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| Monroe News Star - 1/14/1975 |
"I grew up in West Texas, and could not wait to get away. I got away, and went to the University of Texas, and then on to Stanford. I saw the world, and decided what I really wanted was to be in West Texas. So here I am, right back where I started. I had it all, and found it was not that great."
An Attempt to Assassinate the Sheriff of Catahoula.
A mostly cowardly attempt at murder was perpetrated upon the streets of Harrisonburg, Catahoula parish, Monday, July 30, at 10 o'clock. It seems that Dr. W. E. Robb, the newly elected sheriff of Catahoula parish, missed some $350 whilst acting as sheriff in place of John P. Routon, an adjudged defaulter, in 1866, and accused the Hollomon Brothers, in whose safe the money was deposited, of allowing the same to be extracted.
Last week Cary Hollomon for Hollomon Brothers wrote Dr. Robb a note denying all knowledge of the missing money. Dr. Robb replied, saying the money was missing from their safe and refused to retract a word.
Monday at the time above mentioned Dr. Robb went to the post office, and upon his return was fired at without any warning by Wm. H. and Henry Hollomon, from their store, eleven buckshot penetrating his legs and terribly shattering his left thigh. Three shots were fired, two by W. H. Hollomon and one by Henry Hollomon.
As soon as the news reached Trinity (Robb's home), a crowd at once organized and chartered the steamer Teal, lying at Troyville, and proceeded to Harrisonburg, brought Dr. Robb to Trinity, where he now lies in a critical condition.
The whole country is aroused, and there is no telling where it will end.
No cause whatever can be assigned for the attempted killing of Robb. He did not speak a word, nor had he for three or four days to the Hollomons. It looks like a premeditated affair.
Hollomon after the shooting, surrendered and claimed protection from expected mob law, which was talked of. There has never been such an excitement in the parish.
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| Navy Muster Rolls and Personnel Diaries, 1949-1971 |
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| Selective Service Registration Card |
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| Application for Headstone |
This is October 26, 1991 on a Saturday morning. It is sort of muggy outside this morning. I wonder what I would be doing on a Saturday morning in October back in 1938 or 1939 or 1940.
The Juneau boys, Vernon Whitlock and some other boys and I would be going out across the bayou to the field on the edge of the woods and swamps with our BB guns and slingshots. We would go bird hunting. We never did kill much of anything. Maybe a bird now and then.
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| Courtesy of Bayou Momma Photography |
We always took some matches so we could build a fire down in one of the gullies where the wind wouldn’t hit us. If it started raining, all the better. We’d get up under some of the bushes and try to keep our fire burning. We loved camping out. If we had a couple of nickels, we’d buy a can of oil wieners, some sweet pickles, soda crackers, a can of pork and beans, a cold drink or a cake.
We could buy all of that for less than fifty cents. That was a feast for four or five boys. It wasn’t very often that we had that much money between us. Times were very hard back then but they were wonderful times.
We did a lot of exploring while we were out in the fields and meadows. We learned how to identify the different birds and trees and bushes in the area. With the Peck Plantation nearby, we learned all about farm animals. We’d see horses, cows and calves, hogs and little pigs, jacks and old mules. No one taught us about the birds and animals. We discovered them and learned about them ourselves.
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| Courtesy of Bayou Momma Photography |
We probably went places no one else had ever been except other boys. I have no doubt in my mind that I have been to places around here that others haven’t been. I know almost every square foot of this little village.
Some Saturdays I’d be over at Howard Smith’s Greasy Spoon beside the cotton gin. Wagons would be lined up and the gin would be running full out. As I mentioned in earlier tapes, I helped Howard at the Greasy Spoon. He’d fix a tray full of cups of coffee and I’d take them over to the gin and sell the coffee to the workers. I’d stay at the Greasy Spoon all day. That would have been around 1936 or 1937. I was about eight, nine or ten years old.
It was along back in those days when they came out with a candy bar called a Powerhouse. Oh boy, those Powerhouse candy bars were good! Before that we had Hershey Bars, Milky Ways, Baby Ruths, Tootsie Rolls, Silver Bells and some kind of orange drops coated with sugar.
I’ve mentioned Stage Planks several times on these tapes. Stage Planks were some kind of gingerbread with icing on them. There were two in a pack. One piece would have white icing and the other piece would have pink icing.
Each piece was about eight or nine inches long and about three or four inches wide. A package of Stage Planks cost us a nickel.
Sometimes the boys and girls would get together and have wiener roasts. We’d come up with a nickel or a dime a piece and go buy a package of wieners and a loaf of bread. About first dark, we’d go to somebody’s house and build a fire. The girls would be off on one side and the boys on another side. We all wanted to get together but most of the time we were all too timid or bashful.
About 1941, 42, 43 we got up to be teenagers and we had dances. We’d get someone to be the chaperon and we’d get an old record player. They’d let us use the gym at the school for our dances. And just like the wiener roasts, the girls sat on one side of the dance floor and the boys sat on the other side. Some of the girls would dance with one another.
