Hi all, I would like to ask all of you who would like to, to share with us a bit of your roots in Coleman Co. Since I am asking I guess I get to go first. As near as we can tell our SMITH family moved to Coleman County in the late 1890's. Clem and Dessie (nee Murrell) Smith met in Kerens, Navarro County, Texas at the monthly gathering called "Trade Day". They married shortly after Clem's mother died in Upshur Co., TX near Gilmer. The couple then moved by wagon train from Upshur Co. to Coleman County. Their twin sons Clem and Jim died at age 9 months while on this journey. Of 7 children they only had 2 daughters who lived to adulthood, Roxie Mae b. 20 Oct 1900 (exact location unk) and Anna Ruth, my grandmother, b. 21 Sep 1907 in Whon, Coleman Co. Texas. Clem was a farmer by trade and when he wasn't working his own he worked as a tenant farmer, moving from place to place getting the farm going while Dessie fixed up the houses and then they'd move on again. Clem died of dropsy in 1930 in Coleman Co. while living on the Steward/Stewart place. He was about 68. Dessie and Roxie went to live with Ruth and her family. Ruth had met and married Lance "Slim" Wristen in 1922 while living in Rockwood. In Aug of 1923, their first child, my mother, Ouida Dale was born. They went on to have 5 children; Billie Norma b. 1926 Cross Plains, Bettie Jeannee' b. 1928 Rockwood,, Tommie Adrain b. 1937 McCamey, Jimmy Lance b. 1944 Houston. The family moved all over the county from town to town and house to house. Some of my mothers memories are: "In school we learned that the town of Santa Anna was supposed to have been named Santana after and Indian Chief and some how it got mixed up and they named it Santa Anna and everyone thought it was supposed to be named after the Mexican General." "We lived in a green house in Coleman on 5th street a couple of blocks from the West Ward School, you could see the house from the school yard. Aunt Pat (nee Wristen) Duke lived on 5th too, not far from us." " The unique thing about Coleman was that they had a brick plant and so a lot of the houses were brick there whereas in other towns they were wood. When I was in the 4th grade we lived in a brick house on "Brick Plant Hill". Some of my grandmothers memories were: "We used to go camping a lot, me and your pap paw and his sister Pat and her husband Roy Duke and we took the babies with us, your mama Dale and Pat girl Carmensita, just a few months old both of them. We'd go down on the Colorado River fishing and take the cotton mattresses off the beds for sleeping. One time it was cold so we had the men build a fire to warm the rock before we put the mattress down, to keep the babies warm, but we let it get too hot and even though we scrapped the fire away the rock was so hot it caught the mattress on fire. Scared us girls pretty bad. We thought we had killed our babies. But, once we got it all put out and the girls were okay we all had a good laugh. Of course the men blamed us for that one. But the very first time we took your mama down there she was just a few months old and her daddy had her up under his arm like a feed sack and walked off in the river talking to Roy and I was on the bank screaming at him, 'Dale's underwater!!!! Pick her up!!!!' He did and she just spit water and gave him a dirty look. We were so young." I hope you all will enjoy this and share with us, maybe that we will find little facts in our stories that will help us find those missing links. Dawn