USA > Texas > Cherokee County > A history of Cherokee county (Texas) > Part 10
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The present decade has marked a revival of interest in or- chards. The live-at-home slogan, together with a better knowl- edge of insect and disease control, has resulted in a significant increase in peach acreage.
THE TOMATO INDUSTRY
In the beginning only a small wrinkled relative of the poisonous
1In 1902 the Model Farm of the Cotton Belt, with its station at Brunswick, was established on land purchased from the Morrill Company.
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nightshade family, an outcast from the realm of food. Next a garden ornament with the romantic name of love-apple. Finally an article of commerce shipped by trainloads to supply its uni- versally advertised vitamins to waiting millions. Such are the major divisions in the life story of the tomato, now one of Cherokee County's ranking industries.
Brought from Peru by 16th century Spanish explorers and later scientifically developed by American plant breeders, the tomato made its real commercial début just in time to afford the exponents of diversified East Texas farming another crop. Chero- kee County became the pioneer Texas tomato field.
The origin of the Cherokee County tomato industry is linked with the success of its peach industry. Carlot shipments of peaches brought American Refrigeration Transit Company of- ficials to Jacksonville. Finding soil and climate similar to that of Crystal Springs, Mississippi, the tomato center with which they were familiar, they urged Jacksonville farmers to capitalize their experience in peach shipping and enter the tomato business.
Before their tomato propaganda had visible results, however, two Cherokee brothers-in-law, C. D. Jarratt and W. R. Stout, employed in the Cotton Belt Railroad offices at Tyler, made the acquaintance of an ex-Mississippian growing tomatoes on a small scale for express shipments. Amazed by his season's returns in 1896, the railroad men determined to sell the tomato deal to their home-folks. Week-end after week-end found them in Craft, the little Cherokee County community where the Jarratt family owned land. Eloquently they pictured to relatives and friends the new road to wealth. In the end a few caught the vision, agreed to risk some forty acres and prepared to plant the first carlot crop of Texas tomatoes.
Thus a little band of Craft men-R. B. Jarratt, S. H. Jarratt, A. L. Dover, C. A. Walker, W. N. Goodson, Joe Sharp and Tom Taylor-dared to blaze a new trail. In the face of being criticized as fools for planting tomatoes for money, despite the handicaps of inexperience, they laid the foundation for an industry which has had an almost phenomenal development reaching far beyond East Texas.
Although they financed two of the crops, C. D. Jarratt and W. R. Stout continued their work in Tyler during the first growing season. When the tomatoes were ready for market Jar- ratt took the first car to St. Louis. Thus began the long career, both as buyer and grower, which won for him the title, "Father of the East Texas Tomato."
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On May 27, 1897, S. H. Jarratt packed the first crate for a Palestine hotel.2 On June 14 the first car was loaded, two days being required to complete the job. And what a car! Pops, cat- faces, scars and blisters! All the culls now barred by the in- spector's eagle-eye went in with the choice fruit. Fortunately for those amateur shippers the market of 1897 was not glutted. Some six or seven cars constituted Craft's season shipment.
The entire county awaited returns. Two hundred and fifty dol- lars for one acre of tomatoes and that at a season when the old- time agricultural system yielded not a penny. Farm land was valued at $5 to $10 per acre. Cotton was bringing five cents per pound. No wonder skeptical neighbors who had jeered at the "fool tomato venture" longed for a share in the gold mine. Not surprising that some gins failed to run in 1898.
Community after community joined the ranks of the tomato- growers. A decade later, June 10, 1907, Jacksonville alone shipped forty-two cars in one day. Two decades later, 1917, Jacksonville was the center of a circle with an eight-mile radius producing ninety per cent of all the tomatoes shipped from Texas. Despite the extension of acreage in East Texas, Southwest Texas and the Río Grande Valley, Cherokee County is still recognized as the center of the state's tomato industry.
Lack of space makes reference to individuals who have played significant rôles in the Cherokee tomato drama necessarily brief. Almost contemporaneously with the Craft venture, Frank B. Guinn, of Rusk (a lawyer by profession and a horticulturist by avocation), who had long visioned the development of East Texas through the promotion of the vegetable industry, began an in- tensive study of tomato culture and tomato markets. His "tomato schools" gave signal impetus to the industry. Through the columns of his newspapers J. E. McFarland of Jacksonville has rendered invaluable assistance in promoting the spread of the tomato area. A. Y. Shoemaker was one of the veteran directors of the ship- ping end of the tomato deal.
