Old Dacus, Chapter 10
The terrible effect of the Civil War on our community and our surrounding sister communities began to come true in 1861-1862. I have found so far very few personal written records of our beginning Texas forefathers but general accounts all over Texas were the same as Montgomery and so of Old Dacus. Commissioners Court records show sporadic payments to public school teachers, one being sixty three dollars to a Miss Nannie Oliver as a teacher in a public school for the year of 1859. (Incidentally the term year, was probably for the months of November, December and January).
Oliver, is a name listed as one of the oldest settlers and teachers, at Old Dacus. Other teachers named in 1857 were Charles L.S. Jones, E.C. Dealy and Julia Morrell, could this lady be kin to the ever present Z.N. Morrell, the now famed Anderson based first Baptist crusader? But alas, in the same breath, 1857, the court report of T.W. Smith, County Treasurer says the school fund reports were destroyed.
There must have been much unrest and intense feelings about cessation talk and about slavery as early as 1855. Letters written to his family from Anderson, Texas in 1854 by Mr. A.S. Beardsly as published in the Grimes County History book says, "There was a bad cholera scare here when twenty slaves out of seventy and fifteen whites out of sixteen, all of them from the same plantation, died within a week of arrival from Georgia." Also he tells, "When not busy around the house or sewing, it takes the rest of the time to fight fleas, bedbugs and mosquitoes. War seems to be looked upon as inevitable, but for my part, I do not feel much alarmed." In spite of the Indians, insects, disease and the threat of an impending Civil War, our Dacus people had gained much in the way of worldly goods, but we must remember that as in the account in the Journal, "For a wedding present the "brides" father gave her a horse, a cow and a twelve year old slave girl." This was about the time around 1850, a bountiful start to married life. Many stories of visitors or newly arrived settlers talk of the dirt and filth inside the homes. The women had nothing to use to combat these conditions. The use of lye soap, if they had it and hot water was the whole of the tools she had in her fight to keep home, clothes and body clean. The fight against ants and bedbugs was constant. One source of relief to the lady of the house could be found at the Kirbee Kiln, four miles south of Montgomery, a little southeast of the present day Lake 177 subdivision along F.M. 149, a.k.a. Old Houston Road. This kiln made quite a few much needed pottery products. Jugs of all sizes, all purposes and needs. One popular product was the several types of jugs needed to make home-style liquor. They made crocks for the milk, crocks to can or preserve foods and lard. The product of most value to the housewife was a small pottery saucer-like vessel, with a high rim around it to put under each bed or table leg. This cup-like article was large enough in width, that when filled with water or any bug repellent, created a lake that the ant, roach or bedbug must swim through to get to the table or bed. If the homeowner had kerosene, popularly called coal-oil, these leg-cups when filled with the oil or water were very effective.
It is a certainty that all Texas inhabitants had the problem of all manner of insects and with little or no manner of protection. The mosquitoes were the cause of several terrible sieges of yellow fever, killing thousands of people literally wiping out whole families. The flea could and did carry fatal disease in their bites. An account of a visit to Texas in 1852 in an East Texas Historical Journal states, "I am in good health save for bedbugs and tick bites. There is a little varmint here, a stinging lizard with a forked tail, a sting in each fork." A young lady moving to Texas in 1861, states, "Visitors coming to Texas should cover themselves in tar to ward off the ticks, redbugs, fleas by the millions, centipedes, tarantulas and snakes gliding through the grass."

My Notes: The surname Kirby was spelled Kirbee in 1850 census. By 1860 the family used the Kirby spelling.
N. Evaline Kirby is the daughter of Lewis & Francis Kirby who moved from South Carolina to Montgomery Co TX just prior to 1850. The Kirbee Kiln was added in 1973 to the National Register of Historic Places.