BY GEORGE W. BARCLAY, JR., M.D.
(An Interview, was written by Dr. George W. Barclay, Jr.,(b.
1929), based on a personal interview in 1991 with his father and mother,
GWB SR and Ruby E. Vinson Barclay. George Willis Barclay, Sr (b. 1904),
was the last county school superintendent. He held office 1975 to 1979.
It contains various topics about Tyler County, such as cotton, timber,
hunting and community living, as well as information about the nineteen
years he spent in several different rural schools of east Texas as teacher,
coach, principal and superintendent
About the writer: George Willis Barclay, Jr. was educated in
the public schools of Batson and Beaumont, Texas. He was a chemical engineer
before serving in the army. He practiced medicine in Snyder, Texas, before
returning to Beaumont, where he practiced as a cardiologist for more than
twenty-five years. In retirement, he has enjoyed hobby writing, fishing
and developing his properties in Tyler county.
Table of Content and Index
GWB SR. lineage.
Original Mt. Zion Church Building.
The Boll weevil and Johnson grass.
Location of a piece of John Henry Kirby place used for tenant farms.
Difference between tenant farming and share cropping.
Children started school at age 7.
The one room school
The two room school
Logging, the timber business, Mr. Carter.
Normal schools are made into teacher colleges.
Pre-college described
Teacher certification
An elopement described.
Length of school term
Shiloh and Caney
Wages for cotton picker, price of cotton, logger, teacher
Gulf Oil, pump station
Prosperous times, prices, 1929
Birth of GWB JR.
College activities
Stock market crash
Prohibition
Depression
Prices
Concord
Little farm in Chester and house described
Description of a larger school, modern
BS degree conferred
WW II
Compare farming town and oil town.
Beaumont
Retirement in Woodville
Masonic Lodge
Bullocks, Georges, Peters, Vinsons
Pools, other Barclays
Location of the old Henry Barclay Place
Gulf Oil
The last deer
The last yellow pine
Wild Life
Services of a young man owed a father until age 21.
W.W.I, WW II
Crops
Electricity
Literacy
Travel time
T Ford, roads
Cost of land
Raising chickens
Football
Cost of giving birth
Prices
Wages for cotton picker, price of cotton, logger, teacher.
Two room school house
Batson, roads
Hull, Saratoga, Sour Lake, Moss Hill
Beaumont Schools
Batson, WW II
Politics
Lumber business
Size of timber
Cotton fields
Prices
Wages
An Interview With My Parents, Mr. and Mrs. George W. Barclay Sr.
by George W. Barclay Jr.
George W. Barclay, Sr., was born at Chester on 2-22-1904. He was
the eighth child who lived to adulthood. (others were Myrtie, Mary, Eula,
Clyde, Buck, Josh, Robert, Ora, Louise, Feagin). His father was James Walter
Barclay Jr. (Uncle Walter), who was born March 4, 1871 and died in 1944.
His mother was Laura Pool Barclay, who was born January 12, 1873 and died
in 1924. They lived on a blackland farm, approximately 10 miles northwest
of Woodville and approximately 5 miles southeast of Chester, Texas, between
Mt. Zion church and Bob Belt Road. The Pools, Barclays, Peters and Vinsons
all lived in farming settlements close to Mt. Zion Baptist Church, which
now sits on Highway 287, approximately 5 miles south of Chester. The Mt.
Zion church is the oldest standing church in Tyler County. It was built
in 1845 near Mt. Hope, and was moved to its present location in 1870. The
cemetery, on the hill behind the Mt. Zion Baptist church, dates back to
1870, or before. Most of the people buried there are related by direct
kin or marriage.
My father, George, was 1 year old in 1905, when his father, James
Walter Jr. shut down the old farm place because of Johnson grass. It was
1905, and the boll weevil had swept across the south, killing off the cotton.
Uncle Walter, as he was known to most of the people in Tyler County, switched
to a cotton strain that was resistant to the boll weevil, but the Johnson
grass overran his cotton. He moved his family to land owned by John Henry
Kirby, one mile northeast of Chester. It was a black bottom land farm,
and he stayed there with his family and equipment, and tenant farmed that
piece of land until 1912. Now, it is divided into 4 parts and owned by
George and Ruby’s children and Doyle Barclay.
