David
Crockett Broyles was born June 6, 1864 near Sparta, White County, Tennessee.
His parents were John Summerfield Broyles and Mary Ann Crook Broyles. He
was
the fifth child of eleven children
Papa attended the best schools of White County, Tennessee, graduating with honors. After teaching a year or two in Middle, Tennessee, he went to East Tennessee to the small college of Hiwassee near Madisonville, Tennessee.
The word Hiwassee means "Beautiful Meadows," and the campus truly is a beautiful place. My sister, Llewellyn Broyles Brown, and her late husband and my late husband, Emet M. Hall, visited there in 1960. The trees, grass, and blue skies with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance are beautiful to behold.
A charter was granted to Hiwassee College in January, 1850 as an institution to help poor but deserving boys and young men. It is still existing though it has had many trials and ups and downs. It is known for promoting moral excellence. Hiwassee was a degree granting institution. In addition to the Bachelor of Arts, the lesser Bachelor of Science, and the Bachelor of Philosophy, it also granted a number of honorary degrees. Many other degrees are now offered. It is owned by the United Methodist Church.
Papa taught country schools in East Tennessee, also. It was there that he met and married Miss Alice Dodson of Friendship, Tennessee on December 28, 1889. To this union was born one son named John Summerfield Broyles on April 9, 1891.
Late the next summer Papa brought his family to Texas where he taught a term in Honey Grove Creek school in Hamilton County, Texas. When the term was over, they returned to Tennessee where his wife, Alice, died November 21, 1892 of tuberculosis. Young John S. was seventeen months old.
Papa again turned to teaching and to newspaper work. In a letter dated May 15, 1978, Henry Dodson, Papa's first wife's nephew, now living in Alamo, Tennessee, says, "It seems to me that when Mr. Broyles came to Friendship, Tennessee, he went to work in a newspaper office and eventually bought the paper and was running it when Aunt Alice died." This information was news to me but sounds feasible and was helpful in attempting to trace my father's activities.
By 1895 the young widower left his young son, now four years old, with his maternal grandparents and answered the call to the West, and confined not his hands to one task, but did "what his hands found to do" in the comparatively new land. He was a good surveyor, studied law diligently and eventually collected a library* (*See article on "Home Library of Mr. and Mrs. D. C. Broyles," by Grandson Broyles Hall on pages 46-48.) that would be a distinction to any home today. However, the school and weekly newspaper publishing became his closest "loves," and he was associated with both until his death.
In
Texas Papa settled down in Junction, Kimble County, where he taught successfully
for a year or two. It was there that he had the good fortune of winning for
a life's companion one of Junction's finest young ladies, Miss Bertie Della
Sanders, who was one of his high school students. They were married on September
19, 1897. Mama was born August 2, 1881.
In the summer of 1898 Papa and his young wife were visiting in the home of his sister, Emma Jared, and husband Joe Jared in Von Ormy, Bexar County, Texas. Papa was surveying the area. There in the Jared home on August 20, 1898, I was born and named Grace Alice Broyles. Alice was the given name of Papa's first wife. He had me christened and baptized on the eighth day of my life.
There was an interim for a couple of years in which Papa continued to survey. My mother once told me that while he was thus employed one summer, we lived in a tent out on some ranch near Rock Springs, Edwards County, Texas. The tent had heavy boards all around for security and protection. I was about two years old. She said I'd go out to play and when she admonished me to come back that a cow would get me, I would run back, put my hands on the board across the doorway and fall in. Papa was partially paid with a sheep or goat for his surveying services.
Later Papa was appointed official surveyor for Edwards County Texas, and was living in Rock Springs where on October 4, 1900 another baby girl was added to our family. She was named Martha Llewellyn, after our great grandparents Martha and Llewellyn Richardson. She and all the family are very proud of that name "Llewellyn" by which she is called. It is a Welsh name.
By 1902 our family was again in Junction, Texas and a baby brother was born, named David Dodson. Thus Papa was again honoring the D. B. Dodson family. Mama accepted them as if they were her own family's people, which I feel was a very admirable trait of character in my mother.
Papa was an avid reader. Mama told me how completely he could concentrate while reading. He had a habit of picking up a book and reading when he came in each evening. We first three children were close together in ages and therefore were" a handful. " All three of us were crying at one time one day with Papa nearby reading. She became frustrated and was crying too. She touched him on the shoulder. He looked up and said, "Why, Bertie, what's the matter?" She replied, "Professor Broyles, can't you take one of these babies?"
Mama never mentioned nor lamented her position of being such a young wife and mother. Here she was with three babies before she was 21 years of age. When I was 17, I was one half as old as Mama and one third as old as Papa.
