I have often mentioned how much I enjoyed Linda Hubalek’s
Trail of Thread series because of the true-to-life way she presented
pioneering. In our family, my brother and I are the genealogists. Years ago I
was fortunate enough to come into possession of an account given of the move
from Hillboro, Texas to Martin in Harmon County, Oklahoma Territory in 1899 by
the Garton family. This family are not my direct ancestors but two of the Garton sisters married into my line.
This is excerpted from the transcript of an oral account given by Dessie Garton Shraeder
to her granddaughter and has amazing details considering she was a child of nine when
they moved and this was recounted when she was near eighty. I have to admit I'm glad I didn't have to live in these conditions.
We camped at Mr. Brim’s because he had water. There was an
empty dugout nearby. We moved into it because it was so cold in the tent. We
had a sheet-iron stove, but there wasn’t any wood. Willy had pneumonia. The gyp
dust of the dugout turned out to be worse on him than the cold, and so we had
to move back into the tent.
It didn’t
take long for us to get initiated to the hazards of living on the prairie. Rain
was our chief concern. Everyday we searched the skies for rain clouds. When we
saw a rain cloud approaching, we always remembered what a settler’s wife had
told Papa when we camped out on Turkey Creek. He had gone to try to buy food
for the animals. He asked if it ever rained in Greer County. In a long drawn
out tone she replied, “It don’t never rain in Greer County, but when it does,
it don’t never stop.”
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| Before this part of the story, the family had set up their tent on a frozen creek because that was the only level spot they found. |
About two
or three weeks after we arrived in Martin, we experienced our first sandstorm.
Murray and Papa were digging the dugout, and the rest of us were working around
the tent. We had spread all the bedclothes outside on the grass so they could
air the damp out. We saw the black cloud coming from the north. We thought it
was a bad rain cloud. It hit with all the fury of a spring rainstorm, but it
was only wind and dust. Mama struggled to get the bedclothes off the grass
while we kids fought to keep the tent from falling. Even Willy, who still had
pneumonia, was trying to help. But the tent collapsed in spite of all our
efforts. After it was over, Papa and Murray came running to us. Papa said that
he had never been so frightened—he had thought the world was coming to an end!
Later we found our pillows a half-mile away hanging on a barbed wire fence.
After that
experience, we watched the skies for rain, those ominous black clouds, and
another cloud of a different color. This was a gray cloud that meant an
approaching prairie fire. All of the settlers feared these fires. Everyone
plowed his fields to make a fire guard; but if the wind was strong, nothing
could stop the fires. We were never burned out, but we lived in fear that we
might be.
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| A Plains dugout |
Murray and
Papa finally finished the dugout. There we were—seven kids and Mama and
Papa—and we didn’t own one dollar in cash. Mr. Brim helped Papa get groceries
“on account” in Quanah. He had a fenced garden spot that he said we could use.
Mr. Payne let us milk two of his cows. Then we started breaking land with our
horses and that old mule. We didn’t make any crop that first year, but we did
get all of the land broken. The second year we planted maize and cotton. Papa would
dig the holes and I would place the seeds in the holes. The maize was the old
goose-necked variety that grew as high as a man’s head and then curved back
toward the ground. We had to cut each head separately with a knife. It was
difficult for us to reach. Our hands would get cut by the sharp blades of the
leaves and, once in a while, by the knife.
We had to
go to Quanah, Texas for everything. It had the closest railroad. Four or five
families would sometimes get together and go over there because we had to ford
the Red River. If the river was up, all of the horses would be hitched together
in order to pull the wagons across one by one. We had to tie everything down in
the wagons or we might see our supplies floating down the river. We would never
know whether or not the river would be high. There might have been
thunderstorms further west we knew nothing about.
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| Dickson and Susan Garton |
It seemed
like we were always in debt to that man at Quanah. I remember one of the first
years when we made a good crop. Papa went to Quanah to pay off our bills. When
he came home, he said, “Well, Susan, I didn’t tell you, but now I’ve paid it
off I guess it can’t hurt to tell you. I mortgaged the mule last spring.” Mama
was shocked. She fretted the remainder of the day. She said over and over,
“Just think, if we hadn’t made this crop, we’d lost that mule, and then how
would we have broken the land for next year’s crop?”
We made
pretty good crops when we first came to Martin. The land was fresh and would
grow anything if we could just get enough rain. Our biggest problem was getting
water. We had to haul it from Quanah or catch it in rain barrels. When it
rained, we filled every available container with water.
The year
after Papa mortgaged the mule, he traded it for the price of digging a well.
The man had to dig 115 feet before he hit water. We had to draw all our
water—even for the stock. Whose job do you think that was? Talk about “the good
old days!” If I didn’t think Mama or Papa were watching, I would drive the
cattle away—they would drink too much.
Our next
biggest worry was the damage caused by the open range policy. Before the Herd
Law was passed, the cattle would eat our maize crop and trample our cotton.
There weren’t any trees around for fence posts. All the lumber had to be
freighted in from Quanah. Besides that, barbed wire cost money, and we were
always short of money. Willy got a job in Texas. That $10 a month he made sure
helped us. One of most vivid memories relating to that open range policy was
the day two bulls got into a fight on the top of our flat topped dugout. We
were afraid to go outside because they might attack us, and we were afraid to
stay inside because it sounded as if any second they could come crashing
through the roof. Finally, they gave up and went away.
I was just
nine years old when we moved from Texas. Oh, how homesick I would get for all
those beautiful trees I used to climb (I was the tomboy of the family) and the
creeks I used to wade in. I missed our big house too. Everything got so dirty
in the dugout. My brother-in-law Ed, who had said this country wouldn’t sprout
black-eyed peas, brought my sister Attie to see us. They decided to homestead
north of us. We were all together then, and I knew there wasn’t much hope of
going back.
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| Dessie, left, and Lucinda Garton Dessie is the one who tells the story; Lucinda is one of the sisters who married into my family |
All of us
children had to work in the fields planting and harvesting. In the winter we
went to school. I loved school and secretly dreamed of going back to Texas to
high school. My aunt offered to take my older sister Lucinda and send her to
high school so that she could become a teacher. When my sister refused, I asked
Mama if I could take her place, but she shrugged it off by saying that I was
too young and should stay at home.
Sunday was
a big day for us. Everyone in the community gathered at church. After the
services, all of the relatives would go to one relative’s home for dinner and
visiting. Sometimes we would have a church picnic and singing after church. All
of us looked forward to those particular Sundays.
Caroline Clemmons is an Amazon bestselling and award-winning author. Her latest release is RACHEL, Bride Brigade series book 5, available from Amazon
