C. A. HINKLE

The following bio was taken from page 236 of the book entitled "Rusk County History" compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

Transcribed by Shirley Koym

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Cemeteries of Texas

The C. A. and Ida May Hinkle family arrived in Overton by train in 1902. Francis, their young daughter, was born in Tunnell Hill, Georgia. They left Atlanta, Georgia to go west. C. A.’s mother’s brother, Dr. Emanuel Cochran, M.D., advised C. A. to go west for his health.

The Hinkle’s arrived in one of the worst blizzards that the Overton people had ever seen. Mr. Howard Leverett of Leveretts Chapel was in town and heard that a family from Georgia was at the station. He hitched his horses to the wagon and drove to the station to meet them. He invited them to go home with him. They did go and all of them nearly froze on that three or four mile trip. They were good friends as long as both couples lived.

The next year, Mr. Howard helped C. A. find a place to farm with Mr. Will Jernigan. C. A. learned how to farm that year. Then the following year, the Hinkle’s bought an eighty-acre farm with a three-room house on it. Three children were born here: Willie Mae, "Bill", in 1905; James O. in 1906; and Vivian Louise, in 1910.

C. A. farmed in the daytime and repaired watches, clocks and guns, machines, pianos and organs at night. He worked in Overton at a jewelry store until eleven or twelve p.m. It was on one of those Saturday nights that a group of men tried to break into the house. I saw their hands on the door. They almost had themselves in when Ida May said, "Frances, hand me the gun." Those men sounded like a drove of horses leaving our house. Everyone around us knew that Mother could shoot a hawk out of the sky. I think the would–be robbers were glad to get away.

When C. A. decided he needed more land, he searched for some time for a lager place to buy. Finally he found that the old Trammel home place was for sale and bought it, along with the Whittaker place that joined it. Together there were three hundred and twenty-five acres of land.

Late in December 1911, the good neighbors came with wagons and teams and loaded up all the Hinkle household belongings, the Howard Leveretts, the Will Jernigans, the Will Chappels, and the Christians and others that I do not remember and moved them to a new home, the Trammel place. Young men rode horses and drove the cows. Ida May had prepared good food for all the wagon train. It was a long day for all, especially the children who sat wherever they had room. They arrived after thirty miles in wagons, hungry and tired, but happy to have reached their new home, formerly owned by Ernest Beall whose wife was a Trammel. It was only three days before Christmas.

Together the two farms had three hundred and twenty-five acres. We farmed all the land except pasture for horses, cows and hogs and some timberland. The land was rich, and corn and ribbon cane grew several feet above C. A.’s head.

C. A. learned to make ribbon cane syrup and he made the best. All of us helped in ways that we could, like feeding the cane into the mill that took the juice out, as the horses went round and round. The teachers and neighbors came to drink the sweet juice, and we loved having them. Daddy made two hundred to three hundred gallons of syrup, the clearest and thickest ribbon cane syrup we had ever had.

Panther Creek wiggled its way across the farm. We loved to have our Dirgin school teacher come to spend a night or two at our house and go fishing in this creek for perch and catfish. Some teachers that I recall who visited were Miss Lavy Harper, Mrs. Addie McKnight, and Miss Avis Kinard. Teachers like these really inspired students to try to do something with their lives. Miss Lottie Thomas was the Home Demonstration Agent for Rusk County. She, too, was a great help to these little country folks like us.

The old Trammel home was about one hundred yards from our house, and it was really beautiful. It was made of heavy hand planed lumber and held together with wooden pegs and square nails that were used in those days. The home finally had to be taken down for safety’s sake. We were sorry that we could not keep it in good shape.

In front of this home was the old Board Ferry Road that was the main road from Henderson through Tatum and Marshall to Shreveport where the cotton was loaded on barges on the Red River and shipped to all points. This home was called the old Travel Trace home because the Trammels owned the oxen and mule cotton hauling business from Dallas and Ft. Worth to Shreveport.

Three children were born on this farm: Elizabeth, in October 1913, Earnest Hubert, in 1919, and W. Cecil, in 1921.

C. A. bought two outlying farms, Smokey Lane Farm and Pole Cat Ranch. The new acreage brought to five hundred acres the land that C. A. owned. All five hundred acres are still in the hands of the Hinkle children. W. C. and E. H. named the two pieces of land. The Trammel home had to be taken down. The Trammel Cemetery has not faired well at all since Daddy went away.

C. A. died in 1942 of a heart attack. He was sixty-five years and twenty-three months old. Ida May passed away April 28, 1971, lacking only four days of being ninety-one years of age. Vivian died April 18, 1980 and Frances, the same year. James O. isn’t able to work. Hubert works for Johnson and Johnson Insulating, and W. C. works for International Exterminators. The last two boys have cows on pastures they own. Both remaining girls worked their way through college and both taught school. One taught twenty-four years and the other thirty-eight years. Willie Mae’s husband, A. F. "Shorty" Sturm, died August 8, 1980.

Submitted by Willie Mae Sturm