A Texas Tragedy - Part II

Elizabeth and the girls did arrive in Dallas but on the trip home to Antioch, the excitement and fatigue proved too much for C. L., and they were forced to stop and seek help from the nearest source along the way. George McFall, a thin man with a sweeping white beard, ushered them into his home near Wheatland in Tarrant County, and he and his wife Sallie immediately began to care for C. L, in keeping with Southern hospitality. This is part of a letter from Elizabeth to her oldest daughter Cora and husband John Hall, still in Kentucky, still in Kentucky.

If you have not been getting my letters and cards this will fall heavily on you. All was done that could be done to save pap. Dr Wright said that he had no constitution to build on and that he could not take him through a regular course of medicine. Still I dont think that Wright considered him dangerous until Monday morning before he died Wednesday.

I do not think pap thought he would get well. He said once “By good nursing and management we will get away by Sunday but without it we will get off sooner” pap told Dr Wright to do all that he could for him that he wanted to live for the sake of his family. After he commenced taking medicine he seemed to grow sleepy and sluggish and did not seem to suffer at all. He would mutter and talk in his sleep and at times he would rouse up and appear to be almost entirely at himself but as time wore on he became less and less rational and for several days before he died he was almost unconscious of anything. He died as calmly as if falling asleep.

Mr and Mrs McFall spared no trouble, no pains and no expense to wait on pap and see that he had every attention. Mrs Mc would come to our room at all times of the night. She’d come when I was asleep and give pap medicine. They would send to Dallas and get little things they thought he might like and refuse pay when offered to them. Mr Mc sent for the coffin in the evening and the boys did not get to Dallas until late in the night when all the stores were closed and they could not get in. 

Mr Mc put one of his shirts on pap his own were not done up nice and he said he did not want pay for it. I told him that we had been a great expense to him, that we had boarded on him two weeks, that they had a great deal of trouble on our account, that he had hired hands and they had lost so much time for us and I would not be satisfied to take it all and not pay him something. He said that if I thought I’d be better satisfied I might pay him $3.00 for the time his hands lost and that when it suited me. Just any time would do - not to be in a hurry.”

Alice is wanting to go back to Ky. Grandma would work a whole day to get one sweet kiss from any one of the little ones. Tell them not to forget Grandma. Will [a brother, already in Texas] said he would walk 25 miles through the hot sun to see Maggie. Tell her so.

Ma

Maggie, for whom Will would walk 25 miles in the hot sun, was my grandmother Bramblett, daughter of Cora and John. She recalled, “That letter came when I was four. I remember Mother sitting on the edge of the bed and reading the letter aloud. When she finished the last line she lay across the bed and cried brokenheartedly. Because I had never seen Mother weep, I was deeply impressed. That is one of my first memories.”