THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: Aileen Strange
INTERVIEWERS : Geraldine Bakke and Jim Sweeney
DATE: November 3, 1986
PLACE: Iredell, Texas
B: Aileen, how long have you lived •.. how long has your
family lived in this area?
s: My father came to the place where we were all raised in
1890. And lived there and he and my mother married and then
raised us children. They ...
B: Were you one of the first families ... in this area?
Was .•• your family the first family in this area?
S: Well, they were early ... early settlers. They weren ' t
the very first ones, of course, but they bought the place
from ••. Uncle Bobby Russell which was a very early settler
in the community. My father came here when he was four
years old from Arkansas and his father is the one that
bought the place and raised his family there .•. 3 boys and
1 girl. And then they all married and then ...
B: Well, did .•• did you have other ..• did your family
raise other children other than their own.
S: My own parents did. They ... my father and his brother
went to Meridian one saturday afternoon and they ... there
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S: was a man there with a little boy that had been left
with him. His mother had died and his father had left him.
This man had the little boy in Meridian lookin ' for ...
someone to raise him, someone to take him into their home,
and my father brought him home with him and he he lived
with us until he was 18 and then my father carried him to
Hico and, bought him a new suit, clothes and everything and
gave him some money because he wanted to be out on his own.
B: Did he go to work for a ranch or ?
S: When he left our home? Yes, but I'm not real sure where
that was, but he did and my Daddy had helped to find a
job and he did work on a ranch but I don ' t know exactly
where that was. I don't remember. I've forgotten that.
B: Is it true that he married?
S: Yes, he did marry later and lived in ... around Clifton ,
but then he didn't live to be an old man. He died rather
young. He didn't have any children of his own. His wife
didn't have any children but he died kinda young after he
left our home.
JS: I understand that ••. your grandfather was in the Civil
War. Am I correct in that?
S: No. No, not ... not my grandfather. No. He wasn ' t in
the Civil War.
JS: Uh huh.
S: He was he was a boy during the Civil War and he was
the oldest one .•• of the children. His father was killed
STRANGE
S: in the Civil War and his mother took care of the
children, and renegades, whoever they were , burned their
home and she had . ..
JS: The damn Yankees?
S: Yes. That right. (laughter) and she had • •• was
3
..• you know expectin ' maybe somethin ' to happen and she had
buried some corn meal so she 'd have somethin' to eat and
when they burned the home, well , that's all she had, and got
an iron skillet out of the ru ins and cooked this meal on the
fire and I've • .• heard my grandfather tell this a few
times. He really didn't like to talk about it. He was the
oldest one of the children and there was such a little bit
of the corn pone that he wouldn't eat any of it 'cause of
the younger children and he said that he remembered goin'
off ••. turnin' his back and goin ' off and cryin' because he
was hungry. And he ate redbuds. They were in bloom at the
time and he went to the pasture and ate redbuds. I think he
had us children to taste of 'em. If you've never tasted a
redbud bloom , they're sweet, ••• but he cautioned us about
lookin' at 'em to see that there was no spiders , but redbud
blooms do have a sweet taste. If you ever have an
opportunity to taste some of 'em, they •. • taste pretty
good.
JS: Do they have any nouri shment?
S: Well, I really don ' t know. He lived on 'em five days.
It was 5 days before ..• and I don't remember the exact
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S: thing about how he, maybe some of the relatives or
something, come to their aid. Somebody come to their aid.
Now, I'm not sure about that.
JS: You mentioned tha t he had .•. children. How many
children did he have?
S: My grandfather?
JS: Yes.
S: He had 3 boys and 1 girl. But they were not the ones
that was involved in this. This was his little brothers and
sisters, my grandfather's little brothers and sisters that
were involved with the Civil War story.
JS : Did he ever mention which unit .•• ?
S : No.
JS: military unit he belonged ... ?
