Old Poetry Regarding Area Communities
Amity
Amity is a small community just south of Rising Star off of highway 183, in Brown County. Today there is only a community center there. This poem was found in some old newspaper clippings saved by my great, great grandmother Sallie Deens Irby of Rising Star.
How Amity Stands
Written for the Record. [The Rising Star Record, an early paper]
We haint got any store houses
Or dwellings painted white,
Nor have got tall church seeples,
That ran up out of sight;
We haint much on blowin,'
Nor anything that way,
But when we happen to say a thing,
We mean jist what we say.
We haint so pow'rful much on stile,
But plenty enough I think,
And all these Amity girls,
Air jist as purty as pinks
Er fon'y yrll yhid yrt rbrty onr,
Of course hit wouldn't pay,
But when we happen to say a thing,
We mean jist what we say.
As ter pints in agriculture,
We'll speak up plain and bold;
Not have the worth of this fair land,
Has ever yit been told.
Our farmers are all healthy,
Our boys and girls are gay,
And when they happen to say a thing
They mean jist what they say.
We have no balls nor operas,
But parties, we have some;
So when we take a notion to,
We have some solid fun.
Yes, we encourage emigration,
We sell land every day,
For when we happen to say a thing,
We mean jist what we say.
Julian
Amity, Tex., May 12th, 1891
Old Tin Can
Born in Eastland County, Texas
Near the line of Callahan
At the foot of Baker Mountain
Two miles west of old "Tin Can"
And the year eighteen ninety one
‘twas on the fifth day of June
That I first came into being
And the hour was high noon
Maybe you don’t know of "Tin Can"
It is called Sabanno now
Thru necessity the name change
And I’ll tell you why and how
A cotton gin was erected
As the town’s first enterprise
By the local Farmer’s Union
To the public’s great surprise
Down from Nimrod came two neighbors
Boykin Wilkerson and Ep Broyles
And from investment and labors
They received profits and spoils
They built the first store in "Tin Can"
And sold general merchandise
Believe it or not they prospered
On which they capitalized
Then Chan Pickard built a drug store
And A. L. Fore a barber shop
Ed Richardson our first blacksmith
Was a worker not to stop.
Some started a petition
A post office to obtain
It was to be called Savannah
But they misspelled the name
Soon three churches were erected
And likewise a grammar school
Where the teachers all elected
To teach kids the Golden Rule
Next a neighbor boy Ed Lilley
Did a thing we all though strange
When he added to our village
Our first telephone exchange
But paved roads and automobiles
Did away with towns like this
Leaving only the memories
Of the little towns we miss.
by...John Holder (1891-1967)