Is History history?

Is Parker County History History?

By Jeff Clark

            There was a time when Parker County history was chased after like a long lost love. Log cabins could hide along forgotten creeks, knowing someone like Mary Kemp would be along shortly, would return their story back into the pages of this county’s recorded history. Doing local history has become like television – we can give it our time, but first it must entertain us.

The story of Parker County was largely written by “hunter/gatherer” historians like Evlyn Broumley, Fred Cotton, Mary Kemp, Dodie Sullivan, Leon Tanner and others. These folks were not formally trained. Most were born here, all were consumed with the desire that their hometown’s legacy be remembered, preserved and celebrated.

These folks slaved away in courthouse basements or chopping brush away from lost cemetery headstones by themselves or in small unorganized groups for decades. No grants, no employees, no hoopla.

Today a robust menu of local groups is still doing important work, each holding a different part of the elephant: the Parker County Historical Commission, the Weatherford Historic Preservation Commission, the East Parker County Genealogy and Historical Society, the Parker County Texas History and Heritage Inc., Parker County Heritage Society, the Parker County Archeological Society and more. There are also individuals like Debbie Liles (the Parker County Oral History Project) making significant contributions.

Still, I sense something’s changing.

The Parker County Genealogical Society disbanded after 41 years. Its 37 charter members have “gotten old or passed away,” charter member Evlyn Broumley told me. The internet has also made the in depth research these trailblazers pursued a rarity, even among scholars.

There’s still a lot of history out there to discover and document, almost all I spoke with agreed. Lowell “Dodie” Sullivan, president of the Parker County Abandoned Cemetery Association tells me three “lost” cemeteries were restored just since August.

Watching bulldozers and dump trucks pave What’s Next across Weatherford’s landscape, I begin to wonder if anyone cares.

            Broumley used to get five to 10 research queries a week. “You don’t get them anymore.” She fills her weekly column with interesting snippets from old Weatherford newspapers. This should’ve been a clue.

            People have become readers, not writers.

The internet is one factor. “You still have to get offline sources,” she told me. “You can’t believe everything online, in a book or what Aunt Mary said until you can prove it.”

People settle for “good enough” research in this bulleted age of blogs and sound bites. The “why things happen” questions sometimes fall by the wayside.

Broumley said she still gets questions from people wanting to know about the area, “but you can’t really separate people out of history – they make it.” She’s come home from “hands on” research and preservation scratched by briars, bitten by a dog and having walked up on a rattlesnake in the woods. “Did you know you can jump flatfooted straight up from the ground?”

I asked Broumley who her replacement would be. She mentioned a granddaughter in college who will be 65 four decades from now. I hear bulldozers rumbling in the background of my concern.

Fearfully, I begin searching for the next Evlyn Broumley, the next Mary Kemp.

            I started looking inside the 18-member Parker County Abandoned Cemetery Association (ACA). They maintain 64 cemeteries within 30 square miles.

Word of mouth delivers most volunteers. “You get to a certain point in your life,” President Dodie Sullivan says, “when volunteering fits your life. You’ve retired, the kids are grown. A lot of people will volunteer if you ask them at the right time.” The ACA has also received help from the county commissioners, volunteers and landowners in the past.

Lost graveyards are often discovered by new landowners clearing brush. A man called them about the abandoned Clower Cemetery near Whitt. The ACA got to work. Census records were searched to match each headstone’s identity. Brush and high grass was trimmed back. Dodie feels like he knows the people in each cemetery after he does all that research. It connects him to the cemetery’s future care.

Few ACA members are younger than 65. The Parker County Committee on Aging reports there are over 13,000 senior citizens in this area.

Mary Kemp worries about the future of “doing history” in Parker County. “Most people don’t remember the Great Depression, don’t remember WWII,” she said. I asked her where her passion for history came from.

