Snyder Community
Hale County, Texas
Mennonite Colony
Things I Remember About Texas
By Esther Brenneman Yoder
(as written to Matthew Smith for a school genealogy project)
[This paper was submitted to the Snyder Community Project by Joann Yoder Smith, daughter of Esther Brenneman Yoder. Esther was born in the Snyder Community in 1908, the daughter of Preacher Andrew and Lizzie Brenneman. She passed away in 1990. Bonnie Snyder Smith]
I have been told that I was born one Sunday night after my parents returned from church. My arrival was a surprise and so swift that there was no time to send for a doctor. My parents did not have a telephone and the doctor would need to come about nine miles across the prairie in a horse and buggy vehicle, so they sent for a grandma from the church community who helped on such occasions. I did not weigh quite five pounds, so I think I must have looked about like your cousin Mandy when I was a baby. I am not sure how old I was when I almost blew away. Well, I blew across the yard until I hit a fence.
One time when my brother Tim was carrying a bucket of water on his way to water the chickens, I asked him for a drink and he said, “Oh, no, Esther, the chickens, they are hungering and thirsting after righteousness.” This is one story my Aunt Martha liked to tell. Aunt Martha visited us in Texas when I was between three and four years old. She made a multi-colored striped dress for me and I liked it so much I called it my “candy dress.”
I went to school two years in Texas. I would walk across the prairie for two miles to the Snyder school. It was a one-room frame building with little outhouses behind it. There were also hitching racks, for some of the older boys drove to school. We also used the same building as a church. When we went to church we rode in a two-seated surrey (buggy). It seems we usually had two horses hitched to it and a little colt often running along beside her mother so she could have her dinner when she got hungry.
One of my happiest memories was eating large delicious watermelons. We had a windmill which pumped our water and beside the windmill stood a milk house where the milk was cooled. There was also what we called a “water trough” about two feet deep. It was lined with metal to make it water proof. The fresh water from the pump ran through it and we would set large crocks, two or three gallon in size, and then strain the milk into them. When the milk cooled the cream would rise to the top and we would skim it off, let it get sour and then churn it in a wooden churn to make butter. The butter was worked in a mixing bowl with a wooden paddle after adding salt. When all the buttermilk was worked out we put it in pound butter mold, and then pushed out the pound of butter and wrapped it in wax paper. Then we would take it to Plainview and sell it to the grocer or trade it for groceries.
My father would go to town in a big wagon, like a hay wagon, for I’m sure he often had other farm products, such as peanuts, eggs, sweet potatoes and melons as well as other garden vegetables to sell.
The watermelons were also cooled in the milk house. As I remember we had two large barrels which we put the melons in, and the water would also run through them cooling the melons. In the evening we would set up long tables made by putting wide boards on wooden horses. We put large tablecloths made of oil cloth which were waterproof on them. Then we cut the melons and everyone was served a piece and we stood under the huge mulberry trees which shaded the yard and milk house. We did not use plates or forks, just held them (the pieces) in our hands and ate them and spit the seeds on the ground. It was so dry I don’t remember ever having grass in the yard.
When I was almost eight years old, our family moved back to Elida, Ohio. We had an interesting trip on the train. My father put the horses and cows and furniture in a box car on the train and my mother and four brothers, sister and I went on the train in a coach. I can remember the windows of the train were open and the smoke from the steam (coal) engine would come in, plus cinders from the burning coal in the engine. We had packed a lunch, but we could also buy fruit and maybe sandwiches. I think it was a three day ride in those days. I remember changing trains in Chicago. We waited in the station for sometime, and most of us fell asleep including my mother. My brother John was sixteen years old and he woke all of us up when it was time for the train to Lima, Ohio. When we got to Lima, my Grandpa Brenneman was there to meet us in a two seated carriage. I remember Grandpa kissing me with his beard, which was something new to me for I don’t recall having seen a man with a beard in Texas.
copyright ©
2007 Bonnie Snyder Smith