BCGHS Journal Vol V, No 4, Oct-Dec 2023, by Ves Box – BCGHS 1890 Project Committee Chair
Article as seen in Newspapers.com
The Ipswich Journal [Ipswich, Suffolk, England] – Sat. Apr. 19, 1890 [p.6]
[Spelling was not corrected and is original to the 1890 letter]
“The Children’s Hour” [Column]
“Ah! Here comes our dear Postie – the good man you all remembered so kindly at Christmas. What has he got for me this morning, I wonder! A foreign letter again, all the way from Texas. Excuse me, I must tear it open at once and while I am doing so, you dear little lad with your schoolroom face can tell the rest where Texas is. Get out your map of the United States and put your finger down on the very spot which it covers. Meridian, Texas, U.S.A., that is the heading of the letter, and then ..
Dear Aunt Maggie – Seeing a letter from Colorado, I thought one from Texas would be acceptable too. We receive the paper weekly from relatives; it is highly appreciated, especially the Children’s Hour. Our home is in the beautiful Bosque valley, one of the most fertile and prosperous regions of this vast Lone Star State. There are many curiosities here in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, in fact, too numerous to mention, but I will name a few. Among the animals are opossum, raccoon, horned frog, alligator, mule-eared rabbit [the ears measuring two feet], chapperelle, pole-cat, wild cat, hard-shell turtle [sometimes weighing one hundred pounds], couger, Mexican lion, panther, cayote wolves, and in the prairie, the little prairie dog [a very pretty little animal] makes his home in the ground with his companions, the owl and the rattlesnake, and still the little dogs make nice pets when trained. All kinds of Cactuses and prickly pears in rich profusion covering acres of ground. Among the fruits and vegetables are the peach, tomato, pomegranate, squash, okry, beet, cushaw, mush-mellon, citron-mellon, and water-mellon, a single water-mellon sometimes weighing 75lbs. I wish I could send each of the little cousins a water-mellon; they are delicious. Wishing success to the Children’s Hour, Polly Thomas”
The writer is believed to have been miss Pollie Thomas, age about thirteen years — daughter of the widow Hattie Thomas. She was born in Texas about 1877. In 1880, Pollie was living with her widowed mother and her older brother, Wallie, in the village of Clifton, Texas. Pollie A. Thomas married Walter Roy Moreman in Bosque County, Texas, on November 6, 1892. In June of 1900, the Moreman family — including Pollie, her husband Walter, and their four children —were living in Bosque County. In 1910, the family was living in Haskell, Texas — about fifty miles north of Abilene, and included five children.
Polly [Pollie] Thomas Moreman died in Lubbock, Texas, at the age of forty-one on September 5, 1918. She was buried in the Plains Cemetery near Plains, Yoakum County, Texas. Her husband, Walter, died in 1957, at the age of eighty-five. He was buried next to Polly in the Plains Cemetery.