S: He told us these stories when we were kinda small and
after we got older he, for some reason, he didn 't like to
talk about it very much and I .•. I don't really remember
him having mentioned that. Maybe he did and I don't
remember it.
JS: Well , now, I see that ..• that Geraldine has ••. two
books of clippings over here and they are your books of
Clippings, I understand. Could you explain what those 2
books are and what they mean to you and why you've kept
them?
S: Well, my mother was a great hand to keep old papers.
She died in '69 and after she died, well, we , in gatherin '
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S: up her things, well, she had a trunk, and it had
pictures and papers that she had saved, with obituaries of
relatives and friends and things and I, rather than to burn
the papers up, I compiled the things of interest in 'em and
a lot of it is things about Iredell or people that were here
a long time ago and then after I started doin' it, well, I
kept up with it. About 2 years ago I quit because I got
tired of it and I quit. But it ' s all things •.• a lot of
the news is older than I am!
JS: Well, can you give us an example of the stories that
you saved? (turning through the book)
S: Well , some of 'em, now that's ••. this was Aunt Clara
Williamson who was an artist.
JS: What is this now? You the listener would have to
understand the title of the story and meaning •.. what was
it?
S: This lady was born and raised here in Iredell ...
JS: Uh huh.
S: Up on the hill which we call MacDonald Hill.
JS: Uh huh
S: They still call it the MacDonald Hill.
JS: Yeah.
S: And the house is still up there that she was raised in.
In fact , this it it, (pointing to picture) but it's been
redone. I forget how old she was, but after she was in her
late sixties, she started painting.
STRANGE
JS: That was in
S: But she was quite advanced in age .•.
JS : 70 years old you said?
S: No, late sixties.
B: An older lady •. •
JS: Uh huh.
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S: Her husband and •.• she moved to Dallas and she started
painting. She and her husband, when they lived here in
Iredell, had a dry goods business you know •..
JS: Uh huh.
S: And then they made a move to Dallas and she started
painting and she become nationally recognized in her
paintings.
JS: Her name is what, now, Clara Williamson?
S: Clara Williamson.
JS: Uh huh.
S: Her name was originally Clara MacDonald. That's why they
call it the MacDonald Hill.
JS: I see.
S: But, she married J.P. Williamson and then she painted
all her memories of Iredell and that's what these are
(looking at picture) ••. they are things that she remembered
in her mind and she was pretty accurate about it. This
house looks pretty natural.
JS: What are the next stories that you have marked there?
I see you have them marked.
STRANGE
S: I don't have 'em in order.
JS: Well, it wouldn't matter.
7
S: Well, this is about the Klu Klux Klan here in Iredell
which I'm not real proud of, but we did have 'em (laughter)
a little ••.
JS: Well, certainly it's worth hearing about.
S: It was organized in Bosque County. I don't really
remember it, but they came here and they went in the
churches and they had quite a lot of confusion about
walk down aisles ... in the church. I don't know if it
tells you anything .•.
JS: Well, are we talking about the ... the white shooted
sheeted (laughter) ..• night riders?
S: Yes, they had on their hoods and some of the .•. and I
can't remember who was Pastor but I think it was Stovall,
but I'm not sure, but anyway, he recognized some of them and
especially one man who was unusually tall and he asked him
to take his hood off. He asked them all to take their
hoods off.
JS: And did they do that?
S: Well, now ... I ... that I'm not real sure, as I said,
this is really before my time and I don't really
remember very much.
JS: Well, do you remember o r does •.. does this newspaper
clipping tell of any hangings or crimes they might have been
involved in?
S: Not the Klu Klux Klan here. We had some hangings here,
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S: but they were not the Klu Klux ... that did it.
JS: Well, the hangings ... who was hung? For what?
S: Well, it was a Negro man and a white man that was hung
out here. They were hanged about half a mile out of town on
that little branch right out .,. south of town and they're
buried in the old cemetery.