Every once in a while a real brave lad would dance with a girl. I wasn’t one of those. All the guys, including myself liked the girls but most of us were just too shy to ask one of them to dance. Oh, we looked forward to the dances and I guess we had plans to dance with the girls. But we didn’t.
After I got up around eleven or twelve years old I didn’t spend much time around the girls. I was too busy hanging out with the boys roaming the fields and the meadows and slipping down to the bayous.
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| Courtesy of Bayou Momma Photography |
We spent time at the cotton gin playing in the cotton on the big platforms. We would position the bales to the side and make tunnels all down in and through the cotton. In the Fall, we’d go pick persimmons and in the Spring we’d pick dew berries.
Dorothy Mae Benge, John Fairbanks and Cleo Foster were part of our little group that held wiener roasts and dances. They’re now gone. Gone on before the rest of us.
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| Monroe News Star - 6/29/1976 |
Transcription:
William Herbert, 1898-1899Florence Duncle Meyers died on July 3, 1971. She is buried alongside her husband in the Old Pine Hill Cemetery in Sicily Island, Catahoula Parish, Louisiana.
Katie, 1901-1992 (m. Henry Daniel Bruce)
Cicero E., 1903-1988 (m. Flora M.)
Florence Elizabeth, 1907-1997 (m. Jacob Roddie Heard)
Ethel Alaska, 1910-1971 (m. Carl Rupert Deen)
Simon M., 1912-1980 (m. Doris Watson)
Rufus Gordon, 1915-2002 (m. Elva Valentine)
Johnny S., 1918-1977 (m. Ann Smith)
Almeda, 1923-2011 (m. Harry D. Russell)
Old man Zeb York [Son of Sylvester and Sophia Peniston York] was named after his uncle Zebulon York who was a Confederate Brigadier General. Old man Zeb had a son named Zeb who married Henry Brown. They had a son named Zeb who we called Little Zeb. Little Zeb married Emma Griggs and they had a son named Zeb.
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| Brigadier General Zebulon York |
Old man Zeb married Mollie Earle. They had the following children: Zeb, Horace Peniston “H. P.”, Jesse, Billy, Thomas, Earle and Julia. Earle married Mr. Henry Krause and Julia married a Wales.
Zeb, Jessie and Earle made Sicily Island their home. H. P. lived here off and on over the years.
The last time H. P. lived here was in the late 1940s. He and his wife and son, H. P., Jr. lived in the house across the way from my house where Brother Nolen lives today. My aunt Nita Peck rented that house to them. They later moved to Mississippi. H. P., Jr. now lives down in Florida.
Thomas moved out to Georgia and Billy lived up around Fairbanks, up above Monroe. Julia moved to New Mexico but she used to come back to visit her sister, Earle. At one time her husband managed the Peck Plantation. That was before William Vaught managed it.
Old man Zeb York was a very successful farmer and had several hundred acres of land up at Peck. He also raised cattle and sheep. When he died, the land was divided up between all his children. I don’t believe any of his descendants own any of that land now.
I’ve got to tell this story...
Old man Zeb York, T. J. Peniston and my daddy used to play a card game called ‘Setback’. They would play every Sunday evening in the early 1940s. They would take turns hosting the games. I often watched them play but I never could catch on to how the game was played.
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| T. J. Peniston |
One Sunday evening they were playing in the dining room at our house. Somebody knocked on the door and Daddy said, “Son, go see who that is at the door.” When I opened the door, there stood old man Zeb’s son, H. P. He was living up in Monroe at that time and had stopped by to visit.
Man, he was all dressed up in a suit and shiny shoes. He asked, “Is Papa here?” I told him he was and invited him inside.
He walked in the dining room and spoke to everybody. They stopped the game to visit with him. He asked his father how his mother was doing, how the farm was doing and several other questions.
The visit lasted about fifteen minutes then H. P. said he had to go. I walked him to the door and when I walked back in the dining room old man Zeb said, “H. P. is a good boy but I’d just as soon be nibbled to death by a duck than to have him come in here while I’m trying to play cards!” Mr. T. J. Peniston got up out of his chair and almost fell on the floor from laughing so hard.
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| Monroe Morning World - 7/17/1960 |
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| Photograph taken by Billy Hathorn |
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| Monroe News Star - 12/27/1971 |
Emma Idell (m. Jeff Franklin Roberts)
Walter William (m. Norma Keenan)
Cordye (m. Frank Chapman)
William A. "Bill" (m. 1. Versie May; 2. Jimmie Bingham)
Gertrude (m. 1. William Douglas Passman; 2. Clarence Rastus Flowers)
Nina (m. John Carl Passman, Sr.)
Mildred (m. Frederick O. "Freddie" Krause)She married a second time to Joe L. Bingham.
Barbara Nell (m. Fredrick Francis Chambless)
John William
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| Photograph taken by FindAGrave member, Karen Klemm Pinckard |