We were on the move again in 1903. Papa had a teaching job in Pontotoc, Mason County, Texas - seventeen miles from Mason, Mason County seat, Texas. Papa was superintendent of the Pontotoc school from 1903 to 1906. I have a picture of the rather large imposing building with teachers and students in front. I was in the first and second grades there. Mrs. Hoerster, present County Treasurer of Mason County, upon my recent inquiry, sent me an excerpt from the Mason County News, 1858-1958 Centennial edition stating that Pontotoc had a newspaper published by my father, D.C. Broyles, for a few months in 1906 in Pontotoc.
Other historical news she sent was the school building in Pontotoc was erected by the San Fernando Vally Association for an academy. As many as 200 pupils attended school there for a number of years. After the academy was abandoned, the building was used for the public schools until 1927. Pontotoc received a Post Office in 1878, thus dating the town as one hundred years old this year.
We moved the summer of 1903 in a covered wagon and camped out on the Llano River. Turtle eggs were found and boiled. I tried to eat one but it was too "grainy." We took baths in the "shallows" of the river. Papa went off to deeper water. After dressing he forgot to pick up his watch so it was left by the side of the Llano, which definitely was a loss in those days. Llewellyn was ill that summer with "slow fever." We think now it may have been typhoid though no one else in the family took it. Dodson was right at one year of age and ran all around and over Llewellyn on a bed Mama had made in the back of the wagon for her to lie on.
In Pontotoc we settled down in a rambling "box house" in the shape of an upside down "T" with the front of the house to the north. Three steps up in the west end was our parlor in which we had a piano way back then. Under this room was a large basement bedroom. Fireplaces were in the parlor, basement, and bedroom farthest east. Across a hall at the back were our dining room and kitchen. The latter had a wood-burning cook stove and an old cupboard which was made by my mother's grandfather, L. E. Richardson, and other equipment I can't recall.
Papa loved Christmas time. We three little ones were excited about Santa's corning. We received a number of toys, picture books, candy, nuts, and fresh fruit if available. After Christmas was over, Papa would point to a package over the frame work of a door or window - "Look up there," he'd say, "Santa must have put that there." So, ever so often, each child would receive an extra toy.
As a surprise for Mama, Papa had bought dishes for her Christmas gift, and a set of chinaware and another of glass ware. On Christmas Eve (I was told) he was in the dining room unpacking the dishes from a large barrel. Mama needed something from that part of the house, so with a kerosene lamp - one with a finger holding handle - she surprised Papa unpacking the dishes. He tried to hide under the dining table and that was a laughable recollection in the family ever after. I have the spoon holder from the finger-print design of the glass ware. My sister has the sugar bowl. The gold on each is about worn off.
Here I will "back" up to bring in facts about my mother's family. Cornelia Richardson Sanders Conner died suddenly at the age of twenty-nine, leaving five small children ranging in age from eleven years down to a four-month-old baby. The three older ones were Genie, Bertie (our mother), and Leta Sanders. Our grandfather Sanders deserted the family. We children did not know that fact until a few years ago. After a lawful period of two years or more, our grandmother married Millard Conner and soon there were two more children named Millard and Cornelia. Not long after Grandma Conner's death, the widower father was carrying the U.S. mail by horseback, took pneumonia and died. The five orphans were first taken in by their maternal grandparents, Llewellyn and Martha Richardson. Later their maternal Aunt Lena Braley took them for a while. I remember my mother saying they were "pushed from pillar to post" as the old saying goes.
The youngest child, our Aunt Nelia as we children called her, began living in our home at an early age. She moved with us from Junction to Pontotoc and our home was her home until she was educated. She attended North Texas State Normal School in Denton, Texas until she earned a teaching certificate. She taught two years and then married Charles B. Sloan. She was nice to have around - was a sweet, good natured person, slow and dreamy but always a willing worker and helper.
Late summer of our first year in Pontotoc, Papa's son, John Summerfield Broyles, came from Alamo, Tennessee to live with us. His maternal grandfather had been elected to Circuit Court Clerk so the D. B. Dodson's had moved from Friendship, Tennessee to Alamo in East Tennessee. These maternal grandparents felt that Papa could provide a better education for John S. He rode a train as far as Mason or Brady, Texas, then came the rest of the way with the mail carrier.
John was a cute lad with pretty brown, curly hair, twelve years of age. He was of medium build and shy, but he soon adjusted. What an adjustment that was for him! He had come from a home of adults to our home with two half-sisters, a half-brother all three younger than he, a step aunt, a foster brother, a stepmother and a father he scarcely knew!! He became a cheerful, congenial member of our family.
