Walter Byrd “Byrd” Carswell (1882-1965)

Names Detail

First Name

Walter

Middle Name

Byrd

Nick Name/Preferred Name

Byrd

Last Name

Carswell

Birth and Death

Birth Date

April 14, 1882

Death Date

January 10, 1965

Age at Death

82 year(s), 8 month(s), 26 day(s)

Cemetery Location and Disposition

Cemetery Location

Row 04, Grave 13 | Map

Disposition Type

Burial

Relationships to Others at the Cemetery

External Links

Find A Grave

Notes

Byrd married Carrie Thomas [Carrigan] Carswell (1882-1963) in 1904. Here is her bio, written by Cleo Carswell.

Walter Byrd & Carrie were farming on the land inherited from Byrd’s father, W. T. Carswell, near Moline, close to the Lampasas County and Mills County line. Their three children were born there on the homeplace, attended by Dr. Florence Brooking of Star, Texas, which is nearby.

The children helped with the farm chores, often milking before walking to the Moline School, 2 miles away.

The Carswells were close friend with all their neighbors, and they helped one another out in times of need.

In 1918 there was a serious drought in Central Texas, so the crops and animals suffered. In need of money to live on and pay debts, Byrd and Carrie loaded up their children in their covered wagon and drove the 150-200 miles to East Texas to help pick cotton. The family camped near the cotton fields, laying quilts on the ground to sleep on, and cooking over campfires. In about 2 months, the chilren talked thier parents into loading up and returning home to Moline.

Each of the children married as the years went by. Lora Bell married Norman Godwin in 1927. Johnnie married Alma Featherston in 1931. Pat married Cleo Back in 1940.

These days of simple living without electricity or running water, with wood to cut to heat the home in winter, of heavy farm work done by hand labor, all resulted in very loving relationships and good, healthy, sturdy bodies, with a knack for life.

Carrie spent her last days in Goldthwaite and Evant, Texas, as a result of a broken hip from a fall at home. She eventually had a stroke and passed away in 1963. She rests in Hines Chapel Cemetary, Adamsville, near Evant, buried next to her father.

Her husband Byrd was living in Lampasas when he suffered a gall bladder attack and ensuing surgery in Childress Hospital. After surgery, he resided in Heritage Home in Goldthwaite, Texas and passed away a few months later in 1965. He is buried in Payne Gap Cemetary [sic], Mills County, near Moline and Payne Gap, where his parents and family are buried.

(bio by Cleo Carswell, in the Mills County Book “Memories”)

From The Four Fs of Moline, Texas, in the essay on the Carswell family by Cleo Carswell:

Byrd Carswell, son of William T., married Carrie Carrigan in 1903. This couple lived on and operated the Carswell farm and ranch, while the elder Carswells bought and moved to a Payne Gap farm–the old Arthur Hunt place as we know it now.

Johnnie Allen, born in 1905; Lora Belle, born in 1906; and Aubrey W. (Pat), born in 1907, were the children of this family. They were all born at the family home, with Dr. Florence Brooking of Star in attendance.

This was the age of family farms in American life, and these children grew up helping with all the activities of earning a livelihood. Cotton and corn were popular crops, and the Carswells had their share of hoeing cotton and corn rows in the spring, and of gathering corn and picking cotton in the fall.

During World War I, in 1918, the Byrd Carswells went on a cotton-picking trip to east Texas. It had been a dry year and they needed to make money to live on and pay debts. Their horse-drawn covered wagon was their “camper,” with provisions, bedding, clothing, and personal belongings bedding, all contained within it. Each meal was prepared on open fire in the vicinity of the wagon, both on the trip down and after they camped by the cotton fields. Meal time came after the cotton-picking chores were over. At night quilts were spread out on the ground around the wagon for sleeping under the stars. For work, each family member had his own-sized cotton sack, and each one worked all day to pick all he could, thus making the trip profitable. After two months, the children were really ready to get back home, so Byrd told Pat, “If you’ll climb to the top of that pine tree that has no limbs, we’ll go home.” So Pat obligingly did climb it, using every bit of energy he could muster, and they did go home.

