From Texas to Australia

By Tom Stevens

The book is the story of my life from birth to 2018.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Nov 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543408706

Book preview

From Texas

to Australia

Tom Stevens

Copyright © 2018 by Tom Stevens.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018905525

ISBN:                  Hardcover                       978-1-5434-0872-0

                            Softcover                         978-1-5434-0871-3

                            eBook                              978-1-5434-0870-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/15/2019

Xlibris

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Contents

Acknowlegement

Family History

Origins: Stevens Family

The Early Years

My Own Story

World War 2

The Draft

Post War 1945 to 1950

Sold Out

Marriage 1948

Marriage 1948

Family Life

Looking for a Place of Our Own

Australia 1973 onwards

Moving to Australia

Gideons

Gideons in Australia

Gideons in South America

Bundaberg and Retirement

Bundaberg Christian College

The Pottter’s Vessel

Jeremiah 18:1-6 The Potter’s Vessel

Acknowlegement

I wish to acknowledge and dedicate this to my loving wife Elsie Janett Stevens, in memory of her, who lived this story with me and also to our children Matt, JB, and Martha, their spouses, grandchildren and great gandchildren.

Only by the grace of God did these events come about and come to a positive end.

Also thank Pam Weston for editing this book and Nicole Besley for diligent effort in typing all the pages of this book.

From Tejas to Australia

Memoirs of Tom Stevens

© Copyright Worldwide

Everyone has a story to tell. It may be long, short, colourful or whatever. However, mine is ‘unique’.

It starts in Texas and ends in Australia – over 91 years of my life.

Chapter One

Family History

Origins: Stevens Family

Everyone has a story to tell. It may be long, short, colourful or whatever. However, mine is ‘unique’. It starts in Texas and ends in Australia over 91 years of my life.

The story starts when a young girl from a family of considerable means, fell in love with the gardener on the family estate in Scotland. The young gardener was born in 1800 in what is now Northern Ireland. His family had disowned him for some unknown reason and her mother and father did not approve of him for two reasons: first, because he was an Irishman and second, he was a ‘commoner’ and not good enough for their daughter. The young couple changed their names and boarded a sailing ship to an English colony in Virginia where they raised several children.

One of their sons moved to Fairview Ohio, married and had five sons. One of those sons was my Granddad, John Wesley Stevens. His brother Thomas (Tom) – who I was named after – and five brothers, including Uncle Lee, grew to adulthood working, clearing trees and growing food to survive.

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Tom back row next to teacher, Galen Porter, 1938

I knew Uncle Louis quite well as he and his wife lived in Seymour where I went to school. I never met Tom or any of the other brothers. Yet, most of the Stevens family were very close and visited back and forth from time to time, between Texas and Ohio. Uncle Tom moved his family to Springfield Illinois, where he worked for the railroad and did quite well. I have many distant cousins today around Springfield.

My Granddad, John Wesley Stevens, was born in 1838 and grew up on the farm there. When the Civil War started, he fought in many battles in the Union Army and was honoured with some medals. He lived and worked on the farm for a few years, but he wanted to go west as many Civil War veterans did when they were discharged.

Grandfather John landed in Colwell Kansas in 1867 and became a cattle trader. He bought 1500 steers and made six dollars a head on them. You could do a lot then for six dollars. I was told by Aunt Brydie, Dad’s younger sister told me that Grandad had to leave Colwell looking down the barrel of a shotgun. He had gotten a young girl pregnant and her Dad did not appreciate that kind of behaviour.

He headed south and crossed the Bed River Station which is just north of Fort Worth in 1874. John Wesley lived at Fort Worth for three to four years using his wits buying and selling many cattle. He drifted to Fort Belnap, the last fort west of Fort Worth and he stayed there a while because the Indians were running all around West Texas at the time. Several times, he saddled up his horse to check and see if he came across any Indians, going a little further each time. And several times, he had to gallop back to Fort Belnap for safety. Poor horse!

When the soldiers at Fort Belnap had cleared all the Indians for 100 miles west of Fort Belnap, he bought a horse-drawn wagon, loaded it with enough food to last many months, then travelled West until he came to a creek which he named Round Timber.

He made a dugout, built a house, moved in and called it home until he died in 1929 at 91 years of age ‘with his boots on’ as the saying goes.