Tomatoes were first shipped pink, in four-basket crates, packed at home. With the extension of acreage, increased tonnage, more distant markets and the development of better artificial ripening processes, the marketing system has changed to the present shed- packed "green deal," eliminating the cost of refrigeration. F. J. Sackett was the pioneer promoter of the "green deal." Cash track
2H. L. Carlton and S. R. McKee of Mount Selman and doubtless others grew tomatoes for express shipments in 1897.
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sales have also replaced the early practice of sending a man to represent the shippers' interests in commission house sales.
In 1934, the one hundredth anniversary of the use of the tomato as food, the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce conceived the idea of making the United States more tomato-minded through the observance of a National Tomato Week, June 3-9. The nation- wide celebration reached its zenith in the colorful coronation pageant, Spirit of the Tomato, staged June 4 as a part of the Jacksonville Tomato Festival. Attended by twenty-two princesses from towns in the tomato-growing area, Miss Billye Sue Hackney, of Jacksonville, was crowned the first tomato queen of the United States. Cherokee County princesses included Gene Gregg of Rusk, Helen Shattuck of Alto and Mary L. Stark of Gallatin.
Despite its singularly romantic development and the excessive profits sometimes made by individuals, the tomato deal is always a risk for the grower. Unfavorable weather conditions, insects and plant diseases frequently take heavy toll. Today overproduc- tion is at the root of its ills. The United States and Canada will consume just so many carloads. When more tomatoes than this are produced the growers inevitably suffer. Faced with a ruinous half-cent-per-pound market in the 1934 season, East Texas growers sought the cooperation of Mississippi in a concerted effort to force higher prices through a tomato strike. The move- ment, for the most part peaceable, proved futile and the tomatoes were left to rot in the fields. Yet through the lean years and the fat the true tomato man plants again, always hoping to win in the long run.
THE MELON INDUSTRY
The watermelon is another product of Cherokee soil which has helped to make the county's agricultural reputation enviable. Carlot shipments began at Morrill in 1902. Six years later Morrill growers shipped seventy-two cars. The county's banner record is one hundred and sixty-five acres of melons on one farm. The largest yield per acre has been two thousand melons. The champion melon weighed one hundred and eight pounds. Two Cherokee County farmers, J. Palmer Schochler and L. B. Russell, have gained national distinction as melon breeders, the Schochler and Russell melon seed being sold throughout the United States.
Saving thousands of pounds of seed a season is no small task. Since a very irate negro woman tried to fulfill her contract to save the seed on a ten-acre Schochler melon patch by raking them
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out with a spoon and abandoned the job as hopeless, a new process has been adopted. In preparation for a cutting day the perfect melons are pulled and left to overripen in order that the seed may be more easily separated from the pulp. When some thousand are thus collected the cutting begins. Halves, minus the hearts, are placed in a large trough where workers, using as a rule only two strokes to a half, rake out the seed, which pass from the trough to a sand screen where the pulp is removed. After being thoroughly cleaned, they are left to dry in the shade. Thus five girls may save four hundred pounds of seed a day.
COTTON
High prices after the Civil War led to a tremendous increase in cotton acreage at the expense of wheat and other crops. In 1874 the East Texas Immigration Journal reported Cherokee County producing an annual average of approximately 10,000 bales of cotton. According to the New Birmingham Times, 8,283 bales were grown on 39,745 acres in 1888. Evidently either adver- tising zeal had led the Journal to undue boasting or 1888 had brought adverse weather conditions.
By 1892 Cherokee County papers were voicing the appeal of Texas bankers for cotton acreage reduction. With middling cot- ton in Galveston and New Orleans quoted at 61/4 cents per pound, reduction was declared the only hope of higher price. Captain W. H. Lovelady and John Montgomery went to Austin to attend a state meeting of cotton-growers called to consider the propo- sition. Statistics for the next year, however, show an increased production.
Acreage continued to increase until the United States govern- ment took the matter in hand. In 1933 County Agent W. H. Washington, C. S. Ousley of Craft, E. P. Palmer of Alto and T. A. Sherman of Rusk were appointed as the Cherokee County committee in charge of the famous cotton-plow-up campaign. Cherokee farmers signed 2,120 plow-up contracts, which brought them approximately $240,000 in benefit and option payments. Continuing to support the Roosevelt program for 1934-35 cotton acreage reduction, Cherokee growers signed 2,680 contracts, in- volving $166,768 in rental payments and a minimum of $47,680 in parity payments.
