From First 100 Years Nolan County Texas, page 397, published in 1985 by the Nolan County Genealogical Society (no longer in print, but transcribed with permission):
THOMAS SEARCY WHITTENBURG-LUCY MAUD NUNN
When Tom Whittenburg was born 12 October 1873, youngest son of Joshua Butcher Whittenburg and Sallie Ridout on Plum Creek in Caldwell County, Texas near Lockhart, he was christened Thomas Searcy Whittenburg, being named for Dr. Searcy who delivered him but who almost lost Tom's mother. However, it was a black servant woman who saved Tom's life by nursing him with her own infant.
He was about twenty when with his parents, two older brothers and four grown sisters, moved to Sweetwater where he worked with his brother John and father in the family store until it went bankrupt. Then he worked for Mose Newman at his race track where Sweetwater High School is located.
His sister Sue Ella taught school in "Ole Grover" near the Nunn Ranch where she boarded and Tom's future bride was one of her pupils. Lucy Maud Nunn was born in Roscoe, Nolan County 1 February 1891, daughter of Joe Nunn and Fannie Wright. They were married Christmas Day 1907, with Tom's father performing the ceremony when she was 16 and he was 34. They moved into a two-room cabin located on Kildoogan Creek on the farm located north of Sweetwater on the Roby Highway. This farm is where John and Tom farmed and ranched as they grubbed out mesquites to clear more land for cultivation near the creek (which at time was a flowing stream with an abundance of fish, walnut trees, wild game like rabbits, squirrels, quail and dove which John hunted for food).
Soon the cabin was removed to the present location of the farmhouse and Tom, with his carpenter skills, incorporated it into a larger house, dug a rain water cistern and built tanks for water. This was to be the family and John's home until 1924 when Tom and John divided the land and Tom built his own home on the west half-section near the highway. After Thomas Whittenburg bought his Uncle John's land, he remodeled the old house in 1954 and still lives in it, the house where he was born.
The weather became unfavorable and crops were poor, so the family in 1909 was persuaded to go to Falfurrias (Brooks County, Texas) to operate truck farms for Dr. H. M. Bennett, husband of sister Anna Louisa Whittenburg. The trip was made by train with Tom taking in a box car a team of mules, one horse, two dogs and household "stuff". During the five-year absence, the Sweetwater land was rented to Dick McElroy and Sheriff John Bond; Fannie Louisa (1910) and Abbie (1912) were born; Joshua Butcher died and was buried there; and Joe Nunn died in Sweetwater.
John tired of Falfurrias and returned home. Lucy, barely 23 years of age with two babies and pregnant, returned to Sweetwater in 1914, several months ahead of Tom. She lived with her widowed mother and brother, Charlie Nunn. Thomas was born in December of that year. Lucy's health was very poor for several years, and Tom was both father and mother to his young family, helped only by John, hired girls, and Mama Nunn. The children matured early and soon helped with the work.
Farming at best was difficult. All planting and plowing was done one row at a time with plows pulled by Bill and Donk, the mules. Cotton was chopped and picked by hand, hauled five miles to the gin and sold for $.05 a pound. Grain was cut by reaper or binder, tied into bundles and hand shocked until the thresher came to separate the grain from the chaff. Threshing day was a great day. Neighbor women and Mama Nunn came to help Lucy feed the laboring men. The children carried water to the workers and brought wood from the woodpile for the cook stove. When Tom almost died with a carbuncle on his neck, neighbors came in great numbers with their own machinery and laid the crop by. That's the way neighbors were in those days.
Tom had a competence in mathematics equal to that of a high school graduate even though he had about seven years of formal schooling and one bookkeeping course by correspondence. Lucy attended fewer years, but she always expressed gratitude to Tom's mother for teaching her spelling, grammar, numbers and to read and write well. Both Tom and Lucy valued education and made sure their children never missed school. All three graduated from Sweetwater High School and all attended institutions of higher learning, becoming business persons and teachers who assumed responsible positions in their communities.
Tom and Lucy supplemented their income by selling butter, cream, eggs and turkeys. The drought of 1917-18 forced them and John to spend all their cash to try to save their starving cattle and land. Tom left home to pick cotton and later moved to town when the flu epidemic was raging.
WWI was drawing to a close and Tom expected to be drafted and went to work for Walker-Smith Wholesale Grocery. They almost recovered from these catastrophes when drought came again, grasshoppers descended, banks closed, illness struck the family and debts mounted, but they persevered. There were good times with the bad, all simple pleasures of interaction with family and friends. They included hiking, fishing, celebration of holidays, birthdays, church, singings, ice cream socials, play and game parties, parlor games, pitching horseshoes and dollars, "42" dominoes, "Flinch", "Old Maid" and baseball, but not on Sunday.
