[Granville-Hough] 15 Aug 2009 - Schools 4
Trustees for Granville W. Hough
gwhough-trust at oakapple.net
Mon Aug 14 18:11:07 PDT 2017
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:52:43 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Schools4-15 Aug 2009
Oak Grove School. This school was located about 2 and » 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. Grampa.
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