Dec. 1891 dance program and calling card for Maggie Smith my grandmother

 Mama Atwood was a young girl in Warren, Texas when she attended this dance at the Opera Hall.

It was Dec. 23,  1891

Fishing in Aransas Pass, Tx. with Mother, Daddy and my kids

Those little blue crabs were really good to eat.  But one time while Mother was getting them ready to cook one got away and ran all over the camper.

Bill, Anne and Margaret enjoyed swimming in the Gulf.  We had a campsite on the beach at the Goose Island State Park.  It is near the sanctuary where the whooping cranes go for nesting. One of the biggest oak trees in the country is in that park.

Mama Atwood named her babies herself (she says)

March 20th 1958

Dear Mamie,

….If you think anyone named you but me you are mistaken.  No one named you but me.  No one name any of my babies but me..except poor little Sammie (passed away at age 12) She helped me to name Thurston  She was sick at the time & she  liked the name so that is what it is.

You was named Frances Mamie after my mother (Frances Stovall Smith) and Mamie after Mr. King's sister. (Mr. King was Mamie's father.) as she seemed to be his favorite sister.  He spoke of her more than Hattie.  He was proud & said I would name you Frances Mamie and call you Mamie.

Sawmill near Stryker in east Texas where Mr. King was employed.  Notice the steam train in the center of the picture.

You was borned at Stryker near Corigan in Trinity County.  then we moved to Diball near Lufkin.

My happy Dad, Thurston Atwood in his 60's

Thurston in the front yard at their home in Mineral Wells, Texas.  He enjoyed his 60's very much.  He didn't stay retired for long; the company he helped found, S-Tec, wanted him back part time and he went.

Daddy liked to refinish and restore horns from Ford Model A's.  He would go to swap meets for car people and set up a display with his horns.  It seems that Ford used five different horns during the years Model A''s were being manufactured.

Daddy had a sample of each one, and a battery hooked up so he could play the "Ah-OO-Gah" sound and attract people to his table.

Many people brought old beat-up horns to him to restore.  He would fix them and mail them back.
Model A competitions required all original parts to qualify for judging.

Honeymoon in Mexico

The going-away was hilarious.  Blocks had been put under the car and so when we tried to drive away it just would not move.

We drove to San Antonio where my dad had made reservations for us for the first night of our trip.  We had borrowed his Country Sedan station wagon and bought Mexican insurance through Joe Waring, who had also made arrangements for a state-approved guide during our stay in Monterrey.  His name was Rudy.  He had worked many times for the Warings and their friends from Comanche.

After all the wedding hubbub I was exhausted so of course I got turista right away.  Our hotel was the Ancira, which Pancho Villa had made famous by riding his horse into the bar once upon a time.  It was a beautiful old hotel with a lovely restaurant which I only enjoyed the first meal we had there.

The second night and a good deal of the next day I was suffering, and Hayne called on the hotel doctor, who prescribed a bottle of strange pills from the farmacia plus soda water and crackers.  Pretty soon I had recovered enough to start out again, and we went to the Carta Blanca brewery and also to Horseshoe Falls.  We visited a mine where the mine train in and out was still in use for the tourists.

Here are a couple of shots from the brewery.  Someday I will find the rest of the photos and post them here (I hope.)

TR Atwood as Band Director

This is what my father, Thurston Atwood, looked like when he directed the Eastland High School Band.

He was very popular in Eastland.

He was also popular in Comanche, Texas and in Mineral Wells, where the following newspaper article was written:

My brothers and cousins on Mother's side

My mother and her sister Elna both had two boys.  Elna named her oldest boy Bob and her younger son Bill.  My mother named her oldest boy Bill and her youngest boy Bob.

Left to right:  Bob Hanks, Bill Atwood, Bill Hanks, Bob Atwood.

This photo was made about 1959 in Austin at Elna's home at a family reunion.

High top shoes and missing teeth

These studio pictures of me and Bill were made by a photographer in Dublin, Texas when I was 6 and Bill was 2.

Please notice that I finally got to wear low-top shoes.  Bill, however, is still in high-tops.  We had to wear them till our sixth year, both of us. Looks like I might have lost a tooth or two.

Cousins of my Mother and her sister

These two darling little girls are Ona Mae and Marian Ricketts. They were the daughters of Sam and Ruby Ricketts, cousins to my mother, Anna Louise Ricketts.  They were very close in age to Mother (Anna Louise Ricketts) and to Elna, Mother's sister.

According to Mother, the four cousins were almost inseparable growing up.  Often one cousin would "choose up" and so Anna and Marian might spend the weekend at Sam and Ruby's house in Howe and Elna (mother's sister) and Ona Mae would stay at Donald and Ruth's (my grandparents.)

 In 1951 WBAP TV invited the Eastland Band to appear on a
Saturday Sept. 29 half hour performance.  I was seated in center just next to Daddy's right hand. On my left in the same row is Don Smith.

Eastland was very proud of its band.  We played for Christmas parades, rodeos, and football games of course.  We had great uniforms that the good people of Eastland paid for with bake sales, bingo games, and other kinds of fund-raising events.

found: my baby picture

My first picture.  I was born September 9, 1938 in Sherman, Texas 

Uncle Ed and Aunt Laura

My father's oldest brother was named Edward Beverly Atwood.  Everybody just called him Ed. He married Laura Fischer, a lady of German extraction who was from the hill country of Texas.

