First Sanco Homecoming, 29 May 1955 - Coke County, TX Submitted by Mary Love Berryman 28 February 2003 Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ***************************************************************** All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information is included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. ***************************************************************** Friday, June 28, 2002, The Observer/Enterprise, Page 8 First Sanco Homecoming held (The following was a talk given by the late Evelyn McKinley at the 1st Sanco Homecoming on May 29, 1955. It appeared in the 2002 Sanco Homecoming Newsletter) (Mrs. McKinley was born at Sanco January 27, 1905. She went to school at Sanco, and graduated from Central High School in San Angelo, and received a degree from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene. She taught school in Union Texas, Friendship, Silver and Blackwell. Those who knew and loved Evelyn McKinley will long remember her. She was a pioneer ranch woman who loved the land and was a good steward of it.) When we began talking about this homecoming it was agreed that somebody ought to say something about the people who lived here in the early days and recall some of the things they did. No doubt some of you could have remembered better, but memories seem to have no pattem; the amusing, the serious, and the inspiring all come together. My father says that when my grandfather brought his family here 68 years ago not many of the people whom most of us can remember, were here then. Lum Lasswell's family lived up on Gobbler, and he helped dad's folks move out. Perry Breedlove was here, and he married one of the Lasswell girls. Some people thought ranch hands had to be tough, but Mr. Breedlove was able to work for the HXW Ranch for 15 years without ever swearing an oath. Joe Kirkendall was his brother Ben was also here. The Durhams had been here for a few months. During the next few years many other families came. The Craddocks, the Ulmers, Grandpa Scarborough, Frank Scarborough, the Bilbos, the Preslars, and Grandpa Campbell, just to mention some of them. These people worked together, fished together, played pranks on each other, but Sundays bright and early, they, took their families to church even if it meant long drives in wagons. The order in which they came isn't so dear, but Mr. Tucker and Mr. Landers came early. The Sanco young people rode on horseback to Sunday Singings in the Landers home. Mr. Menielle, Mr. Goss, Mr. Cole, Mr. Fletcher, Mr. Bums, Dave and Bud Martin, Mr. Austin, Uncle Jack and Tome Adkins, Mr. Benningfield, and Uncle Cliff Creighton were definitely old timers. But no family wove itself more into this community than, the family of Grandpa and Grandma Gartman who lived here so long and so well. Mr. Daffern and Jim Robertson moved in near the Landers and Tuckers, and below Grandpa Gartman were Mr. Overall, Lee Hurley, Whitney Baze and Uncle Johnny Berryman. Briscoe bought the old Clark place. Mr. Ballard was up at the gap and Mr. Walker and Mr. Jameson were just outside the community. In later years Mr. Jameson loved to attend the meetings at Sanco and rejoiced in the good preaching we often had. Mr. Carwile, Mr. Reid, and Mr. Devoll reared their families here as well. Mr. Arledge came later. Just a few of you who came earliest have stayed through the years to bless us with the influence and inspiration of your lives. For every one of you we give thanks today and pray that you may have many more useful years. Mr. Clevenger was sort of a newcomer. He ran the store after Oil Tubb. Best of all he built his kitchen-floor high enough off the ground for Sallie and Leona to build a dollhouse underneath. Here we had some of the best times of our lives. But when I we grew older and heard Mr. Clevenger, his voice choked with emotion, professes to know the Lord, and Mrs. Clevenger slipped quietly around after church, smiled and said, "Go home with us." We learned to appreciate the dear souls that they were. Most of my nickels were spent with Mr. Clevenger or Mr. Campbell. On Sundays Mr. Campbell led the singing and Mrs. Campbell played the piano. In the autumn evenings mother rocked me to sleep on the front porch as we listened to the old gin and waited for my dad to bring coal across the mountain from Blackwell for the gin in the old wagon. Mr. Meek, Mr. Benningfield and Reef Smith, Jim Smith's brother, ran the gin at different times. On clear mornings we could often hear Mr. Cole and Mr. Bilbo talking as they came around the hill on bales of cotton to the gin. Sometimes someone from up that road raced my daddy to the gin, but if our