THE GRANGE
During the '70s and '80s Cherokee County was a stronghold for the Grange, a national organization officially known as the
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Patrons of Husbandry, which sought to effect an agricultural regeneration by rescuing the farmer from the ruinous credit and one-crop system prevailing after the Civil War. The first county grange was organized at Social Chapel on Box's Creek in 1874. John B. Long, a charter member, became a state as well as a county grange leader. In 1891 he was Master of the Texas Grange. J. M. B. McKnight was for a time president of the county organization. John Anderson and John J. Felps were also ardent grange workers. Local granges established cooperative business enterprises which at first proved profitable. The Alto Cooperative Association of the Patrons of Husbandry, chartered in 1882, is doubtless typical. It opened with a capital of four hun- dred dollars and began selling family groceries. Two years later it was handling general merchandise and had a paid-in capital of $4,180.
In later years the Farmers' Alliance and the Farmers' Union sought agricultural advancement.
NURSERIES
For more than sixty years the nursery business has been a growing Cherokee industry. Larissa was its first center. In 1880 Yoakum & Company, a firm established by Doctor F. L. Yoakum, former president of Larissa College, advertised the largest nursery stock ever offered in the South. George A. Long was another Larissa pioneer. S. Z. Alexander established a nursery at Mt. Selman in 1893.
In 1878 Reverend N. A. Davis, a Presbyterian minister who had been engaged in the nursery business at Rusk, established the first Jacksonville nursery, near the present A. K. Dixon home. As an employee in the Davis nursery Wesley Love, afterward owner of a five-hundred acre orchard, took his first lessons in peach culture.
The S. R. McKee nursery of Jacksonville is the oldest of the present nurseries, tracing its descent from the Yoakum Company.
ROSE AND PLANT FARMS
In recent years commercial rose growing has become an im- portant industry in the Jacksonville territory. The first carlot shipment was made by the Clarke Rose Nursery to Manchester, Connecticut, in 1928. Express shipments are billed to stations ranging from the state of Washington to the Carolinas. With a reasonable season Jacksonville growers can produce 500,000 rose plants, representing some $35,000 income. A sixteen-acre
HONORABLE JOHN B. LONG
RICHARD B. REAGAN
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rose field, with sixty varieties of blooming roses, merits the poet's description, "a thing of beauty and a joy forever."
During the past decade plant farms have also proved sources of profit. Cherokee tomato, pepper, onion, egg-plant, cauliflower, cabbage and other plants are marketed by express and parcel post, not only throughout the United States but in Canada and Cuba. At the peak of the season mail cars often prove too small for the daily consignments. In 1933 approximately one hundred million plants were shipped from Jacksonville; one Ponta farm reported business totaling $20,000. These are the chief shipping centers.
COUNTY AND HOME DEMONSTRATION AGENTS
In 1909, H. W. Acker was appointed special agent for farm demonstration work. In 1916, Frank B. Phillips became the first county agent. Until the commissioners court assumed the obliga- tion, the agent's salary was paid by the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce. H. L. Clyburn is the 1934 agent. In 1929, Miss Irene Price, the present home demonstration agent, began work. The inauguration of this service for Cherokee farm women has proved invaluable during the recent years of economic disaster, not only in the production and conservation of food but in giving rural women and girls a happier existence.
In 1922, largely through the efforts of Mrs. A. G. Adams of Jacksonville, the negro women were given an opportunity for improvement in living conditions. Mrs. Adams became personally responsible for raising the two hundred dollars annually necessary to supplement the state's apportionment and maintain a negro home demonstration agent. Although in recent years the Negro County Council has raised this fund, Mrs. Adam's continued encouragement has contributed much to the success of the work. Since the beginning, Lula B. Ragsdale has been agent. Improved kitchens, home and yard beautification contests, garden, poultry, canning, balanced diet, rug and various other projects have resulted in marked advancement among club members. For twelve years J. C. Bradford, negro county agent, has successfully directed a program of economic development among the men and boys of his race.
