Tomlinson Hill

by Chris Tomlinson

  During the first two years, the hotel booked big bands, including Lawrence Welk’s, but the Depression slowly shrank Marlin’s mineral-water tourism. Hilton sold the building to the National Hotel Company, which changed the name to the Falls Hotel.27 The nine-story building remains the most prominent structure in Marlin, but it sits vacant, having never reached its potential.

  The financial shock wave of 1929 eventually trickled down to Marlin’s farmers and merchants. White unemployment in Texas rose from 4.2 percent in 1920 to 5.4 percent in 1933. African-American unemployment jumped from 4.8 percent to 8.8 percent.28 When one of Marlin’s banks collapsed, the Chamber of Commerce and Senater Tom Connally bought it, while other Marlin banks struggled. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration ordered Falls County farmers in 1933 to plow up as much as a third of their cotton crop in the face of a global glut. Many farmers grumbled about destroying crops they had worked hard to cultivate, and the following year, ranchers begrudgingly followed a similar order to reduce their herds of hogs and cattle.29

  To fight unemployment, Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration to hire millions for government projects. White farmers watched with dismay as many of their workers left the fields for government construction jobs. Townspeople, though, welcomed the new schools, streets, roads, and, ultimately, the new Falls County Courthouse in 1939. Farmers didn’t complain quite as much when the Rural Electrification Administration delivered power to their homes for the first time.30

  Marlin hosted the East Texas Chamber of Commerce in April 1931, and with high school football’s growing popularity, Tom McQueen donated land for Marlin High School’s first gridiron. The city continued to grow, and the first Safeway store opened the same year, the first grocery not owned by a local businessman. Business was even good enough that the Scheiblich family opened a second grocery on Coleman Street in 1936, later calling it Kash Way.31

  OLD SETTLERS

  The Old Settlers and Confederate Veterans Association reunions continued to grow in popularity, even during the toughest years of the Depression. Marjorie Rogers, a Marlin-based journalist for both the Marlin Democrat and the Dallas Morning News, wrote a feature story about the 1937 renunion, providing a glimpse into Falls County society. Since tradition dictated that everyone take an elderly person to the reunion, Rogers took ninety-year-old Granny Maxwell:

  Granny Maxwell’s eyes sparkled as we completed our journey and drove up to the tabernacle just as the meeting was being called to order by President Tomlinson. A hush fell over the crowd as Tomlinson’s rich voice boomed out the opening announcement:

  “Ladies and Gentlemen the Old Settlers’ and Confederate Veterans’ reunion of Falls county will now begin its annual reunion. Chaplain Asbury please give the invocation.”

  Minutes of last meeting were read by a son of one of the community’s pioneers. The minutes were virtually the same as those of previous years, for there is little formal business transacted at these reunions.

  President Tomlinson arose and launched immediately into his welcoming address. Occasionally he paused to greet some old timer entering the tabernacle.

  “Well here is Uncle Ed Smith. Come on in Uncle Ed. Sit down here with the rest of your old friends. We are mighty glad to have you here with us.”

  Then he stepped down from the platform to help Uncle Ed find a chair, near the front, where he could hear better. Several other late arrivals claimed the president’s attention before he finally concluded his remarks with the announcement that “now we are going to have some mighty fine music.”

  McCreary’s Music-Makers struck up a lively tune. There was a mixture of old and new melodies from piano, fiddle, saxophone, bass-fiddle, banjo and guitar. The players, all country-bred, played tunes nearest to the hearts of their audience. Wrinkled, sun-burned countenances smiled as the music filled the air. Some patted their feet and there was tremendous applause as McCreary sang “Eliza Jane.”

  Three-minute talks by old settlers followed. The oldest were called first. Most of the audience had heard the same stories for years, but loved to hear them again. Tales of travel to Texas in early days, conditions of the country, Indian fights and carpet-bag rule—all related with as much animation as ebbing strength would permit.

