Out of the Attic: “Glad to Hear Him Cry”
Veteran members of the Society will remember a time when transcriptions of family records – bible pages, newspaper articles, obituaries, funeral programs, commencement programs, and so on – were regularly found in the pages of our publications. We’d like to revive this practice and start featuring family records in our monthly eNews. We need your help to accomplish this.
Rummage around in your genealogical “attic” for unique family records. Then email us a transcription. Include an introductory paragraph to explain what the record is and where you found it. We’ll do the rest.
Send your records to newsletter@dallasgenealogy.org.
“Glad to Hear Him Cry”
by Barbara A. Ware, Ph.D.
I discovered this typed page when closing our family home after the death of our parents. There was no date on the document. If the ages of the children are correct, then the event would have occurred in February or March 1956. If it was meant for newspaper publication, I could not find it.
Robert Leslie “Less” Hight typed this story about his two-year-old grandson on an old Underwood manual typewriter in his real estate office just off the square in McKinney.
Kathryn Hight Ware, three of her children, and her father were driving to Farmersville, Texas from McKinney in the Ware family Dodge 4-door sedan. In those days, cars were so large that children could stand up in the back, sleep on the back shelf, or sit on the floor to play. Cars didn’t have seat belts or automatic child locks. Most likely Kathryn and Less were on their way to transact business in Farmersville.
Less Hight, a real estate agent from 1903 until his death in 1963, bought and sold houses, farms, and land. His daughter often helped him with recordkeeping. She did this while maintaining a home in Dallas for her husband and their four children. By 1956, R. L. Hight was a partner in Hight & Kerby Real Estate. In 1955 and 1956 Hight & Kerby advertised several properties for sale in or near Farmersville.
I appreciate so much that my grandfather documented this event in our lives. It reminds me that I need to organize our family archive so that the younger members of the family that didn’t know their great grandparents can appreciate the contributions they made.
Record Transcription: Glad to hear Him Cry
Tuesday morning my daughter and three of her children and I started to Farmersville. About 10.30 and when we were about five miles out started to drive around a Model A Ford and a pick-up truck. about the time we were passing them we heard a loud noise like a car door makes when flying open. so looked around and the left rear door was open and making a awful noise from the wind blowing against it. Then looked for the two Children in the back seat and a two year old buy (sic) was missing. then the nine year old Girl began to scream and that her little Bother (sic) had fallen out. My daughter was driving and so pulled out on the shoulder of highway. And we looked back and saw a bundle out about 20 or 25 feet. Then she and my Grand Daughter started running and I moved over oin (sic) the drivers seat and turned around, and we all got there about the same, then when he was piked up (sic) he began to Cry and cried as loud as he could all the way to the hospital. He was considerably bruised but is doing allright and will out in a day or two I think and are very thankful that we could hear him cry again. RLH
