The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 48, July 1944 - April, 1945 Page: 254

A Trip to Ceras*
By SUSAN FRANCES LOMAX'
Edited by JOHN A. LOMAX
Introduction
T HIS IS WRITTEN by a woman of eighty years old-badly
done, but I have been in this country a long time; have
seen many changes in forty six years. How I wish I could
tell it as I wish to. It would be something worth telling. I
sometimes wish I could tell things that happend during the
War: how I made cloth to cloth all my family and we never
went naked either. It kept me moving to do all I have to do.
I have sit up many nights untill ten or later and carded to spin
next day, but those days are gone-I hope will never come
again. For how would these sosity girls look weaving, hunting
around in the woods getting roots and barks to dye the thead?
We used so many different kinds of barks to color our cloths.
I have gotten of on the War but I will never forget how we
had to do to make both end met. I have lived to see all these things
and am glad to see everything changed-I think for the better,
but I still remember how different from 1869 to 1915; sur-
prising but true.
Why We Came to Texas
I have been requested to write something of our trip to
Texas. I wish I could write something real good but will do
the best I can. It must be remmberd that I did not have the
*The original of this recollection has been placed in the Archives of
The University of Texas Library. It was written at Meridian, Texas, on
November 26, 1914. It was presented to the Texas State Historical Associa-
tion by John A. Lomax, son of Mrs. Susan Frances (James Avery)
Lomax, and at whose request the original was written. In this printing
punctuation has been added and some letters not capitalized in the original
have now been capitalized; otherwise the document appears substantially
as written.-Editor.
'Susan Frances (nee Cooper) Lomax was born on a farm in North
Alabama on May 5, 1835. She died in Austin, Texas, January 15, 1928,
at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Alice Lomax Pedigo. When twenty-one
years of age she married James Avery Lomax, twenty years her elder,
near Goodman, Mississippi. James Avery Lomax was at that time a
widower with five children. "I respected him and I felt sorry for him," she
once told her daughter. He owned a farm and a small tanyard. During
the war he was detailed by the Confederate government to tan leather
and make hand-sewed shoes (with the help of Negro craftsmen) for the