Sixty Years in Texas

This book was published in 1908.From the books prefaceIn writing the sketches of the old pioneers that are recorded in this book, and the hardships that my father and family endured, and the many difficulties that we finally overcame, I have tried to confine myself to the facts as they occurred, and I will also state as a fact that I am not an educated man. I never had an opportunity of securing a common edu- cation. I went to school five or six months in an old log cabin — the first built in the north part of the county. The school house was known as the Bark Log College, and the school was known as a Blab School. The teacher gave the scholars the privilege of studying their lessons out loud. I studied gram- mar for three weeks, and became far enough ad- vanced to know a noun from a pronoun, and tried to parse simple sentences the last week of the school. If the reader should find grammatical or other errors in sketch or poem, I will kindly ask you to pass the imperfection by; and on the other hand, if you find anything that you appreciate in sketch or poem, be good enough to speak a kind word about it. It will cheer and gladden my heart, and I shall appreciate it very, very much. When I was growing up I determined to secure the means to educate myself. But when I reached my majority the war came on, and before the war closed I married, and after the war closed I found myself with wife and baby in a log cabin out on the bald prairie, and it was a hard, hard struggle for a living. We had four children born to us, and we determined if, by hard work and economy, we could save enough to give our children better school ad- vantages, we would do so, and we have done that much at least. Read more