| Rich: This interview took place on May 8, 2002 at Wells High School with Lloyd and Eloise Richardson formerly of Wells, Texas. The Richardsons currently live in Lufkin, TX. This interview will become a part of the oral history project of Wells High School in Wells, Texas. The interviewer is Elizabeth Rich. |
| Rich: How long have you lived in this surrounding community? |
| E.
Richardson: Oh, all my life, and that is like
72
years, almost, in June. So we’ve lived here all the time. I
went
to school here and graduated from Wells High School in 1947, and went
away
to Baylor for a few years, and taught in Lamar, Texas six years.
Then
I moved to Wells and stayed here until year before last,
then we moved to Lufkin. So I’ve been here all my life. |
| L. Richardson: I was born in Alto, and we moved on the farm between Alto and Wells and we lived there basically most of my young life. Then I went into the service, and then went to school at the University of Texas, then went to Oregon and Tennessee. Then we moved back in 1956. We’ve been in this area ever since. |
| Rich: How has the community changed in that time? |
| E.
Richardson: Ohh...drastically. Well, now in
some ways
it has changed and some ways it hasn’t changed. The school has
stayed
about the same enrollment, I think, all that time. The businesses
have decreased in town, 'cause we used to have a thriving little
town. We have gotten a few more cultural things such as the
library.
I don’t know about the church, whether that affiliation has
increased. [Looking at husband] you want to take up? |
| L. Richardson: Yes, but let me back up, I think it has changed a whole lot since I was a youngster, because we didn’t have electricity and you had to draw water and you had to cut wood for your fuel and so it has changed. In 1939 the REA [Rural Electric Association] put in power, so we were able to get deep freezes and in-door plumbing and stuff like that. So it has changed a lot since I was younger, but I don’t think the population of Wells has changed too much. In towns (like in Houston) country boys used to be way out there and were kind of frowned on. Now everybody lives in the country and you drive to town and so it has changed. I remember one time if you would go to Lufkin and you was from Wells, they kind of frowned on you being an outsider. Now everybody up here says "I goes back and forth to work about 30 years to the paper mill." [in Lufkin]. So the farm boy is gone and now everybody has good transportation but it has changed to where if you live on a farm you still have the conveniences of town. |
| E. Richardson: But I do remember, now that you mentioned, that back when we first moved in the house (we lived next to the house that I was reared in) that the streets [in Wells] were dirt. They were not paved, not even a hard top, so that has been a thing that has changed. At lunchtime, we didn’t have a cafeteria here at school, so we always went home for lunch. Your mother would pick you up and you would have 30 minutes for lunch. Then she would bring you back from lunch. But the roads were dirt roads. I remember that. |
| Rich: You said in your questionnaire that the community commitment was engrained in you. What did you mean by that? |
| E. Richardson: Well I had just always been taught to give back to the community what the community had done for me and I have always been a person that’s involved in everything. I’ve enjoyed being a part of the activities in the community; the activities within the school and in my church. I just always done that and I just always wanted to be a part of everything. As I said, I guess my mother taught me to be involved and I’ve always liked that and have always been involved. |
| Rich: Do you think today’s citizens have the same commitment? |
| E. Richardson: I would hope that they do, but sometimes I doubt. I think ultimately, with maturity, maybe they will commit. If they don’t commit, then the community will go down. You won’t have a Wells, you won’t have a…you just won’t have a community. Now that’s my feeling. |
| L.
Richardson: Let’s go back to the question
before. If
you’re not involved...well let me back up. I have a very simple
philosophy
in my life. “Leave everything better than you found it. So
when
I became a part of this…this [community], I was involved in the city
government,
the Lodge, Historical Society. We became a part of culture.
I feel
like we are doing a better job for leaving it for somebody else.
I
will give you a good example. When we started the research on all
this
history, have y’all seen the markers in Crossroads
and Forest? That was basically my work. I’m not bragging on
it.
