Old Family Homestead

Come and take a little walk with me.  Down this overgrown dirt road where two dead trees had to be cut up and pushed off to one side of the  drive.  It's been so long since human eyes have gazed down this lane.  Do we dare?  Let's put one foot in front of the other and see where it leads...

My husband, Tony, goes on ahead of me.  It IS a beautiful day, a Sunday afternoon, and we're going on a hike, into the acreage, the woods, the tangle of an old homestead that hasn't had human contact in many, many years.  Around two hundred years ago, this old homestead belonged to Tony's great-great-great (we think one more great) grandparents.  A hundred or so acres in deep east Texas that grew several generations of ancestors before. I'm not sure how they came to have this land in the first place, perhaps my hubby knows.  I know that alot of folks in east Texas arrived by wagon from southern states of Tennessee and Alabama among others.  I know that's where Tony's and my ancestors came from.  Even as late as my grandmother and grandfather, they came by wagon to settle in East Texas from Chattanooga, Tennessee.  My Nanny was pregnant with my mom when her mama died and she didn't even get to go back home for her burial.  Sorry, I digress...

OK, back on topic......It's got a bit of everything.  Clearings for pasture grass or gardening, pine plantations, a lake, and an underground spring that feeds the creek and the lake, wildlife for hunting.  Must have been a wonderful place to raise 8 sons and 3 daughters.  These were the original inhabitants of this land.  These were my husband's ancestors.

Deep in the woods, I spy a clearing filled with little bitty yellow daffodils or narcissus - can't remember their names.  All that yellow and green amongst the greys and charcoals of wintertime. It was beautiful! Almost fairy-land like!  You'da had to'uv been there...

Through the trees, we spy an old barn... It's pretty empty, you can tell the wild things have taken over as well as the spiders and birds.  When I slip inside, being careful to watch where I walk, I can almost imagine all the farm chores that were done here, the feeds stored, the harnesses, the tools...  It's fun to just sit and imagine the sounds of the livestock and chickens and the laughter of children running and playing around this old barn...

Looks like it's been patched many times with tin and wood... I'm sure it's seen lots of good use over the years...

Wait!  What's this I spy?  We finally arrive at the old home.  We almost can't see it through the trees here when we wade through the tall grass.  We also have to watch out for holes in the ground.  The hogs have been running loose here for no telling how many years.  If you don't watch your step, you're going to break your ankle or fall flat on your face!

I SO hate to see an old homestead like this fall into ruin.  No one has lived here in so long.  I couldn't get close enough amongst the trees to get a good clear picture of the whole house.  It once was painted white, but the paint had long ago chipped away and only a few little slivers waved in the breeze.  This was a big house at one time, two stories, several rooms - I guess they needed it for such a large family.  Looked like it had been added onto a time or two.

Kind of a cool black and white...

Such a shame to see this old place falling in upon itself - I stepped inside for just a minute, but didn't linger - some of the flooring has fallen in and just wasn't safe to hang out for very long....

When I was looking in the windows, I started imagining again at what life was like here once upon a time.  The mom and dad, the children, the hard times, the good times, the Christmases, the births and the deaths.  Handing this house to the next generation and then the next until fnally, they all left this place and moved away to begin their lives somewhere else.  I wonder who the last person or persons were who lived here...

A little further away, we found an even bigger barn, complete with a hayloft on the top level - just like one might see up north or in a picture.  A ladder went up to the top.  I REALLY wanted to go up there and check it out imagining how it might have been long ago - full of hay and perhaps kittens!  I'll bet the kids played hooky from their chores and had all sorts of fun up there in the hayloft!

You can see below the hay loft.  There was sure some great old oak and pine wood on the inside of the barn that was still usable - especially the oak.  I'd love have one of those old barns taken apart and moved to our farm, but it's just not possible, and not affordable.

I love this photo looking up through part of the hayloft.  The back side of the barn was nearly gone, but it sure made for an interesting photograph!

Above and below pictures - do you know what kind of tree this is?  Best we can tell, it's a Hercules Club tree - it appears to be some kind of hardwood, and it's got sharp pointed thick bumps on it.  It's difficult to tell the size of the points from the photos, but I sure know how this tree got its name!  I'd sure hate to get "clubbed" with a limb from this tree!  We actually found one of these nasty trees on our own property. I think my hubby is going to cut it down before it has a chance to spread!

We wandered through the tall pines.  This place through the recent years had been sold to one of the great, great, great grandsons, and he'd had pines planted on this place in several different areas.  They have not been managed well over the years, and strolling through the pine forests was a bit difficult stepping over limbs, etc.  However, there are still lots of good trees to be harvested.  My husband has actually been hired by the family to investigate the viability of the remaining pine plantation and see about managing it as a crop.  That was the original intent.  Tony is good about stuff like that...

Finally, we had been told that there was an old burial plot or cemetary on the place and that some of the first family members were buried here.  It took alot of looking, and someone from the family had told us an approximate location. Tony had been out there a day or two before and had recorded the location on his GPS (aren't those great!) so we found it pretty quickly. There were a few gravestones that had names and dates on them, but there also were some markers that just had initials on them.  Don't know if they were children or what.  Some big rocks for grave markers, too.  I took a few pictures but I don't know if you can make them out.  The old patriarch, Jeff S., was born in 1811 and died in 1891, I believe.  His wife was buried there, too.

See the clasped hands carved into this stone?  It had broken in half so Tony held them together so I could get a photo....

A few more stones in this burial plot...

Very hard to make out...

This ugly fellow kept hanging around the house.  Vee, you can appreciate this guy - we've got a slew of these guys down here, too.  It was kinda creepy... No telling what kind of tales he could tell.  Sorry this was so long.  I just thought it was a really interesting afternoon, and it was sort of a history lesson to us - if only an imaginary one - beings it was my husband's ancient family place.  We enjoyed this trek.  I hope to go back sometime...

Keep yer dress down.