            Kemp’s mother took her to visit their family’s Parker County cemeteries when she was a little girl. “She told me their stories, who those people were.” Families would meet at Spring Creek Cemetery to take care of their own plots. “If another family’s plot was uncared for, everyone just pitched in.”

            Children worked beside parents, heard their stories, built community with the folks that came before.

Mary has written five books, edited or co-edited the two Parker County History books, had a hand in 17 state historical markers and helped restore numerous historic buildings and cemeteries. “I couldn’t have done what I did without family, friends and volunteers helping all along the way.”

Those who know Mary, however, know she’s a self-appointed committee of one – her own parade or the leader of small parades when she finds something that needs saved. Still, Mary’s fabled sunbonnet, boots, gloves, and grubbing hoe haven’t left her closet in a while.

Mary’s “Shaw-Kemp Open House” draws 4,000 visitors each spring to see bluebonnets blooming among an 1856 log cabin, a 1918 homestead and many other historic structures she’s preserved south of town.

Mary went hard core into her historical pursuits when she was in her mid-50s. “Who’s the next Mary Kemp?” I ask.

Mary smiles. “I love all my grandkids, all my great grandkids equally.” They call her “Great Ma.” Mary’s 11-year-old great granddaughter Taylor Todd Kemp has come to Mary when working on school projects, has her same love of dolls (Mary’s collection numbered in the thousands), and is asking the right questions a young Mary Kemp might ask.

Taylor was born while her family lived in the historic Causbie House, a big two story brick home built in 1916 on far South Main. Maybe that had an impact.

Taylor has come to Mary and told her “I’d like to go to the 1918 house on the Shaw-Kemp place and spend some time. Someday I’ll live in that house.”

If Taylor cranks up her research in her mid-fifties like Great Ma did, the Mary Kemp machine will lay silent for 40 years.

That’s a long time for this county to wait.

The Doss Heritage and Culture Center opened four and a half years ago, the 25 year culmination of work by a small group of local leaders called Civic Development. Many don’t realize the beautiful stone building at East Park and Texas Drive houses a museum. The Doss often adds the new tagline “A Texas History Museum” to their promotions.

Exhibit Coordinator C.B. Williams shares that a recent seminar for museums she attended said that the typical format museums use to showcase their history archives is changing. Museums must compete with places like Six Flags for the attention of potential visitors.

Looking to the east, I notice that the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History changed their approach. Quiet “nailed to the wall” static displays have been replaced by lively “hands on” exhibits, videos, and interactive games.

The Doss has learned that their opportunities for educating youth will grow if current traditional exhibits are enhanced by interactive displays, video games, and turning the Mary Martin Collection into a more dynamic “Broadway Experience”, as one example.

The Doss already boasts interaction with area youth through school programs, Doss Wranglers weekend classes and “Gone to Texas” and “American Indian” summer camps for kids.

“We have so much to compete with for kids’ entertainment,” Williams says. “We’re going to be the Kimbell someday, only about history.” The Doss would be a destination.

The Doss sits on seven acres leased from Weatherford College for 99 years. It hopes to fill these seven acres with six log cabins now in private hands. The Doss just started tapping into Weatherford College as a resource, using students to design video games for future exhibits or using archeology students to research Parker County’s prehistoric history.

The Weatherford Public Library boasts a great history/genealogy collection – old maps, newspapers, files on families and old groups. And let’s face it, newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs – surely this flood of information will positively impact future researchers.

            Mary Kemp is still always on call, even with her health challenges. Evlyn Broumley still writes, still answers questions that trickle in.

            Broumley received a request for information last week. “There’s no way I can lift those big deed books anymore.” Mary tells me she turned over many of her cemetery records to the ACA last year.

            “You have to encourage people to become active,” Broumley told me, “as we become inactive.”

            The Good Old Days often weren’t. A story like this written 20 or 80 years ago would’ve revealed a haphazard approach to the gathering of county history. People like Mary, Evlyn and their deceased forebears were out on a mission and worried little about public image, Roberts Rules of Order or strategic plans.

