William Arthur McCarver

January 20, 1899 – June 1972

The following information was told by William Arthur McCarver, on February 28, 1969 to his son, Travis McCarver. Arthur is 80 years old and tells what he remembers about his early life. Some facts given may possibly be verified by family records.

I was born in Giles County, Tennessee on January 20, 1889. My parents were Thomas Jefferson McCarver and my mother was Lydia Ann Crabb McCarver. They were married April 20, 1888. Daddy was born in Lincoln County, Tennessee on August 9, 1858. Elkton was the town nearest to where I was born. Lee Arney might be able to tell which town or community was the one in which my father was born.

My mother's people lived in Madison County, Alabama. I don't know if my mother was born in Tennessee or Alabama. Granddaddy Crabb farmed all of his life as far as I know. My father farmed, worked as construction laborer and worked at a corn and flourmill. Jake Morrell owned the mill where he worked. The mill was on Elk River and my father helped build the mill. Mr. Morrell got 1/7 of the corn meal, which was ground, in his mill. I don't know how much of the flour he got for grinding the wheat.

Around the mill was a good place to fish and my father with other men used to fish there. One day, using a seine, they caught a yellow catfish that weighed 55 lbs. Uncle Gatch McCarver, was the one who first tied into him. They were using a 150 ft seine. They rounded up near a bank and Uncle Gatch first touched this fish, found that he was a big one, and caught him by the gills. A big fight took place and Uncle Gatch had a good bit of trouble before the other men came to help him.

Uncle Gatch worked at the same kind of work as my father; that is, build houses, helping to build the mill, and working at it. He also farmed. Uncle Gatch died of typhoid fever when he was about 30 yrs. old. He was never married. A sister, Delia, died the same summer from typhoid. Delia was never married and was just about grown when she died. My grandfather and grandmother had 4 boys and 4 girls. Will was the oldest. I think he was married, but I don't know if he had any children. I don't know much about Uncle Will.

Gatch was the next and I told you about him. I don't know who was the next oldest, but I think it was one of the girls. Delia was the youngest girl and Aunt Bell Arney was the next youngest girl. Aunt Sis married Bill Bentley, who farmed and ran a dairy. He moved to Green County, Arkansas, I believe. Paragould was the county seat. They moved there sometime in the early 1800's.

My father, Thomas Jefferson McCarver was older than Aunt Bell, but younger than Aunt Sis. One of my aunts died when she was little. I think her name was Mary, but the records would have to be checked to make sure.

Uncle Jack was the youngest child. He lived with his mother until she died, which was about 1891. They lived on a farm, but I don't think he was a very good farmer. He came to Texas in 1892, and married in 1894 or 1895. He lived in Lamar County. He worked on farms around by the month. Later years, he moved to Grand Saline, in Van Zandt County, and worked in salt mills or salt factory. He left there and went to Shreveport, Louisiana and then went to Oklahoma. He died there in 1934. I don't know much about him.

Great Granddaddy Lee was my grandmother's father. I don't know where or when he was born. I don't know whether he farmed much or not but know that he was a flat boatman. Building flat boats was a lot of work. He lived in Tennessee near the Tennessee River. He spent most of the year building flat boats. He hewed the logs down with an axe and rough saws. In the fall, he bought harvested crops from his neighbors and other produce. Some he took on commission. This produce, he put on his flat boat and floated down the river to New Orleans. There he sold the produce to merchants and the flat boat to construction people or carpenters. He walked back so he could not carry anything back with him. He was, of course, married, but I know little of his family. I'm sure that he had 2 boys and 2 girls. He probably had more children. I think one of the girls was named Sofia. One of the boys was named Gatch Lee and I don't know the others. Lee Arney could probably tell more about his family.

On one of Great Granddaddy Lee's trips to New Orleans, he didn't return. At the time, he should have reached New Orleans; there was an epidemic of cholera. It is possible that he may have gotten sick and died there.

My father worked at Morrells Mill until 1893, when he decided to come to Texas. We traveled from Tennessee on a passenger train. The coaches were carried across the Mississippi River on a ferryboat. The engine on the east side of the river would back the coaches on the ferryboat and the engine on the west side of the river would then hitch on to it. My mother packed our goods. She put what she could in 2 suitcases, which we carried with us. The other household goods were shipped in the baggage car. We had to pay extra for goods shipped in the baggage car. To keep costs of shipping down, our bedsteads were left behind, along with chairs and table. We shipped our feather beds, clothes and cooking utensils. We were allowed only the 2 suitcases without extra charge. We moved to Lamar County, Texas at that time, September 1893. Roxton was the name of the town near which we moved. The train trip to Lamar County took 2 days and nights. The trains were slow then. 30 miles per hour was really going fast then. The trains at that time had many stops to make and stopped at each little community where stations were, often about 5 miles apart. I don't remember much about the house we lived in at Lamar, as I was only 4 years old, but it seems to have been only a rental shack. We stayed there from September until January of the next year, 1894. We moved to Lamar County because Uncle Sam Crabb and Uncle Jack McCarver were living there. Daddy didn't like it there, so we moved to Kosse, Texas, Limestone County, where he new some people. We came by train from Lamar to Kosse. We came through Dallas. We had no springs for our beds, but made grass, straw, or shuck mattresses to put under our feather beds.