But we had to go back and find out things [about] people that have been
dead
several years and that is very hard to do. So you have to kinda
become
a part of the thing and I have been able to get six markers for the
area
while I was on the Historical Society. I feel real good about it
'cause
it was history that was gonna be lost. Let me give you another
example.
Up here between here and Forest is a marker for Kilraven, have you ever
heard
of Kilraven? They had quite a sawmill community, but they left
here in the twenties, before I was born. It was hard to find the
information
on something [where] everybody was pretty well dead, but anyway, that
can be
marked now. The word Kilraven became known all because of two
people, one
named Killy and the other named Craven. They named it Kilraven
for the two people involved in the sawmill. But that sawmill left
here
in 1922. They moved to Louisiana. At one time, they had a
boarding
house, a hotel, a big sawmill, planers. They had a commissary
across the
road where that house is across from it. That history would have
been
lost forever if people hadn’t been out [trying]. Now I’m not
saying I was the
first, because Johnny Craven, who was a friend of mine, he was a Ph.D.
from
a University while I was in school. Johnny had done some work on
Kilraven and I knew that he had gathered a lot of facts that I didn’t
have
to do myself. But it becomes a part of a person’s life that he
has
to give back to a community that has been good to him. |
| E. Richardson: Commitment to me is just a core word. For everybody if they want to make things better, they like what they got, they need to be committed now. That is just a really, really big word and important word for young people like you all to adopt into your lifestyle. |
| Rich: You were both public school teachers. What advice would you give to us students today? |
| E. Richardson: Well, he wasn’t a teacher [nodding toward husband]. I was a teacher. [My advice is] to become a part of your community, to get involved in your school and to get involved in your church. And I know it’s hard sometimes to make the right choices for teenagers, I have a granddaughter that is almost your age. She is almost 16 and we pray every day that she makes the right choices. You have so many conflicting things that kindly detract you. But if you can just stay focused on what you know is the right thing, then you are gonna do well in school. Go on and get as much education as you can. Be independent. That’s a key word for me too. Independent. And to be independent you’re gonna have to have education. |
| Rich: There is a great problem in the United States, in rural America in particular, of our history disappearing. If most of the students walked away from this interview with one item of significance, what would you want that to be? |
| L. Richardson: Well, let me back up for just a minute. There are a lot of improvements that went on in the city, I know your granddaddy; we were on the city council, got lots of money, about a million dollars. We got a new water tower, a new water well, new sewer system, so those are not just gotten 'cause somebody says lets get Wells some money. In fact every time we would go to compete for money, there would be sixty, seventy towns that we would be competing with. Big towns, like Tyler, Longview and Texarkana and the little ole' town of Wells, we would come in usually in the first ten. And that would be the ones that were funded. So you have to go after things, you can't wait for somebody to say Wells needs it, let's just give it to them. It don't work that way. I feel Wells has had a great advantage 'cause we had people committed to try and improve the water system, the sewer system and the overhead water tower. It was old and it was just about to rust through. A lot of work was done trying to improve the city and things you can see, [like] a new water tower standing there. We had the old one down there right across that washer down there [pointing]. Those are things that are done that people can see, there are a lot of other things that are done that people can't see. You put in a new sewer, but people can't see 'cause it is under the ground, but somebody is always going to make improvements on the town. I want to compliment the people on the board [and] on the city council; they were people who were dedicated. |
| E. Richardson: Another word that comes to mind on my advice, is to be aggressive. You know some of us have the idea to let somebody else do that, I don't want to get involved. Now you can't do that, you've got to get involved and you got to be aggressive to get to get these things that Lloyd was mentioning. As far as the city is concerned, that goes with anything; that goes with your school, that goes with your church, that goes with your family life. You have to be aggressive. Don't let somebody else do it, you get out there and be a part of it also. |
| Rich: Are there any…like little stories or tales about Wells that you would like to share? Just anything. |
| L.
Richardson: Yeah, I can think of a good many
of them.