Harder to document would’ve been the little girls and boys hearing their family’s stories, visiting ancestral hallowed places, taking within their own heart stories of where they came from, of who their bold heritage would allow them to be in their own lives.

Look around Weatherford. The days of story-telling old men drinking coffee together are coming to an end. Children are rarely pulled away from their computer keyboards and handed a grub hoe to tend grandma’s grave. What’s out in the woods will have to wait, will have to hope the bulldozers can be distracted until the next Mary Kemp or Evlyn Broumley make their entrance onto Parker County’s historic stage.

Plowshares Into Keyboards,

Quick Hits of History for Next Generation

People often confide “I wished I’d paid more attention to grandma’s stories about the old times when I was growing up.” Today’s college student or history researcher will likely hit Google or rootsweb.com websites, before thinking to ask grandma (who lives in another state) or God-forbid opening a library book.

I became curious about the future of “doing history” in Parker County. Through the years, our first hand oral history changed to second hand written history and now heads toward filtered, anonymous online history. The computer becomes the storyteller, instead of whoever generated the original “content”.

We can’t ask a black man in Weatherford what it felt like to be discriminated against, unless we go knock on his door.

Indiana Jones didn’t use the internet.

Early on, I suspected internet access to websites like Ancestry.com was the culprit. That’s not the entire answer. History is like football. It can be learned, played, or watched. Imagine learning to play football by reading a website. The gathering of history is no different.

Professor Brad Tibbitts teaches history at Weatherford College. “Students entering college are being taught history in a very interactive way.” They are exposed to computers and DVDs to receive information. This trend will increase as time goes by, he believes.

College courses still offer lectures, but students want content to be as interactive as possible. Many textbooks have DVDs in the back. Companies selling learning materials realize this and push the envelope, developing progressively more interactive means of learning, moving away from lectures and original research. Searching for a relevant book becomes passé.

Students learn with computers, video games and online. They become “recipients” of information, not discoverers.

Most of what Tibbitts’ five and ten-year-old grandsons requested for Christmas consisted of electronics. This year’s high school graduating class will be the first Google Generation, being born the same year the search engine came into being. These students believe the answer will hit their screen, if they type in the correct question.

When Tibbitts was a kid he occupied himself outside, his imagination or friends providing the chief search engines of his entertainment. Now many kids remain inside watching hours of TV or playing electronic games. Goofing around with your friends has become a schedule of activities organized by adults.

No one knows the long term implications. “Things don’t get melted in the melting pot like they once did,” Tibbitts said. “People don’t get to talk to different types of people like they once did.” Children “talk” through the filters of text message, email or Facebook.

Even the use of the telephone is becoming limited. Each semester Tibbitts explains to new students that telephoning or dropping by his office will facilitate better interaction. Students are resistant to using the phone, though it’s hard to text message the same subtlety of 1950s race relations that one can see in person on the twisted face of an 80-year-old man who suffered it first hand.

We talk more AT each other using electronics, not WITH each other like we did in the past. Public discussion is often lost in a tide of cynicism and reproach.

“It’s important to set examples that are worthy,” Tibbitts believes. “Look more at how we’re alike, not at how we’re different. If we’re losing the ability to talk as people it’s dangerous for this country,” he adds.

Tibbitts sees similarities between the current tenor of public discourse and that shortly before the Civil War. It was easy to see Northerners as Them, not taking the time to know or understand their point of view.

Tibbitts has taught young people for 44 years.

“I think it’s important that we be mindful of who’s coming along behind us,” he said. The path we lay out will be walked by our children and grandchildren.

We are being taught by machines, expelling information input by people we may never know. Many accept the truth of what pops up on their computer screens. The story and meaning of the nation and of Parker County history become shallow and prone to misinterpretation when we become “watchers” of the world instead of people actively digging into Parker County’s soil for its truth.