  Several ex-slaves were asked to tell of their trips to the war with “ol’ massa.” They told of swapping tobacco to Yankee soldiers for coffee, dodging Yankee bullets and shells, how they lived on sow-belly and parched corn during the long struggle. These colorful stories by the feeble old darkies drew hearty applause.

  “General Hooks,” who was a member of Forrester’s Brigade brought the house down with his fiery oratory. He ended by singing “That Old Time Religion.” At last President Tomlinson announced the meeting would adjourn for dinner.

  [After dinner] as the crowd formed a huge semicircle around the tabernacle, the pageant opened and from a wooded section of the hill there emerged an old woman sitting erect in a saddle mounted upon a beautiful spirited horse. She rode like a veteran. Following her was a covered wagon, bearing a pioneer family heading for the promised new land. An iron pot and chicken coop were fastened to the rear of the wagon. Dogs preceded the wagon followed by a cow and a calf.

  Presently a band of savage Indians, with bloodcurdling war-hoops, dashed out of the brush and attacked the frontiersman and his family. A terrible fight ensued. The frontiersman, of course won out and the crowd went wild. A large covered wagon drawn by oxen and driven by a man dressed in rawhide clothes ended the pageant. The crowd now moved toward the tabernacle as McCreary’s music signaled the opening of the afternoon session.

  “Professor” Eddins was first on the program with a Brazos Bottom folklore tale for the children. A mortuary was read by one of the prominent U. D. C. ladies of the county and taps were sounded by a great-grandson of one of the early settlers. A member of the county bar, standing behind a large wreath of flowers delivered a memorial address. Handkerchiefs found their way to [the] moist eyes of some of the audience—relatives and close friends of those whose names had been listed in the mortuary report.

  Next came one of the most popular features of the entire reunion—an old fashioned sing-song. President Tomlinson announced that Brother Kirkpatrick would lead a few numbers from the Sacred Harp song book. The community’s best singers were grouped near the front of the tabernacle. Brother Kirkpatrick pitched his voice to do, re, me, fa, sol, la, his hand going to right, center and left as he kept time to the music. Everybody took the pitch and the woods rang with harmony of old-time notes, triangle, circle, square and the like.

  Square dances and [a] Virginia reel closed the day’s program. Young and old joined in the dancing, the young boys and girls catching on quickly to the stately figures of the Virginia reel. An hour before sunset the music lagged, as did the hot and tired dancers. Tomlinson urged them all to come back the next day with well-filled dinner baskets.32

  Farmers faced a lot of hardship, and social events like the reunion helped provide a sense of community. World cotton prices had dropped as Britain promoted cheaper cotton production in their colonies, while in the United States, the boll weevil destroyed cotton crops.

  SHARECROPPING STRUGGLES

  African-American tenant farmers faced a compounded threat during the Depression. When white farmers made little on the crop, they paid little to the sharecropper. White farmers also hired machines to replace workers.33 Historians debate whether black flight to cities sped mechanization or whether the reverse is true, but the two trends took place in tandem. At the depth of the Depression, in 1935, 90 percent of black farmworkers in some parts of Texas were unemployed and the Falls County population was shrinking.34

  To understand what life was like for the African-American Tomlinsons, I sought out the last two of Vincent and Julie Tomlinson’s children still living in 2012, Lizzie Mae and Charles. Lizzie Mae was ninety-two years old and living with her daughter Sandra Tryon in Houston. Sandra expl
ained that Lizzie suffered some dementia, but she agreed to let me interview her mother, since she still remembered much of her early life. Sandra put me in touch with Charles and his wife, Zelma, who lived in Wichita, Kansas. I arranged for them, Sandra, and Lizzie Mae to meet me on Tomlinson Hill. We walked the Hill together and they showed me the places of their childhood, and we paid our respects to their ancestors buried there. They shared with me their life stories.