Returning to the old farm, my dad attended Mt. Zion school second
grade. In 1905 when my granddad moved to the John Henry Kirby place above
Chester , he share cropped at what you call a third and a quarter. He gave
twenty-five percent of the corn and thirty three percent of the cotton
to his landlord. This type of farming was different from a regular share
cropped, with no investment, who usually gave 50% of the crop to the landlord.
According to my dad, my grandfather’s theory was to leave the land untold,
and turn the cows loose, and let them eat up all the Johnson grass. When
they returned to the old farm some 6 years later, the cows had eaten all
the Johnson grass except for that growing around the stumps and threes,
which they had to chop down.
He said that when he told his friends that he was moving back
to the old farm, they teased him and told him and told him that he was
going to the "sticks". To the people living in Chester, living out in the
country was considered living in the sticks. My dad (George Sr.), attended
school at Chester in the first grade at the age of 7. That spring, his
father moved the family back to the old farm. He resumed cultivating the
old farm continuously, until he retired when all of his help left him,
around 1938.
Returning to the old farm, my dad attended Mount Zion school,
starting in 1912, in the second grade. It was a one teacher school located
on the old dirt road running from Mount Zion church to the Barclay farm,
where the house still stands. It was located about 1 mile southeast of
Mount Zion church. As were all rural schools in those days, it was a one
room, one teacher school, and went up to the 7th grade. Around 1916, it
was converted to a 2 teacher school, and reclassified as a first class
public school, and offering grades 5 through 9. My dad worked for his father
on the farm, and attended Mount Zion school through the 9th grade , finishing
in 1921.
My grandfather, Walter, took my dad, George, to see Mr. Carter,
who ran a large sawmill at Camden, Texas, and got my dad a job in the logging
business. because he was educated, George was assigned the job of scaler.
After the cutters had cut the trees, he would measure the diameter of the
tree and the length of the logs, and mark the trees where they were to
be sawed. He was paid the standard wage in that day for a logging man,
which was $1.50 per day. After one and a half years in the logging business,
and helping his dad bring in a crop, my dad joined his friends and his
cousin DC Peters. They caught a train to North Texas State Teachers College
in Denton. NTSTC had previously been designated a normal school for preparing
teachers, but with an act of the legislature, it was made a four year college.
My dad was 19 when he finished the equivalence of the 11th grade of high
school at NTSTC. After taking the state teachers certification exam 3 times,
he passed it and received his elementary school teachers certificate in
1924 at the age of 20.
My dad taught his first year at Shiloh, a small rural community
west of Woodville, in the fall of 1924. He was 20 years old at the time.
After he received his first monthly pay check, he married my mother, Ruby
Vinson, his childhood sweetheart, in November 1924. Ruby was the daughter
of James and Ada Vinson. She was the oldest of 5 children, Ruby, Zelda,
Jimmy, Mona and Aldridge.
My mother had celebrated her 17th birthday on October 24, 1924,
and had finished the 10th grade at Mount Zion. In October, she had her
17th birthday and in November, she married my father. The state law at
that time was that a man had to be 21 and a woman had to be 18 years old
to get a marriage license. My dad was 20, and my mother had just turned
17. He wanted to ask permission from my grandfather Vinson to marry mother,
but she would have nothing of it, and they decided to elope. He wrote a
note and signed it for his father. He got permission from his father with
the note, and rode a horse to Woodville and bought a marriage license for
$3.00. He presented the note from his father which he had written, and
told the clerk that my mother was 18 years old.
After securing their marriage license, my dad went back to Chester,
picked up my mother at Mount Zion. She got on the back of the pickup and
they rode to Chester looking for the preacher. Her parents apparently did
not know that she had gone. When they got to Chester, they found out that
the minister was visiting in Huntington and was not planning to be back.
My dad talked a friend into taking his car and going to Huntington to pick
up the minister and bring him back to Chester to perform the wedding. Interestingly
enough, the preacher who came back to perform the wedding for my and dad
had performed a similar wedding for my grandfather Vinson years before.
He was a friend to both families.
In December, or early January after Christmas, my mother journeyed
to Nacogdoches and entered Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College, where
, in the spring of 1925 and summer of l915 she got her high school diploma
and certificate to teach elementary school. She was 17 years old at the
time. In the fall of 1925, my mother returned and taught school at Shiloh
with my dad. Shiloh was by then a two teacher school.
The church at Shiloh, where they had their school, still stands.
