Throughout the first part of the twentieth century, educated women wrote brief articles about local people, events, and issues. These were women who loved to read, wrote prolifically, and were well acquainted with neighbors. I should know; my grandmother was one who practiced through 1930s to 1960s in Archer County.
Hunt County had several of these women. One in particular was the accomplished musician and teacher Georgia Walden. She lived and taught in the area known as Northeast Corner. After I discovered I had a printed copy of the articles she wrote between 1902-1923 I decided to share with my readers. The originals from the Commerce Journal were microfilmed and are in the Genealogy Collection at the Commerce Library. Her great-great-granddaughter Molly Graham Welch and the wonderful Hunt County historian, Dorothy Wood Moore, transcribed the films and put together a collection of tales about the Northeast Corner. May you enjoy Hunt County a century ago.
“Today, the first Monday in 1903, is clear and bright much to our surprise and pleasure as Sunday evening, the 4th, closed in on us dark and stormy raining slightly, but the friendly norther came to our rescue, and here we farmers are today, busy fencing and clearing away rubbish with buoyant hopes for a good crop year. If the twelve days after Christmas is a ruling sign of the year’s weather, we will be all right as January and February will be clear and open, March wet, April and May dry, June and July wet, August dry, September showery, October dry and windy. This is an old, old wise saying of the observant. ‘The twelve days after Christmas rule the year,’ as to weather, so let us watch and see if our unlearned progenitors were really wise.
“The salute to the New Year roused Hunt county to its remotest corner. Commerce opened the serenade by the sweetest and most melodious, then Greenville with her brazen bells and shrill whistles followed by Wolfe City, the most prolonged and loudest of them all – the mingling and jingling continuing until we fell asleep dreaming of Pandemonium Hades and everything else noisy and disturbing.
“Saturday was a fatal day to long-haired farmers who were compelled to go to town to get trimmed up for Sunday. Every mother’s son of them stuck in the Commerce slough (mud pit) near the slaughter pen and had to be pulled out.”
“The moving and hustling incident to New Year are about over and folks are beginning to feel at home – this bright sunshine makes them feel spring time in their bones and hearts as well. Now is the time for the early crop of Irish potatoes, English peas, spring turnips and mustard to go in the ground.
“The weather continues fine and cotton picking is the order of the day. Some plowing is being done. Wheat is looking up some, recovering somewhat from numerous drenches.
“Social parties are happily on the decline and we are sorry to say the Sunday schools also. The schools at Century, Columbia, Jardin, and Prairie View are progressing nicely, well attended and fairly equipped, so you see we are not educationally dead in the N.E. Corner.”