Mollie Barcenia Watson Crawford
by Marylee Watson Knight, 2003Mollie Barcenia Watson was born October 2, 1894, the fourth child of Joseph Fowler Watson, Sr. and Sallie Beatrice Garland, but the oldest of their children that lived to maturity. Reared in a family that placed high value on education, Mollie B. focused on becoming a school teacher.
She married Samuel Scott Crawford, the son of Andrew Jackson Crawford and Loduska Stark Jones. Sam, who was an accomplished barber, had previously been married to the former Belle Woods. Following their divorce, Sam was a single parent, struggling to rear his three children Garrett, Inez and James. James was still quite young when Sam and Mollie B. were married. Perhaps it was because James was so young, or perhaps it was because he had learning disabilities, but James quickly became the child of Mollie B.'s heart.
When Sam died August 4, 1944, Mollie B. graciously arranged for him to be buried in Waldrop Cemetery beside a stillborn daughter of his first marriage, who was born and died on April 2, 1910, and beside Belle, the mother of his children, who had died in 1926.
Mollie B. and James made their home together until Mollie B. was elderly. She worried that, when she died, there would be no one to see after James and that there would be people who would take advantage of him. Although it grieved her greatly, she made the necessary arrangements for James to become a resident at the State School in Austin. As soon as possible, she managed to get him transferred to the State School in Lufkin where she could go to visit him. She knew she had done the right thing when she saw how happy James was at the school where he had a variety of activities and a lot of friends. James saved the money he earned in the school workshop and bought his "mama" a little block and white television. It was hard to say who was the proudest ... James because he had earned the money and bought the gift, or Mollie B. because he had earned the money and bought the gift. Needless to say, that TV was one of her great treasures.
When Mollie B.'s health began to fail and she started making preparations to enter a nursing home, she was adamant that she had to make the final arrangements for herself and James. She went to a local funeral home and paid for both their service. She choose James a burial plot on Waldrop Cemetery, beside his mother and father. For herself she choose a plot in Walton Cemetery, in the Delray Community, in a row with her parents and siblings.
When Mollie B. died on November 12, 1978, she was buried beside her brother Joseph Fowler "Jake" Watson, Jr. in Walton Cemetery. The cemetery lies within the Headright land grant their great-grandmother Catherine Lindsey received when she came to TX in the spring of 1836, something that always made it special to Mollie B.