Donate Grandma’s Stuff

Where It Will Live Forever

“A lot of things get into the hands of people who don’t care,” historian Evlyn Broumley says. Parker County citizens have amassed rich personal collections of papers or artifacts over long life times. “Things get lost,” she added. “Private collections become at risk or disappear once their collector dies.”

Though these collections are viewed as strictly private property by out-of-the-area heirs, the harmful impact to the county’s history when these treasures are lost or destroyed is hard to overestimate. There are core historians in this county who are unsure where they’ll leave their valuable collections.

As Weatherford continues to grow, we don’t know all our neighbors. We don’t know which door to knock on searching for this county’s Holy Grail.

The Doss Heritage and Culture Center’s C. B. Williams reports that a lady recently walked through their front doors with one of Oliver Loving’s quilts. None of her kids wanted it. What if that kind donor had passed away before her important gift?

Broumley encourages heirs to donate at least a copy of important papers somewhere safe. She suggests a local collection, but advises that one ask important questions: do you want these things, will you preserve them, and what happens if you close or change your mission?

Broumley places duplicates of her work in multiple places. Just because an event is recorded in a book, doesn’t mean it happened exactly that way. “You’re taking one person’s report, what he saw and remembered,” she says.

When grandma dies, you can toss her collection in the trash, donate it to a college or university, attempt to maintain the collection yourself or find a local archival facility like the Doss or the Weatherford Library.

The Weatherford Library will copy family bibles and place them in the files (there’s nine filing cabs in the Weatherford Library now). The Doss Heritage and Culture Center will accept items if they comply with their mission statement (www.dosscenter.org). In a nutshell, if grandma’s history happened in Parker County, it has a pretty good shot at the Doss. If not, it could still be used in education.

Researching a recent story, I was told that the late educator Raymond Curtis maintained a lush collection regarding Weatherford schools. Though I was given many clues, I could never locate this treasure trove. I completed my story sensing one of Curtis’ boxes might’ve held an underreported chapter in this city’s history.

Many artifacts are offered to the Doss. Their Collection Committee reviews these donations, which can be made as true donations, conditional donations or loans for an agreed-upon period of time.

“We learned about a 91-year-old lady from her husband,” Williams told me. “His wife lives in a nursing home. When she was born she slept in this wonderful pioneer cradle, which she donated.” He asked if the cradle was being exhibited. Williams told him that she wished his wife could come see the museum to see where she donated her wonderful treasure. Parker County Transportation brought her to the Doss. Her wheelchair was rolled in and she saw her donations distributed among the exhibits. She cried with happiness and shared many old stories.

Doss Archive/Collections Coordinator Delissa Slimp wants to make sure, however, that people know that donating is no guarantee that materials will always be on exhibit, due to space limitations.

There are other great archival facilities like Texas Tech’s Southwest Collection in Lubbock, UTA’s Special Collections and several other Texas colleges and universities. These can offer unparalleled safety and integrity to historical collections, but they lie outside the county.

The Doss has catalogued storage facilities on its ground floor, as well as climate-controlled storage offsite. Like most history museums, they utilize the Past Perfect software to catalog their collection for researchers’ use. The Doss has already assisted college student research, using their four and a half-year-old collection. The Doss is a 501(c)3 entity and is incorporated. The assets (collection) of the organization would be turned over to another non-profit organization or as directed by the board to an organization should the structure of the Doss ever change.

Ideally, historians should visit these facilities themselves. Ask the important questions. Then let their years of hard work go forward to help future researchers piece together Parker County’s important legacy.

Special thanks to Joann Barnhart, Evlyn Broumley, Harold Lawrence, Wayne Lee, Mary Kemp, Betsy Pedigo, Linda Pelon, Delissa Slimp, Lowell “Dodie” Sullivan, Leon Tanner, Brad Tibbits, C. B. Williams, Rae Wooten and the Weatherford Public Library.