It is used by some members of that community. In 1927, they both taught
at Caney, a rural community in Polk county about 5 miles east of Chester.
They rented a room. In understanding this, one must realize that the school
year was only about 7 months. The average rural school year in the state
of Teas at that time was seven months. This was determined by the habits
of the farmers. The months, generally, that the students went to school
were October through March. School would get started in some places in
early October and in April the students were turned out to plow the fields
and put in the crops. The start of school was delayed in the fall in order
to pick the cotton, which they picked up until October.
In 1928 my dad taught at Shiloh, and apparently my mother did
not teach that year. They were living back home. They lived some of the
time with the Vinsons, and some of the time with the Barclays. Times were
good. Cotton was 40 cents a pound. A cotton picker could make $5.00 a day.
In 1907, Gulf Oil had run a pipeline through Tyler County, and put a pump
station at the George Vinson place, about 1 mile from the Mt Zion church.
Working on the pipeline, or at the pump station, paid about $5.00
a day. In comparison, as logger made $1.50 per day working very hard, from
sun up to sun down in the woods. In 1929, both my mother and father taught
at Cherokee community, which is about 5 0r 6 miles northeast of Woodville,
close to Billums creek at the site of the old Cherokee Indian village.
It was a two teacher school, composed of my mother and father. Many members
of the Woodville community still living were their students at that time.
You must remember that, in those days, with the exception of a few merchants
and professional people living in the towns, that most people lived in
the country and made their living by farming. These small schools were
placed with in walking distance of these farming communities.
In 1924, at Mt Zion, my dad made $150.00 per month, and in 1929,
at Cherokee, my dad was paid $l50.00 a month and my mother was paid $85.00
a month. 1929 was a very prosperous year in southeast Teas. Jobs were available.
My dad’s four older brothers had gone off to work in the east Texas oilfields.
The Gulf pipeline had been laid, and Gulf was hiring locally for the pump
station and pipeline. cotton was 40 cents a pound, and framers prospered.
The lumber business had not yet declined, and provided an additional opportunity
for employment.
My dad, who was 25 years of age in 1929, vowed that he would
never teach school for $150.00 a month again. Since he and mother were
both working and everybody seemed to the prosperous, he bought a new 1929
Ford T model roadster with a rumba seat. It cost him $418.00, which is
the same as he paid for a 1926 Ford touring car, which he traded in on
the roadster. That spring, after buying the new car, my dad bought 20 acres
of land 1 mile from the Chester pump station gate, and built a house on
that land. it is of interest that he paid $20.00 an acre, or $400.00, for
the land. The lumber for the house that he bought at the Camden Carter
sawmill, cost $100.00. He paid a carpenter $250.00 to build the house.
The house had an adjacent garage, and a pitcher pump on the back
porch. In the summer of 1929, my mother discovered that she was pregnant
with me. My dad made application for a full-time job with the Gulf Oil
Corporation, and, that fall, when they had not acted on his application,
he borrowed some money from my granddad Vinson and he and mother went to
school at Stephen F. Austin State Teacher College at Nacogadoches.
On October 1, l929, I was born at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, and
delivered by Dr. Stephen Tucker and his wife, who was a registered nurse.
My dad and mother were renting from a Mr. Palmerly, who was a barber in
Nacogdoches. I later performed a physical examination on Mr. Palmerely
in 1964 at Snyder, Texas, and he gave me a very detailed description at
the whole birthing process. He has been standing out on the front porch
with me day, and his wife had been helping Dr. Rucker’s wife with my mother
when I was born. Incidentally, Dr. Tucker’s fee was $25.00. That was probably
the only year he went a full two semester year to a four year college.
Not only did he make the football team at Stephen F. Austin that year,
but he also was on the Dean’s list for good grades. Even though the stock
market crashed in New York City on October 29, it’s significance was not
apparent to the people in Texas yet. One other thing I might add of interest
was that prohibition was repealed in 1929, but that didn’t have much affect
on the law abiding citizens of southeast Texas, since Tyler County was
dry, and I suspect that Nacogdoches county was dry, too. It probably didn’t
have an affect on the bootleggers who were making corn whiskey down in
the river bottom around Spurger and Fred, and various places in Angelina
and Nacogdoches county, because they went right on making and selling their
white lightening.