JS: What were they hung for? Do you recall? Was it cattle
rustling?
s: I think it was family trouble.
S: Family trouble.
JS: Oh, family trouble. Oh.
S : I don't remember exactly ... I think they were sent
there maybe to kill the man •..
S: Yeah
S: Well , thi s ..• this man wanted them to kill this lady's
husband and then the mob took over and they ...
JS: Geraldine, you're telling now that this was in a sense
almost the present day Mafia sense of killing. They were
hired killers?
S: That's •.. that's what the fable •..
S: What the fable says.
S: Yeah, that's what the fable says, but we're not real,
real sure about it.
JS: And when was this? What year?
JS: Approximately?
S: As far as the year is concerned , I don't know.
STRANGE
JS: Just roughly.
S: The county was organized in ••• well, it was after
it was probably around 1850 or something like that.
JS: Uh huh. Uh huh.
9
••• I
S: They're buried in the old cemetery up here and the •..
the colored man's grave is turned opposite to the white
people's graves.
JS: He'd be feet first?
B: Well, like the white graves are .•• a r e East and West
and his grave is turned North and South.
JS: I'll be darned. Well, now you have other clippings
here. What ••. what, for instance, are they? And what are
the dates? (drops microphone?) OK, to repeat my question,
what other little clippings do you have here that would be
of interest, historically?
S: Well, during the World War I, my father had a very
special friend that was .•• they had gone through school
together and they had always been very special friends and
he had married and had had a wife and one little boy and, of
course, my father was married and had, I guess, 2 .•. 3
children at the time and my father didn't go to the War,
but this friend of his did. Do you want me to give you his
name?
JS: Yes, sure.
S: His name was Clarence Swilling.
JS: S-W-I-L-L-I-N-G. Uh huh.
STRANGE
S: And he was fixin' to go to France.
JS: Uh huh.
10
S: And he ..• started comin' '" he was gonna leave ...
leave his home on one Sunday afternoon and he was comin' to
see my mother and daddy which as I said, they were very
special friends, and they had company, so he went back home
and wrote them a letter and left it with a friend to deliver
to my daddy and he got killed in the Service. Well , in
fact, he died with double pneumonia, they claim. But this
friend delivered this letter to my daddy and mother and he
had requested that they remember him, that he had a horror
to bein' forgotten, and he said "Did you know that I feel so
close to you; that I want you to be the ones to remember me.
I'll never come back and see you all, but after I'm gone and
everything ..• and this war is over, the second Sunday of
August of every year, I want you to put somethin' on my
grave even if it's just a ... " (I forget what, some kind of
a weed, I believe, he said), "so you will remember me, and
when you ' re gone, for your children to carryon the
tradition that I want to be remembered". Well, my daddy did
it.
END OF TAPE I, SIDE 1 , 15 MINUTES
STRANGE 11
TAPE I, SIDE 2
S: His wife was already dead. She had died at childbirth
and she was buried in the Hico Cemetery, so later they
brought his body back and put it up there by the side of
hers. And •. then Daddy went every second Sunday in August
and •.• and put flowers on his grave. Well, after Daddy .•.
he kept tellin' us .•. to do that when he was gone. So we
still do, and it's gone on down to my daughter, that's 3
generations. But I remember this Clarence, myself, but I
was just a little kid, but I do remember him. I didn't
really remember much about the letter until after he was
gone and Mom and Daddy showed it to me.
JS: Are any of his relatives, his family still living?
S: His son died 2 years ago.
JS: Uh huh.
S: And is buried up there by him.
JS: Do they have any grandchildren that ?
S: No, his son ... he had this one son, and his son was
married. His sons' wife is still living. She lives in Fort
Worth.
JS: Uh huh.
S: But she brings flowers over there, too. And, this
Clarence's wife, had a brother. Her name was Weeks, and
her brother's wife and me kept tryin' 'til we finally got a
tombstone for Clarence's grave through the Government
STRANGE 12
JS: Uh huh.
