Two of the best known pioneer citizens of the South Plains, who came to sparsely settled West Texas nearly sixty years ago and helped build up the counry are living in Crosby County today on a farm they settled in 1906.They are Mr. and Mrs. Jeff J. Spikes, whose modern farm home is about seven miles northwest of the village of Cone. Mrs. Spikes is widely known for her historic writings about "Old Emma." She writes a weekly column for The Floyd County Hesperian, and Ralls Banner, Ralls, Texas, also a column for Crop and Stock Magazine published monthly at Lubbock. She titles this column "As a Farm Woman Thinks" and signs it Nellie Witt Spikes. Several thousand readers follow her column from week to week and she keeps in contact with hundreds of the early-day settlers through this column, which often refers to the events at the turn of the century.
Mr. Spikes can really lay claim to being a pioneer of Crosby County, having arrived there on the first day of August in 1890, after a month's trip from Kaufman County. He was barely twenty-two at this time, being born July 30 on Spikes Prairie, Kaufman County, near the present town of Kaufman. His father was the late Captain John Wesley Spikes of Parson's Brigade U.C.V. He sold out in Kaufman County, put the money in a belt, which he gave Jeff. The latter says he "pulled out on horseback for East Texas to buy a small herd of cattle, which he drove to the Plains....
"We settled near Emma and I helped vote county seat away from the Quaker Colony in Estacado in 1891."
Mrs. Spikes moved at the age of four with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John M. Witt and grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Geo. D. Jones. Mrs. Margaret Witt and the daughter of the Joneses. They came from Parker County, Mrs. Spikes having been born at Weatherford. She says:"We made the long dry trip in a creaking ox wagson, my father and mother and two small children. That was in 1892. My father stayed in Parker County; Mother went back and we moved out two years later. I was four years old the day the small herd was turned out of the pen and the loaded wagons started toward the setting sun. One wagon was loaded with corn; we brought big hams and slabs of cured bacon. The Jones family had been pioneers, leaving Virginia and coming to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, then to Red River County, Texas. My grandfather came on to Parker.We lived at Emma in a two-room house at first. Mother hung a cloth across the room from the ceiling, papered both sides with newspapers, then we kept the schoolteacher to board. Father bought in a store with a Mr. Dry; the cowboys called it Wet and Dry Store. We moved out two rooms up near the public square and started a restaurant. FathScotland. We added other rooms and could take care of District Court officers when they made it to Emma and also the drummers, cowmen and cowboys. Big Stetson hats hung close to the city derbies and patent leather slippers were under the table with boots and spurs. Many prominent men ate at the table and mother really set a good table, as she was an excellent cook and Father saw there was plenty to cook. Antelope steak and roast prairie chicken, blue quail, plover found their way to our kitchen.
The winters were hard, the houses frail, but the dugout warm. "I have seen cattle," says Mr. Spikes, "dead along the drift fence that stretched from the Plains to New Mexico. In the spring of the year cattle would be dead along the Yellowhouse River after a cold rain. It was outside country; cattle began drifting from blizzards and snow and cold rains as far north as Amarillo. When they struck the drift fence, they lay down, never to get up again, others fallong on top, a terrible sight."
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
Services for Joseph Jefferson Spikes, 96, were held at 2 p.m. March 27 in the First Methodist Church. Mr. Conrad Ryan, pastor, officiated, assisted by Mr. W.A. Appling, Midland.Burial was in Ralls Cemetery under direction of Carter Funeral Home.
Spikes, the last known living cowboy of the I.O.A. Ranch, died in Crosbyton Hospital after a brief illness. He was born at Spikes Prairie, Kaufman County. In 1890 he and his parents moved to Crosby County by ox-drawn wagon and the trip took them three months.
Spikes worked on the I.O.A. Ranch in Lubbock County. The north boundary of the ranch is now 19th Street in Lubbock.
Survivors include his wife, Mrs. Nellie Witt Spikes; a son, Dr. L.W. Spikes, Ralls; two daughters, Mrs. Wilda Laminack, Ralls; Mrs. Wilma Wheeler, Floydada; seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Crosbyton Review, April 2, 1964
Record provided by Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum
transcribed by Linda Fox Hughes
Mrs. J.J. (Nellie) Spikes - pioneer, historian, and journalist - is dead at the age of 89. The well known Ralls woman succumbed at 1 p.m. Tuesday in Crosbyton Hospital following a brief illness.Memorial rites are planned for 10 a.m. today (Thursday) in the Ralls First Baptist Church. Officiating will be the Rev. Dick Richards, pastor, and the Rev. C.O. Halle, pastor of the Cone Baptist Church.
Interment will follow in Ralls Cemetery.
In her major work, the co-authored "A History of Crosby County, Texas," which is the only recorded authentic account of the history of Crosby County.
The former Nellie Witt was married to Jeff Spikes on December 27, 1906 in Hereford. The couple had a four day honeymoon...a covered wagon trip to the 640 acre ranch-farm the bridegroom owned in Crosby and Floyd counties. Spikes preceded his wife in death March 26, 1964.
She was a member of the Ralls First United Methodist Church.
"Mrs. Spikes was one of the few 'honest to goodness' farm writes in this country," friends state. She wrote a newspaper column entitled "As a Farm Woman Thinks," which appeared weekly in the Floyd County Hesperian, Ralls Banner, Lorenzo Tribune and a Lubbock publication, Southwestern Crop and Stock.
Born May 4, 1888 in Weatherford to John Marion Witt and Margaret Jones Witt, she moved to the Plains in an ox wagon at the age of four.
Her father operated a general merchandise store at Emma, county seat of Crosby County at that time, and also operated the Witt Hotel.
Young Nellie saw the West from behind her father´s candy counter and waiting on tables at the hotel. She finished school at Emma with a four year state certificate, attended a summer formal school in Plainview, and spent a summer in Amarillo studying music and shorthand. She attended Panhandle Christian College in Hereford for three months, where she took a business course.
In addition to her newspaper writings, Mrs. Spikes has written booklets on the early days of the Southwest.
Mrs. Spikes´ historical writings have been acknowledged by the Texas State Historical Survey Commission and Texas Historical Foundation in 1969 by Gov. Preston Smith and in 1976 by Gov. Dolph Brisco, making her an honorary member of these foundations. These are a few of the citations Mrs. Spikes received for her works.
She is survived by; two daughters, Mrs. Wilda Laminack of Ralls and Mrs. Paul Wheeler of Cone; two brothers, Joe Witt, Amarillo and Jim Witt of Lubbock; three sisters, Mrs. Carl Hill of Amarillo, Mrs. Lois Tubbs of Lubbock, Mrs. Josephine Wadsworth of Lubbock, seven grandchildren and nine great grandchildren. One son, Dr. L.W. Spikes preceded her in death October 10, 1973.
Crosbyton Review, October 6, 1977
Record provided by Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum
transcribed by Linda Fox Hughes
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