Evelyn Dillingham--Briggs

Oral History Transcript, undated.

I was born on my daddy's ranch on Mill Creek, about 2 miles southwest of Briggs. It was 1898 and I don't mind telling you a bit. I'm here and hope I live to be 100. The way I feel and the way I work, I think I will.

 

There aren't too many of our old settlers alive now. There's Horace Clinkscales, the McCartys, the Stiles family, and me. That's all I can think of now that have been here through the years.

 

We were all raised on ranches, but my husband was in the mercantile business for 15 years, 1921-35, when this house was built. We sold the store and went into the ranching business. It was on the corner on Main Street in Briggs. It was a general store with men's clothing and other clothing, shoes, groceries, just a general store. People came in and gave me a list, and the Mexicans sometimes gave me a list in Spanish. I learned more Spanish then, than going to school. South of us was all farm land, and there were big families working that land, planting, plowing and all.

 

At that time, Briggs was a big settlement, with 2 or 3 general stores, blacksmith shop, a movie, drug store, 2 barbershops. It was just a nice little country town. There were probably 300 people in the area. The Pulliam farm south of town was real big and he had a lot of families that rented and farmed on the Pulliam land. Edwin Harton had a barber shop; the Ratliff-Moore store; the Linsey store, S.R. Dillingham general merchandise; Mr. Stewart had the blacksmith shop; Clarence Baker had the hardware store; the Pulliams had a nice movie house. The first movie I saw there was a comedy and one of our local boys got so tickled I thought he couldn't get down. The first talkie I ever heard was in Galveston when I was visiting with a friend. We thought that was the greatest thing we'd ever seen.

 

I went to school in the building that's here now. We had 12 grades. There were lots of people who graduated from here that went on to graduate from college. My neighbor, Mrs. Caskey, has six children that went to Briggs schools and every one of them graduated from the University of Texas, and put themselves through. One of her sons is in the Aleutian Islands with the Army, and two girls are teachers. That's Mrs. Malcolm Caskey.

 

One of my first teachers was a Miss Dennis, from Liberty Hill. We took our own lunch and everyone got to school the best way they could. There wasn't any bussing then. Oh yes, Mr. Fred Parsons was another teacher, and Mr. Sullivan. At time schools weren't organized like they are now and we didn't have 4H or scouts or anything like that. We studied spelling, geometry, U.S. History, Texas history; algebra, reading. When I first started there were a couple of grades in each room. The teacher just gave the assignment for one grade to read and then worked with the others. She'd alternate. We used to have spelling programs where people from different localities would come for matches. There wasn't much society or like that.

 

Growing up we learned to sew and cook, or we'd have young folks gatherings, picnics and things like that. We played a lot of games like checkers, Chinese checkers, and worked puzzles. We'd play "snap"--there would be a bunch of young folks in the room and one boy and one girl would be holding hands and would say "Come snap me". If anyone snapped them apart you got up and left the room with them, and chased around until you caught him. It was silly.

 

The Dillingham place joined ours (Skaggs) and I had two brothers who fished and hunted and ran around with Bob, my husband. We got to sparking on the sly and started going together when I was about 13 years old. I've got a ring he gave me when I was nine. He'd slip stick candy in my school desk for my desk mate and me. I've got pictures of us when we were just knee high to a duck. I was 16 and he was ___ when we got married. Our married life was Number One, because we enjoyed the same things and got along good and helped one another. We got married in the Briggs Methodist Church. We were going to have the Bertram Methodist pastor marry us, but there was a big rain and the roads were just awful so he couldn't get here. So we got this other man to marry us. That was in 1913.

 

We had old crank phones as long ago as I can remember. We could talk to Bertram, Florence, Andice, Liberty Hill by going through the switchboard. Lillie and Minnie Harton worked as Central for a while. There was a woman before that, but she moved to Bertram.

 

the churches were the Methodist and Baptist at first. then later the Church of Christ. And the Methodist disbanded.

 

My father was from Lynchburg, West Virginia and my mother was from Missouri. My father had a big bunch of sheep and was grazing those sheep near Hutto, long before any of this land was fenced. It was open country from here to Hutto. He started this way with those sheep, and my mother's family was living at Andice then. they met there, and married at Gabriel Mills. I think my father found this ranch for sale and bought it, so that's why they moved here. I had two brothers, L.S. and Roy Bryan Skaggs.

 

Grandpa Dillingham raised his family in Austin. Mr. Sid, my father-in-law, drifted up this way and bought a ranch close to my daddy's. So my husband and his sister and brother were raised here. The older Dillinghams had gone to Austin from Tennessee. I have a table that my mother's people brought from Missouri in a covered wagon, in about 1871. I remember hearing Mother talking about swimming the Canadian River. They were crossing the river and it got up and washed a little colt away from them, so they had to swim down and get it. They came through Oklahoma, and Mama was scared of the Indians, but they didn't bother them.

 

There's been a domino club here ever since I can remember. They play at this gas station now, and they used to play at the store. There was a Ladies Society at one time; there's a group that meets the 3rd Tuesday every month.They make quilts, pillowcases and things that are needed in homes, or at the nursing home. We visit and have refreshments. Wilma Clinkscales, and Ethel McCarty, Mrs. Daly, myself, two or three people on Rocky Creek--I guess there are 12 or 15 people in it now. The only other club like that I've heard of way back was a Wednesday Bible Class that my mother taught. She made us learn the books of the Bible. She was pretty strict with us, but she was a good teacher.

 

Everybody did their won work and didn't have equipment like we have now, so there wasn't as much free time. We had big iron ranges, and milk coolers, and coffee grinders. We canned, and we had a beef club, in the winter. One man would kill a beef and divide it among the members, then the next month someone else killed his. We had good meat all winter, hung up in the smokehouse. Mother packed sausage in jars and packed lard over it to preserve it. We raised a garden, but didn't can a lot of vegetables. We did can fruit and berries. We had our milk cows, and Mother separated the cream from our Jersey milk with a cream separator, and sold a lot of it. There was an ice man who had an ice house here, and he went to Lampasas several times a week and took the cream up there, to the creamery. That was Lee Patterson.

 

This tub outside here was an old bathtub that came out of our old home. It's galvanized. Now it's filled with flowers.

 

[transcriber's note--Hattie Evelyn Dillingham died 8-16-1980; she is buried in the Dillingham Cemetery in Briggs.]

 

 

Last update:  Saturday, 22-Jul-2023 09:36:40 MDT