 The Sherman Courier
Wednesday, August 15, 1917 pg.27 50th Anniversary edition TOM RICHARDS EXPLAINS HOW THE PEOPLE LIVED FROM 1845 TO 1875, EVEN THEN THEY HAD "HIGH PRICES" ON SEVERAL THINGS The following interview with the late Tom Richards was published in The Courier August 13, 1910, and will be found of much interest and value. Mr. Richards was postmaster at Sherman at the time of his death. "My father settled eleven miles east of Bonham in 1845. That was before Grayson county was organized and all this country here was known as Fannin district. Grayson county was organized, I think, in 1846. I first came to Sherman in the year 1848, but I did not come here to live until the year 1852. When I came here in 1848 there was only one store and that was in a log house over near where the Continental Bank now is, possibly on that same lot. That store was owned by my brother, Frank Richards, and he kept his merchandise in a log house and at the end of the house was a kind of shed where he kept hides that he bought. All the merchandise they had then was hauled from Jefferson in ox wagons and all the stuff that this country had to sell such as hides was taken to Jefferson for sale. There was very little farming done here when I first came here, but this was the finest stock country any man ever saw. The prairies were covered with grass knee high to a horse and just as thick as it could be and there was fine grass in the timber, too, and cane breaks and stocks stayed fat all winter. Talk about beef, I have never seen any corn fed beef that would equal some of the beef they had here then fattened on the grass and I have seen good beef killed here in mid-winter. Another some of the best milch cows I have ever seen were some of those old long horned cows that we had in those days some of which would give a blue bucket full at night and almost as much next morning. The people got along well and had a good time generally, though some things were very high and very scarce. Even as far down as the seventies some things were very hard to get in this country. In the early seventies I superintended the building of a house for my sister, Mrs. Fitch out here just east of Sherman and my recollection is that house cost between $45 and $50 per thousand feet and we had that hauled here on ox wagons from Red River county, and everything else that we had was hauled here on ox wagons either from Jefferson or from some other place in East Texas. At that time people had to drive their cattle to market instead of shipping them as they do now." Sherman History Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson County TXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |