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In the family photo Forbes group
made in Mississippi. You will
note the bauble, broach, or the ribbon around your great
grandmother’s neck. It was handed down in the Reece Families
from the time it was made by an early day photographer useing
the
new photographic process invented by Daguerrer Louis Jacques Manue who was born in Cormeilles Seine- et.oise France in 1839 called a daguerreotype. The broach is one and a half in (inches) long. Three quarters of an inch wide. 1/2 in thick. Is engraved in solid gold with a cut glass cover. A beautiful piece of jewelry. I gave it to my niece. Also I have her Grandma
Reece’s old Indian beaded bag purse. Two hundred years old. The moth’s had just about finished it. Also gave her ear bobs. I have very few heirlooms left in this old trumprey. I also had a French three sided sword cane which went to the Taylor family in Houston, Texas.
I enjoyed the picture you sent. I did have all of them excepting your imediate family line, but doled them out to the other kids. You known old Confuses (Confucius) said one picture worth twenty thousand words.
I will try to answer ally of your querys. My brain is so muddled up anymore. Sometimes it doesn’t work senseably. I never dreamed when I was young I would get old and loose my witts. You no people surely don’t appreciate their youth and/or cherish this period of their life. You seeme to have travelled ____ a few? many miles. Have you ever been to Paris, Texas. Lamar County. Where your paternal grandmother Marshbanks lived. It is a very old historical town and yet retains some the old aura’s of the past. I do not believe there is anything left in Elwood, Texas where I was born. Not even on the map. The old cotton gin you refered to in your last letter was close to my grandfather’s trading post. As I remember when just a small boy very little of if was left then. It was one stand type powered by a horse tram arrangement. See your dictionary. Could gin about one bale of picked cotton a day. As to antecedents or relations to our families I can’t say. Sometime when I feel better I will draw you a map of Elwood as I remember in detail. We had an old cemetery on our place between the tradeing post and the old Forbes home. Then there was a very old cemetery at old Round Prairie where randfather Richards was buried along side Great Grandmother Nettie Reece Forbes. I well remember their funerals and the beautiful caskets.
The coffins were transported to the cemetery in a wagon. The Negro cemetery was also near our home. I could narrate some very wild tales about it. I recall one moonlight night my grandfather Forbes and I walked by this old graveyard going to a magic lantern show at the old Jackson Place on Red River. We also went to shadowgraph shows. We never heard of a movie then. Coming back I stayed as close to Grandad as I could. Goose bumps all over. I would not look over at the moonlight scintillating on the headstones. Ghost storys then were top subjects. Even telephones had not grown very poplar and were called devil boxes by the natives. learned a lot about spirits, hexes, ghosts and witches from my Negro friends.
Here I am rambling around saying much about nothing quote Shakesphere. Maybe I’ll get uncorked if I wait long enough. I get tired in my hand and mind. I may have to take another stretch on the hospital! I pray not. I am like the old fabled chariot just literally falling to pieces. So far I have not told you anything about the Forbes Clan but what you already possess, but I will keep digging and see if I have anything left but a poor memory. I have really had a wonderful life but according to monitary value I am a successful failure. I am like my Indian blood ancestors never cared for the money I could make. It causes so much trouble, bad grief and yet you can’t live now days without it. I believe I would have enjoyed being an Indian chief in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. I have put in a lit of my life hunting, fishing, and trapping wild animals. Which today I do
not approve of, as it’s a cruel profession. I can understand a person killing a deer or any other edible animal to survive but not for sport as is done today in our area. We believe it or not have wealthy sportsmen who do not need the animals for food. Will shoot and kill, also wound them by the dozens just to see them
die and leave the carcasses where they fall, a ____waste. The hunting trend is a throwback from the pioneer
days, then necessary, but is not now needed. Now that’s off my chest we will get back to your letter and find what we can do to answer a few more of your querys.
