Hallmark Family

Nancy was the only surviving daughter of Abraham Elzey Richeson and Lucinda Frances Angel. She had only one brother, Joseph, who reached adulthood. About age sixteen, she married George Thomas Hallmark, the son of Elijah David Hallmark and Martha Ann Broxson. She was remembered by most people as a kind, Christian woman who struggled mightily to raise her large family. When they lived on the farm near Prairie Grove School in Johnson Co. Texas, she took her children regularly to Retta Baptist Church. When she and George Thomas Hallmark owned the feed store in Lillian, Texas, she took the children to Lillian Baptist Church. Most of the time she and her children had to walk to church because in the early years of their marriage, George was not particularly interested in going to church.

When George Hallmark decided to seek cheap land in Scurry County in far West Texas about 1909, it was Nancy who had to deal with the move. A railroad box car was pulled to a railsiding in Lillian, Texas, and all the family's belongings were packed inside. Nancy and her children then climbed inside the boxcar to make the trip. She had to cook meals and meet every need of her children inside a moving railroad car.

When they reached their new land, she had to create a home inside a small dugout home in the ground. The house had a Dutch style, half-door to allow light and air inside from the top, but the bottom could be kept closed to keep out rattlesnakes and other vermin. She worried as her children ran loose in this wild, unsettled land. The boys often went rabbit hunting, which added meat to the table. Once the boys reached inside a hole where a rabbit had disappeared, only to find a rattlesnake. Three of their children were born in Scurry County. Life in the West was hard and lonely. They lived about four miles north of the town of Snyder. Water was scarce.

George's Uncle Tom Broxson and his family lived in town which was a little comfort to have family near by.

Farming did not go well, so George sold the land and moved his family back to Johnson County, Texas. Nancy was back where she could be near her parents.

Nancy had a reputation for being a folk healer. She had learned from her mother the art of gathering wild plants and herbs to made her own medicines. She was also a midwife at many area births. She always seemed to be where she was needed in the community. She had a kind and generous nature. Nancy cared for her father, Abe, in her home after the death of her mother. It was George and Nancy who donated the land for the Prairie Grove School in Johnson County, Texas.