gate was open they really had to hurry. But when Mr. Cole started to town in that buggy, you really drove if you stayed in sight of him. Can you remember? Like the village Smithy, Uncle Sinc was blacksmith and he to went on Sunday to the church where he taught the girls and boys. How many here today were in his class? Later Uncle Bob Cosby built the present store building for a shop and garage in the days where garages were necessarily close together. Grandpa Scarborough kept the first store, before my day, over where Grandpa Bird finally made his home. Later he lived in the little house across the road from Aunt Cora Creighton up here on the hill. The Durharns built their home at the point of Durham Peak. Mrs. Durham was the first Postrnaster. The first schoolhouse stood near their place. That was way before the big three-room we can first remember, and before the time of Miss Y ates and Miss Fenielle, Miss Nora Stevens, Miss Ruby and Miss Conrad. My parents and some of yours, educated as they were in the early one- teacher school, seemed to acquire a great deal of knowledge and most of the skills and abilities we talk about in our universities today. Perhaps we should give no credit to the poor facilities but rather to the people themselves who determined to use every opportunity at their command. In this age of high standards of living, expensive school plants and good church buildings, we should use thern as wisely and well as they used theirs. Rather than try to destroy, deflate, or smear their high ideals, we should try to be worthy of them. For my first 15 years most of my small world passrd through the gate at the corner of our yard or trudged the school trail that ran between the house and the creek. Oren and Vida Belle Fletcher, Eele and Desma, Ulmer and Thelma, Herman, Homer, and Effie knew that trail well. Mr. Kimbell never passed our gate without my knowing he had been there. We were candy partners and the candy was always there whether anybody had been home or not. Mrs. Anderson in her buggy on the way to town came by that way. Sunday mornings Grandma and Grandpa Bird came early for church and stopped their hack in front of our yard and fretted that we weren't ready. The most cherished memories, perhaps, are of the late summer evenings when Mama's roses and honey-suckles were in bloom and from all around we could hear the horse drawn vehicles gathering in the old brush arbor where the revivals were held. Some who passed our place were Uncle Smith and Aunt Julia in their white-topped hack. Walter, Phronia, Boyd and Mattie, and Horace and Etta with their families. Uncle Frank and Aunt Neppie and Allie and sometimes Myrtle and Pearl Ross. The Arbor stood between where the churches now stand and the kerosene torch lanterns were the source of light. In the twilight this quiet little village echoed as we sang, "How Firm a Foundation, Ye Saints of the Lord!" "What Can Wash Away My Sins7'"Amazing Grace," and "Just As I Am Without One Plea But That Thy Blood Was Shed for Me". The glory of the Lord shone on the faces of those who walked closest with Him and Aunt Neppie's shouting was so filled with the Joy of the Lord that the joy was contagious. The memories of those blessed times still strengthen and encourage our hearts as we recall the good, and the noble, and the true in the lives of those devoted Christians and others, like Mr. Carwile, more recently passed on. Not all of them were soldiers of battle, but rather soldiers of the Cross - who fought, the good fight of faith. So this Memorial Day as across the nation we commemorate our soldiers and sailors dead and resolve to live for God and Country with the same devotion that they died for it, let's also honor and revere the memory of these Christian warrior. With this thought the Cemetery Association has been improving the cemetery and have invited us here. It is on occasions like this that faces of these loved ones seem to visit us once more. So it is with mixed emotions that we welcome you, their sons and daughters, back to your old home today, joy at having you here; sadness that a reunion can never be complete until all the redeemed are gathered home. Those who rest on the hillside are more in number than we who reside in these valleys. But somehow when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and the dead in Christ shall rise, I believe that the old hillside will be the closest to Heaven of them all. "Lord, I want to be in that number, when the Saints-go Marching in" - Don't You? -------------------------------------------------------- Permission has been given by the Observer/Enterprise for publication in the Coke County TXGenWeb Archives.