• Home
•  | 
• Login/Register
•  | 
• View Cart
•  | 
• Checkout 
•  | 
• Help

The following story was written by Estelle Martin while living in a nursing home in Amarillo, Texas. She was born in Mississippi. It is her life story.
"My parents were Henry and Nancy Lou Ellen Montgomery. I had two brothers and one sister older and four sisters and five brothers younger. When I was nine, we moved to Quanah, Texas and in the spring of 1908 we moved to a farm north of Quanah in the Marshall community. The fall of 1910, we moved back to Mississippi. Our father was a sharecropper and we seldom got to go to school before February or March. That was in a one-room school with one teacher that taught through the eighth grade. In September 1912 we moved back to Texas to the Hoolyann community near Kirkland. There we traded with Furr Mercantile, the original Furr Store. In 1914 we moved seven miles west of Goodlett, Texas and our school was Curryville. In 1920 our father bought a farm two and one half miles southwest of Goodlett. My oldest living brother had gone in the service and was killed in World War I on October 27, 1918. On December 11, 1921 I boarded a train for Abilene, Texas where I entered Draughn’s Business College. I was 21 years old. June, 1922 I went back home to help lay by the crop. In August I got a call from Quanah asking if I would help the county agent close that office. I worked six weeks there and on September 27, 1922 Tom Harman and I were married. We moved to Goodlett the following year and on September 5, 1923 our son, Lyle was born. We moved back to Quanah in 1924 and our daughter, June, was born June 4, 1925. In the year of 1928 we moved to Lubbock and the country was in the depression and jobs were scarce. Tom began work in the harvest the summer of 1929. He ended up in a small town of Gruver just 13 miles west of Spearman. He got a job as a cook in the only cafe. The children and I went back to Goodlett and stayed with my parents until Tom could send for us. On August 1, 1929 we boarded the train, spent the night in Amarillo and the next morning we got on the Rock Island train for Gruver. When we got to Gruver that evening there was no vacancy in the one and only hotel. We spent the night at Uncle Sam Gruver’s home. The next day Tom put up an 8x10 foot tent at the water tower. The 6th of August I was asked to help and learn to operate the telephone office. It turned into a blessing and in February of 1930 the job was mine." for more go to http://myweb.ecomplanet.com/PEAR1397/mycustompage0004.htm

You must be logged in to post a comment regarding this story.