ancestors' hardships left families proud of their heroic roots. Consider how
vastly different stories from three local Brazos Valley citizens weaved together
an epic history lesson for pioneer Texas.
Hinds Pruitt, posed for the cover of Frontier Times in October 1940. Born
in Blanco County in 1859, Mary Pruitt lived through Civil War events plus Indian raids
and scares, when horse thievery reigned. Shotgun powder blasts into cotton provided
fire. Women used the "baker" to cook meals, while combinations of "greens, hog jowls,
and seasoning" produced mouthwatering "pot liquor." Mary's family cooked biscuits on
an open fire until they received the first cook stove in the county. Their spinning wheel
"converted woolen yarn into linsey-woolsey dresses" and "homespun coarse breeches."
Though walnut bark dyed their cloth, none compared to Mary's first "red-spotted store
calico dress!" But Mary's greatest seamstress challenge was "turning the heel of the sock,"
until Wheeler & Wilson provided the sewing machine after the Civil War.
ship to New York City. He rode a train to St. Louis, Missouri, sold newspaper subscriptions to learn English, and married
Emma Kilmer in 1877. He endured beatings as one of the first AFL union leaders, worked seventeen years with Anheuser-
Busch, lived three years in Kansas City until a flood destroyed the family's home, then moved the family via covered wagon
to Hereford, Texas in 1904. For three years, they lived in a "half dugout," where Linda's father was born. Fred was the
first County Treasurer and helped organize Olton, Texas. Emma washed with homemade lye soap and quilted bedding
from men's wool suits. Around 1916, they owned a washing machine and a "round oak" coal cook stove. Years later,
friends found the dugout and restored the old stove, placing it in a local museum.
Around 1990, Olton citizens wrote a play in honor of the Schreier family.
Ray, recalled life from 1917-1924 in Girvin, Texas. Their parents, Damon and
Laura, raised three boys while living in a detached railroad baggage car. Employed
by the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway (KCM&O) as a Section Foreman
for track maintenance, Damon supervised a small crew of "snipes" who also lived
in temporary housing. With no telephones or utilities, the family carried water 75
yards from a concrete cistern near the track. Laura burned chopped up railroad ties
in a flat-top stove for cooking and heating water. The family recycled bath water
on Saturday night, and Laura also used home-made lye soap to wash clothes. For
extra income, Laura sold milk, butter, eggs, and chicken meat and washed the
snipes' clothing. Monthly, the family rode
the crew's railroad motorcar to Fort Stockton
for supplies and doctor visits.