[Granville-Hough] 15 Aug 2009 - Oak Grove Schoole and Uncle Martin Richardson

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Oak Grove School.  

This school was located about 2 and ½ miles from the 
1936 site of the New Haven school in the Oak Grove Baptist Church 
community.  It was established in 1895 in a two story building, one 
story being used as a Masonic Lodge.  (This was the old Bunker Hill 
Lodge which I believe was in its Bunker Hill location, as Cousin Maxine 
Watts remembers seeing it there.  Old Bunker Hill would fall in the 
present Oak Grove community.)  Teachers included Oliver Sullivan, Miss 
Ida Norris, and Martin Richardson.  In 1913 the school combined with 
Forest Hill, and not long after that consolidated into New Haven. 

    The WPA history of Smith County states that Martin Richardson became 
a Baptist preacher.  Well, yes and no.  It is a remarkable fact that 
Uncle Martin, Uncle Jim, and Uncle Tom Richardson all graduated from 
Mississippi College in 1917, the only record of three brothers 
graduating in the same class from that institution.  Mississippi College 
was noted for training Baptist preachers.  Of the three, only Uncle Jim 
Richardson became a functioning Baptist minister.  Uncle Martin and 
Uncle Tom became school teachers.  When Uncle Martin related his 
experiences at Mississippi College, he talked about football, not about 
preaching.  He had been one of the earliest football players at the 
collegiate level in Mississippi, and many of the people he played 
against became leaders in Mississippi activities. He had some 
interesting anecdotes about them.

    Uncle Martin lost his first two wives to disease, and left for West 
Texas. We did not hear from him for about 10 years.  It was rumored he 
settled in a West Texas county which had only a few schools.  He began 
teaching there and also became the County Superintendent of Education.  
He married one of the other school teachers, but they did not get 
along.  In the next election, she ran against him for the County 
Superintendent position,  she won, and promply fired Uncle Martin as a 
teacher.  All he ever disclosed was that he had a Angora goat ranch, but 
during the dry years, they died, dried up, and blew away.  He then 
drifted across the Southwest, spending time with famous hunters and 
frontiersmen, and wound up in California where he somehow got land and 
water rights to a cotton farm in the Central Valley.

    In the winter of 1937/38, he visited Mississippi and came by Magee 
High School.  The Superintendent was his former student, Minor L. Bott, 
as I recall.  Mr. Bott stopped all classes, called everyone to the 
auditorium to hear Uncle Martin relate some of his experiences and 
contacts in the Southwest.  Uncle Martin did the best he could, but his 
voice was somewhat hoarse, there was no amplification, and I could not 
understand much of what he said.  But it was a remarkable gesture to a 
former teacher.