We had a guy here one time and we were on a basketball team. We
were playing
Mount Enterprise or somebody out there. There were cane fields
between
Crossroads and Forest and a fellow named Jones had a beautiful cane
field.
Well, Mr. Mays, he was a teacher here and he went to Central as
superintendent--of course he's dead now. Mr. Mays, he was a
single guy. About half
the ball team would ride in one car, the other would ride with somebody
else.
Well, anyway, on a wet night we decided we would go and get some cane
out
of Mr. Jones' cane patch. He [Mr. Mays] had to carry some boys
over to Forest.
There were some boys over there going on home, in fact probably on the
place
you're living on right now. Are you on the right, on the right
hand
going from Forest to Barsola, you live on the right hand side? So
anyway Mr. Mays let some of us [on the basketball team] out so we could
cut some cane. We waited for him to go over there and we waited
for him to
get back, so we put the cane in the back seat of his car. He had
a four-seater. Anyway, when we got back into town we didn't
realize that all of those
cane tops were dragging forward just like a brush and everybody knew
when we came
through town [because] that cane was just a'dragging. That was
one funny incident. I will tell you another funny incident. It happened we were also on the ball team. We were going between Rusk and Mount Enterprise. Of course, Mr. Mays didn't have a car with power brakes. It was just mechanical brakes. Anyway, we ran into a bunch of cows, but fortunately we didn’t hit any. We all went through, threaded through a bunch of cows on the road. We got over there and stopped and everybody was just so scared, that we didn't play worth a flip that night at ball. I think that night that they beat us so bad because we thought we were all going to be laying beside the road dead or something. Let me see if I can think of something else. |
| E. Richardson: Well, this is not a story. This is just an incident. I know you haven't but you probably heard your mothers and daddies [talk] but they're even too young for this. Mr. Rube Sessions was quite prominent here in town. He was really an individualist. I was much younger than you all were, and he would walk barefoot and he had an old car that he had knocked the window out of, so his dog could stick his head out the window. Of course he was the most prominent person in town. He had land, he had money, he was the owner of the sawmill; he was just the top dog. But, anyway, I would see that man and he wasn't a real friendly man; he would scare me to death. I would see him coming barefoot in his old overalls, and that old dog. I would just turn the other way. But that is who the library is named for. He was very nice really, that was just me as a young child. |
| L. Richardson: Let me tell another incident. It takes me awhile. At one time the only way you could have heat was from wood. In the back of the old gym, I think they have an air conditioner there now. There used to be a woodpile and we would have to go out there and get wood to bring in there to the school rooms. So Timford Seymore, do y'all remember Timford? Well Timford and I were out there bringing in firewood. Well in the old gym they had the little small windows that would make a big window frame. One of those windows was out and somebody stuck their head out and said, "What are you boys doing?" So Timford said, "None of your damn business." Well the guy raised the window and it was the superintendent of the school. So he told him right quick it was some of his business. We never did make that mistake again. But all we could see was that small part of the face, we didn't know it was the superintendent. |
| E. Richardson: Needless to say, he was in more trouble than I was. |
| L. Richardson: Another time we had a teacher that was off sick, and the Baptist--no the Methodist-- preacher, Charles Lamb, taught in her place while she was off sick. We were all just young boys, you know how boys will cut up. The preacher just wouldn't put up with any foolishness, so after about the first ten minutes of the kids acting up he just went down to see the superintendent. Mr. Bryan called all us boys down and lined us up and he gave all of us about five or six licks. A lot of us hadn't done anything, but we all got whipped because a few of them kept messing up. Well there's a lot of things that went on in a little town. |
| E. Richardson: Tell her about walking across the gym floor. |
| L. Richardson: Yeah, he [the superintendent] had a loud speaker, an intercom, and he could tell who was walking and who that was. |
| E. Richardson: This was over in the old gym. |
| L.
