The Blount County News-Dispatch, 3 Mar 1898 Oak, Texas. The ex-Blountites in this part of Ellis county are trudging along smoothly, to-wit: The Bynums, the Armstrongs, the Allgoods, the Robinetts, the Glovers, the Nations, the Corneliuses, the Murphrees, the Ellis', the Beardens, the Morris, the Williams, the Reynolds, the Shockleys, the Poseys, the NeSmiths, the Murrays, the Majors, the Carns, the Dorsetts and others I cannot call to mind. The abovenamed or most of them are settled in a radius of five or six miles of Oak. In West Ellis there are people with families whose children fill a big school-house. About nine-tenths well satisfied and doing as well as they could in any agricultural and stock raising country. Politically this section is democratic-adherents to the principles enunciated at the Chicago convention in 1896. Religions:-Dominant party Methodist, South-all sorts of methodism, but we are not all sanctified instantaneously. It would be a glorious consumation if we could be, and live up to it and keep wild prairie cattle and mean stock out of our fields and not get mad. But the older we grow we ought to grow better. The low price of cotton for the past three or four years has caused a reduction in the acreage to be put in cotton. It is now early corn planting time and farmers are well up with their work. Oats and wheat are looking well. Candidates are as thick as "Carter's oats." I see in a late issue of the News-Dispatch that my old friend Aus Carnes has announced himself as a candidate for Clerk of Blount. J.A. Higgins.