My father rented a farm on a sharecropper basis from George Green. He worked by the day when he wasn't working on the farm. He was paid .50 a day during the winter when the days were short and .75 a day in the summer when the days were long.

George Green furnished a little old box house for us to live in. He left Daddy work 25 acres of land. He furnished 2 horses when Daddy broke the land for the first time. Only 1 horse for the rest of the time. He furnished Daddy with a 1 horse-turning plow, a Georgia stock and a walking planter. I was too small at that time to help much, but mother helped with hoeing cotton and picking cotton. He raised 18 acres of cotton and 7 acres of corn. George Green got half of what he raised. The cotton sold for .7 or .8 cents a lb. We lived there one year and then moved to Steele Creek, on Dr. Ezell's place. The place we moved to was all timberland and Daddy cleared it. He was paid 5.00 an acre for clearing it. He had to cut all trees and brush under 12 inches through and could deaden all larger trees. He piled and burned all trees and brush, which he had cut down. He only had 11 acres cleared at planting time, so only planted the 11 acres. He planted both corn and cotton. Daddy covered the corn seed with a turning plow and the cottonseed with a bull tongue. I don't know what kind of corn was planted, but the seed was white. There was only cottonseed in those days, not different strains or varieties. He made 9 bales of cotton off the Green place and some corn. He got 3 pigs from old man John Thompson while on the Green place. He cut Mr. Thompson a set of crib poles so he could build a corncrib. He sold one of the pigs to a Negro about 3 months after he got them. One of the other two, he butchered in the fall and the other later in the winter. We harvested no crops on the Ezell place as a big overflow came in June of 1895, and washed our crops away.

We moved in July of that year to a shack on the McClanahan place, 5 miles north of Kosse on the Gunter road. We picked cotton for Johnnie Nat Jones. We stayed there until January. Uncle Jack moved in with us while we were there. All of us could pick a bale of cotton every 2 days when the weather was good. Mother could pick cotton only in the afternoon, as she had to cook dinner every morning. We got .50 a hundred for picking the cotton. It took about 1600 lbs of picked cotton to make a 500 lb bale. Uncle Jack stayed with us for the next 2 years.

Johnnie Nat Jones built a house on some of his land that fall, and we moved into it in January. We had no hogs that year and no livestock of any kind except a few chickens.

The first year we lived in Texas, mother cooked on a fireplace, but after making a crop, we bought a wood stove. Mother had a cast iron frying pan, a cast iron teakettle, a cast iron pot, and a sheet metal pan for baking bread. Also a cast iron wash pot. She may also have had a wooden tub, which people made by sawing a wooden barrel in half.

After moving into the new house in January, we made a share crop that year. The landlord furnished the land and equipment and a house to live in and got half the crop. Daddy and Uncle Jack both worked 80 acres of land that year. They were furnished 2 teams. Mr. Jones furnished 2 new John Deere turning plows, which had steel, beams. They were considered black land plows. Blue Kelly and the Bradley Clipper were wooden beam plows and were considered sandy land plows. The teams they worked were mules.

Uncle Jack and Daddy planted 20 acres of corn and about 60 acres of cotton. I don't know just how much they made, but I think they made between 20 - 30 bales of cotton. They had to hire help in the picking of the cotton. Cotton was easy to grow on the mesquite land, as there was no Johnson grass, Bermuda grass, cockle burrs or weeds. We thinned some of the cotton. We planted the cotton and corn with a champion-walking planter made by the Bradley people, David Bradley co. It had a steel wheel, also an iron covering plows on a wooden foot. The cotton box was made of wood, but the corn box was made of steel. The rest of the planter was made of wood.

My father and Uncle Jack, bought teams and tools that fall and they worked the land on 1/3 and 1/4 basis the following year. This meant that the landlord got 1/3 of all corn raised and 1/4 of all cotton raised. You furnished your own teams, tools, seed and labor. The landlord furnished the land and house to live in. This was 1897.

They worked about 80 acres again that year. There was a dry spring, and some of the seed didn't come up. They made 20 bales of cotton that year. They didn't make a good corn crop. The still had no livestock other than chickens. My brother George was born in 1893 and John was born in 1896. George was born in Tennessee in April before we left in September.

My daddy bought the first cultivator I ever saw in the year 1897. It was a riding cultivator. It was called an Ohio cultivator. It was a big improvement over the Georgia stock. In 1895, when my mother was frying bacon at night, the wolves in Todd Pasture would start howling. They looked different from the wolves we have now. They were real wolves, prairie wolves, not coyotes.

