Moving to Fisher County Texas

[This is an excerpt from a transcript of interviews between Emmilou Collins Edmonds Adams and her father, Carlos C. Collins, recorded February 14, 1982. Passages in italics are his actual words, although portions may have been omitted for brevity. Portions in brackets [] were added for clarification.]


Background –

When Carlos was 10 years old, the family moved to Fisher County, Texas [from Bell County].


Carlos Collins –

Grandfather Barber (Uncle U. Collins’s father-in-law) [Stillman Barber, 1821-1907], was from Gonzales, moved to Fisher County. He bought a ranch of 5 to 6 thousand acres. He was a widower. Roughnecks were stealing his cattle. He persuaded Uncle U. [Uriah Collins 1858-1960] to come and take charge of the ranch. ABC [Albert Buell Collins] bought several hundred acres from Father Barber.

[Note: Carlos Collins said that at one time “Father Barber” was sued for Breach of Promise.]


When I was about 8 or 9 years old, Dad [Albert Buell Collins] sold his farm [in Bell County]and moved to Fisher County. It was 300 miles from where we lived near Holland. We moved in a covered wagon. There were two wagons and one surrey. I remember it took us about two weeks to get out there. We couldn’t go very far each day and I believe Aunt Emma [Emma Perryman, 1862-1949], mother’s sister, was along, and also George Bradshaw [1879-1959], a son of mother’s sister Sitha [Sitha Ann Perryman, 1849-1937].

When we first moved to Fisher County, our farmhouse was not far from a rural schoolhouse. I think it was called Fisher School. There would be church services there almost every Sunday, but including first the Baptists, then the Methodists, then the Presbyterians, then the Campbellites or Christian Church, then the hard-shell Baptists, the Holiness and they wouldn’t, they had to take a turn about. In other words there was a church service there of some kind almost every Sunday. The Baptists took their turn about every two or three weeks. But we attended everything and we learned a good deal, a little bit about the doctrine of each church. We knew the Baptists baptized ‘em, the Methodists poured the water on ‘em, and the Presbyterians, I believe they do both and the Campbellites, they baptized them. They had to baptize them right away, the way we understood. It wasn’t far from the Clear Fork Creek which was less than a mile from the school house. We saw baptisms in all the ways. I don’t know whether I mentioned the hard-shell Baptists. They were there about every two or three months and they observed what was called the ordinance of foot-washing. Well, we took that in. In other words, it was interesting to know; you had quite an education as far as the doctrine of religious organizations was concerned.


The farm that we bought in Fisher County consisted of about six or seven hundred acres. There was about 100 acres in cultivation. It was in the valley of the Clear fork of the Brazos River. It was real rich land. The first year we raised about a bale of cotton to the acre which is an exceedingly good record for a farm and they thought we were going to get rich fast. Well, the next two or three years it was either dry or droughty or one year the grasshoppers ate up everything almost. We had a nice crop of cotton or corn and maize growing and then when grasshoppers came and they just stripped everything. Of course we had worked the crop and it was in pretty good condition. That is, we had worked the ground to keep the weeds down, and then the grasshoppers ate the crop. It started raining then. It was a Colorado grass; I’ve not seen much of that kind. It grew fine and we had a hundred acres of that grass. Well, we didn’t know at that time that it was exceptionally good hay grass. But it turned out that we bought mowing machines and balers and I think we made more money on it that year than if we had had it in cotton. Somehow or other on the following years it never did rain the right time to grow the Colorado grass.


We had several horses and mules. We had 5 or 6 old mares and we raised a mule colt nearly every year. We had 50 or 60 head of cattle, I think. So we had a kind of combination farm and ranch and we got along one way or another. We had chickens, hogs, etc. I recall one time that we had what we called a beef club in the neighborhood. In order to have fresh meat – I think there were about 8 people in this club. They’d kill a yearling calf. They had a certain time to kill them and divide that up among the members of the beef club so we had reasonably fresh meat a good bit of the time.