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Garrett’s Bluff

I had a delightful encounter on June 10 at the annual Emberson School reunion held at the Pshigoda Center on Cherry Street in Paris, Texas. Eva Hall Brown presented a colorful handmade quilt to Aikin Regional Archives. It’s sewn with fabric-copied historic photographs and dates, names, and signatures of former students, including her own. She started school there in 1924.

Eva’s grandfather was Dr. Benjamin Franklin Hall, whose wife was Rebecca Elizabeth Buster Hall; Dr. Hall was an early day physician in the area. Eva’s parents were Charles and Florence Caviness Hall. Her younger sister, Billie Hall Engel, of Fairfield, Ohio, was at the reunion, also.

Eva presented a collection of historic papers and photographs to the archives, including a wonderful photograph of Maud Hall’s gin at Garrett’s Bluff.

According to A.W. Neville’s “Backward Glances” column of June 25, 1941, Dr. B.F. Hall was a surgeon in the Confederate Army, a Virginian who came to Texas after Lee’s surrender and settled at Center Springs (now Chicota). One of his sons, W.M., was known as Maud Hall. About 1898 he built a steam gin at Garrett’s Bluff.

Dr. Hall soon moved from Center Springs onto Caviness land and lived in a log house from which he practiced medicine and farmed the land. His cotton was ginned at Center Springs on a gin operated by horse or mule power which turned out maybe two bales a day. Such is progress.

Also in the collection is a wonderful picture of the old ferry at Garrett’s Bluff, one of a 1907 “fish fry,” and one of the “Emberson Gang.” Both sunbonnets and parasols were the fashion of the day, and the picnic was spread on the ground on big cloths. Folks dressed up for their social occasions in those days. It was a way of life of which the current generation knows but little.

I think I’ll add the second item to the Paris Junior College historic quilt collection. I recently bought a hand-stitched quilt top which I couldn’t resist. It’s in the bowtie pattern and is pieced with genuine flour sack prints. At first, I thought I’d hand quilt it myself, but being a naturally lazy person, I now think I’ll give it to the archives.

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