W.J.M. and Hester Smith of Barren County, Kentucky

I wish I had these pictures years ago and were able to show them to my grandmother Mamie and her sisters. This is their grandparents, Billy and Hester (Young) Smith. They had eleven children, one of whom was Ella Elnora (Smith) Pitcock, who married Franklin Pedigo Pitcock.

As you can tell, these old photos are fragile, crumbling, stained, water-damaged, and broken. They are oil renderings made about 1894 in Glasgow, Kentucky. These photographs belonged to Aunt Quallie (Smith) Jobe and were given to me by her great-granddaughter, Jo Ann Steinhauser of Lubbock, Texas, in 2003. I knew from another distant cousin that Jo Ann owned them, and asked her years ago if I could borrow them to make copies. She couldn’t find them, and thought she had given them away or misplaced them. I finally gave up on having copies made. One day out of the blue, Jo Ann e-mailed me and said she found the pictures tucked in an envelope with her children’s baby photos. I called her immediately - she laughed and said she knew she’d be hearing from me!

I asked Jo Ann if she’d let me have them if I had copies made for her. She agreed, knowing how much I cared about these old photos. I’m honored to own these, even in their current condition, as not many people have original photographs of their great-great-grandparents that were made more than 110 years ago.

Grandpa Smith’s name was William James Madison Smith (he was known as Bill or Billy) and he was born in 1834 in Fentress County, Tennessee. He married Hester Jane Young in 1853; she was born in 1839 in Clinton County, Kentucky and died in 1903 in Glasgow, Kentucky. Grandpa Smith died in April 1920 in the New Lynn Community, which is out in the country near Tahoka, Texas. He’s buried at the Tahoka Cemetery. After Grandma Smith died, he lived with his children and spent a couple of years (about 1908-1910) living with the Pitcocks before they moved to Wheeler County. Grandpa and Grandma Smith were both wonderful people and I will do another post soon with some stories about their lives.

© 2008, copyright Stephen Mills

Small Town Connection: Twitty, Texas

Here's a brief article from The Handbook of Texas Online about a little ol' place in Wheeler County, up in the northern Panhandle. My great-grandparents, Frank and Elnora (Smith) Pitcock, moved to a farm near Twitty in 1913 and lived in the Twitty/Kelton/Shamrock vicinity for many years. My grandparents, Cully and Mamie (Pitcock) Watson were married at Twitty on April 13, 1929 and the ceremony was conducted by his grandfather, Rev. John M. Lawhon. There's not much left of Twitty now - it's just a wide place in the road, as they say - but it holds lots of memories for Pitcock and Watson family descendants.

This is a photo of my grandparents, Cully and Mamie Watson, taken shortly after their 1929 marriage. Don't they look happy? This picture belonged to my great-aunt, Mrs. Vivian (Watson) Vaughan - her granddaughter, Anna, gave it to me after her death.

TWITTY, TEXAS. Twitty is on U.S. Highway 83 six miles north of Shamrock in Wheeler County. It was named for Asa Twitty, an early settler and store owner. A post office was opened in 1912, and by 1925 two stores and a cotton gin had been established, and oil had been discovered. The population was then estimated at twenty-five. In 1930 the town had a population of 100, the gin, three stores, a church, and a rural school. Since the 1930s high school students have been bused to Shamrock. Although Twitty reported only one business in 1980, its population had remained fairly stable with an estimate of 116. In 1990 the population was sixty. The population dropped to twelve in 2000.

© 2008, copyright Stephen Mills