After finishing a full year of college in 1929 and 1930, my dad
returned to Chester and helped his dad put in a crop. Then he spent the
entire year in politics, and ran for the Tyler County School Superintendent
job. He ran against Bronson Owen and lost. He went back home, and again
helped his dad put in a crop and pick cotton. At that time, the depression
became apparent to all over the United States. There were no jobs available.Gulf
Oil stopped hiring. Oil went down to 5 and 10 cents a barrel, cotton went
from 40 cents a pound to 25 cents, and eventually down to 5 cents a pound.
The farmers could not sell their livestock.
My dad had previously vowed in 1929 hat he would never teach
for less than $50.00 a month again, but in 1930, Brandon Owen sent word
to him that if he would come back to Cherokee and teach, they would use
him as a second teacher, and they would pay him $60.00 a month. My dad
took the job and taught the school year at Cherokee in 1930 and 1931. Apparently,
my mother did not teacher that year. She became pregnant with my sister
Ruby Nell, and, on April 8, l931, gave birth to Ruby Nell at their little
farm at Chester. Dr. Cade was present at the birth of my sister. His fee
was $25.00 in cash. My dad offered him a heifer, but Dr. Cade would not
take the heifer, because he would have to feed it. So, my dad paid him
the precious $25.00 in cash.
In the fall of 1931, my dad accepted the position of Superintendent
of the Concord School in Angelina county. Concord was a small rural school
with 5 teachers and 3 school buses. It was located in the Angelina river
bottom, east of Zavalla. My dad was superintendent at that school for two
years. He was 27 years of age when he started there, and had the only automobile
in the community. This was at the height of the depression, and many people
were unemployed, broke, and many of them were hungry and malnourished.
Even adults went without shoes. My dad felt like, economically, his decision
to be superintendent at Concord had been a mistake. The people were impoverished,
and on a lower socio-economic level than any he had grown up with in Tyler
County. This occurred at the worst part of the depression. However, my
dad said it was not as bad as the dust bowl depicted in the movie The Grapes
of Wrath. In addition to being superintendent, he provided automobile transportation
for the sick people, and ran other errands of similar nature for the community
it In addition to being superintendent, he taught classes . When he left
Concord, he was 29 years old, and I was three. My sister was one year old.
My mother had fun in Concord, since the people treated her so well. She
shed tears when they left.
My mother pointed out to me that the people in the Angelina river
bottom lived mostly by putting hogs in the woods and growing some corn.
They would hunt and fish for game, and make cone syrup. People at the table
ate cornbread, fried bacon, and syrup with some milk or coffee. Some grew
vegetables. In Tyler County, most of the farmers had their milk cows which
provided milk for their families. One man she know grew only peanuts, so
all he ate was peanuts. Such vices as co-habitation was unheard of in the
strict Baptist communities of Tyler County, in the vicinity of Chester
and Woodville, where my parents grew up. Again, I would like to point out
that there were at least a quarter of a million people in Texas at that
time unemployed, and that starvation was common across the entire south,
if not across the entire nation, in the big cities.
At the little farm at Chester, he had a nice garden, and we had
a mule. Some of our distant cousins, the McQueens, lived right across the
row. They had a young daughter named Dagma, who was bout 12 years old that
I became close friends with. You will remember that the Barclays are relatives
of the McQueens. (note Walter Barclay b. 1774 married Elizabeth McQueens
Madison County Kentucky in 1804.)
In the late summer of 1933, my dad journeyed to many places,
looking for a teaching job. There were none in Tyler County, and only one
opening in west Hardin county. He went to Batson in Hardin County. In the
summer of 1933, and as was the custom in those days, went to see each member
of the school board individually. He accepted a job with the Batson school
district in 1933, and stayed there until 1942. We moved to an old farm
house approximately three-fourths of a mile west of the school, where my
dad had a large garden, a milk cow and a bunch of chickens. We never did
raise hogs, with one exception, I raised a hog when I was about 11 years
old as a pet.
My dad was principal of the high school, coach of athletics and
drove the early morning school bus. The afternoon school bus was driven
by Mr. Boud, the school custodian. Batson had a modern school with eleven
grades. It had a large auditorium, a chemistry lab, biology and home economics
lab, a library, a large gymnasium, which was unusual in those days, and
tennis courts. After a couple of years, my dad put in a football field
and track with all the other additional facilities for track and field
events.
