.  
Mother had tied Granney's jaws shut with a cloth so when she stiffened 
her mouth would be shut.  I remember the brown-red mahogany coffin.  
It was shaped something like an hour glass with the shoulder part 
wider than the lower part.  It was placed cross ways on the back 
doors of the Fort when she was taken from the ranch to the cemetary 
at Robert Lee.  Walter B. Green, a playmate, and I played In the snow 
before the funeral at the ranch. Mother came out of the house and 
asked us to be quite.  Granney dled ln November 1918 during the 
influenza epidemic of that year.  Every body at the oil well had
it.  One of the Latham girls in the Valley View Community divided 
her time between the oil well people and granny at the ranch.  She 
nursed everybody but did not take the flu.

Copied from "Stalkin' Kin," Vol. XII, No. 2 - page 85-86
by Mary Love Berryman, marylove@tyler.net.  
Used with permission by the San Angelo Genealogical and Historical Society