My mother, Sallie Bates Williamson and her family came to Dickens County in 1891. Her husband, R.F. Williamson and three year old daughter and a small son, one year old, settled at Cottonwood on what is now known as the Rev. Stokes place. Three more children were born here. Jessie and Glenn attended the first school ever taught at Cottonwood. Year later, Cottonwood was called Afton. Mr. Middleton was their teacher.
My parents afterwards in 1896 moved four miles west of Cottonwood on a one-hundred sixty acres farm which my father purchased for five dollars, and a yellow horse. Our first home on this place was a shinnery arbor and a covered wagon. Soon, our half dugout was built, this sheltered the family from the severe winters. Later we added a lumber house, 10' x 12'. On this farm, my mother lived sixty years, about two thirds of those years she spent alone.
Sallie Williamson was a doll of a woman. An inch less than 5' tall, peaches and cream complexion as a girl, black scotch-irish eyes, and black hair, small of stature but a giant of a woman in doing things for her family. Both parents were concerned about their children. We had no school when we first moved to Cottonwood, so my mother and father got together with the other parents and organized and built a one room school house, known as Liberty School. The school house was built about the center of the community, and we had to walk two and one half miles despite the weather. Every family tried to make sure the children were at school every day. I dreaded the wild Surleys (Bulls to you, we were not allowed to say the word bull) on the open range. Mama had made me a new red dress, and the boys (my brothers) said that the Surleys would fight if they saw red, so each time I wore my red dress I was so scared that I could hardly walk across the pasture. We carried our lunch in a tin bucket, and the drinking water was hauled to school in a fifty gallon barrel with one dipper for all of us to use. School lunches consisted of biscuits and butter and hard boiled eggs. Fruit was a special treat at Christmas time, I well remember the joy of gathering around my mothers knees, she would peel an orange, and each of us children would get one section, and then the next day we would have another and so on until the oranges were gone. Usually we each had an apple, and would eat those on Christmas Day.
Usually we had a beautiful, peaceful life. It was ten miles to Dickens City. When our father went with wagon and team about once a month, he brought us a treat of pepper mint candy. Occasionally there was violence and tragedy. There were no fences on our way to school, but one morning when my father started to town, a man who owned a big amount of acreage stopped him and told him that he was building fences across the road to school, and that we would have to go about a half of a mile farther to where he would put a gate. In the argument that took place, my father was cut and scratched, but the other man was minus an ear, and I'm the proud possessor of the wire cutters which did the job. The gate was put where my father wanted it, with the understanding that we keep it shut. Every child was taught that for your friends or enemies, it was a tragedy to leave a gate open.
Every morning my mother would brush my long brown hair until it shown, and tie the braids with ribbons to match my calico dress. She never kissed us goodbye, even though she might not see us alive again, rattle snakes, and wild bulls were the hazards we must face every day, and it was a long way to a doctor, and no telephones were available.
I credit my mother with saving my life several times. Once I was bitten by a cat with hydrophobia. My father rode half a mile to a Matador tank where the cowboys were branding to find out what to do. He returned and borrowed a buggy and loaded me into it and we drove frantically the fifteen miles to Mrs. Cockrums to a Madstone. We got there late in the afternoon, Mrs. Cockrums heated some sweetmilk in a basin and dropped the small, black, slick stone, the size and shape of a domino into it. She placed the stone on my shoulder where the cat had bitten me. In a few minutes she drew my fathers attention to the green streaks of poison making rays to the stone. Since I was only 6 years old at the time, I don't remember how many times she took the stone off and dipped it in the milk. the milk was supposed to draw the poison. Mrs. Cockrum fed me egg custard milk. We stayed there two and one half days, and then my father asked her if she could come home with us, knowing that my mother would be frantic not knowing how I was or what success we had had. So with the stone still sticking to the wound, we went home. When the poison was all drawn out, the stone would fall off it's own accord. After it would no longer stock on my shoulder, Mrs. Cockrum put it on another bite on my knee. I was sitting on the floor, rocking my baby brother in a home made cradle, when the stone fell off and one rocker of the cradle broke a chip off the stone. My mother was upset, but Mrs. Cockrum said that perhaps it would not destroy its usefullness. She charged my father $15.00 which was an enormous sum in those days, but for the life of their small daughter, it was cheap. Another time that Sallie saved my life was when I was 12 years old. She sent me out to get some sweet potatoes from the cain teepee where we kept them, I stuck my hand into the opening, and something like a needle stuck into my finger. I put my finger into my mouth and sucked out the blood and spit it out, then went into the house to put some turpentine on it. Mother asked me where the potatoes were and I told her I would get them in a minute, that a mouse had bit me and I wanted to doctor it. She looked at my finger, then grabbed a cord and bound it tight around my wrist and put some kerosine and alum in a bucket and made me put my hand in it and hold it there while she got my brother to borrow the Hailes double buggy and put me in it. They took me to Dr. Blackwell in Dickens. He cut the cord from around my wrist and made a cut in the finger to bleed it, but the blood had clotted and would not bleed. He packed it full of potash and said that I would be alright. A cowboy that was bitten the same day, died, and had it not been for my mother, I would have died too.
The third time I credit my mother with saving my life, is when I had typhoid. I was in high school at Dickens, and my fever was one hundred and four, my mother nursed me day and night through this illness, though tired and sick she must have been, my wonderful mother once again was the mainstay of my life.
Years later, when my husband I visited her, Sallie laid her head down on her kitchen table and sobbed to us that something must be done for her loneliness, that she could stand it no longer. This is one of the rare times when she let her feelings be known, and soon she had forgotten the outburst, and was making plans for ordering some good cattle, and building a new house. At ninety years of age, she fed her own cattle.
Although my mother never joined any church, when I walked into her fresh clean house, I felt that God was with me. Sometimes she and I would just sit and look out her window, watching the moon rise, she was at peace with the world, and all that was in it.
Source: History of Dickens County; Ranches and Rolling Plains, Fred Arrington, ©1971
Funeral services for Mrs. S. Williamson were held at 3 p.m. Friday in the Chapel at Campbell´s Funeral Home. She died about 9 p.m. March 23 in her home in Roaring Springs.
Born in Bowie County in 1870, she came to Dickens County in 1890. She lived the life of a pioneer ranch woman, and was a Gold Star Mother of World War I.
Survivors include two sons, C.C. Williamson, Morenci, AZ, B.M. Williamson, Quemado, NM and two daughters, Mrs. Roberts Puschel, Alamosa, CO, and Mrs. J. E. Berry, Spur.
Four grandchildren and six great grandchildren survive.
Pallbearers were Robert McAteer, Horace Hyatt, Guy Goen, Ralph Bennett, Dumont Bridge, and Chap Reese.
Interment was in Afton Cemetery.
©The Texas Spur; Thursday, March 31, 1960
 |
|
This site may be freely linked to but not duplicated in any fashion without consent.
The information on these pages is meant for personal genealogical research only
and is not for commercial use of ANY type.
