Hopkins County, Texas -- Early History of Hopkins County Texas

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Pat Howard   <mendocinosunrise@gmail.com>

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Early History of Hopkins County Texas

Biographical sketches and incidents of the early settled families

By E. B. Fleming

1902

                                Chapter V.

There was in an early day in Hopkins County a fine range for all kinds of
stock - hogs, horses and cattle. Mast in the timber on the creeks was abundant
and hogs gathered a bountiful living in the forest. The branches of forest
trees would bend and break under their load of acorns and nuts, and no one
pretended to feed hogs only to keep them tame. Every man killed his meat from
the woods. The country was peculiarly adapted to the raising of every variety
of poultry. All kinds of domestic fowls supported themselves and raised their
young by scratching for bugs, and every family was abundantly supplied with
eggs and chickens the year round, practically without expense or a great deal
of trouble. The greatest and only difficulty in raising poultry was the
trouble of protecting the fowls from the ravages of minks, foxes, hawks, owls,
pole cats and chicken snakes. Those who craved a stronger beverage than milk
at regular meals, contented themselves with tea made from sassafras roots.
Persimmon beer was used at the table of many of the early settled families.
The ripe persimmons were put in a large keg, warm water was poured on them and
left to ferment, when it was ready to serve. Used with baked sweet potatoes it
made a nutritious and very strengthening diet. Cows found abundant food in the
range the year round, grasses of all kinds grew without stint, the prairie
part of Hopkins County afforded the best range for cows. The cane brakes on
the creek bottom furnished an inexhaustible supply of excellent provender for
them during the winter, and grass grew luxuriantly all over the county during
the spring, summer and fall. Every family was therefore abundantly supplied
with milk and with butter without any expense at all beyond the small amount
of labor necessary to prepare such things for the table. Household furniture
was all made by hand out of rough timber and with crude tools. An ax, a saw
and drawing knife and a few plain augurs and chisels of different sizes
constituted the full kit of tools of the best equipped workmen. With such
tools were made all the chairs, stools, benches, tables and bedsteads. There
was not a bureau, sideboard, washstand or wardrobe in the whole county. Such a
thing as a piece of painted or varnished furniture of any kind was unheard of.
There was not even a saw mill anywhere in reach of the pioneer settler. Sixty
years ago a furnished room contained a bed, a few rough chairs and stools and
a long bench, a dining table and a cupboard made of boxes or rough cheap
boards. The average residence had but one room, which served all the purposes
of a parlor, sitting room, library, family room, bedroom, kitchen and dining
room. A brief description of a fashionable bedstead will give the reader an
idea as to the general character of household furniture, and illustrate how is
could all be made from rough lumber by awkward workmen with a few crude tools,
already described. A bedstead had but one leg or post, which stood near one
corner of the cabin. The distance from the lone post to the log walls of the
cabin was about four feet in one direction and seven feet in another. These
distances measured the width and length of the bed. The leg or post was simply
a stick of timber about as large as a man’s leg, and as high as his waist,
split from a tree, hewed square with an ax, and smoothly dressed with a
drawing knife. Large auger holes were bored in two sides of the post near the
top, and similar holes were made in the logs in the walls of the cabin at the
same height. Two pieces of timber prepared after the same manner as the post,
on four feet long and the other seven, served as rails of the bedstead. The
ends of the rails were trimmed to fit the holes in the post and walls, and one
end of each rail was driven into a hole in the post and the other driven into
a hole in the cabin wall.

      This made the framework of the bedstead. Rough clapboards were placed
over this frame after the manner of slats, and dry cow hide, hair turned up,
was spread over the clapboards to complete the groundwork of the bed. Economy,
utility and durability were the strong points of these old-time bedsteads. The
people in that early day had no locks to anything. It is told as a story
perhaps, that the first lock that ever came into Hopkins County was bought by
a farmer and attached to the door of his corn crib. It aroused the indignation
of the whole neighborhood and the people in mass meeting assembled and
compelled him to remove it. They held that it was a reflection upon the
honesty of the neighborhood, and an insult to the whole community. They freely
granted that he had a perfect right to lock things from his own children in
his own house if he felt so disposed, but to turn a key in the face of the
whole community was a public insult they would not submit to.

SOURCE: Early History of Hopkins County Texas - E. B. Fleming, Publisher 1902
Pp. 43 - 46




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Pat Howard
mendocinosunrise@gmail.com