At various times the Carswells opened their home to a young man or men wanting to work. Byrd would hire someone and he could live with the family while the work lasted. Some extra jobs they did were haying, cutting wood, harvesting grain, breaking wild horses, and driving herds of livestock from one ranch to another. Byrd was a trader, and moved livestock by driving them. Later he used a truck for transporting them. Among the young men working thus for a time were Truman Hughes, Sam Porter, John Porter, Clem Howard and others. The home was also a haven for young couples or singles who for a time needed a place to stay and work. Among these were Rip and Bea Clary and Dealia Maxey and son. Carrie’s good cooking was always an added incentive to work here. People have remembered her chocolate pudding, chicken and dumplings, biscuits, and her “johnny-cakes.”

For many years there were cows to be milked so cream could be sold at the Moline store. There was also the cream separator to assemble to separate the cream from the fresh, warm milk. They milked from 6 to 12 cows by hand. This was a year-round activity, cold weather and all. The boys did the milking, but Lora Belle surely got in on separating the milk and the washing up!

Another all-time chore was the hog feeding and fattening operation. This involved corn gathering by all the family, carrying the household food garbage to the pens, and the endless feeding of grain to about 50 hogs. There was always work!

In summer, after farm chores were done, there was time for slipping off to Bennett Creek to go swimming. Pat learned to swim before his parents knew he’d been swimming. Of course, Johnnie and Lora Belle were there too, so he was safe. They enjoyed fishing also, and Bennett afforded some good ones.

Another fun activity was calf-riding, which was usually done by a collection of neighborhood boys with fathers assembled to watch. Horseback riding was also the order of the day. Sometimes they would swim the horses with someone hanging onto the horses’ tails to liven up things or to follow a dare.’

Just plain visiting between neighborhood kids was as much fun as anything. Those closest to the Carswells were the Henrys, the Clarys, the Riches, the Pattersons, the Cooks, and the Phillips’.

Pets were a great part of the playtime scene. Bruno, Smut, Cap, and Jim were dogs to be remembered. Cap once ran ahead of Johnnie to pick up his cap when it blew off and protect Johnnie from the rattlesnake lying there. The snake bit Cap and he died. Pat’s pet billy goat would pull the little wagon when harnessed to it, but when be and Johnnie dressed up, he didn’t recognize them, and would butt them.

Sometimes though the years of the William T. Carswells, a frame house was built in the location of the present house. The log structure was then used for a barn. The farm house was typical of that period, having two rooms on either side of a long, wide open hallway, and a shed room on the back. This room was often used for storing cottonseed, and Pat remembers sleeping on the cottonseed at times. During the occupancy of the Byrd Carswells the hallway was narrowed and closed in, and a kitchen and back porch were added. The chimney remained as it was built of brick on the north side of the house.

Johnnie and Lora Belle went to school one or two years at New Gray before Moline School was built. Johnnie didn’t go the first year he was of age because it was so far his parents wanted him to wait for Lora Belle the next year. Pat also started a year late, being unable to go at age 6 because of a bout with pneumonia. He started at Moline, and his first teacher was Miss Clara Hale. Through the years the three of them walked to school, sometimes cutting across the Cook place to shorten the distance. As they reached about high school age, Moline School had about 125 children spilling off the hilltop each day. But only about four families of children came out of town on the road with the Carswells.

School years were mostly happy times. Lasting friendships were formed; many activities were enjoyed together; and Lora Belle says kids got a better education right here at Moline than they do in the updated big city schools. There were fights on the way home from school, just to prove who was strongest or bravest, or just to entertain the older kids who “egged it on.”

Only this one of the many school incidents Pat has told about being a part of will be related here. This time he and Arvel O’Neal were chosen to go get kindling for starting fires the next day. They went into the cloakroom to get their coats and caps. Instead of coming back through the door and the classroom, they climbed out the window to get the kindling, brought it back in through the window, and walked out of the cloakroom carrying the kindling. They created quite a sensation with their trickery–they thought!