THE CHEROKEE COUNTY FAIR AND COLT SHOW
Interest in agricultural advancement has been mirrored in public exhibits. In 1893, largely through the efforts of John B. Long, General John M. Claiborne, John B. Reagan, Joe D. Baker,
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For Peyton Irving, the principal and founder of the school, surviving students have a respect almost akin to reverence. Emi- grating from Virginia in 1856, Professor Irving opened a school at Lynn Flat in Nacogdoches County. Leaving the schoolroom for the army, he became an orderly of General Albert Sydney Johnston. After the battle of Shiloh, ill health forced his retire- ment from Confederate service. When his strength permitted it, he again taught at Lynn Flat until Doctor J. M. Noell invited him to open a school at Alto. Here he brought his bride, Miss Emily Massey, in 1864. In 1865 he moved to Rusk where he directed the Cherokee High School until he accepted a position on the Masonic Institute faculty. Later he taught in Galveston, Ladonia and Cleburne. Death came at Cleburne in 1923. His son, Peyton, Jr., was for many years prominently connected with the State Department of Education.
RUSK MASONIC INSTITUTE
In accordance with the Masonic policy of promoting educational interests, Rusk local organizations provided Cherokee County with its chief school in the '70s and '80s.
In 1869 a group of citizens had organized the Rusk Educational Association and purchased land on which they expected to build a school. After two years of effort, hampered by inadequate resources, the association sold its claims to the Euclid Lodge No. 45 and the Cherokee Chapter No. 11, Royal Arch Masons. The Masons erected a two-story colonial building on Henderson Street, the present site of the grammar school, and opened the Rusk Masonic Institute, with ninety-six students in attendance. On March 14, 1873, it was granted a state charter with the following board of trustees: R. H. Guinn, C. C. Francis, J. T. Wiggins, J. J. Mallard, Thomas E. Hogg, T. L. Philleo and M. H. Bonner.
The first R. M. I. faculty consisted of four members : John Joss, superintendent and principal of the male department ; Peyton Irving, principal of the female department; Mrs. R. E. Shanks, principal of the primary department ; Miss Harriet Mitchell, music teacher. Among the higher subjects listed on an old report card are trigonometry, surveying, natural philosophy, logic, chemistry, Latin, Greek and bookkeeping. Students were graded on politeness.
Professor John Joss, a graduate of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, was not only the first but also the most famous of Masonic Institute superintendents. According to his students, he could quote ten thousand lines from Homer's Iliad and Vergil's
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Æneid. The study of logarithms he considered excellent holiday sport. In 1874 he moved to Galveston. Afterward he returned to the Institute as professor of natural science and foreign lan- guages, in which capacity he was serving when the school was sold. Many Galveston boys followed him to Rusk. The esteem in which he was held is further revealed by the dedication of Thomas E. Hogg's poems: "To Professor John Joss as a testi- monial of my gratitude for acts of kindness done me as well as my appreciation of his high attainments as a scholar and his intrinsic worth as a gentleman."
Among later superintendents were John A. Boone, Winfield M. Rivers, R. E. Hendry, J. D. Nevins, W. F. Cole and B. A. Stafford. Other faculty members included Robert McEachern, the blind poet-musician, J. W. Phifer, Mrs. M. A. Rogers, Mrs. M. Blasingame, Miss Kate Fairiss, Miss Lula Guinn and Miss Laura Philleo. The student body included boarding students from various parts of the state. Tom Campbell, future governor, was enrolled in 1873.
In 1888, because of financial difficulties, the Grand Chapter of Texas granted the local lodge permission to sell the property and pay the outstanding indebtedness. In December, 1889, it was purchased by the Rusk free school district, the Institute having for some years been partially supported by public school funds. The Masons donated half the purchase price.
JACKSONVILLE COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE
The Jacksonville Collegiate Institute was another private school whose influence still lives in the achievements of men inspired by its great-souled founder, John J. A. Patton.
Professor Patton, the son of a Georgia Presbyterian minister, moved to Texas with his bride, Miss Margaret E. Thomason of Mobile, Alabama, in the late '50s. He taught until the Civil War called him to arms. After the war he returned to the schoolroom. At one time he was president of the Andrew Female College at Huntsville. He was superintendent of the Temple schools when he died in 1885. J. L. Brown of Jacksonville pays his former teacher the following tribute:
"Professor Patton was the Robert E. Lee type of gentleman. His strong personality dominated and inspired his pupils. His work endures in the religious, commercial and educational life of Jacksonville to the present day."1
1Ford and Brown: Larissa, p. 181.
