The Sherman Courier
Wednesday, August 15, 1917
Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

TOM BOMAR SAYS THERE WERE ONLY 23 HOUSES IN SHERMAN WHEN HIS FAMILY MOVED HERE IN 1853.  TELLS OF FIRST SCHOOLS

Tom Bomar, well known in Sherman until his death a few years ago, gave The Courier a few years ago some interesting and valuable information which we herewith present:
I came to Sherman in 1853 with my parents when I was only six years of age.  It is early impressions that are most lasting and I remember soon after we came here, possibly a year, I counted the houses that were then in town and there were twenty-three of them.  Some of them were a sort of clap board affair and the others were built of logs and covered with clap boards.
The first school that I ever attended was taught by Mrs. Burl Smith, mother of our present Burl Smith and Burl was then a babe playing at his mother's knee.  That school was taught in a little house down close to where Mrs. Chapin now lives on South Montgomery street.  Later the Odd Fellows established a school here which ran up to the war, but there was no such thing in those days as public schools nor were there any school houses.  I think that even then there were some little public school funds that was given to the different private schools that were gotten up in the country.  
Transportation in those days was either on horseback or in ox wagon.  When people wanted to go anywhere they rode on horseback and if they had a load to haul they used oxen.  I remember all down to the war when a new arrival would come into the country he was given a hearty welcome but he was watched very close until they knew just what kind of a chap he was.  If he proved all right, he had the confidence of everybody and the word was passed around that he was all right, but if he was not all right a committee was sent to him and he was told that the best thing that he could do was to move and in that way the country was kept free from tough characters.
Even in the fifties there was quite a little wheat raised here, though of course, the crops were small.  Old Uncle Jim Chaffin had a little farm over here about where the big oil mill is, and I remember hearing him say one year that his wheat made sixty bushels to the acre and it was no uncommon thing for wheat to make forty and fifty bushels to the acre.  There was some corn raised here then and some cotton but nor very much.

Sherman History
Susan Hawkins
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