|
This family lives in the Pleasant Hill community near Ralls, Texas, on the land that was filed on by Steve R. Ellis in 1888.Before the consolidation with Ralls, Pleasant Hill had a two-teacher school. Occasionally a protracted meeting was held in the little red brick schoolhouse; most every Sunday either one denomination or another held services there. With the Sunday night singings it was a live community
Walter Gillon was on the school board; most of the years he served as president. He and his young son, Walter Ellis, are stockfarmers, and love it. Walter has a sizable herd of full-blood Hereford cows that have each year 100 per cent calf crop, which is considered a liberal return for their keep. These calves are taken up at weaning time, which comes about December 1, and put on feed. They are fed for a period of ninety days on sorghum bundles, grown on the farm and ground with an electric feed mill. This is put into feeding troughs, where it is further enriched with cottonseed mel. The gain in weight and in price is sufficient. Mr. Gillon believes, to furnish him with good reasons to continue the project, while the son is gaining valuable experience that will enable him to continue with the stock farm when his father has retired.
Young Gillon who is fourteen years of age, a native Crosby Count resident, is now engaged in an FFA project, the poultry business. In his experiments is a flock of five hundred white Leghorn and Rhode Island pullets, that he is keeping a record of. Beside the cattle and chickens, the father and son have some Duroc brood sows. These sows and their pig crop furnish two money crops a year, which is a great help in meeting the expense of the farm.
In addition to the livestock, the Gillons are cultivating, by tenant farming, 1,000 acres with irrigation. They have four wells, which is hardly sufficient to supply the water necessary during the dry seasons. Audie Bryant and Mr. Loyd, the farmers on the place, have the major portion of the land planted to cotton each year. The cotton is sprayed occasionally with poison from airplanes, for the destruction of the worms and other insects that once destroyed it.
Walter Gillon married Ruby Ellis December 14, 1917, who is not only interested with him and the young son in their stockfarming project, but encourages and boosts them along when their spirits run low.
Mrs. Gillon keeps busy in all civic and church duties that her active mind and willing hands find to do.
Source: "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. 439
When Interviewed Mrs. Gillon said:"We have no record of any great celebrity being born in a dugout, though they could have been, for one of our most outstanding presidents was born in a log cabin. I do not profess to be great, nor do I claim a near-greatness, other than that my parents, Temple and Elizabeth Ellis, are numbered among the pioneers of Crosby County, and that I was born in a dugout not many miles from my present home on the very section of land that my Uncle Steve Ellis filed on, in 1887, on the ground where my father´s family began their home near the old Quaker town of Estacado.
My dad owned an eight-section ranch in this neighborhood, where I grew up with the love of cattle and ranching in my blood. All the years of my life I have felt a love for stock, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than the sight of fat cattle near a lake or tank of clear water. The low of the cow and the bawl of her calf have always been music to my ears. All my life that has been the one pleasure I have always had to enjoy.
As a child I had dolls by the dozens, and horses at my convenience and command. I always had a neat little playhouse and pets. Candies were continually before me, for I was an only child for a period of years, in my mother´s family of six brothers, who vied with one another in the effort to spoil the only little girl. Naturally, being of an appreciative nature, I was thrilled. However, down in my lonely heart I missed the one great pleasure that every child should be privileged to enjoy, companionship with another child. I should say I love people better than a herd of whiteface cattle; knowing my heart I´m sure I do and if I have censured my parents at all it is that they did not have my sister Lesley Opal sooner, so that the longing for companionship would have been erased from the otherwise most beautiful memories a child ever had.
Being the mother of an only child, I feel his life is not quite full enough, though he does live where there are people, a privilege I could not enjoy.
When Walter Gillon and I married, he came to the farm with me. We have enjoyed every minute of our lives, apart from the hurry that life has become.
We lost our first son, who, had he lived, would no doubt be now fighting our country´s battles.
Walter Ellis, a big boy now, aged 14, like his mother and dad, likes the farm and the life he is living among his chickens and turkeys, his pigs and cows, with his dogs as his constant companions.
However, remembering the companionship of youngsters I missed, I see to it that his friends visit often and are welcome in our home."
Source: "Through the Years, A History of Crosby County, Texas" by Nellie Witt Spikes and Temple Ann Ellis ©1951; The Naylor Company, San Antonio, Texas
Mrs. Ruby Gillon Services Are Set
RALLS (Special) - Services for Mrs. Ruby Ellis Gillon, 71, a longtime area resident, will be at 4 p.m. today in First Methodist Church here.The Rev. Conrad Ryan, pastor, will officiate, assisted by the Rev. C. M. Field, Baptist pastor from Ralls. Burial will be in Ralls Cemetery under direction of Carter Funeral Home.
Mrs. Gillon, a native of Crosby County, died at 4 a.m. Friday in Crosbyton Hospital. She was the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Temple H. Ellis, area pioneers.
Mrs. Gillon was a member of the first graduating class at Lubbock High School and was a graduate of Texas Presbyterian College at Milford, which later became Austin College at Sherman.
She was a member of First Methodist Church here and served as a Sunday School teacher more than 30 years. She was past president of the Parent-Teachers Association at Ralls, having been awarded a lifetime PTA membership.
Also she was secretary and treasurer of Pioneers and Old Settlers of West Texas for 15 years and was honored this year by the 40th annual reunion program being dedicated to her and her husband, J. Walter Gillon.
She and Gillon were married Dec. 4, 1917 in Lubbock.
Survivors include the husband, a son, a sister, three grandchildren and two nieces.
Crosbyton Review, November 18, 1965
Record provided by Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum
transcribed by Linda Fox Hughes
J. W. Gillon´s Rites Planned
J. W. "Walter" Gillon, 79, a West Texas pioneer and longtime resident of Ralls, died about 5 a.m. Saturday after an apparent heart attack. He had been hospitalized previously for several weeks.Services were held at 2:30 p.m. Monday in the First Methodist Church at Ralls with the Rev. Vernon O´Kelly, pastor, officiating, and the Rev. H. B. Coggin, former pastor, assisting.
Burial was in the Ralls Cemetery under direction of Carter Funeral Home.
Gillon was born at Grenada, Miss., and moved to West Texas in 1907. He married the late Ruby Ellis in 1917 and moved to Ralls two years later.
He served on the Pleasant Hill and Ralls school boards, was president of the Ralls Chamber of Commerce and was a member of the Ralls Rotary Club. He also was vice president of the West Texas Pioneer and Old Settlers Reunion Association and was active in the organization for many years.
He was a retired farmer and stockman.
Survivors include his son, Walter Ellis Gillon of Ralls, a sister, Mrs. Prichard Horton of Grenada, Miss.; and four grandchildren.
Ralls Banner, November 3, 1971
Record provided by Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum
transcribed by Linda Fox Hughes
 |
Crosby County TXGenWeb Project
|
This site may be freely linked to but not duplicated in any fashion without my consent.
The information on these pages is meant for personal genealogical research only and is not for commercial use of ANY type.
