Typed by Lena Stone Criswell
The Daily Democrat
Thirtieth Year Number 302
Marlin, Texas, Monday, April 20, 1931
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FALLS COUNTY IS HOME
TO TEXAS JUNIOR U.S.SENATOR
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Ancestral Southern Mansion
West of the Brazos Has Become Landmark
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"That a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country" may not be said of Tom Connally. For Marlin and Falls county are truly the town and county of the junior United States senator from Texas.
Tom Connally was born within less than an hour's ride of Marlin. And his 86 year old mother, Miss Mary E. Connally, lives in the ancestral - a stately old southern mansion - in the northwestern part of Falls county near Eddy. Tom Connally's father, Jones Connally, descended from American revolutionary stock and himself a Confederate veteran, lived and died in Falls county. Tom Connally came from sturdy stock-christened Thomas Terry Connally, his mother was a Terry, the daughter of a Baptist minister. She and Jones Connally came to Texas from Georgia in a wagon-it was their wedding trip. They settled in Brazos county and then lived in Mclennan county before taking up their permanent residence in Falls county upwards of a half century ago.
So Tom Connally is a town boy who made good among his folks without having to go to the city, as it were. True, he ambled off to Waco once to attend Baylor University, and then down to Austin to the University of Texas, and thence into the United States army during the Spanish-American war. But all of this time, he was just a town boy-to be more specific, a Falls County farmer boy!
And not long after Tom Connally took up the practice of law in his town of Marlin, the county seat of Falls county where his family lived and still live, the folks decided to send him down to Austin as a member of the Texas legislature. And then they made him county attorney of Falls county. And then followed his meteoric rise to become a member of the American congress, his service in the United States army during the World War, a few jaunts overseas to get a grasp of world conditions, and his elevation to a seat in the senate. And he was still just a town boy. And folks had considerable to do with all this. And the boys from the forks of the creek around Marlin and Falls county-the town and county folks-they admire him and they are proud of the record he has made and all that, but to them he's still, and ever will be, just "Tom!"
Copyright Permission granted to Theresa Carhart and her volunteers for printing by The Democrat, Marlin, Falls County, Texas
