Rains County, Texas Memories of Emory by Joseph Oswin Teagarden
(This information was sent to me by another Sharon, who was submitting for a dear friend of hers---who is granddaughter of
Joseph Teagarden. Sharon felt this info might be interesting to Rains County researchers. Am posting here as she sent it to
me------Sharon Pierce)Hello Sharon,
My name is also Sharon and for the past few months I have been collecting and organizing family papers for a dear friend of mine who is in her 70's.
Her grandfather, Joseph Oswin Teagarden left a 40 page typed document about his life in Texas.
He was born in1861 just prior to the beginning of the Civil War. This document was written in 1951-3. Some parts of it were written 1917. Although the section I am attaching here is not in the early portion of that document.
I should explain that as I went thru this document I did not make a lot of changes in the language or sentence structure... keeping the flavor of the old gentleman's ideas are as important as the ideas.
I am in the process of organizing that document and ran across his account of a period in 1879-80 that he worked for a firm that sent him to that town to run a commissary.
I am attaching that section of his document to see if you might find it interesting.Start of his experience in Emory
" In January, I went to Tyler and stayed a short time with Charlie, who ran a photograph gallery there. Then, on to to Mineola where my brother Bill and family lived.
In February (1881), he (Bill) got me a job with the H. Munzesheimer & Company Tie Contractors. They were opening a commissary in Emory, where they were placing a lot of tie makers and sent me to run it.Emory
A rough set gather in Emory, from all over the United States. The town was rough too. It had three dry goods stores and three saloons and not very much law. Being a small place, there were very few girls there, so with three out of town boys there, there was a scramble for dance partners, but we had an enjoyable social time.
I remember a country doctor, well fixed, and his wife, both cultured people, gave a party for me at their country home one night which included my town friends. We went out in livery stable outfits and were having a great time, when a lot of country boys , including a nephew of the hostess, undertook to take over the party, not in a fight or a rough stuff but by getting the dance floor and continuing a set indefinitely (Square Dance).
Our girls, realizing the situation, walked out on them and then we took over. The fiddlers, knowing we were the ones that were paying them also called a halt.
Well, those country boys fussed and fumed around for some time, but the nephew stopped all rough stuff. However, at the same time, we were ready for anything they might bring up.
In my contract, it was my duty to fill the orders of the subcontractors of which there were several, who established camps in the area where they were working. Several of these camps had fifty or more working. Other parties, two or more, in small groups worked independently. I kept all the records of theses sales and we soon had eight to nine hundred men at work and it became a big job for me, but I never wavered and carried it through until the contract was finished.
On one occasion, in the summer, the railway company failed to make a monthly inspection and receive and pay for the ties stacked by the workers on the right of way. So they could not be paid for that months ties.
These men had been gathered from all parts of the country and Canada. The Union Pacific Railroad had been completed through to the west coast and our company had secured a large number of these men. All of these men, except a few local farmers who were also making tires, were a tough set and most of them quit work and come into town (Emory). Several saloons in the place did a big business.
One day a bunch of them came into the commissary, when one of them suggested let's take over the commissary.
At the time, the demand on me for supplies was so heavy that I often got supplies by Express, often such as five hundred pound cases of bacon. On the occasion of this interruption, I had such a box of bacon sitting on the floor, out in the open, with the top off it, along with a big knife used in cutting the side of meat to fit the orders.
The leader of this gang took up the knife and seated himself on the counter in front of me. Further down the counter from where this man sat, was my desk which had a colt 45 in it. I took out the colt, and stuck it in my belt. I was engaged in filling out orders when the gang came in. About this time a local farmer, who was part of the gang said lets take charge, I'll get him, meaning me. He started for the front end of the counter to come after me, as I pulled out my gun, I told him if he passed the end of the counter I would kill him.
He was walking fast and I raised my gun, he suddenly backed out and rushed out the the front door running into the Sheriff, an old man. The Sheriff asked me if I wanted him and I said no, let him go.
I was in danger from the one sitting on the counter with the big knife. He was the leader of the gang. I kept my eye on him, since he was in reach of me nearly all the time.
After this episode, all of them left at once. By then it was late afternoon and I arranged to close the commissary earlier than usual. In the mean time, a local man came to me and suggested that I look out, that farmer was in the crowd swarming around one of the saloon and threatening you.
I soon closed the door and walked directly toward the saloon, which was across the Public Square from the commissary. When I was more than half way there, one of the gang saw me coming, and yelled that fact into the saloon. Then the scramble came. Several , including the farmer , rushed out , mounting their horses tied to a nearby rack and left in a run.
Early in that same year, I think it was May, the track was finished as far as Emory. When the construction train would go back to Denison every Saturday night or Sunday morning and return Sunday night. Several of us boys, two other besides myself, were out of town boys, would go up the road to Greenville and Denison. On one occasion, when I went to Greenville on Sunday morning, I met at the hotel a young man from Mineola whom I knew- Y.B. Dowell. He had an engagement to call on a young lady, Miss May Moulton. Miss Moulton had been a fellow student with him at the State Normal at Huntsville. I agreed to go with him, and he advised her of the addition. We met the young lady, a charming hostess, who I met again several years later as Mrs. Will N. Harrison, and at that future meeting she graciously solved a problem for me by giving me a formal introduction to Miss Corrie Birdsong.
The contract being finished late in the year (1881), I closed the commissary in November, shipped the balance of the goods back to the general office in Mineola, and went there myself.
On returning to Mineola from Emory, I went to work for S. Munzesheimer & Co., a big general store with some twenty clerks . They also did a banking business and general merchandising business. They carried on an extensive credit business with farmers in several counties. The firm also bought all the cotton marketed in town, which in mid season amounted to as much as three hundred bales a day."
(I am not sure what I told you about the gentleman who wrote it .. Joseph Oswin Teagarden was born in Sumpter Tex 1861 son of Oswin Teagarden and Mehetable Baker. They came from Ohio in 1849.
The orginal document takes you thru the following areas in Texas (where else) Sumpter, Emroy, Greenville, Celeste, Dallas ..He traveled a lot and was a bookkeeper and banker. The most interesting thing about him is his marriage, that took place in 1885 in Greenville. It is a real life love story that lasted 63 years. Her name was Corrie Birdsong and she was poet lauite of Dallas at the turn of the century.)