At the time John joined our family I was five-years-old. I took it upon myself to entertain him. We had an "athletic" bar in our back yard which I played on quite a bit (I was somewhat of a tomboy). I had him hang by his knees and I'd turn "cats" through his arms. We did other stunts also. But being seven years older than I and having been assigned to the basement bedroom of our home, he soon left his younger sisters and brother to play without him. Other teenagers joined John in the basement room whom I'll mention later.
To know John was to love him! He was with us until he left for higher education - first in Alabama and then to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, where he earned a Civil Engineering degree. He and my mother were very compatible and though she was only ten years older he loved and honored her as if she were his own mother. We all loved John; it was so nice to have an older brother with us.
In September of that year we were surprised one day to see a horse-drawn buggy stop at our house. Out stepped Mr. Powers of Rock Springs, Texas, with his son Ross, carrying a trunk full of Ross' clothing - a big surprise to all of us. While our family was living in Rock Springs, Papa had surveyed for Mr. Powers and was in their home from time to time to discuss business. Ross was a school drop out about thirteen. After being around Papa several times he had said "I would go to school to that man." So here he was to be a member of our family until he graduated from high school. Thereafter he married and I lost track of him. John S. welcomed Ross as a roommate in the basement.
Papa was a wonderful disciplinarian. I never remember him spanking any of us, but when he told us to do something, we knew he meant it. Our mother did not spank either. But we were disciplined. One punishment is very outstanding in my memories. I liked to pull jokes on people. One kind of candy that was popular when we were children were "candy kisses" which were rolled in powdered sugar and each wrapped individually. I was about eleven years old. It was April 1st. I got some laundry soap, the same color as the candy. I cut it into candy size pieces, rolled each in flour, and wrapped each in the original candy paper and put them in a small candy sack. When the boarder boys came in I was ready for them. Wilford Faver, one of Papa's assistant teachers, who was dignified and always neat and professional looking came in first. I offered him some candy. When he bit down on the whole thing in his mouth, you should have seen the expression on his face! I yelled "April Fool!" and was laughing my head off. Mama soon was on the scene. She punished me by making me put one of my "candy kisses" in my mouth and sit in a room alone. I sat there laughing inside - I had enjoyed the joke so much! I held the soap as still as I could and did not dare swallow. I sat quite a while when Aunt Nelia came to my rescue. I heard her say, "Bertie, aren't you afraid that soap will make Grace sick?" Mama soon told me to spit it out.
In Pontotoc we had a regular visitor who came every few months. I do not know where he and Papa met, but Mr. Holmes, a nephew of Oliver Wendell Holmes, made special visits with us each year. He drove a horse to a buggy, was old, very hard of hearing and had poor eyesight. He would have Papa read to him hour after hour in the evenings. Papa's voice he could hear and understand with ease, but Mama couldn't make him understand her. One day she was trying to carryon a conversation with him about how the blood poured from my foot after I had stepped on a nail while playing on some old lumber. The old man replied, "You're right. The rain surely did pour last night."
At one time in Pontotoc we owned a horse and buggy. The horse had been in a severe or intense tornado two miles out of town; therefore he was very shy and jumpy when he encountered a moving paper around his feet. That horse was one of Papa's bad investments. He was soon sold.
Some friends took Mama, Papa, and me out to see the tornado destruction in which three of our mutual friends were killed. The home and everything in the area was blown away except the top of a concrete water cistern. I remember Mama saying, "If only they had gotten into that cistern." I was horrified at anyone getting into a cistern of water. During the storm large hail stones fell over and around our home. We gathered enough to make a freezer of ice cream - a big treat for us.
Papa's widowed sister, Florence Cope and son Findley (nineteen years old) came from Tennessee the second summer we were in Pontotoc. He joined the boys in the basement. She taught a summer school that summer in Pontotoc. Within a few months Papa purchased the Mason Herald - a weekly newspaper in Mason, Texas. He put Findley Cope over there to run it and Aunt Florence went with him.
Mr. J. A. Willhelm carried the mail a distance of seventeen miles from Mason to Pontotoc and back each day by horse and buggy. We three children, one at a time, would ride back with him to visit the Copes. As Dodson was riding over one day, Mr. Willhelm asked him what Papa's given name was. He didn't know. Mr. Willhelm asked, "What does your mother call him," Dodson thought a little and replied, "Professor Broyles, go milk the cow."
I never heard Mama call Papa anything but Professor Broyles. She had been in High school under him and to her he always was "Professor Broyles." His sister said he was known as "Crock" when growing up. In Texas for a number of counties in every direction he was known as Professor Broyles. It was never shortened to "Prof."