Freestone County, Texas Reflections Reflections on the 1930 Census of Wortham by Wanda Willard Smith [posted by permission of author] July 30, 2007 Last week I read the entire 1930 census for Wortham (29 pages), taken in April of that year. It was like looking at an old photograph album!! I was 7 then and in the first grade. I found all of my classmates, their parents and siblings. One was A[lvin]. C. Black whose folks ran the "Bulldog Den," a hamburger place on the grounds of the grammar school. I had a crush on A. C. because he always smelled like mustard and onions--two things never allowed in our house because my dad didn't like them--or hamburgers [although, after his grandchildren came along, he sorta developed a taste for them!]. I read all the names, their ages, their relationships in the households, value of the homes (most of which are still standing today!), or if they were renters, how much they paid for rent. In the case of my folks it was $25 per month for the large Quinby house. Most of our rent was covered by the four boarders my mother took in (her older brother Odes Thornton and the three Lee boys, Oliver, Omar, and C. C.). Many people in town boarded or roomed in other people's houses. Still more interesting were the occupations. I didn't make an exact count, but there were at least 3 drugstores, 2 meat markets, a bakery, 5 or 6 retail grocery stores, 3 or 4 dry goods stores, 2 barber shops, a couple of hardware stores, a lumberyard, 3 cotton gins, a bank, insurance company, several cafes, 3 lawyers, 2 physicians, ministers of all the churches, a lot of farmers, garage mechanics, a couple of printers, a blacksmith and and many who worked in the oil fields. In 1930 Wortham still had many wooden derricks inside the city limits, and there was still active production in Currie and Mexia (my uncle commuted to Mexia everyday to work for Pure Oil Company). This census also called to mind something long since forgotten. Back then, even before they were called " the 5 & 10" or "The Dime Store," and eventually, the "Variety Store," these businesses were called "Racket Stores"--which sold knickknacks, toys, sewing notions, etc., that could not be found in dry goods or grocery stores. I had totally forgotten about them. Wortham was a pretty little town (despite the derricks and their pumping gasoline engines). Every street was wide and paved, with curbs and gutters and sidewalks, street lighting. Natural gas was piped into every dwelling, a city sewer and water system with a new reservoir supplied running water to every house. Once Wortham was featured in Ripley's "Believe it or Not" as the smallest town in the country with the most miles of paved streets. Of course, all of these amenities were made possible by the oil boom--money well spent. In 1930 almost every house in town had a barn or cow-shed, a pig pen, a garden plot, and a small servant house. Many families in the middle of town still kept a cow for milk and butter, had a few chickens for eggs and meat, raised pigs, planted a garden for fruits and vegetables. The one-room servant houses (sometimes over the garage) had no kitchen or bathroom facilities, running water, electricity or gas. The inhabitants used kerosene lamps at night, a kerosene heater in the winter (if they could afford the kerosene), and used outdoor privies located at the back of the property. Blacks lived in these servant quarters, among the white population. Their occupation was listed as "servant" (sometimes "domestic servant"), usually a single woman, occasionally a man, rarely a couple. The women washed and ironed clothes, did housework, some even cooked for the white family. They paid no rent and subsisted on left-overs from the family table. Other blacks lived in what the whites called "negro town" and the blacks called "Tin Cup Alley" (these residents were listed at the end of the census). Located outside the city limits northeast of town, it was a collection of rundown wooden shacks. As a small child, I remember going there with my dad to the local abattoir (slaughter house) to pick up some meat. But, in later years, listening to tales from the black woman who lived with us, it was a scary and dangerous place, especially on Saturday nights, when fights, "knifings" and shootings brought out the local constable and the doctor (to sew up wounds or declare somebody dead). There was a school and a church or two. Occasionally, on Sunday afternoons in the summer, they would have a baptizing and/or footwashing at the Brickyard tank. Most of the town, white and black, would turn out and sit on the banks to witness these joyous, shouting, clapping, singing occasions of unrestrained exuberance (so different from the subdued services in the white churches). I am sure that Wortham was no different from thousands of small towns across the country. The Great Depression, looming ahead, would change us forever.