'U' Uncle Mert

 

 October 1908

Dear Mama,
I'm fine.  Don't worry.  I am workin' at the Cotton Mill in Post City.  Stayin' with Aunt Annie and Uncle Oscar.  Don't know when I'll be home.
Your son,
Mert
PS...Tell Grandpa, I'm sorry bout taken' Delsey.  I knew she'd find her way home.

Mert was but a boy of ten years old when he hung the cardboard sign around Delsey's neck with the note to his Mama.
'Don't pick up this Old Mare.  She is goin home'.

The year before he got all the way to Snyder, Texas before he was picked up by the Sheriff.  The story goes...Mert was pickin' cotton in Grandpa's cotton field when he dumped out his half full sack, threw it over Delsey's bare back and took off.  

He made his way as far as Scurry County by pickin' cotton along the way for 50 cents per hundred pounds.  When his Uncle, the Sheriff picked him up he had $2 in his pocket.  When asked why he took off with his Grandpa's horse and cotton pickin' sack, hes said, "We need the money."

Uncle Mert was a man of few words with a work ethic that went back to his days as a cotton picker on his Grandpa's farm.  After his work at the Cotton Mill in Post he worked his way to California and then on to Canada.  

His Mama didn't see him again until around 1915 when he returned home to help her move to West Texas.  He spent most of his life in West Texas.  

He lived his last ten years or so with his nephew, my Dad, on a farm in Ward County where he and his  Mama...my Great Grandmother...homesteaded a farm not far from where he spent his last days with my parents.

Mert was my Great Uncle...brother of my Grandmother and Uncle of my Dad.  He was stricken with Glaucoma in his fifties and by his seventies was only able to see light and dark shadows.  His blindness slowed him down, but didn't keep him from working every day of his life.  He spent many hours in the fields grubbing mesquite with a pick axe. 

He rests In Peace in Tamarisk Cemetery, Grandfalls, Ward County, Texas.

He was true to his Epitaph to the end of his life.

My Great Uncle was a great story teller and I was a good listener.

Photo Credits

Mert and brother Othella about 1918...Mert (standing)

Headstone...by Sue McPeak

Thanks for visiting Where Bluebonnets Grow

All photos by Sue McPeak ©reserved