In 1936, my dad got his Bachelor of Science degree from Stephen
F. Austin State teachers college in Nacogdoches. During my entire childhood,
my dad went to school every summer, except the summer of 1935. That summer
he worked for the Gulf pipeline at the pump station in Sour Lake for $5.00
a day, which to us seemed like a high salary.
Since my sister and I were both small. In 1936, we moved from
our farm house to a house my near town in old Batson. His salary at Batson
was $90.00 a month teaching school. My mother did not work, dad purchased
a house in the old town of Batson, located adjacent to the Yust family
and the Rogers family. Our immediate next door neighbors were the Gaskeys.
My dad paid $450.00 for that house.
I started out in the first grade at Batson and went through the
seventh grade, when we moved there in 1942. Prior to his leaving in 1942,
the school board elected my dad Superintendent after H.A. Hefner, who had
been the Superintendent, resigned to take a similar job in Graham, TX a
town near Breckenridge.
After my dad got his Bachelors degree at Stephen F. Austin, he
switched to Sam Houston State teachers college in Huntsville, which was
closer to Batson than Nacogdoches. He went t o school every summer, except
the summer of 1942, when he worked in the shipyard in Beaumont. He eventually
got his Masters degree in Administration at Sam Houston State teachers
college, in 1945.
The Batson years was a happy time for our family, even though
we were in a depression. Batson was a oil field town, and there was electricity
in the house. In the town proper, where we lived, there was relative prosperity.
If you have to choose between living in an oil town and a farming town,
choose the oil town every time because the people have more money. Also,
the tax base is richer and the schools have more facilities. I will get
back to Batson later on.
In 1941, on December 7th, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and
the United States was at war. My dad finished out the school year, and
in the summer of 1942, we moved to Beaumont, in Jefferson County. My dad
worked at the shipyard that summer, and went to work in the Beaumont Independent
School District in the fall of 1942 as a full-time coach and physical education
teacher. In those days, the coaches taught physical education every period,
and then coached football, basketball, track and various other sports after
school hours.
My dad eventually became the principal of David Croquet high
school, and subsequently, after an administration change, spent his last
16 years in the Beaumont system as a teacher at Beaumont High School. he
taught American History, Social Studies, and Civics. My mother never taught
again. When the kids grew up, she went to work for Montgomery Ward and
worked for them about 11 years as a clerk until Wards closed and left Beaumont
in 1965. We were all members of Calvary Baptist Church, on the corner of
Neches and Corley, our entire stay in Beaumont from 1942, on. Our only
residence was 1635 Cartwright Street.
My dad retired from the Beaumont school system at the age of
62, in 1965, and moved to Woodville, Texas, where he built a retirement
home on Johnson Street. He became active in retirement by becoming precinct
chairman of the democratic party, member of the Tyler County Historical
society, and went fishing, put in a garden, played dominoes on the courthouse
square.
Our house on Johnson Street was located only 3 blocks from the
courthouse, where in 1845, his great uncle was the first judge. The Woodville
Baptist church , where my dad and mother are members, was 2 blocks from
the house and the Masonic lodge was only a block and a half or 2 blocks.
Edward’s Funeral Home was only 2 blocks from our house, and my dad went
down and took out a pre-burial plan with Joe Edward’s, assuming that Mr.
Edwards would out-live him. It turned out that Mr. Edwards died, and at
the time of this dictation, my dad is 87 and still alive.
In my dad’s retirement, my mother continued keeping house and
developed an extensive yard of popular year-round blooming flowers and
trees. When dad could no longer put in a garden in his later years, my
mother did. She was presented the Wheat Award at the Dogwood Festival around
1983. She believes it was likely because of her many years of making flowers
for decorations at festival.
Becoming active in politics, in Woodville, he ran for the Tyler
County School Superintendent job in 1974, at the age of 70, and won. He
came out of retirement, and was he full-time superintendent of county schools
of Tyler County from 1974 to 1979. At the time he finished this term in
1979, the title and position of County School Superintendent was abolished
by the legislature of the state of Texas. That office no longer exists
in our state. it should be noted that my dad really wanted the job in 190,
and shook hands with just about every voter in Tyler County but lost. He
won it finally 44 years later at age 70.
