[Granville-Hough] 24 Sep 2009 - Moving to Laurel

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:18:58 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: toLaurel - 24 Sep 2009

    Moving to Laurel.  As Smith County began to over-populate, with 
Sullivans and others, they began moving to Hattiesburg, Laurel, 
Columbia, and Jackson.  As the timber harvesting industries were in 
these places, it was easy to find jobs associated with sawmilling, 
processing lumber, and derivative industries.  From any of the sidings 
on the railroad in Smith County you could board and go east to Laurel in 
a few minutes.  Going west, you had to change trains in Saratoga and go 
north to Jackson or South to Hattiesburg.  So about the year 1900 people 
began to take advantage of the new mobility, and everybody soon had 
cousins in these towns or cities.  Sometimes they left their past behind 
them, and sometimes they took it along. 
    The advent of the automobile gave a much greater freedom to visit 
relatives in these exotic places, and even to get to Louisiana, where 
relatives had been going since 1850.  WWI affected some people who saw 
greener pastures and moved to places in AR, TX, OK, but it seems these 
were somewhat random.  Many who had left had to return to their extended 
families in the Great Depression.  They had to re-learn back-breaking 
labor and the backwoodsy skills of subsistence farming in the cut-over 
piney woods.
It was really WWII that caused wholesale shifts in population to defense 
industries in the coastal areas of AL, MS, LA, and TX.  Between 1940, 
when Smith County was over-populated for the ways of life being 
followed, and 1950, the county lost half its population, and people 
tried hard to forget how desperately poor they had been before WW II.    

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I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see.
I sought my God, but my God eluded me.
I sought my brother, and I found all three.