Grayson County TXGenWeb

Tioga Herald
1908
Hard Times In Grayson County

My father and sister and brother-in-law all started to Texas when I was a young woman. We came to Fannin County at Christmas and our oxen began to die. They all died except one of my father's, so he got a job for himself and my brother making rails and they soon paid for another ox. The day they got through paying for him, he died and we were left again.
We moved to Grayson County and my father took up 640 acres of land given to settlers......
People loved each other then; it was not like it is now. Pride and style have taken the place of religion. I am an old spinner and weaver ever since I was large enough. We had to pick out all our seed from our cotton with our fingers for several years after we came to Texas, make up our own clothing and raise our own indigo to color the cloth. I never saw a sewing machine or cook stove until after the {Civil} war. I was married and had three children before I ever saw a cook stove. In making up our cloth after we got it, we would sew it all with our fingers and make the buttons out of thread.........
When we came to Texas in 1845 the country was full of wild game ----- turkey, deer, bear, panthers, antelopes, wild cats, most everything.
There were plenty of bees in the woods in those days. People could go and find a bee tree anytime they tried and cut it down and get lots of honey.......We raised a lot of pumpkins and that was a big part of people's living. We had no flour for several years, so we would stew our pumpkin done and put it in meal and salt it, if we chanced to have salt, and work it up into dough, making it into small thin cakes called pumpkin bread.
We had hog meat and would fry a few pieces, take the grease and crumble cornbread in it, putting in water and salt and we had a pot of soup called "Poor Do."
People think they live hard nowadays, but they don't know anything about hard times...

Mrs. Talitha Wilson English