This information was found in the vertical files of the Genealogy Department of the Longview Public Library.

THE AVINGER CITIZEN
Special Historical Edition
June 18, 1954

During the early 1850's, before the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, a little colored boy was getting his first impressions of the world on a plantation in Alabama. Uncle Doss Jones, was that little boy, and until his death Saturday, May 22, he was still forming his daily impressions of the somewhat different world than the one he was born into over a hundred years ago. He lived near Avinger and was the town's oldest citizen, having spent his last ninety years in the immediate vicinity of his farm two miles north of town.

During a recent interview, he clearly recalled having spent his boyhood in Alabama during slavery days. Upon being asked if he remembered the old Massa's name, he promptly replied, "Capin' Marshall." His first home was a large plantation on which he picked many a pound of cotton until old enough to take over the job of weighing.

There came a time, he recalled, when all of the plantation people were sold. this event resulted in his being brought to East Texas at an early age, via New Orleans, up Red River and Cypress by river boat to Jefferson. From Jefferson he was brought by a pioneer family to a farm about three miles west of old Hickory Hill, which later became Avinger.

He still liked his orange soda-pop and friends and well wishers who dropped in to see him, from time to time, were careful to remember to bring him some.