The cultivator had a wooden frame, hammock seat which was arranged so the seat would kind of swing. It also had break pin feet. When the plows hit a stump or rock, the pin holding the plows rigid would break and the plows would swing back. The pin being broken, the plow would be of no use until the pin was replaced. The pins were made of wood and we made our own pins with axe and knife. We always carried some extra pins with us on our cultivator.

We moved east of Kosse in December. We moved onto the Ken Stevenson place about 2 miles east of Kosse. We moved because daddy wanted a change. It may have been because daddy thought sandy land would be easier to work. Also, a larger variety of produce could be grown on sandy land. During 1898 and 1899, we lived on the Stevenson place. There, we raised our own potatoes, sweet potatoes, sorghum from which we made sorghum syrup, peas and general garden produce. We, of course, raised cotton and corn. Uncle Jack was not with us then. Daddy raised 25 acres of cotton and 15 acres of corn. We made a good corn crop and sold some of it for .25 a bushel. We made 12 bales of cotton. That sand would make stuff then. The landlord got 1/3 of the corn and 1/4 of the cotton.

I started to school that year at the Eutaw schoolhouse. We had a wood burning box heater to keep us warm. Matt Walling was the teacher. The father’s of the children furnished the wood for the stove. Each man with a child or children in school was supposed to haul a load of wood to the schoolhouse sometime during the school year. The larger boys attending school would then cut it into usable lengths. We had a 10-15 minute recess from schoolwork in the middle of the morning and again in the afternoon. We had about an hour for lunch. Mr. Walling was a young, single man about 24 or 25 years old. The school was state supported and all we had to buy was books, slate and pencil. There were about 50 pupils enrolled. The average daily attendance was probably around 40. The pupil's ages ranged from 8 to 21. The teacher had to work hard to accomplish much. Pupils would stay when needed to help with the crops, when the weather was bad and for other reasons. The school term lasted 6 months. The teachers earned around 40 to $50 a month. He would do good to draw $45 a month. I finished the first reader the first year. It was the only book I had that year. I don't know what man or company printed the book. The teacher in each school would decide what books he wanted to teach from and the parents of the students would have to buy that book. They might move during the school year to a different community a few miles away and have to buy new books that were required by the teacher in the different school. Daddy taught me to write some before I started to school, also my A B C's. I had almost no lessons in writing that first year as the reader was about all that I was supposed to learn.

I would go to school and study until I was asked to recite my lesson. Then I was supposed to study the rest of the day. The pupils mostly remained quiet. When punishment was necessary, the offending pupil was whipped in front of the class. The severity of the punishment was tailored to fit the offense and the size and sex of the offender. The black-board was made by the carpenters in the community. It was made of tongue and groove lumber. A thick coat of black paint was put on it and it was erected at the front of the room. The chalk was furnished by the state. Erasers were made by the women of the community and were made of cotton flannel bags, which were then filled with lint cotton. The openings of the bags were sewn up. The schoolhouse had only one room. There were no parties or dances. There was a spelling bee in the schoolhouse once or twice during the year. The 4th and 5th grade students would be taught arithmetic and the multiplication tables. They were sometimes in the 6th grade before they would learn them. The single teachers would board with some family in the community. The married teachers would rent a house.

In 1899, we made a good corn crop and only 8 bales of cotton. The June flood sort of sobbed out some of the cotton, or drowned it out. Some people lost their cotton to weeds, as it was too wet to get in the fields to work. I don't believe we lost any.

In 1900, we moved to Alto Springs, Texas, on Dr. A.T. Ezell's place. Lester and O.T. Williams own the land now. The house was a little old 4-room box house. My brother Pat McCarver was born that year. The land was mesquite type land. We had corn, cotton and a little garden. We had one team of mules, a milk cow, chickens and a hog or two. I don't know how many acres we had in corn or cotton, but we only gathered 8 bales of cotton.

A large hurricane hit Galveston that year (1900), and the heavy rains we got caused a lot of the cotton to be wasted. We made a very good corn crop. We, (Lee and myself) went to school at Alto Springs that year and the teacher's name was Arthur Bunn.

I later attended 6 weeks school at Mexia Texas. It was called Summer Normal, (1909), kind of like a college course.

William Arthur McCarver and Loucia Mae Burns were married on December 23, 1915, by Rev. Dan Brown, in a buggy at Mustang Prairie, near Kosse, Texas. They had six children:

Pauline McCarver Turnipseed

Juanita McCarver Allen

Annie Lee McCarver Davis

Travis McCarver

Howard McCarver

Vera McCarver - Vera was killed in the May 11, 1953 Tornado in Waco, Texas. She was working in the R. T. Dennis building at the time.