S: Because we wanted his grave marked and .•. and we
it's kept real nice out there in Hico Cemetery and we still
do that.
JS: Well, now, when this, I know you said, 2 books of
clipp ings .•. do you have any other particular stories that
come to your mind that ••• you have so many of 'em. You
must have hundreds of them! What, for instance, is the most
outstanding one that you recall? Does it pertain to the
neighbors or the cattle market, the farming or .•• war, for
instance? I see you have pieces of paper in here.
(INTERRUPTION IN THE TAPE)
JS: Well, now ... let me interupt for just a minute,
Aileen, I'd like to ask you a little bit about your
background.
Depression.
I know there was a Depression, a horrible
It certainly affected people down here in
Texas. Could you tell us a little bit about your background
during that time and how you lived and the ••• the food you
ate and things of that •.. sort?
S: Well, my father was a farmer and we lived on the farm,
but he also was a carpenter by trade, and he worked away
from home what he could, but during the Depression there
wasn't very much building, of course, but he raised ••• he
was a good truck farmer, and he raised a lot of our food,
practically all of our food at home. I can remember us •.•
pickin' the beans •.. after you let 'em stay on the vine
STRANGE 13
S: until they're dried and then we'd pick 'em, and I can
remember us thrashing and dustin' the chaff out of 'em and
put them away for winter, and Daddy always killed a lot of
hogs. We had a smokehouse that, they cured the meat and
hung ... hung up the hams and things in the smokehouse ••.
enough for winter. And they rendered the lard and we had
that, and my Mother canned a lot of fruits in fruit
jars, you know, just like ordinary farmers did. Still do.
And we always had dried beans and Daddy raised potatoes and
cured them, even sweet potatoes and put ' em in the beds, and
we had lots of food. It was home-grown stuff and about the
only things that we really had to go to the store to buy,
was coffee and sugar ••.
JS: And you had money ... that was required ... cash that
to get that.
S: Yeah, that's right. But Daddy, during the war then, he
went down on the coast at Orange, Texas and worked in the
shipyards as a builder. And my mother stayed out there on
the farm and sent us children to school and it was •.• that
was how we lived.
JS: Well , how 'bout your social life? You as a young lady
what sort of a social life did you have?
S: Well, I wasn't very old at the time. I was about, it
was about my second •.• maybe my second or third year in
school. But Mama, we always had a piano and Mama really
tried ... she tried to teach us music, but I wasn't
STRANGE 14
S: inte~ested. But my sister plays, (laughte~) I wasn't
interested but we sang alot. Marna •.• the neighbor children
or friends and neighbors would corne in on Sunday afternoons
and Sunday nights and Marna played piano and we'd all sing
and we had some ~eal good singers as neighbors and we
enjoyed ..• ente~tained ou~selves that away a lot. And then
my mother and daddy had ... had f~iends that they played
" Forty-two" . They had a "Forty-Two" club kinda like people
do now that they met a lot of times when the crops was laid
by or out of work you know, rainy, well, they would get
together. Or, also, go to the neighbors and that's just the
way we lived.
JS: And how about the clothing ... did you make your own
clothe s?
S : Well , my Mother was a seamstress, in fact , she used to
sew for the public when we's growin' up. That was the way
she hepped with the expenses of raisin ' the family and it
partly was, she sewed for the public and she was a real
good seamstress, and I ... we was talkin' about that in our
Sunday School lesson the other day how we did at that time
and •.. and when the change of the seasons, Marna would
always fix each one of us what we called a Sunday suit. And
we'd wear that eve~y Sunday 'til the seasons changed. She'd
fix us another one and that's the way it was. When we got
horne from church, we pulled off our Sunday clothes, ... it's
so different now ... people think they have to have
STRANGE 15
S: somethin' new every time, but childr en ... all the young
folks that I grew up with, they were just like us, they had
one, and we didn't feel bad about it because everybody else
lived the same way.