When my dad became 91, in 1995, he was given a party and awarded
his 70 year Masonic service pin. It is his opinion that he is the youngest
man ever to receive that award. He joined the Masons on the first meeting
night after his 21st in March of 1925. Back in hose days, the Masons of
the Mount Hope lodge at Chester met on the first Saturday after the first
full moon of each month. The reason for that, was so that they could ride
their horses home from lodge meeting by moonlight.
I would like to say a few words about the Mount Zion church and
cemetery, since it is where all of my near kin on my dad and mother’s side
are buried. Mount Zion church is about 3 0r 4 miles south of Chester, located
on an unimproved dirt road which runs west to Russell creed and down Russell
creek where the Vinson settlement was. Old George Vinson, my great grandfather
on my other’s side, lived there and his four sons had their farms along
that road.
My granddad Jim Vinson grew up on the farm there and went to
work for the pump station, while he continued to farm. Then he worked for
Gulf Oil for about 30 years when they finally put him on full time. They
lived in a company house for a number of years and then moved up on the
hill about a mile from the pump station gate and about a quarter of a mile
from my dad’s little farm he built in 1929.
Around 1942, my granddad, Jim, moved to Chester. He built a house
across from the Carnes and next to his daughter, Zelda Seamans and her
husband, Clarence and their son Ralph. It was approximately one city block
from the Chester High School. My granddad Vinson was on the Chester school
board many years. In fact, he was on the Chester school board when my dad
moved to Batson in 1933. My granddad, James Alfred Vinson (b. 1887-
d 1952) was married to my grandmother Ada George Vinson (b. 1887 - 1960).
They are buried side by side Mount Zion cemetery, next to their you
g son Aldridge, who died at the age of 8 of appendicitis. Jim Vinson, as
he was known, was the son of George Vinson, who was married to Mary Peters.
I, nor my mother, knows where the Vinsons came from. They were not listed
in the Tyler County census of 1860, nor were they listed as slave owners
in Tyler County. Consequently, it is my opinion that the Vinsons came from
somewhere in the south, and settled on Russell creek 5 miles below Chester
sometime right after the Civil war.
They attended the Mount Zion Baptist church, and have kin folks
buried in that cemetery back to 1870. My grandmother, Ada George Vinson,
was the daughter of a George, who wed a Miss Bullock, my mother’s grandmother,
and who my mother was named after.
My mother, Ruby Emily Vinson, was named after Emily Bullock.
Whether Emily Bullock was a daughter of Charles Bullock, is not known for
sure by my mother. She was always told that she had a great grandfather
that was a captain in the Civil was. The George’s lived out on what is
now known as the Woodville to Livingston highway, and so did the Bullocks,
and so did some of the Barclays, as far as that goes.
The Gulf pump station has to have played a great part in the
economy of the area of Mount Zion church and to my family. Spindletop Oil
field was brought in 1901, Batson, Saratoga, and Sour Lake Oil fields were
brought in 1904. Humble field, 1905. Kilgore, Henderson and the East Texas
field in 1930. Conroe was brought in 1933. At the time the Conroe field
was brought in 1933, oil was 10 cents a barrel. The Gulf Oil corporation
evolved from the Guffey oil company, that was formed at Spindleton.
Gulf eventually built a huge refinery at Port Arthur, and they
put in a pipeline system across the state of Texas. Fortunately, the pipeline
went trough Tyler County, and Gulf put a large pump station approximately
one mile from Mount Zion church. They bought the land from George Vinson
and his heirs for the pump station. Incidentally, when they closed the
pump station down, they sold the land back to the Vinsons at about $500.00
an acre, at a time when most unimproved land in that area was selling for
$2000.00 an acre. When they bought it in 1907, I suspect they paid $20.00
an acre.
After the Civil War, and before the railroads came in, most of
Tyler County was covered with yellow pine and was not fit for farming.
The best farming was in the creek bottoms, river bottoms and blackland
farming. Farmers sold their forest lands to the timber companies for as
little as one or two dollars an acre. They had no way of cutting the large
trees, and after they cut them, they certainly had no use for them.
James Walter Barclay Jr., my grandfather, married Laura Pool
Barclay. Laura had a twin sister Clara Pool that married Henry Barclay,
my grandfathers brother. henry was the oldest son of my great grandfather
James Walter Barclay and inherited most of his land, which was on the west
side of 287, and extended from Woodville below Kirkland Springs and almost
to Russell Creek on the west side of 287. The old Barclay place, that belonged
to my great-grandfather, is directly across the road that runs to my grandfathers
house, about 1 to 2 miles back in the woods. There is still a little dirt
road that runs in there to the old place.