Richardson: He could tell by how a person
walked. |
| E. Richardson: And you just didn't walk on that gym floor, you walked around, and of course you didn't think anybody was seeing you. So sometimes you would want to walk across it. And I think that is what happened in their situation, they knew he knew, he could tell by the footprints. |
| L. Richardson: Oh, yeah, yeah. Well I’ll tell you another funny incident that happened. We were playing Cycone, I believe it was, or Laneville. Maybe it was one of them. Stewart Balford I think was one of the referees or maybe it was Melton, but anyway he called a technical foul on somebody from Laneville up there and the coach didn’t like it. I think he called it on the coach, but the coach didn’t like it at all and the coach made a big to-do about it. So when we played Laneville and Mr. Wyatt was our coach they [the Laneville players] were out there sharpening their knives when we walked by. And Mr. Wyatt said, “Alright, boys, just don’t pay them any attention, just go on around them." And we just went right through those old boys, just a'sharpening their knives. |
| E. Richardson: They were trying to intimidate you. |
| L. Richardson: Yeah, they were really trying to intimidate us. Mr. Wyatt said, “Just don’t pay them any attention, boys.” Another funny incident was, did ya ever know Tom Sherman? His mother had a drugstore, here at one time. Sherman built a store. |
| E. Richardson: You have to remember how young these kids are. |
| L. Richardson: Yeah that’s right. Well anyway Tom was a real good friend of mine. In fact he was killed in the war. He was shot down in Germany. Well, anyway, he is dead now, bless his heart. We were playing one town, I can’t remember exactly who it was. Anyway this team we were playing had not made their field goal, but they made several passes, and right before the half this guy comes running down through there and from the center line he shot and that ball went right through that goal line. And they had one field goal in the first half. Well, Mr. Wyatt was our coach and when we broke for the half he said, “Whose man was that?” and Tom Sherman said, “He was mine.” And Mr. Wyatt said, “Put your clothes on. You’re through. You let that boy make a field goal.” So he pulled Tom out of the rest of the game, cause his man made a field goal. |
| Rich: Are there interesting stories that you would like to tell us about the historical landmarks around Wells and the surrounding communities? |
| L.
Richardson: Well, I can tell you several
landmarks.
The cemetery is a landmark. The cemetery up here, Mt. Hope, was
founded probably before 1875, but that is the date that is used because
that is
the day that the land was recorded in the courthouse. But [it]
was started before
then, and the Bowman brothers, when they came in here, they owned a lot
of
land. Now let me stop there and explain how a lot of people got
land
then. Back during the Mexican empresario times, if you would move
in
here they would give you so much land. Now if you married a
Spanish
woman, they would give you a lot more land. Over there on Cedar
Springs you probably see the Mt. Sterling [marker] over there.
That is where the Durch boys, they had a settlement. Now going
back
to the cemetery, one of the Bowman boys sent word to a preacher, a
Brother
Lewis, over in Barsola, over where you live, to come in to Wells and
open a
church. The church became the school. And it set there
where the Flowerys are buried
up there in the cemetery. So the church and its school had it
beginning
in the late 1860’s and early 1870’s. The
cemetery has a marker specifying that it is recognized as a historical
site, just like any other state historical place was. Another
thing is of course there at Barsola; there was a
big sawmill. In fact, I went to it one time when it had quit
operating. During the war it played a big part in shipping lumber
to the military
forces, but it shut down in the forties. It was there
for a long time. It was probably a good business back in those
days.
Well let me back up there. At one time there
over at Barsola...no wait a minute.
I’m thinking about Kilraven which I’ve already mentioned. They
had
a lot of company houses. They had about twenty company
houses. What would happen, there would be somebody would quit the
company and they'd
leave and that house would be vacant before somebody would be hired ant
they
would move back in. On payday a lot of those guys would find
that house that didn’t have anybody in it and they would get in it and
they
would gamble every time they got paid. They would gamble and lose
their paychecks.
So the wives got together and said they were going to put a stop to
that.
They got ahold of the president of the company and said ok, lock all
those
houses up. Back in those days, they didn’t even lock houses, all the
houses
were wide open. Nobody stole anything, you didn’t do like you do
nowadays.
