HLRGazette Archives

Wood County History

The diary/journal of John Newsom
Ed. Note: The following is an excerpt from the dairy of John Haines Newsom, an early Wood County settler. Newsom Street in Mineola is named for him.
His diary is so lengthy and detailed that it could be made into a small book. He offers many every day glimpses into early life in the county spanning the period from 1859 to 1892. The following is the Foreword to the diary and one installment Newsom wrote on his experiences with farming after a very long journey by wagon from Georgia to Texas with his family.
Arrival in Wood County at Quitman
It being only about five years in growing, everything was new and fresh and the carpenters saw and hammer was heard from sun to sun.
A fine two-story school house stood out in bold relief as evidence along with a fine church and Masonic Hall combined, to show to the weary traveler that he was among friends of civilization and refinement..
Leaving Quitman, we drove four miles into the country to a friend and kinsman by the name of William Hart, who met us at the gate and welcomed us to his house. He gave us the freedom of his house and purse until we could locate, which we succeeded in doing the second day thereafter.
We rented a place from Ben R. Willson situated seven miles from the town of Quitman in a southeast course off from any public road. We moved there and began unloading our wagons for the first time in two months and three days.
On the second day of February, 1860, we were ready to commence to take an inventory of what we needed to commence work. At this time of year, all the places in the country that are in repair are all taken up. This place had lain idle the year before, and the houses and fencing were in wretched bad repair. But it was the only place to be had in the whole county and had just enough land for our forces to cultivate.
Farming in Texas
Being fresh from Georgia, entirely too much for the same force if we had had five year acclimating in Texas. But we went to work with vigor. We went into the woods and got out some timber and soon had some plow stocks made. Some fencing was out up and a spot was cleaned up to start plowing in. In less than one week, we had our plows going and I was the second man in the neighborhood to commence planting corn and the first to begin planting cotton.
We managed our crop finely, notwithstanding our neighbors predicted that we would make a complete failure if we did not change our mode of working with it. They told us our way might do for Georgia but in Texas we would have to adopt the Texas mode of cultivation. But I was stubborn to be thus controlled, so went on in my own way and, sure enough, came near making a total failure of the crop, but not on account of wrong cultivation.
About the first of June, the rain stopped and we had no more rain until the 21st of August. When it did set in, it rained consecutively for every day for twenty-one days. Out of our very short crop of cotton, being shortened one-half by drought, it was now shortened fully one-third by the excessive continued rain. Thus, our crop was reduced to a very meager one.
Our corn was not cut off much by the drought and we did not lose a great deal of corn in the wet spell. We gathered of good sound corn an average of 25 bushels to the acre and gathered from 40 acres of cotton 11 bales averaging 500 to the bale.
Our wise neighbors that knew so much about how land should be worked in cotton and corn in Texas (on land that they claimed to be superior to the land we cultivated) made an average of 10 bushels of smutty corn to the acre and about one bale of cotton to 10 acres of land planted in cotton!
I had the satisfaction of boasting to them about how I had outstripped them farming. They were not a little chagrined at my success, for they well knew in the starting they had every advantage of me that it was possible to have. They also knew that in addition to other disadvantages that I had to contend with, we could not get corn to feed our stock beyond the first of May. Corn was not to be had. We paid $2.00 per bushel for what we did get and could only get enough to make bread for ourselves. So I lost a great deal of time grazing my mules. On one occasion, two of them got out of sight one night and I had a two-day race after them before I got them. They had started back to Georgia, but I overhauled them about 30 miles out.
This year, 1860, is and will be referred to by Texans for all time to come as the driest and hottest year that ever was. During the long dry hot spell, the air became so heated that the wind blowing on you would not cool you off. The wind itself was hot.
A great many towns in Texas this year were burned, some say by spontaneous combustion. But, as an offset to the short crop this year, the forest trees were loaded down with fruit. The very leaves of the trees bore fruit. The red oak leaves were laden with wheat and the leaves of the post oak trees were born down to the ground with something that, more than anything else, resembled cow peas.
Ed Note: Newsom's diary is too lengthy to print in a series of consecutive installments, but we will return to it from time to time to provide further glimpses of the trials and triumphs of life in early Wood County.