JS: Was that a horse and a horse and wagon era that
you're talking about or did you have an automobile?
S: Well, we had an automobile. I remember the first car
Daddy bought. It was a Model T ... and we were so proud of
it. But I was just • .. I wasn't very big. I don't remember
exactly how old I was, but somethin' about 5, 4 and 5, 6
years old, somethin' like that, but I can remember it, and
we were so proud of it. One of our neighbors had a car and
he went with Daddy to Hico and bought this car. It was
brand new, and he give $500 for it. (laughter) And come
home •.. the man drove it home for him and Daddy had built a
shed, and Mr. Polnack drove it in the shed and Daddy didn't
know how to drive it out, so we had to let it stay in there
until Mr. Polnack come back and taught him how to drive. I
remembe r that! (laughter)
JS: (laughter)
S: So that was .•. that was really primitive days, I guess.
But that's the way that was.
JS: Well, did you have the opportunity to travel at all?
S: Well, not extensively, no. Just around over Texas.
(laughter)
JS: To what extent ... ?
STRANGE
S: Oh, I've been a few places but not •..
JS: Have you been to San Antonio and Austin .•. ?
S: Yeah, I've been in San Antonio.
JS: And to Austin and ••. ?
S : Yes.
JS: Now , were they part of school programs?
16
S: Not .•• no, we didn't travel much out of school. I
mean, the school didn ' t sponsor it when .•. I was goin ' to
school. No school sponsored trips ••. like they do now.
JS: Was this ..• what, was this a high school ... that you
attended?
S : 10th grade is where Iredell went, then.
JS: And you got, what ... a degree?
S : Well , not, that's •.. I graduated from the 10th grade
and then the next year after I graduated in the 10th, they
added the 11th and I graduated from it. (laughter) So I
really graduated twice. But the 11th grade was as high as
they went. They added the 11th grade within a year after I
graduated from the 10th, which was in 1928 and then in 1929
they added the 11th.
JS : Well , I see you have a very lovely house here and you
have air conditioning, electricity and I know you have a
telephone ... telephone, because we used ... we called you
today ...
S: Yes.
JS: But ••. what sort of conveniences did you have when
STRANGE l7
JS: you were young? Was there ... was there ...
S: Well, when we lived out on the farm, the old home place
out here, we didn't have electricity, but nobody did at that
time. I remember when the electricity come through here ...
It was after I married. They didn't have electricity out
there until after I married. But, we had good wells of
water and Daddy had water piped in the house, which all
farms didn't, but ••. we did have 'em.
JS: Uh huh. But, now, there's a very interesting story
about your grandfather. Could you tell us that? Would you
mind tellin' us that little story?
S: All the farmers came to town on Saturday afternoon and
one Saturday afternoon my grandfather was walkin' down the
streets here in Iredell, and there were some men had
been discussing a man that was here in town that was rather
cantankerous, and they had been commenting about some of his
misgivings and so they asked, turned around and said, "Dave,
what do you think about it?" And he stood there a minute
and he says, "Well, I'll tell you this, he could whistle
better than anybody I ever saw".'
JS: (laughter)
S: And that got to be quite a story. The men ••. it
impressed the men that had been talking.
JS: It would certainly impress me! (laughter)
S: And tha t 's .•.
JS: A good whistler is always welcome amoung men.
tell you that ••• an admired one!
I'll
STRANGE 18
S: My grandfather was a person that he always told us
grandchi ldren, "If you can't say somethin' good, don't say
anything." So that was his philosophy, and I thought he
stood up pretty good for it, I really do.
JS: That's great. And thank you so much for this very
interesting, enlightening interview.
END OF TAPE I, SIDE 1, ABOUT 10 MINUTES.
(I would like to have included in the transcript my family,
my husband, Tom Strange, and my two daughters, Rebecca Ann
Strange and Nancy McClure.)