You lock everything up like somebody is going to steal it from
you.
But anyway, those women put a stop to those men from gambling their
checks
away. |
| E. Richardson: And the Methodist church down here is a continuation of that church from the cemetery that he mentioned. That first church. They might be interested. |
| L.
Richardson: Now let me go back and pick that
up.
When the church and the school was first started out there, and then
when the
railroad came through Wells, which was in 1885 or 1886, a lot of the
areas
around here, like out here at Cheeseland and out their at Shook's Bluff
(are you all familiar with those communities?). They moved into
Wells
because of the railroad. That was before the time of the
automobile,
so you could get on the train and ride to Lufkin, or Tyler, or wherever
you wanted to go. A lot of people moved and that is the reason
Dr. Falvey moved in here. [He's who] the church is named after
down here.
Dr. Falvey’s son is the one who gave the church in memory of his daddy
cause
his daddy was a doctor at Cheeseland and he moved into Wells.
Then
they moved the school in; the steps are still there if you want to see
them.
That house right across from the nursing home, there on the corner, if
you
will look, you will see those curved steps. There’s an old house
built
there, but the steps were a part of the second [Methodist] church that
was there when
they moved the church into Wells in the 1880’s. It stayed there until
about 1940 something. Then the church sold that property and they
made ‘em
a school and the new church was built and it was dedicated. It
was built in ’49 and ’50, but it was dedicated in 1951and Eloise and I
were
the first couple married in this church down here. |
| E. Richardson: That’s our claim to fame. |
| L.
Richardson: Our claim to fame, but anyway we
really
hated, when we moved to Lufkin, to give up our membership here, ‘cause
it meant a lot to us. Our children were raised up here and a lot
of
personal friends here. |
| E. Richardson: They might like to know what the oldest house is here in town, ‘cause that doesn’t have a marker. |
| L. Richardson: The oldest house is over here [pointing]. Do y’all know where John Sneed lives? Alright, the house right across from there, well… |
| E. Richardson: I’m not sure who lives there |
| L.
Richardson: They call that the old Bailey
home, but if you look at the architecture....Dr. Falvey built that
house for
a daughter, then they built that house where John Sneed lives. Of
course
the Sneeds were here a long time, but the Falveys lived there and that
was
one of the first two houses built. Now let me go on to another subject, that probably you’re not aware of. Back in the 1850’s, Lufkin was not in existence. The county seat of Lufkin was a little town of Homer; it was between Lufkin and Huntington. There’s nothing there now; just a church called Homer Methodist Church. But there was a road built from Homer to Alto, and the reason that road was built was because the Civil War was kinda getting hot and they needed a way to get the troops into the El Camino Real, which was Highway 21, which was the King’s Highway. They would carry them into Louisiana, then they could go on into Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. But they needed someway to get the troops over there, so they built the Homer-Alto Road. Now let me tell you where it goes. We’ll go back to Alto. Homer-Alto crosses the highway just as you go into Alto before you go up the hill. It went on and went by the old school. Then it went out, well, it was parallel with [Highway] 69, but it didn’t go to Forest. That’s a different highway over there. It went and crossed the road out there where I was raised and came across and went into (y’all know where Crossroads is?) well right behind that little building the road came right behind it. That road is still open, although it goes around and comes back into the highway. That is the oldest, not the oldest road in Cherokee County, but one of the oldest roads. It went on down by Cheeseland and followed on in. Now let me tell you about the first road in Cherokee County, the lower end. I’m not talking about the upper end. It’s called the River Road. |
| L. Richardson: Now let’s continue on. The reason that it was called the River Road was because it followed the high ground over there against the river and it came all the way up the river. The way those roads were fixed back in the early days, the landowners who had the land had to build their own part of that road. If they weren’t physically able to do it they had to hire somebody to go out and do the manual work. They didn’t have a highway department or highway commissioner. The individuals had to build their own road. So consequently, the road just went from landowner to landowner. That’s the way it came through. The roads in Cherokee County are basically the early roads, the River Road that’s going by Parks Cemetery and the Alto-Homer Road. The Alto-Homer Road crossed about where the bank is. It went up and right there where the nursing home is, it made a turn and went on around. That is where the road was. And that was before the Wells Railroad went through here. The Railroad changed a lot of that stuff. Once it came in then things began to change and roads began to come in [like] Highway 69. I lived out on the farm when that was built. It was called Centennial Highway. In 1936 was when that road was built, and [for] that reason it was called Centennial Highway. Remember Texas Independence was in 1836, so that is the reason it was called the Centennial Highway. It connected all the way from Beaumont and it goes all the way up to Greenville through Mineola. |
| Rich: [to Eloise] Any stories about the landmarks? |
| E.
