Once upon a time not so long ago, I read old newspapers at the library and recorded one event for each day of the month. GEUS then published them as a trailer on their television station. When I retired I found I had too many family commitments to continue. Now that I have more time and have discovered I miss knowing what happened around here in the past, just as I like to read this newspaper every day. I realized it was time to begin again.
Last summer a friend convinced me I needed a Facebook page. So the logical things to do were read the 1914 Greenville newspapers and add a comment each day on Facebook. I began on January 1, 2014. This time around I added names of persons who married that day, comments about national events that had an effect on Greenville and Hunt County, and items from area newspapers. While as a historian, I look for trends and attempt to analyze the events; I have chosen to omit that from Facebook.
On Sunday, December 29 this newspaper ran an article by Dr. James Conrad entitled “Winter wedding typical in early 20th century.” As all of his columns are, this one was both informative and interesting. After reading it, I realized that Dr. Conrad could have written about any number of the weddings that took place in January 1914. Many were reported in the Greenville Morning Herald.
For example, A. D. King of Dallas and Annyee Roark of Pittsburg (TX) agreed to marry here on January first; but her train was late arriving. The marriage was delayed until the second when it took place in the County Clerk’s Office. Later in the month Paskle Middleton of Point and Mary E. Burns of Kingston were married in Greenville by Rev. F. Graham McMurray of Central Christian Church. Both took the train to Greenville and returned to their new home via the railroad.
Greenville in the early part of the 20th century was a major railroad hub in Northeast Texas. Hence, it became something of Gretna Green, a small community located in the south of Scotland. That village is famous for the vast number of runaway weddings that occurred there. In fact, Mary and Edith motored to Gretna Green to dissuade their young sister Sybil and Tom Branson from marrying in season two of “Downton Abbey.” Wonder if anything like that happened here?
The most unusual item I read in the Greenville Morning Herald was a wedding that took place in Naud Burnett’s grocery store. No copies of the Greenville Evening Banner exist for 1914 and the copies of the Greenville Messenger are somewhat unorganized so we know little about that wedding. The original copies of the Messenger were sorted in order by days and then bundled by month. However, the person doing the microfilming wasn’t paying attention or didn’t know the order of months in a year. December is sometimes followed by July, etc.
To read what happened in Greenville a century ago, go to www.facebook.com/carolcoleytaylor and enjoy.