Granddad was the first white man to settle in Baylor County Texas. He planted 40 acres of corn to use as feed for the cattle in winter time. The Miller brothers, his neighbours, owned a ranch on the west side of the Brazos River. They saw the green cornfield, opened the gates, put their steers in and they ate it all!

The Miller brothers would always go to town on Saturdays and they would shoot their weapons and scare everyone to death. The Miller Creek was named after them.

My grandmother was Stella Powell. She was born in 1868 during the Civil War on her family’s cotton farm in Georgia. After her eldest brother was killed in the war, the Confederacy sent the family a lock of his hair and she wore it all the time in a locket around her neck. They never knew where he was buried.

In following years, other settlers moved in, the Powell family among them. The husband’s name was John Cash Powell. He was from a cattle property near Stirling City in West Texas. One of his children, Marguerite, was born there. She became my mother. She was the eldest of eight children. She started school in Westover Texas, ten miles from the Stevens Ranch. She went to school in Westover for five years until her family took her out of school to help with the four youngest children – some of them still in diapers.

When Mom was about 20 years old, my Dad wanted to date her, but Grandmother Powell wouldn’t let her as she blamed Granddaddy Stevens for the death of her brother. He had been in the Infantry in the Union Army and fought in many battles and Grandmother Powell hated the Union Army so much that it caused a lot of tension the whole time she was alive.

So Mom and Dad secretly dated. Dad would pick her up when Grandmother was out or take her out in the buggy late at night. He would bring two or three blankets so they could stay warm. Eventually Grandmother Powell allowed them to become engaged and they married in 1916 when she was 22 and Dad was 30.

Aunt Etta, who was Dad’s older sister, married a doctor whose name was Dr McLamore. He was a travelling doctor who went from home to home in a buggy and was away most of the time. They had one daughter, Valerie and a son called John T. Aunt Etta died when Valerie was about seven or eight years old.

I have heard two stories about what led to Aunt Etta’s death. One is that when her doctor husband was away, she wanted to go see her parents so she harnessed a team and buggy. On the way, the buggy turned over and she hit her head on a rock. She was never the same again. The other is that she lost a baby boy when Valerie was four years old. The pregnancy had caused heart problems which accelerated, leaving her an invalid until her death when Valerie was seven.

Grandmother Stevens adopted her and she lived there until Grandma died in 1934. Valerie was one of my favourite cousins as she would take me for ice-cream and we had fun times. This was when I was six or seven.

Dad’s uncle, Leroy – we called him Roy – decided the family ranch at Round Timber was a bit small for the Stevens family so he and my Dad rowed across the Brazos River to look at the Hash Knife Ranch which was for sale.

They went back to talk to John Wesley and Martha, his wife. If they bought it, it was going to be for the entire Stevens family. Grandmother Stevens thought it was a good idea, but John Wesley did not. We can’t buy it, he said, because we don’t have enough money. I’d need to mortgage this ranch to buy it.

Dad knew the President of the Jackboore National Bank and he agreed to furnish the money to buy. My Dad went back to his Mom and Dad and they agreed and eventually, so did Granddad Stevens. They bought it in 1914. My Dad and Uncle Roy were the co-owners of 105 acres and 5000 cattle.

The baby sister of the Stevens family was Byrdie. She married Raymond Plant in 1915. They had three daughters Madge, Grace and Dorothy. Grace always considered me as her brother as she didn’t have any brothers of her own. We were in the same grades at school and were very close.

The Stevens ran Hash Knife from 1912 to March 1926 when Dad died. Mom and Dad had three boys all under ten when Dad died from pneumonia. When Mom’s brother left and she couldn’t find help, she talked to the bank and decided to leave the ranch due to lack of help.

Aunt Etta McLamore had two children. John graduated in electrical engineering from Texas ANM. He never wanted to be a country boy so he moved to New York. His sister Valerie was a school teacher. She married but her husband died and she was a widow for a number of years.

Valerie had a daughter, Martha May who contracted polio when she was 15. However, she got through school and became a doctor even though she was partly paralysed. She still lives in Edinburg Texas.

Valerie told a funny story about when she and another school teacher went to dinner at Tex-Mex Café across the river from her hometown Brownsville on the border of Mexico. After a few drinks they were tipsy and they got picked up by the Mexican police for soliciting. They locked them up overnight until the police found out they were not soliciting of course, and they got out. She loved to tell that story. Being school teachers they had quite a bit of explaining when they got home.

