Looking Back, by Elizabeth Scott Scrivner Dickson Page: 2 of 14
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LOOKING BACK
The Autobiography of Elizabeth de Barger Scott Scrivner Dickson
I grew up in Paris, a small provincial town in Northeast Texas. It is an old town
with a proud heritage. The county seat of Lamar County, Paris was the hub of a
cotton-growing community. The town square was the center of trading for
farmers from miles around. They came at day-break with wagons filled with
produce, as well as bales of cotton. The square was the center of commercial
activity for many years. Change and progress were slow to come in Paris. But
as King Cotton died, Paris, which had resisted change for so many years,
progressed enough to accept and even welcome newcomers and new industries.
During my lifetime, I have witnessed the change of the town from center of the
cotton community to center of the regional area, not only for agriculture, but also
for higher education, medicine and industry.
Paris is known as the City of Crepe Myrtles, because there are so many old and
beautiful ones there. When I was young, many streets were made of bricks and
were shaded by hundred-year-old trees. Trolley cars, whose fare was 5 cents,
traversed a number of streets. Colonial homes held family treasures and family
gardens were graced with dogwood trees and azalea bushes, as they are today.
My father's family was from Paris. Tom (Thomas McGee Scott), my daddy, was
born there. He was the son of Judge David Howell and Mary Fooshee Scott. He
had a younger brother, Ben, and a sister, Ina, who moved away from Paris a few
years after Mother and Daddy married. Daddy's mother died the first year of
their marriage.
My mother's family were from "up North" in New Jersey. My mother was the only
child of Charles Wesley and Elizabeth McGuire Street. Her mother died when
she was 14 months old, so she was reared by a maiden aunt, Caroline McGuire,
when she was not living with her father and step-mother. She was named
Caroline, after her aunt, but later she changed it to Carolyn. I never knew any
grandparents from Mother's side of the family.
My mother came to Paris as a bride. She was pretty and had a "peaches and
cream" complexion, which caused a great deal of jealousy among the new
acquaintances. She found Paris stuffy, full of clicks, populated with Southern
ladies of leisure, reared to entertain. When they made their obligatory social
call, the ladies left their calling card in a silver tray in the hall for that purpose.
Their work was done by paid Negroes. Mother, on the other hand, was a nononsense
Yankee of independent thinking, a do-it-yourself kind of person, with a
can-do spirit and disarming honesty. As such, Mother was lonely and
misunderstood.
Despite the difficulty she had adjusting to her new environment, she made the
best of her situation and threw herself into all kinds of projects she felt needed
attention. As years went by, she did many things for the community. She taught
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Dickson, Elizabeth Scott Scrivner. Looking Back, by Elizabeth Scott Scrivner Dickson, book, 1997; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth29059/m1/2/: accessed May 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Private Collection of Caroline R. Scrivner Richards.