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Range -lore
Nellie B. Cox
San Angelo, Texas.
RANGE -LORE
Page one
Mrs. Eleanor Ervin who eame to
Susalmgelee in 1886, is 96
years old and until about two
years ago was (as she express-
ed) sprier than most girls
nom.
She says: "I was born in Missouri and when I
was about six years old, my father brought us to
Limestone County:Texas. Yes, thatwas a long time
age. I can't remember it much except that there
were Indians everywhese. My mother stayed scared
all the time. My father was friendly with some
Indians and they would bring us children beads and
trinkets of all kinds and also fresh meat.. One time
Page two
500 Indians passed our house after they had burned a
small settlement and killed the settlers. We had
been warned and hid out. Mother was worse scared
after that so father moved us to Mississippi. I
married my first husband there. I got word that he
was sick at a commissary during the Civil War, so
I took my oldest boy and started to him. neighbor
took us in a wagon. It was so muddy we bogged down
and then had to ferry across a river. 's (Here the
daughter, herself an old woman,interrupted to re-
mind her mother of samething)•"Now, daughter, you
don't remember like I do. You weren't there. I
can't remember the name of the river. It wasn't
the Mississippi River. I got to my husband anyhow
and he got well, but he didn't live many years.
va.fter Mr. Ervin and I had been married a few
years we moved by wagons to Uvalde, Texas. Indians
were there, too, but about all they did was to steal
horses on moonlight nights. My husband and son
would take the other children and spend the night In
the corn patch. The Indians could have found us, but
they never did. We sold our goats and other stuff to
Nub Pulliam's brother-in-law. My husband knew Mr.
Pulliam far back. He (Mr. Ervin) attended the wedding
of Mr. Pulliam and his first wife- Mary Holmes, I
think was the girl's name.
Page three
"after selling out, we came to the Concho Country,
first to Ben Fiaklin and later to San Angelo. We have
lived at Knickerbocker, Sonora and other places around
in this country.
"Tom Ketchum was a good boy. He got off with
bad company. I knew all the boys. I heard Sam say
that all he wanted was a horse branded S.L.S. I don't
know why. Tom always did things for poor people,*gave
them what he could. Yes, he might have been a kind of
Robin Hood. I knew a girl in this country who joined
up with a gang of desperadoes. When she was growlng
up she was pert and different to most girls of that
time, but she learned to shoot, first with one hand
and then with the other hand, She helped her bunch
in robberies and was finally caught, convicted and
sent to the "pen". She was real smart.
"I remember when Will Carber was killed and
another man caught at Sonora who were thought to be
trying to rob a bank. That wasn't so many years ago.
"/f my memory wasn't so bad I could tell a great
deal more."
Runge -lore
is1131.10(;%.1
Lre. Ustruor 1-1"vin. 216 11th ''.trost,
LA‘n ithgelo, Tows, Interviewed January
6, 1:338.