An incident that my dad has told over and over again, over the
years that I have known him, is that his father, my grandfather Walter,
shot the last deer in Tyler County in 1932. He did it because they needed
the meat. At that time, he almost cried when he felt like he killed the
last deer, because he said that none of his children would ever get to
shoot a deer. Around 1940, they closed the hunting season in Tyler County
for 5 years. White tail deer were imported from South Texas and West Texas,
and now the deer herd has been replenished in Tyler County. My grandfather
had no idea this would happen. It is an observation, my dad said, that
they cut the last of the yellow pine tree down in Tyler County in 1930,
and my grandfather shot the last deer in 1932. When the settlers came to
Tyler County across the Neches River in 1832, the entire county was filled
with tall pine trees 5 foot in diameter and 150 feet high. The deer herd
was so thick they would walk up to people without shying away. Turkey,
bear and all other game of that sort were in abundance when those settlers
came.
By 1932, they had shot all the deer and most of the squirrels
and you probably couldn’t find a bear within a thousand miles of the Neches
river unless it was in a zoo. Another thing of interest, is that when my
dad went to work at the age of 17 for Carter lumber company as a logging
man, he was paid $1.50 a day. In those days, your dad was entitled to your
services until you were 21 years old. Out of the $1.50 Mr. Carter paid
my dad, he in turn paid his dad $ .50 a day to hire a man to work in his
place on the farm.
I asked my dad about World War 1 and what he could remember.
At the beginning of WW1, my dad was 13 and my mother was 9. They both seem
to remember the same things. They bought a little red button for 10 cents
and wore it on their lapel. Sugar and flour were rationed and almost non-existent.
You couldn’t buy meat in the store and farmers were selling all they could
raise, and consequently, meat was scarce. The predominant crops in Tyler
County have always been corn and cotton. They also had plenty if sugar
cane for syrup. They ran hogs in the woods and kept cows for milk. They
raised vegetables in their family gardens. During WW1, there was a national
drive towards self-sufficiency, and each family was encouraged to have
a "victory garden". This was also true of WWII.
My mother pointed out that we always had plenty of milk. Most
of the people in Tyler County in the early 1930’s put their milk in the
well. They had open air wells and would let it down on a rope. The ones
I saw were in glass jugs inside a flour sack. My mother said they put theirs
in a tin syrup bucket, their milk put the lids on and then put it in a
sugar sack with a knot. They tied the rope around the knot, and let it
down in the well. This was so that if the bail came off, the bucket wouldn’t
spill and sour the well water. Most of the wells were open and about 25
feet deep. My dad had a pitcher pump at our house in Concord. We had pitcher
pumps in Batson. The first house that I lived in that had electricity,
was in Batson in 1933, we were, however, fairly close to town. People that
lived on the farm did not get electricity until after WW2, around 1946.
My dad was pretty young during WW1 , but I asked him what he
remembered. No immediate member of our family served in the armed forces
or was killed. there were very few people that they knew of in Chester
or Woodville that served or were killed. My dad had four older brothers.
Clyde was not drafted. Buck was in the state guard at Woodville, wore a
uniform and drilled with a stick. Josh was inducted into the draft the
day the Armistice was signed. Robert was too young and Feagin was a baby.
My dad was 13.
When I asked my dad why he didn’t go to Woodville high school,
he said that at the time he went off to Denton, Woodville did have 11 grades,
but they would not have given him a teachers certificate. The expense would
be the same for room and board. When he taught school at Shiloh, it was
about 6 or 7 miles through the woods from his father’s place. He rode horseback.
It took him 1 hour to get there and 1 hour to get home through the woods.
My mother substituted from him several times. For comparison, in 1920 seventy-five
of the school age children in Texas were attending public school. The illiteracy
rate in Texas dropped to 8% over all. It was the lowest in the south. But,
Texas was rated number 39 in all the states in quality of education.
It is interesting that in 1926, my dad bought a T-model Ford
touring car for $418. The roads were bad and after the first week the back
wheel came off. There were no paved roads. All were dirt trails, no upkeep
and little or no roads. In 1929, he traded his 1926 T-model for a 1929
T-model roadster with a rumple seat. In those days, they borrowed the money
from the bank, paid cash for the car, and paid off the bank in installments.