Uncle Ed and Aunt Laura when they married around 1934

They spent their lives building and running a chicken business called the "Atwood Hatchery."

It was located on Highway 16 north of Comanche, Texas.

When I became a teenager I had a job in their hatchery taking chicks out of the incubators.

When I stayed over at their house I thought it was funny that Uncle Ed blew his nose so loud.  

Aunt Laura and I joked that he could "wake up the chickens."

A Christmas card from the hatchery about 1947

My mother's working life

Above is my mother's high school yearbook picture.  She graduated in 1931 at the age of 16.

Right away she went to work as a stenographer in the office of her father and his brother in Sherman, Texas.

Ann was a fast typist and even faster at shorthand (taking dictation the old-fashioned way.)  She sometimes wrote her notes to herself in shorthand.  Mother never had to ask for a job in her life.  

She was always in demand for her office skills.  She worked for Doctor Stout's clinic in Sherman where I was born. She was stenographer at the county welfare office in Comanche where my aunt was a caseworker during the 1950's.  She ran the office of Jake Varnell, attorney-at-law in Mineral Wells, Texas when my father went to work teaching school there.  And eventually she was secretary to the city manager in Mineral Wells.

607 Broadway in Clarksville

Clockwise from top left: Elna Ricketts, Grandpa John Barry, Anna Louise (my mother) and Clare Jean Ricketts in front of the family home at 607 Broadway in Clarksville. 

In  1990: Me, my granddaughter Margaret, and Mother (Anna Louise Ricketts) sitting on the steps of the house at 607 Broadway.  This house burned to the ground about 3 years after this photo was made.

My mother's mother Ruth Barry

My grandmother Ruth Barry was John and Annie Barry's first child.  She was born in 1892 in Clarksville, Texas.  Here are 4 photos of her: as an infant, as a toddler, as a schoolgirl and as a young woman. 

The Barrys had a maid/housekeeper, cook whose husband tended the yard and took care of the cars, repairs, etc. This was not unusual in that day and time.  But Ruth grew up not knowing how to keep house, or cook, because it had always been done for her.

John and Annie Barry in Clarksville, Texas

included in this one minute video are pictures of Annie Barthel, John Barry, and the house John built for his family. In 1894 my grandmother,  Ruth (Annie's first child)  was born. She had two sisters: Mable and Alvina, and one brother:  Erwin, who was always called "Brother" by my grandmother and her sisters.

When my grandmother Ruth married she still lived with her family so my mother was also born in the Barry house.  It has since been torn down, probably to make way for some hamburger stand or something.

Also in this slideshow you will see a picture of Barry's mill from the distance and another photo of the owners with their dark-skinned workers standing behind them.  The man seated third from the left is John Barry, my great-grandfather

John and a partner named Montgomery became developers in Clarksville, and published a paper that praised their town for its banks, churches, schools and businesses.  The paper claimed that there was not a saloon in the county. (Red River County on the Oklahoma line.)

My Mother's Grandparents

My Great Grandfather on Mother's side was John Barry, who lived in Clarksville, Texas.   Clarksville is in northeast Texas on the Red River which borders Oklahoma.

John borrowed money from an uncle in Fort Worth and bought a wholesale grocery business. He planned to operate it with his brother Jasper Barry, whose nickname was "Jap".  John spent the summer of 1890 in Louisville, Kentucky to attend Bryant & Stratton business college (the school still exists today.)

While he was in Louisville John met Annie Barthel.  She was also attending business school, learning to keep the books for the "Steam Laundry and Carpet Beating Works."

John and Annie went out together a few times and then he had to leave for home. But they began a year-long correspondence that concluded when they married in June of 1891. Here I will post examples of the love letters they wrote on letterheads from each establishment, the Wholesale Grocery Store in Clarksville and the laundry in Louisville. Later on I will post more of their love letters.  

My parents' wedding

The date was June 12, 1937 when Thurston and Ann, my parents, had a double wedding with Mother's sister Elna, and her husband, Bronson Hanks.  They had zero money and so did their families, so they married in Tyler, at the home of Thurston's brother, my Uncle Watt, and his wife, Frankie Cash (more about them later.)

On their first anniversary both couples got together again and here are their pictures.  Mother was six months pregnant with me. I was born three months later on September 9, 1938.

How my father and mother first met in 1936

In 1936 Thurston had been traveling Texas with his brother for almost two years.  He sold electrical appliances for Texas Power & Light Company.

Somehow in Sherman, Texas he double-dated with a friend and met my mother, Anna Louise Ricketts.  She was petite and very smart.  At 16 she had finished high school and went to work in the insurance office that belonged to her father and his brother Sam.

I think it was love at first sight.

More Maggie and her talents

 Mama Atwood's house was on one of the 2 main streets in Comanche, at 415 West Grand Avenue.

It was made of cypress wood and was never painted which made it a beautiful silvery gray color. She was always talking about having it painted. But never did. 

She is shown here standing on the west side of her house about 1951.

She was very expert and any kind of crochet, embroidery and tatting.  She won ribbons for her quilts and for her needlework.  Both at the State Fair of Texas and at the Cotton Exposition in Waco.