As I sit meditating on bygone days, how fast the different scenes of life flit before me on memory's screen - the hours of joy and hours of sorrow, all shared alike among us.I find myself comparing the early settlers of this country with the Puritans. Like them they were seeking homes; like them they desired a place of purity and opportunity in which to rear their families, and like the Puritans they found it. Some are prone to describe them as reckless gun-toting folks accepting might as right, but the guns were toted for the coyote and the badger, and an occasional antelope to help the food supply. These were peace loving and God fearing people.
On reaching this country my father swapped a pony for a claim on a section of land. A little two-room boxed and stripped house was erected by Steve Ellis, and a well dug by Mr. Lowe. A horse pasture and field were immediately fenced. How happy he was.
The sweetest awakening I ever knew was by my father whistling gaily as he rose from his bed to start a new day. On entering the door, he would often knock the backstop for us kiddies.
He was told he could not raise corn here but "Dad knew better," and he planted and plowed it deep but never a roasting ear showed up. He also failed on his maize crop, as that was a new crop to him.
With feed to make another crop to be hauled from Amarillo and the price for his little East Texas home about gone, he was not daunted. Mother took the tent we had camped in while our house was being built and fashioned trousers for Dad and the boys, using ravellings from the duck to sew the seams on her fingers.
They milked their longhorns and poured it to the shoats and fattened our meat on milk alone. Mother churned the cream, making a portion of the butter into soap, as there was no market for cream and butter. Plums and grapes from the breaks were converted into delicious jellies, jams; yes, and wines. The old settler refuses to forget the fine quality of beef produced on the native grass.
As they gained footing, good bulls were put into the herds and thus began the strain of breeding up to the finest cattle in Texas. Many were the long, hard rides for the boys of this country during the blizzards to hold or regain their cattle. Sometimes this was done in the late hours of the night, with only a lantern in some windmill tower to guide the rider to safety, for there were few roads across the vast prairie. My first school was at LaBarque, a little one-room school, taught by Mrs. Temple Ellis and located where the Pearson farm home now stands. It was from this school I learned how the love and respect of a child that is won is the lasting love and respect of a man or woman they grow to be. There was a little crippled girl in her first year of school. The teacher each day would say, "Maudie, you may sit here in my chair for a while." Why she did this I could not understand, for this little girl was none other than myself. I was not humiliated by being told that the hard benches were too tiring on me, but left to grow up into understanding the kindly feeling and the noble desire to help the less fortunate, a spirit not peculiar to the pioneer people.
My second school was Emma, still one room but with a wonderful bell whose clear musical tones would often tell us, yet three miles away, "thirty minutes till books." We would slap old Fox with the lines and urge him on for we must not be late. Books called, Miss Della Martin led a hymn and the Lord's prayer was repeated by all. Before dismissing for lunch, Professor Naugle had us arrange our books and prepare for a sermon delivered by the Methodist pastor. Boys and girls, do you remember how we tried to have something nice for lunch when we spread together and the teacher ate with us? This was when Marcus Phillips and K. Carter were with us.
Am I permitted to name some of these noble families? These were Detwiler, Jones, Milwee, Reagan, Burleson, Kidd, Spikes, Poulson. Yes, Paul Poulson was so nice the girls all enjoyed playing with him and he always had something nice and new his Auntie had brought him. Then the Murphys; dear Rena, not long with us, often took me home with her when the blizzard was too much for me to face six miles north in an open buggy. Also Esther Murray took me to her home and how I thrilled to see my name in the Crosby County News, as her dad was editor. Also Nellie Milwee was often my gracious hostess in time of storm. There were the Elkins and Smyer families and we all remember pretty Eva Brown. She sleeps in a lonely grave in the Tucumcari cemetery. She filled an untimely grave. Walter Dry, a pal to all the girls, and the Dr. Carter family; Dr. Carter was our faithful family physician for years. Dr. Ferguson coming to his aid years later. Both have gone to their reward.
These were the dear old preachers who labored to save our souls. Brother Winn often spent the night in our home, when he came down from Plainview, Brother Bently, the Methodist minister; every housewife cringed for her prized rocker as he laboriously settled himself in it, and he must have weighed over three hundred pounds, but both young and old loved him. Joe Day from the canyon south of Floydada, and C.W. Smith held the first meeting for the Church of Christ in Emma.
Why shouldn't this have been a wonderful place to live with such noble characters to associate and labor with?
written by Maude Bedingfield ScottSource: "Through the Years, A History of Crosby County, Texas" by Nellie Witt Spikes and Temple Ann Ellis ©1951; The Naylor Company, San Antonio, Texas p. 311
Funeral services for Maude Bedingfield Scott, 98, of Lorenzo were held at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at the West Side Church of Christ with Earl Howe and J.W. Bedingfield officiating.Burial was in Lorenzo Cemetery under the direction of Carter-Adams Funeral Home of Ralls.
Mr. Scott died at 2 p.m. Monday in Ralls Nursing Home following a lengthy illness.
Born April 8, 1885 in Wayland she married Claude E. Scott on July 28, 1907 in Crosby County. He died Dec. 23, 1956.
She came to Crosby County in a covered wagon in 1892 and was honored in 1973 as a pioneer of the county. She was a member of the Crosby County Home Demonstration Club and the sewing club.
She attended the Church of Christ for 83 years.
Survivors include a son, Jack M. Scott of Scurry; a daughter, Anna Maude Hopper of Plainview; five grandchildren; 14 great grandchildren; and a great great grandchild.
Her grandsons served as pallbearers.
Ralls Banner, February 28, 1984
Record provided by Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum
transcribed by Linda Fox Hughes
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