A history of Deaf Smith County, featuring pioneer families Page: 48 of 174
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History
Deaf Smith County
PioneersArvel Jernigan, Weed, N.M.; and R. L. Morriss, Omega,
N.M. They had 22 grand-children and 24 great-grandchildren
in January, 1964.
Leora Scott was married to Oliver H. Hickerson in
March, 1908, and lived in Oklahoma for years. She had one
daughter, Mrs. Logan Call, Imperial, Tex., and two sons,
Truman O. Hickerson, Lomita, Calif., and I. W. Hickerson,
San Jose, Calif.
ELISHA CARTER, 1877
Before It Organized
Three excited little boys rode with their mother on the
train into Clarendon--as far as the line went at that
time--in 1887. They were sons of Mr. and Mrs. Elisha
Carter and were met at Clarendon by their father who
brought his family on to Deaf Smith County in a covered
wagon. Carter had come ahead of the family, driving his
sheep from the Pecos River country where they had lived.
Their household effects had been shipped to Clarendon in
an emigrant car and had to be hauled on to their new home.
The Carters' first home in this county was a dugout.
Then they built a two-story adobe house on the Frio Draw
near the present Highway 385. Carter filed on four sections
of land two miles east ofHerefordin 1890. He hauled
lumber from San Angelo for a seven-room typical Texas
ranch house with covered porch circling three sides. That
house burned in 1934.
Before the organization of Deaf Smith County, Tascosa
was the seat of government for the entire western Panhandle,
and E. Carter went there at times to serve in the
court. He would never take any of his family with him. It
was too wild.
A big occasion for the older Carter boys--then seven
or eight
was when the parents took their five boys, inJoe
Carter was manager of this ball team in
1903. The boys are (left to right) back row:
Lewis Hubbard, unidentified. Glen Brunk, Joecluding two born after they came to this county, to Amarillo
to see the first Fort Worth andDenver train come in.
Mrs. Carter said the boys were so frightened they scattered
like cottontails and had to be rounded up.
Whole family groups would go to the sand hills when
the wild plums were ripe. They camped for days and enjoyed
visiting while they picked plums. Pioneer kitchens
smelled mouth-wateringly good as the women made jelly
on their return home. Sugar was bought by the barrel, and
the plum jelly, jam, and preserves were poured layer by
layer into those barrels.
The Carter boys became noted horsemen as they wrangled
mustangs still roaming the prairie in herds at that time.
The elder Mr. Carter stocked cattle as he developed his
ranching interests. His brother, J. W., and his wife,
"Moggie", became well-know Castro County residents.
Among the students at the Panhandle Christian College
here were the Carter boys, who were encouraged to get
an education. They were getting around in local circles,
even before the college was established, as reported in
one of the first issues of The Hereford Brand in 1901,
"Hailed as the 'death knell to liquor traffic in Deaf
Smith County,' the first step toward prohibition here was
taken in the circulation of a petition in September, 1901.
The movement started in a meeting at the church on
September 13, when Judge Gough took the chair and gave
a ringing speech against the assertion that prohibition
will not prohibit."
A majority of the large crowd responded and gave their
signatures to the petition. G.R. Jowell, G.A. Sachse, and
C. G. Witherspoon were on the committee to circulate
the petition. Among the boys volunteering to push the
canvass for signers were Tom Meredith, Dalton Johnson,
James Bell, Tom Carter, Claude Witherspoon, and Elisha
Carter, Jr. The boys reported 209 names, but the commissioners
found only 93 voters on the list
Tom Carter became a life-long Hereford business man,Carter, Dow Mercer and Jim Carter; front row,
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Patterson, Bessie. A history of Deaf Smith County, featuring pioneer families, book, 1964; Hereford, Tex.. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth16011/m1/48/: accessed May 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Deaf Smith County Library.