You mentioned my sister Julia, as, living in Brownfield,Texas. She hasn’t lived there for years. I beg your pardon if I said Brownfield. She lives in Cocucino County, Arizona in a small village called Cornville and her love story writeing career is over many years ago and I doubt if she has anything left of that venture.
And to look at her now you can’t picture her as a beauty contest winner with all the local and distant swains after her hand in marriage anymore than you can picture me when I was a young buck with the world at myfeet. Time sure dies alter your machenery and trends. If I don’t hurry up and get this mess finished I won’t be able to get in the mail until tomorrow. So please this is the best I can do when I get in a hurry!
Well, tomorrow came around and found me indisposed so will go on from here. I tire out so easily doing nothing. Getting back to your imediate family I am sure little Cullen was old enough when Uncle Will lived in Elwood to recall some of the events of his boyhood days there and the trips they made in wagons and especially the one from Paris to Brownfield, Texas which took weeks. You might for nothin better describe Uncle Will say he was a gypsy and a Professional horse trader. I doubt but what he was proud of it but it hurt my Aunt Julia Taylor’s blue blood family pride. Uncle Will use to say, “No, Jule, you ain’t no better than the rest of we Forbeses because you are a city dweller with a two horse carrage, a two story house and a parlor maid. My mother told me Uncle Will tried to whip Aunt Julia one time in Mississippi because she was disobedient to her mother. As you say in your letter this feud was continued by he and Aunt Julia for many years. They broke the mold when Uncle Will was made so to speak. I am sure Little Cullen took after his mother’s blood line, the Marshbanks, and as far as I know I am the last in line to be stuck with the old family name Cullen. And as far as I know I am the last in line to be stuck with the old family name Cullen and from what you state with much emphasis, and I do really believe you, Little Cullen has honored the old family handdown which has been tossed from family to family for seven generations. And to me you should be very proud ofhim and I am proud for you. You may recall the old song Fannie Brice made popular in the early days of radio show; stateing that a good man is hard to find. I will buy that.I can’t agree with you when you called me a learned man that covers too much territory. I have literally lost touch with the world.
You seem to wear many hats. I admire outstanding women. There is nothing on earth more beautiful than a perfect female human being. I can imagine you being able to adjust your life to most any circumstances. I have made a hobby, more or less, or collecting data on notable outstanding women and its surprising what
you find from Eve to this age of females. You
mentioned the first born in a family, usually a son, which had second authority to his father, __ __the
family ___. And the girls were just so much chattel.
I am sure your husband doesn’t take that attitude of life. I can state Uncle Will never granted his children any human rights and they all earned every dollar he gave them. Maby he wasn’t cruel to them but never had any real human interest in their lives or aims. Maby this helped them to become more independent and learn the responsibilities of this world. I wish Uncle Will had repented before Little Cullen passed away and personally stated to him that he, Little Cullen was the only real man to his knowledge he ever knew. I just know how this would have cleared up the atmosphere between them. Uncle Will had too much false pride.
I do hope he had councel with his maker before he passed away.
In the late photos of him I would not have known him but for his large ears. Guess I inherited this trait from the Forbes’s line. My ears are also large. But then they ain’t very good now.
Yes I have had some years ago some tape recording experiences with notable authors and or writers. I know so many who have made the Top Best Sellers. I have helped some of them in their research in history. I have never really published a book for commercial sales. I am a vanity writer. Have had no desire to put my writeings before the public in book form but have been involved with some of the books now on the market. If I have a historical trend in writing it is ancient or western history.
What I have had published as ______ articles and short stories. I do not try to peddle them or sell them. I get much more pleasure out of helping some one else compile a book. I am rather involved with one such book depicting the life of the American Indians thousand of years B. C. and up to our western pioneer era. Of Shoot Em Up Pete’s or fast gunmen. Sounds rather silly to most people but I enjoy it. I write on any subject matter. I am not a fluent narrator. I love to talk with noted people, intellectuals and show my ignorance.
It’s fun.
