Women in Early Texas Page: 34
xxiv, 334 p. : ill.View a full description of this book.
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The baby wore no clothes for months. She was first fed with an
eye-dropper. Her brother, who was seventeen years old at her
birth, said Emma could have been put in a coffee pot and covered
up. She thrived. Her first dress was a large circle of very fine cotton
batiste with a circle cut out for the neck and sleeves inserted in slits
below the neck. The dress was ripped at the cuffs as she became
older. It was her Christening dress and is still carefully preserved in
a delicate pink and white round straw basket.
I was twelve years old when my grandmother died in Novem-
ber, 1911. I had become a sort of handmaiden to her as she
became less active, filling her bedside waterpitcher and turning on
and off her small Emerson fan. Sometimes Grandmother would
take me by the hand and tell me long stories of her childhood, her
father, her strenuous days when her husband was away at 'war or
on the range. She told me with sadness how several of Sherman's
men knocked the top off sister's grand piano, put it on the lawn,
filled it with hay for their horses, and commandeered her home for
their men.
In the early 1870's Rockdale, Texas, became a growing town
with two railroads for shipping cattle: the International and Great
Northern and the San Antonio and Aransas Pass. They were nick-
named the I and GN and the SAAP. When my mother, Emma,
the youngest child, was about seven, the family decided to move
to Rockdale. They built a good-sized house with land enough for a
garden, barn, horse and cattle lot, and an area for raising chickens
and pigeons. My grandfather loved squabs, and my grandmother
said when sudden company arrived they could go out and get
squabs just the size for cooking. No one knew about allergies then,
so when my grandmother developed asthma, the chickens and
pigeons at the backdoor were not suspected.
Nicholas, the eldest son, managed the cattle when his father
became too old to ride the range. Sometime in the 1880's there
was a terrible freeze and all the cattle were lost. Grandfather then
went into sheep raising with headquarters around Lampasas.
Nicholas had not married until he was about forty, in 1890. A
daughter was born April 7, 1892, named Mattie. The wife and
baby went to live in the Lampasas area. When their second child
was due, Nicholas started out in the wagon for his wife's home for
the delivery. She had kept notches on a stick for each period of
her pregnancy, but she did not reach her home in time. The boy
was born out in the open country with no medical care or even
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Carrington, Evelyn M. Women in Early Texas, book, 1993; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth296851/m1/46/: accessed May 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.