Aunt Lou Amma's Memoirs - Part I

In 1979, at age 79, my mother's sister, Lou Amma Bramblett Armstrong, wrote down some of her memories as a child. Aunt Lou Amma was the forth of eight children of Lee and Maggie Ertle Hall Bramblett, and the first daughter, after the boys; Homer, Tommie and Carl. Daughters, Elna, Cora and Ina would follow; then the fourth boy, Erwin. 

Carl, Tommie, Erwin and Homer
Maggie and Lee

Cora, Lou Amma, Elna and Ina

  
Pages one and two of her hand-written transcript are missing, but what remains provides glimpses of life in and around Johnson County, Texas at the turn of the century. She first describes a journey the family made to visit maternal grandparents, John and Cora Latina Doss Hall , who had moved from west of Cleburne, Texas to the Indian Territory of Kiowa, Roger Mills County, Oklahoma a few years earlier. Lou Amma was only two at the time, so the details of this particular journey no doubt came to her as family lore. 

 In July 1902 (or first of Aug.) papa and mama hitched up to a covered wagon with a mattress in the back for their 5 children to ride on. Elna being about 3 months old and Homer about 7. Must have had springs under the mattress because they had to take cooking utensils along to keep us fed. It took them 11 days to go to grandma Halls. They stayed 11 days and returned in 11 days. Papa said, “It was fun.” Mama said “Never again.”

They took along one bicycle and in town or up along a long hill Homer would get on one peddle and Tommie the other. They attracted lots of attention. I remember one thing about the trip. Wading barefooted in the sand going up a hill.

Note: Roger Mills, Oklahoma is about 300 miles from Johnson County, Texas. Today, that's a 5-hour auto trip. 

Next she describes family life when your papa is a jack-of-all-trades, but primarily a “ginner”  - owner and operator of a cotton gin.

Lee Bramblett (2nd from left) and his gin crew

Since 1902 was the date of our gin burning, [the trip] must have been not long after that. I don’t remember when the gin was built but after papa got it clear of debt he put his Ins. with a Mutual Ins. Co. to be less expensive. Anyway when it burned he could not find a piece of the Mutual Co. left. So he had to go in debt to rebuild.

Later he decided to trade his 144 acre farm (which was located on what we knew as Cris Larimore farms) for a section of land out close to Sweetwater Tex. Then later I remember papa and mama were standing out at the well, I was near, when he told her he traded his section of land for a cotton gin at Egan. Mama cried she was so put out with him. It did no good there so he mortgaged both gins and moved it to Barnsville.

 Mama told on paper that he traded the Barnsville Gin for a grindstone and threw it in the well. Papa sold what equity he had in his grist mill, blacksmith shop, telephone exchange and moved to Cleburne to work for Mr. Powell at a gin about 1918. I believe Tommie bought the telephone exchange wire and etc. but as I remember it was a loss to him. That is not clear.

When I was 15 or in 1915 papa would leave the stands for me to run while he went to Alvarado to run a grist mill over there. I have one of the printed meal sacks to this day. On Saturday, when all gin hands had finished for the day and left, two other bales of cotton came in. Carl was 17, I was 15, Elna was 13. Carl ran the engine to one bale. I ran the stands (also did the weighing) Elna ran the packer. The man that bought the cotton fed the suction. Then Carl went up stairs, tied out the bales and loaded it on the wagon. Then we proceeded in the same order for the next.

One day Uncle Jimmie Hightower brought in a bale and I carelessly failed to weigh the cotton and all. So this is the way I worked it out to know what he owed for ginning. When the bale was tied out and weighed again I knew about how many lbs. It took to make a bale that size so I filled in the gross weight and Uncle Jimmie made me happy when he said, “That was exactly my field weight.”

In the next segment, Lou Amma tells about living in an extended family, early automobiles in Johnson County and  building a new house.