  Vincent and Julie had worked their rented farm, raising hogs and vegetables, doing their best to remain self-sufficient as they raised their children. They lived at the intersection where the roads to Lott and Chilton merged into a single highway to Marlin.35 Vincent took in his father after he lost his vision, and Peter spent most of his final days sitting on the front porch of the family’s two-room shack, listening as his granddaughter Lizzie Mae and the other children played around him.36 Peter died from prostate cancer at the age of seventy-seven, in 1926, and was buried in the black cemetery in Lott.37

  Julie gave birth to Vincent Tomlinson, Jr., in 1930, John K. in 1932, Charles in 1933, and Oliver Terry in 1935. While Charles went by his proper name, John was known as J.K., and Oliver went by O.T.38 Large families were normal on the farm, since mortality rates remained high for African-Americans. In 1936, 1,321 black children died for every 100,000 births, compared to 961 deaths for whites. A black woman was twice as likely as a white woman to have a stillborn child or to die during childbirth.

  In addition to their eight children, Vincent and Julie took in at least three others. At one point, fourteen people lived in the twelve-hundred-square-foot cabin that Vincent built on Deer Creek, and Julie fed and cared for them all. Lizzie Mae said the children didn’t mind; it just meant more kids to play with and to do chores, like gathering firewood or drawing water from the well.39 Vincent and Julie had their own bed, but the children had to share theirs, divided up between boys and girls. The entire house was used for sleeping, except for a corner used as the kitchen. Charles described it:

  You had to go up about one, two, three—about four steps up to the porch. We called it the gallery back then. That’s the only place we had to gather. It went from one end of the house to the other end of the house. And then you had that one entrance to the front and had one entrance to come in through the back door.

  But when you come in the house, you come into a bedroom in them days. And then the stove, we got heat by, was in the bedroom and that’s where we’d sit during the day.

  There were four rooms. Because every room was a bedroom, there wasn’t just a room by itself for a living room; you didn’t have that. Just had a place to sleep.40

  Vincent and Julie rented one hundred acres from Albert Tomlinson, and in addition to the cotton field, they put in a vegetable garden, a pigsty, chicken coop, a smokehouse, a tool shed, and a small barn for a mule, a horse, and a few dairy cows. Vincent took care of the hogs or the cows, and he sold surplus hogs for cash. Julie took care of the chickens and the vegetable garden. Every winter, Vincent would slaughter a hog, and Julie made pork sausage to hang in the smokehouse alongside the bacon. When they had extra vegetables, usually turnips, Vincent and Julie’s children sold them at a roadside stand. Vincent also liked to hunt rabbits and squirrels.

  Lizzie Mae and the other Tomlinson children attended the Tomlinson Negro School in the late 1920s, when conditions were desperate. The Tomlinsons and Stallworths had moved the wooden two-room shack to a safer place after the Deer Creek flood, placing it in Cedar Valley. The school did not have electricity or running water, and the students used an outhouse. The rough-hewn structure, with one classroom and a small office, was thirty years old when Lizzie Mae started school, and the building doubled as a church on Sundays.41

  Julia Ann Taylor and Mabel Tyler divided the forty children, one teaching first through third grades, and the other fourth through seventh. While one group listened to the teacher, the other worked on assignments or played outside. Classes lasted from 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., with a one-hour lunch break. The Tomlinson children took peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some crackers for their lunch.42 The schools themselves were physically uncomfortable, and middle and high schools were far away. The teachers struggled to pay their own bills. To make money on the side, Taylor operated a speakeasy out of her house on the Hill.43 After seventh grade, the children attended a junior high in Lott and high school in Marlin, if they hadn’t already dropped out.44

  Two-thirds of black schools only had one room, with one teacher who taught all ages. Tax records show that white school property was valued at three times that of black school property. School districts paid African-American teachers $92 a month, compared to $121 for white teachers and the student-to-teacher ratio was 39–1 for blacks and 30–1 for whites. But Texas was actually a bright spot in African-American education, with the state spending forty dollars a year on each black student, the highest in the South, while it spent forty-seven dollars per white student. African-American children valued what little education they received, though, and black illiteracy in Texas plummeted to 13.4 percent by 1930.45