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R. A. Barrett, W. F. Thompson, Eugene Dorough and F. B. Guinn, a fair association was organized with Colonel T. L. Fariss as president. After being held at Rusk for some years it was discontinued. Afterward a fair was held at Jacksonville. The present fair association, with its buildings at the county seat, was organized in 1931.
One of the popular features of the first fair was a contest staged by the Rusk Rifles. Walter B. Whitman, afterward editor of Holland's Magazine and now on the staff of the New York Sun, was the captain of this widely-known military organization, which was a predecessor of the Iron Guards and the present Com- pany A, of the Texas National Guards.
About 1908 the Cherokee County Colt Show held its first exhi- bition at Rusk. For a number of years its annual live stock, agricultural, horticultural, needlecraft and culinary exhibits, in which communities enthusiastically contested, attracted attention throughout East Texas. Newspapers reported ten thousand people in attendance. In 1911 the parade was more than a mile long.
TERRACING
Cherokee County numbers among its citizens the "Father of Texas Terracing," T. G. Simpson of Gallatin. Through the example of his pioneer work in this field of conservation, thou- sands of acres of Texas soil have been saved.
After ten years of regretful observation of the wasteful wash- ing of his own farm, Simpson thought of terraces. Armed with a cumbersome terracing level of his own construction and assisted by a skeptical son, he began the initial test on a five-acre tract in 1895.
Neighbors jeered at the idea. Even his own family tried to stop him. The first year he didn't make the seed he sowed, but for six years he stuck to his program of crop rotation. The seventh year he gathered six bales of cotton from the five acres, in the beginning too poor to grow peas.
Jeers turned to compliments. Skeptical neighbors sought assist- ance. Since 1896 Simpson has terraced over thirty thousand acres of East Texas farm land.
In recent years terracing schools held by the county agents have promoted the conservation of Cherokee soil.
CHAPTER XI
EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS AND SOCIAL CHANGES
WITH the close of the Civil War and the subsequent return to more normal living conditions, the education of Cherokee children again became a matter of public concern. In addition to the development of a free school system the latter half of the 19th century witnessed the establishment of a number of other schools which left an indelible imprint on the lives of Cherokee citizens.
THE CHEROKEE HIGH SCHOOL
The earliest of these post-war schools, known as the Cherokee High School, was established in Rusk in 1865 by Peyton Irving. It was first located in a two-story building on the corner south of the present fire station, but was afterward moved to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The following extract from an advertisement of its opening, January 6, 1868, is a sidelight on its work:
"The session lasts 24 weeks. Strict discipline will be enforced. Orthography, reading and writing, $18; arithmetic, grammar, geography and history, $27; logic, rhetoric, natural philosophy, physics and chemistry, $36; classics, higher mathematics, moral and mental philosophy, $45. Half tuition must be paid in advance. Board at reasonable rates in the best families."
Incredible as it seems, the program for the annual exhibition in 1870 included seventy-three numbers, grouped under the following alternating heads : music, declamations, literary gems, select essays, original essays, select orations and original orations. James Stephen Hogg appeared in a musical number. The audience came in the morning, brought lunch and remained for an after- noon and evening session. All exhibition programs had a com- mittee on order, composed of leading citizens.
Among Cherokee High School faculty members were C. J. Harris, who is remembered chiefly for his readiness to inflict corporal punishment on girls, and Mrs. A. S. Sturdevant, mother of I. L. Sturdevant, president of the Stone Fort National Bank at Nacogdoches.
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The Collegiate Institute opened in 1873 near the site of the present Methodist Church, Lots 3-5, Block 167. A year later, despite high tuition, its enrollment had passed the hundred mark. Until Professor Patton again yielded to his love of change and moved to Marlin in 1878, his efficiency as a teacher and his dignity as a man continued to draw students from a wide area. R. E. Hendry succeeded him. In the '80s the building was used for a public school. Professor A. D. Davies was principal.
Among surviving Collegiate Institute students are John H. Bolton, Reverend B. R. Bolton, W. C. Bolton, A. N. Ragsdale, Doctor Frank A. Fuller and Reverend S. M. Templeton (of Rockwall).
LONE STAR INSTITUTE
Lone Star Institute, located in the village of the same name, also owes its prominence to the personality of its founder. In 1889 Colonel T. A. Cocke opened the school, with Reverend A. M. Stewart as co-principal. During the next four years the number of boarding students steadily increased and many families in larger towns moved to Lone Star to send their children to the Institute.
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