Rains County Leader (Emory, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 18, Ed. 1 Tuesday, October 9, 2001 Page: 16 of 30
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IT^ trains Counta Leader Tuesday, October 9,2001
“Old
News”
by Elaine Bay
"Old" is news for a family
historiarvgenealogist
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LOOKING BACK
James K. Polk Martin Homeplace
by Joan Martin Kile
Mary Emma Massey and James K. Polk Martin moved to Rains
County in the fall of 1887, bringing his four children by a previous
marriage and four of their children with them. Their fifth child, Alonzo,
was born the following year in March 1888. The family had to work
hard to make a living off that farm.
When Mary Emma died in 1910, the Martins’ community property
was valued at $2,000.00; the probate listed these items:
270 acres in 3 tracts of land, value $ 1,540.00
10 head of cattle, value $100.00
5 horses, value $200.00
1 old wagon, value $15.00
1 old surrey, value $15.00
I old buggy, value $10.00
harness and other farm implements, value $20.00
household goods and kitchen utensils, value $100.00
James Polk Martin died on January 1, 1912, without seeing all of
his 18 children grown; three of these children had died young.
Lawrence, the youngest child, was only 7 years old when his father
died. The family farm was divided up with some children buying out
the others. Alonzo, my grandfather, eventually became owner of the
part of the farm where the old Martin homeplace stood.
Alonzo, known as “Lon,” moved back to Rains County around
1915. He built his home about a quarter of a mile from his parents’
homeplace. He taught school at Hogarisville for a few years but
continued to farm this land. Lon was so proud of his first horseless
carriage. He drove it up to the gate and hollered, “Whoa!” That
automobile smashed right through the gate, getting the first of its many
dents and scratches.
It has been said that during the depression years, Lam and Grace
Martin were the anchor for many families. There was always one or
more families living with them during those years; they might be from
the Martin or Terry side of the family or even friends such as the
Waldrops. The rule was to work the farm to have food to eat so no one
would go hungry. And so they did.
Today, most of that farm has been sold. I am the fourth generation
to own a few acres where the home of J.P. Martin was built over 100
years ago. Oh, what a change! But in some ways still the same.
ALL T
AWIIKI
lilt 1/
NEW BIRMINGHAM
AND EAST TEXAS IRON
by ARCHIE P. McDONALD
Photo courtesy ot NEVA (HUNTER) WATSON
ROBERT LEE HUNTER with his new Model T Ford, taken in 1921. He was
the father of Neva Dell Hunter and the late Vera Lee Hunter. His father, A.
R. hi nter, was a Confederate soldier.
Photo courtesy ot JANETT FRANKLIN
ALFORD YANCEY, taken in 1955 at the Rains County Fair, which was held
nn the courthouse square at that lime.
Rains County Leader classified
|H WK ads are posted f ree on the
W “
New Birmingham, in Cherokee
County, was supposed to be the
third industrial metropolis to bear
that name. The two other Birming-
hams, one in England and one in
Alabama, had shown how the avail-
ability of iron ore could build a city
where not even a town had been
before.
The dreamer in the case of New
Birmingham, Texas, was Alexander
B. Blevins, a sewing-machine sales-
man who knew what had happened
in the northern part of his native
state of Alabama when northern
industrialists invested capital to
develop the iron industry there.
In the 1880s Blevins discovered
that iron ore was abundant in
Cherokee County and was already
mined to supply a foundry at the
Rusk Penitentiary. So he dreamed a
big dream: a “New” Birmingham,
perhaps even larger than the one in
Alabama.
Blevins organized the Cherokee
Land and Iron Company with the
assistance of capitalists W.H. Ham-
mons, James A. Mahoney, and Rob-
ert Van Wych. They leased 20,000
acres and began mining even while
they built a fifty-ton furnace that
Blevins named the Tassie Belle
after his wife.
New Birmingham was laid out
near the Kansas and Gulf Short
Line Railroad. In addition to the
furnace, the town soon claimed
2,000 residents who enjoyed the
services of a bank, saloons, a news-
paper, even the five-story Southern
Hotel. Industries included a sash
and door factory, a wagon and plow
works, an iron pipe factory, and an
electric generating plant. New
Birmingham, “The Iron Queen of
the Southwest," seemed well on it*;
way to prosperity and permanence.
It was not to be. The dreamers
had attempted too much too soon,
and when the Panic of 1893
deprived them of new capital neces-
sary to continuing developing until
profits sufficient to sustain the fur-
nace were earned, they were hard
pressed to continue.
An attempt to involve English
capitalists in the vehture fell
through because of Texas’ Alien
Land Law, and in 1890 Hammons
was killed by a New Birmingham
businessman. Then a fire destroyed
the furnace, forcing the layoff of
over 300 workers.
People moved away, businesses
closed, and by 1896 only 200 resi-
dents, barely ten percent of the pop-
ulation less than five years before,
remained. The post office closed in
1906. Most of the buildings in New
Birmingham were scavenged dur-
ing the First World War to provide
materials for construction in Rusk,
and the hotel, the last building left
standing, was destroyed by fire in
1926. liven the rubble of the old
hotel was removed in 1932 during
the construction of a highway.
The Birmingham in Alabama
developed into the largest city in
that state while the Birmingham in
Texas disappeared, remembered
now because of a historical marker,
liven so, it reminds us that once
there was a dream.
(Archie /’ McDonald is Director of the
Lust Texas Historical Association and
author or editor of over 20 hooks on
Texas)
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Hill, Earl Clyde, Jr. Rains County Leader (Emory, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 18, Ed. 1 Tuesday, October 9, 2001, newspaper, October 9, 2001; Emory, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth766983/m1/16/?rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rains County Library.