****

My grandmother Stella Powell, (her name was Stella Humphries before she married) was born in Georgia in the civil war. She was a very austere woman and had a locket she wore around her neck. In the locket there was a lock of red hair from her brother who was killed in the civil war in Georgia in the early 1860s and she missed him very much. I think he was her favourite brother; they must have been very close anyway. It was quite a common practice in my day because a lot of people had lost sons and husbands. Her dad was a Georgia farmer. Relations in our family still have the locket somewhere.

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Stella Humphries and family at their home, Mesquite Texas

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Chuck Wagon and cook Hashknife Ranch c. 1920

There is also a handmade rocking-chair. It was made from Georgia peach tree and it was made to hand down through the generations. One thing the Powell family did, they always stayed close together, in close contact with each other. Grandmother Powell was a widow. Grandpa Powell died in 1914 – I believe from a kidney problem. He died on the farm they had been growing cotton on near Westover, Texas. My mother told me Grandma Powell had to quit school in the fifth grade. She raised my mother and six other children and she always was very conscious of the fact, and felt inadequate, not having any more education than that. She was self-educated and she was very good at mathematics. She helped me with my school lessons even all those years ago. The Depression made it difficult but Grandmother Powell never complained. She was brought up on keeping her family in close contact and always had her door open to her kids and grandkids. We would often join in on Sunday lunch, at Seymour where I grew up. She was a very good cook and my mother was a very good cook too.

Hash Knife Very few people really knew why the Stevens Family lost the Hash Knife Ranch. The family blamed my Dad, Elmer, and it was partly because he was always ambitious. In order to get enough funds to buy the Ranch, the Bank had to have a mortgage over John Wesley’s Round Timber Ranch.

Granddad JW was not agreeable until Grandmom Martha talked him into it. My Mom said that they all agreed to do it; then Granddad said Martha and I will sell our Round Timber Ranch in a couple years.

My Dad did his pencil work and told Mother as long as it rained and cattle prices were good, he believed they would never have to sell Round Timber. As it always happens, the rains did not happen and cattle prices dropped dramatically. Then the family had a meeting and Dad Elmer told them what they had to do to satisfy the National Bank in Jacksboro.

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Elmer Stevens, Hash-Knife Ranch, Baylor County, Texas, 1922

I am sure they thought long and hard. Grandad, in his late 80’s would not agree. I staked this ranch by myself, suffered all the problems and I won’t sell my beloved ranch. Of course everyone finally agreed.

Mom told me Dad went out to the Davis Mountains found a Ranch near Alpine and had a signed agreement to buy a larger ranch than the Hash Knife. However, Dad passed away in April 1926 from pneumonia. When Mother told me the entire story I told her "Mom we are going buy a ranch that is bigger than the Hash Knife was. I was 12 years old at the time. We did what I said, but it didn’t happen until several years later when the Lord blessed us with Glencoe-Camboon in Australia.

I believe Grandmom Martha was the brains and ran the family, especially after John became older. I give her credit for knowing the importance of education for her family – her children, grandchildren, great grands, even the many grands for years to come. She made sure Aunt Edna Mae went to Finishing School, I think in Virginia. Elmer spent two years and played football at Texas University. Uncle Roy was sent to a Military School in Missouri. Aunt Brydie attended a Girls’ Finishing School in Virginia also.

Now my grandmother’s children, and her children’s children have university degrees from Bachelors and Masters to MD and PhD. Bless her heart.

****

Granddad and Grandmother Stevens’ Trip to Yellowstone National Park.

In 1914, my cousin Valerie McLamore talked Granddad Stevens into going to see the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. It was a 3000 mile trip over unpaved roads. Grandparents, John W and Martha Stevens took their grandchildren, John T McLamore and his sister Valerie. Valerie’s uncle E Lewis Stevens and his wife, Ida, went with them in a separate car. Along the way, they stopped for a couple of weeks in Colorado Springs.

I have newspaper clippings of a couple of columns Valerie wrote for a newspaper in 1998 which gave me much of the information I will write here.

They had to do a lot of preparation for this trip – no motels and no rest rooms along the way – so they had to take whatever they would need for camping out each night. Granddad was 12 years older than Grandmother and he had a great sense of humor: You and Val will have to do all the work, setting up the tent each night, getting the fire wood and having a fire to cook each meal.

Valerie said "Yes