The Blount County News-Dispatch, 19 Aug 1897 From Oak, Texas. Messrs. Editors-I send a few items from Oak, where your paper is patronized by many former Blount citizens. This, the western part of Ellis county, is principally settled up with North Alabamians. Your correspondent is one of the first or the first of a long train of the Bynums and Murphrees and connection thereto belonging. I was raised near Red Hill, Marshall county, Ala. My father settled there before the Cherokee Indians were transported by land to the west in 1835. I am the only one left of a large family once in Brown's Valley and Big Spring Valley, and the eldest of 8 children. I speak of myself and family only to let others know who used to know us. I was married to Sarah R. Morton, nee Bynum in 1865 and moved to Texas in 1869. I am hale and hearty at the age of nearly 73. I guess I could throw down John McDermott, Aus Carnes or Jesse Morton, my old associates. Old Dock Bynum (as we boys call him) now lives in Brown county. He moved out there from Ellis several years ago. He recently came back with his family to visit his old home in Ellis, one of the best counties in the best state in the union, California and Alaska not excepted. Asa Bynum gave a sociable the other evening in respect and for the benefit of Dock Bynum and family, who have returned to their home in Brown county. You don't have them all at the reunions in old Blount, of the same connection. I suppose there was over one hundred collected at Asa's Prairie cottage in 2 or 3 hours three-fourths of them being akin both by affinity and consanguinity. So you see the Bynums and relatives are not confined to one section or country. At the reunion at W. Bynum's the other night we had old and young. Old aunt Peggy Murphree, aunt Kattie Bynum, now blind, Will Murphree and many others too numerous to name. We had organ and vocal music, and it did sound so sweet, not out in the desert air, but, out on the Prairie blooms,-not much blooms at present, for we have had a drouth of 6 weeks, but it is now raining copiously. Crops prospects in this the central part of Texas are only tolerably fair. Wheat and all small grain good. Corn cut off a third or more. Cotton injured one-half or more. J. Anderson