Richardson: Well, no. He’s the authority
on the
landmarks, other than the church. |
| L. Richardson: Well, let me tell you another story. Do y’all know Dr. Hill’s place out here on the River Road? I don’t know if y’all know where that is or not. But there was a cemetery out there. Farrell Hicks told me before he died there was a cemetery out there. The deal was, the Ku Klux Klan was active in this part of the country at that time, and what happened was they figured that this man was involved. Anyway, the Klan went out there and there was a couple of children there ‘cause there was a teacher who lived there and taught at…I’m trying to think of the name of the school. Damascus, I think. Anyway, the Ku Klux Klan killed the man. They thought he was the man [they were after], but he was not the man, he was a schoolteacher. They killed him and killed two of the children. They pulled them out from under the bed and killed them and they buried them. That cemetery is still there, down there on the left hand side of the road, right across the road from Ross Hicks’ place out there on the left. I always wanted to go out there and try to find it. |
| E. Richardson: They were marked with rocks. |
| L. Richardson: I don’t think there is any legible reading on them, but they were marked back in the time when the Ku Klux Klan was trying to intimidate the blacks. |
| Rich: Is there anything else you would like to tell us? |
| L. Richardson: I wish I had thought before, and made some notes about some stories. |
| E.
Richardson: Well, ahh…you remember, out there
on the
Chopping Road, this was long before either our time, didn’t they dig
for iron
ore? Tell that story and about the house. |
| L. Richardson: The reason that road is called Chopping, was a time when out of Rusk we had the New Birmingham town. In New Birmingham town they would take the [iron] ore out of the ground. In fact they had two glass burners. If you will notice when you go into Rusk on the left it has the words The Tassiebell. Well, the Tassiebell was a glass burner. It took the raw ore and it would convert it into iron. So what happened was they had to have something to fuel those ores with. They had a bunch of prisoners out here on the Chopping {Road], and they would cut wood and send it up there to the glass burners. You know where the Chopping Road is? That’s where it got its name. The prisoners would chop wood out there and send it to Rusk on the railroad. And they found out the ore grade was a poor grade of ore and it didn’t make good iron. So they went out [of business]. They had a big hotel that had a ledger where some of the presidents signed the ledger. So one time, New Birmingham was a town long before Rusk was a town itself. |
| E. Richardson: They had a galley out here at the place where they were cutting timber. And that galley was bought by a man and the house was moved to back of where we lived and it’s a part of where we lived. The logs are like this [illustrating with her hands]. They are square and they had square nails and of course now siding has been put on it, but that was part of the galley. |
| L. Richardson: You know what a galley is? |
| E. Richardson: That is the kitchen. That is where they cooked. So that house is part of a galley. |
| L. Richardson: That house was mentioned in Johnny Craven’s book and it was built in 1892. |
| E. Richardson: But, anyway, that’s it. There is a lot of history here. I think it is wonderful that you all are setting it down. |
| Rich: This concludes the interview with Lloyd and Eloise Richardson. It will become a part of Preserving the Community Voice program of Wells High School in Wells, Texas. The interviewer was Elizabeth Rich. |