Lamar Co., TX - History: 1928 Article by W.S. Adair ***************************************************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb by: June Tuck USGenWeb Archives. Copyright. All rights reserved http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ***************************************************** From the historical files of June E. Tuck, who does not validate or dispute any historical facts in the article. This article was written by W. S. Adair, May 13, 1928. Told to Adair by J. N. Humphrey of Lamar County, Texas "My father, Joseph P. Humphrey, who was of English descent, came to Texas from Indiana in 1845, and settled in Red River County," said J. N. Humphrey of Paris, who was a visitor in Dallas last week. "I was born in a log cabin in Red River County seventy-eight years ago. Father dying when I was an infant, mother some time later was married to J. W. Woolridge, and we moved to Lamar County, where I have lived since. When we came to Lamar County there were just two houses on the Bonham Road between Honey Grove and Paris, a distance of eighteen miles. The same year the name of the county seat of Lamar was changed from Pinhook to Paris. But why the settlement was called Pinhook in the first place or Paris in the second place, I am unable to say. There is nothing about it, so far as has ever appeared to me, to suggest a pinhook, and less at that time at least, to suggest the city from whence the fashions in dress come. "The country west of Paris in early days was rightly called Grand Prairie. > From any little elevation of land the observer could survey as wide a circuit as his eye could take in and enjoy a commensurate expansion of soul, particularly as the sun was going down on any clear day in spring. The landscape was animated by cattle, horses, sheep, deer, turkey, prairie chickens, packs of wolves, an occasional panther and no end of prairie dogs, with the little owls and rattlesnakes that burrowed with them and with the hawks that fattened on them hovering above. But this aspect of the prairie was not to last until it grew monotonous. "There was next to no rain during the summer in those days and by late fall the grass became so dry that it actually generated the sparks that set it to blazing in many places at once. These fires filling the whole heavens with a nocturnal splendor such as you seldom see. Then until the return of the grass and flowers the whole country was robed in black, as if in mourning. I will add that I have heard it said that the soil of North Texas was made black by the annual fires that swept the prairies for long ages. "There was nothing more encouraging for the boy to shoot at than prairie chickens. These birds would let the stripling sportsman, with his single- barrel shotgun, walk right up within thirty feet of them, turn a side view so as to expose the greatest possible surface, and then stand perfectly still. The truth is, prairie chickens always seemed to me to be begging to be domesticated. We boys were bold to chase any wolves we caught in the open, but never followed them into the thickets, for there, we were told, the wolves did the chasing. We always had plenty of meat, both fresh and cured. Great droves of hogs fattened on the acorns in the extensive oak forests, and every settler worked his wild hog claim to the extent of putting up a supply for a year of bacon, hams and salt pork. "The people in every way lived in the most primitive fashion. Many of the best marksmen still used the old flint-lock rifle. It was thought that the cradle, the scythe, the flail and the reap-hook were about as far as invention could hope to go in the matter of farm tool and implements. "And we were just beginning to catch rumors that in the stores in some parts of the country wearing apparel could be bought ready-made. From the earliest times Paris, eighteen miles south of the Red River, was the trading point of the Indians. In fact, for long years the trade of the Indians was worth much more to the merchants of Paris than the trade of the white man. White people, Indians and negroes mingled on the streets and in the stores. The Indians wore bright blankets and plenty of feathers and rode ponies, for it was not until some time after the Civil War that they began to take to wagons. FIRST COTTON CROP "The better-to-do settlers, however, were largely independent of the local merchant. They made their own clothing, had no grocery bills, and for such supplies as they could produce at home they went with their wagons once or twice a year to Jefferson or Shreveport. "In 1860, Paris had three or four general stores and a population of perhaps 500. Down to that time it was not thought that corn would grow in Texas. Settlers cultivated a little wheat, rye and oats and a less cotton. John Womack was the only big slave owner. Taking the alarm at the abolition agitation he had moved his slaves from Mississippi or Alabama to Texas in the days of the Republic and had settled on Red River; but on account of having no market for his cotton, he had not been able to turn his negroes to much account. "But the settlers who had come from the northern States knew nothing about growing cotton. As an experiment we planted a patch of ten or twelve acres in 1861 and made a bale to the acre, but it was not until later we learned that we had made a good yield. We loaded it on wagons and hauled it to Shreveport, where we got 25 cents in gold for it. Gold was the only kind of money in circulation in those days. We soon found, however, that the war had closed even the distant markets against us, and this gave farming, such as it was, among us a setback. "But even after the war the country developed slowly. Splitting rails and making fences was hard work, and with the old-time implements and methods, farming could no be undertaken on a large scale. There were no plows with which to break the prairie sod. We sowed and planted by hand, scattering or drilling the corn and cotton seed, and after it came up, shaping it to something like rows in order to get at the weeds. "A great change came in the "80's. To us, the most important new things were barbed wire for making fences and plows that would actually turn prairie lands. Settlers began to pour in and to open farms and to put more and better stock on the range. They soon demonstrated that the soil would produce corn as well as wheat and cotton and that even vegetables would grow and all kinds of fruit trees flourish and even bear when the frost did not nip the buds. With the stirring of a greater area of soil and the increasing of livestock, the rains became more regular and copious, and the fires that had always swept the prairies every fall ceased and left the grass for winter pasture. COMING OF THE RAILROAD "The only thing we seemed to lack was railroad, and that want was supplied when the Trans-Continental line was built from Texarkana to Sherman. Then followed all kinds of improvements in farm tools and machinery, with which one man could do the work which had before required twenty men, and by the side of which old implements and methods looked as if they had been invented and recommended by the very spirit of perversity itself in order to make the lot of the farmer as miserable as possible. For example, what could have been less to the purpose than the narrow tires with which the old-time wagons were equipped? They seemed to be designed especially to sink the wagon in the mud to the hubs, to cut the roads to pieces and to muss up the highway for the teamsters coming after. "All kinds of farm work was done by hand, and, as there were many kinds of it, the farmer, in order to get by, had to be a jack-of- all- trades with the proverbial up-shot that he was probably good at none of them. It seems that agricultural machinery and methods underwent but little improvement from the time of the ancient Egyptians down to about sixty years ago. The whole change has come in the lifetime of men still living. "Sixty years ago the cattle of Texas were the native longhorns and the horses about as low down in the scale of worth. Within that time the razor-back hog has given place to swine that can make a better showing on the corn they consume and the Mexican sheep to breeds that yield more mutton and better wool. A corresponding improvement is also to be noticed in all sorts of field and garden seeds. Finally, the chemists have found ways of preventing the soil from wearing out and of even restoring the fertility to land already impoverished. ONE THING LACKING "All that seems to be in arrears is some way of working the farmer over. He is badly in need of a change of ideas. For one thing, farmers should make on the farm everything they use at home. This they are not doing, but are running up grocery bills like mechanics and other town people and mortgaging their lands in order to get the money with which to meet these superfluous bills. Farmers are going to be poor folks so long as they raise nothing but cotton. The vast majority of tenant farmers have to be furnished with teams, implements, seeds and supplies for, whether they make much of it, they spend it before they make it. (Rest of article is missing)