courtship letter from Maggie Atwood to Manning Atwood

Mr. Manning Atwood

Emporia, Texas

Dear Friend:

I received your most welcome missive day before yesterday & rest assured the contents was duly noted.

Mr. Atwood I was surprised at you speaking as you did, as I had never thought of such a thing as you thinking  anything of me only as a friend. But don’t think now that I am mad or anything of the kind, for I am not mad at all.  But if you wish me to say anything on the subject I will beg you to wait a while.  Mr. Atwood, I am not mad with you for mentioning such a subject to me but I would  rather you had waited a while longer. 

I don’t know when I can come up there. But maybe in this month or in the next if not this will try to come this month though.  If I don’t come by the 20^th of this month I won’t come at all until next month as my youngest married sister will be here then & I will have to stay with her.  As she is going to move to the panhandle the first of February & then I don’t know when I will see her again.

Mama wants to make her a visit before she moves and then I will have to stay here OU keep house. I will sure be lonesome then.

Mamie & I have been having a scrap.  She keeps meddling with things about the table U I have to whip her little hands much to keep her away.& when I whip her it hurts me worse than it hurts her.  But I have to do it or else be always after her to keep her out of mischief.

Papa told me to tell you he thanked you very much for your offer but said that those men here was depending on him & he could not give it up yet awhile & after he does give this (job) up then if you should happen to be out of a foreman he would be at your service.

I have not heard from Bro. Oscar King since about a month before I left Pickens & he was sick then.  We can’t imagine what is the matter that he don’t write..I have sent one of Mr. Kings pictures off to have enlarged; it will be here in a day or two. IK guess I am getting awful anxious for it to come.

I have written no less than a half dozen letters in the last 3 days & they was all terrible long ones & I am a little worried & have to write more this evening so I know you will excuse this uninteresting letter I will try to do better next time.

I will close now

Your true friend

Maggie King   Warren, Texas    no date.

the mattress factory

The year was 1929.  Manning  Atwood passed away in June and Mama and the family tried to keep the mattress factory going.

Maggie (Mama) Atwood sewed the ticks for all the mattresses on her treadle machine.  Then the ticks were stuffed with cotton by a machine of some kind.  Last the edges were hand rolled with a mattress needle and tufted with hanks of cotton spaced so the fill would not shift.

A gathering of the Atwoods and their extended family iin 1928

On Mothers Day in 1928 the whole Atwood clan gathered at Mama and Papa's house in Comanche, Texas.  Atwood men at top are l. to r. Thurston in his Boy Scout uniform, Manning "Papa" Atwood, Edward Atwood and Watt Atwood, whom my father Thurston referred to as "the swamp rat."

Below is the photo of the whole group.  First Papa and Mama in the back row, then Frank "Watt" next to Ruth "Zamp" in the center.  The woman holding the baby boy is Alma Atwood Denny with her son Cleve B. Denny.  Thurston is the last one in this line.

In front left to right is Harold Denny, Alma's husband, Hipp Arthur with his first son John Manning and beside them is Ernestine Atwood Arthur.  Edward the eldest son is on the right seated.

Thurston Atwood, my father, at about age 6

. About 1920. The tall lady in the center is Mamie, In order: Ruth, Maggie, Mamie, with Thurston in front of her, Ernestine and Manning. Thurston told me that the older girls boxed his ears when he was little. He never could hear very well out of his right ear.