  Sharecroppers needed the entire family to help plant, chop, and pick cotton, so black schools synchronized their calendar with the farmwork. When the cotton was ready to be harvested, everyone went into the fields. New mothers took their infants and kept them on cotton sacks while they pulled the fuzzy white balls off the shrubs. Charles recalled women giving birth in the fields.46 Lizzie remembered putting on bonnets, long-sleeved shirts, and pants to keep her skin from blistering:

  I know we had to go to the field every day. I’d lay down on the porch and sleep and I’d hide up under there when it was time to go to [the] field and they would look for me and they’d say that’s where she was, trying to hide to keep from working, but we had a good time. We had to pick cotton. We had to chop cotton. We had to pull the corn off of the stalks.

  We had to pick that cotton you know in a big sack. My brother [Ellie] could pick about twelve hundred pounds a day. He was a proud picker.47

  Life for the black Tomlinsons always teetered on the edge of disaster. Charles told me that one bad crop or a boll weevil infestation could leave the family in dire straits. In those years, Vincent signed the family up to pick cotton in West Texas or near Corpus Christi later in the year. The children would miss school when it started in September and not get back to Marlin until the first week of December.48

  Lizzie enjoyed going to school, but she told me her younger brothers, particularly J.K. and O.T., would disappear into the woods when class started. The teachers would report them to Vincent, who’d punish them, but the boys never liked sitting in the stuffy wooden schoolhouse, crowded together with the other children.49

  But J.K. and O.T. also fought, and at least one bout ended with a trip to the doctor. When J.K. was losing, he pulled a knife and swung it at O.T., cutting open the base of his ring and pinkie fingers. The doctor offered O.T. a choice of having his fingers either curled up or pointing out straight. He chose them curled up so he could box, one of his favorite sports.50

  Charles said he knew that white society didn’t really care if he got an education. He’d seen the white schools, with their fancy buildings and new books. Some black children saw no use in going to school when the odds were that they were never going to be more than farmworkers. Most didn’t make it to graduation. Charles finished high school, partly because he was determined, and partly because the teachers helped him:

  The teacher wouldn’t put too much pressure because she knows what you’ve been doing. She’ll give you time to catch on and get it right. I appreciated that part, too. They was awful good to us all.

  I didn’t have a reason for making a life out of schooling. I just got my lessons so I could finish school so I would have something. I could read and write. That’s what my dad said you are going to learn in school anyway, read and write and knowing to subtract so the white man will not cheat you out of everything you got.51

  The black Tom
linsons celebrated Juneteenth to mark the end of slavery, but Charles said Vincent and Julie never spoke about the family’s slave history, except to say their grandfather Peter was freed from slavery on Juneteenth. Charles said he never thought twice about sharing a last name with Albert until his early twenties, when a neighbor explained how most of the black families in Falls County took the surnames of former slaveholders.

  Albert visited Vincent about once a week to see how the cotton was growing. He would pull up to the gate outside Vincent’s house, and Charles would run down to open the gate for Albert, who would drive his car up to the cabin and get out, carrying his walking stick. Charles said Albert never entered the black family’s house, but he would walk into the field with Vincent, and they’d talk for about an hour:

  He furnished the seeds and everything. If he got two bales of cotton, my daddy would get the third bale.

  Albert would just come to talk to Daddy. He wouldn’t talk to nobody else. Nobody else was in that conversation. He just come to talk to Daddy because he wanted to know about how’s he doing with the crop, you know, how’s everything working out. [Albert] told him that Daddy had too much garden, that [Albert] needed some of that land for cotton. My dad said, “Well, we got to eat.” I forget the answer, but anyway, he still had that same amount of garden for years.52

  Julie worked for Albert and his wife, cleaning their house, churning their butter, and milling their grain. Lizzie and Charles said they would go to Albert’s house to see their mom, but they always used the back door and never entered past the kitchen. No white family in that era allowed African-Americans to use the front door. The wood-framed Victorian house intimidated the children, and they knew Albert didn’t want black children in the house at all.53