Tom died of a cerebral hemorrhage 6 June 1946. Lucy died two days before her 89th birthday, 29 Jan 1980, at Holiday Retirement Center in Sweetwater where she had been a resident for eight years. Both are buried in the Whittenburg family plot in Sweetwater Cemetery.
Lucy Whittenburg, during her 34 years of widowhood, moved from the family home on Roby Highway and lived in Sweetwater, earning her living as a practical nurse. She spent her spare time as a volunteer in women's work at Fourth and Elm Street Church of Christ, was a member of Eastern Star for a time, loved the museum and was tireless in visiting and writing letters to the sick and troubled. Although a blizzard raged at the time of her funeral many registered, attesting to her contributions as a friend.
* * * * * *
NOLAN PIONEER DIES AT HOME
SWEETWATER, June 6th - Thomas Searcy Whittenburg, 72, a resident of Nolan county for 56 years, died at his home on the Palava road north of Sweetwater at 1:25pm on Thursday. He suffered a stroke on Sunday. Mr. Whittenburg was born October 12, 1873, in Caldwell county.
He came to Nolan county as youth and engaged in farming and stock raising.
Survivors in addition to his wife are two daughters, Mrs. Fanny Suffel of San Saba and Mrs. Abbie Whorton of Tahoka, and a son, Thomas Whittenburg, of Sweetwater. There is also a niece, Sally Campbell of Clayton, N. M., who was reared in the Whittenburg home. A sister, Mrs. W. A. Dobkins of Fort Worth, and five grandchildren are other survivors.
Funeral services will be held at the First Christian Church in Sweetwater, with the Rev. J. T. McKissick of Abilene, the Rev. Hugh B. Warner of First Christian Church in Sweetwater, and F. B. Shepherd, minister of the Church of Christ, officiating. Wells funeral home has charge of arrangements.
From THE ABILENE (TX) REPORTER-NEWS (June 7, 1946)
Obit courtesy of norannl - 7/02/2013
* * * * * *
NOLAN COUNTY DEATH CERTIFICATE
Name: Thomas Searcy Whittenburg
Event Type: Death
Event Date: 06 Jun 1946
Event Place: Residence, Sweetwater, Nolan, Texas, United States
Cause of Death: Cerebral hemorrhage; hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease; hypertension
Gender: Male
Marital Status: Married
Age: 72 yrs 7 mos 24 days
Birth Date: 12 Oct 1873
Birthplace: Texas
Father's Name: J B Whittenburg
Father's Birthplace: Alabama
Mother's Name: Sallie Rideout
Mother's Birthplace: Missouri
Occupation: Farmer-stockman
Residence: Route 2, Sweetwater, Nolan, Texas
Burial/Removal: Sweetwater
Date: 07 Jun 1946
Informant: Mrs. T. S. Whittenburg (wife), Sweetwater, Texas
Certificate Number: 28459
GS Film number: 2218377
Digital Folder Number: 005145072
Image Number: 02055
* * * * * *
THOMAS SEARCY WHITTENBURG-LUCY MAUD NUNN
When Tom Whittenburg was born 12 October 1873, youngest son of Joshua Butcher Whittenburg and Sallie Ridout on Plum Creek in Caldwell County, Texas near Lockhart, he was christened Thomas Searcy Whittenburg, being named for Dr. Searcy who delivered him but who almost lost Tom's mother. However, it was a black servant woman who saved Tom's life by nursing him with her own infant.
He was about twenty when with his parents, two older brothers and four grown sisters, moved to Sweetwater where he worked with his brother John and father in the family store until it went bankrupt. Then he worked for Mose Newman at his race track where Sweetwater High School is located.
His sister Sue Ella taught school in "Ole Grover" near the Nunn Ranch where she boarded and Tom's future bride was one of her pupils. Lucy Maud Nunn was born in Roscoe, Nolan County 1 February 1891, daughter of Joe Nunn and Fannie Wright. They were married Christmas Day 1907, with Tom's father performing the ceremony when she was 16 and he was 34. They moved into a two-room cabin located on Kildoogan Creek on the farm located north of Sweetwater on the Roby Highway. This farm is where John and Tom farmed and ranched as they grubbed out mesquites to clear more land for cultivation near the creek (which at time was a flowing stream with an abundance of fish, walnut trees, wild game like rabbits, squirrels, quail and dove which John hunted for food).
Soon the cabin was removed to the present location of the farmhouse and Tom, with his carpenter skills, incorporated it into a larger house, dug a rain water cistern and built tanks for water. This was to be the family and John's home until 1924 when Tom and John divided the land and Tom built his own home on the west half-section near the highway. After Thomas Whittenburg bought his Uncle John's land, he remodeled the old house in 1954 and still lives in it, the house where he was born.
The weather became unfavorable and crops were poor, so the family in 1909 was persuaded to go to Falfurrias (Brooks County, Texas) to operate truck farms for Dr. H. M. Bennett, husband of sister Anna Louisa Whittenburg. The trip was made by train with Tom taking in a box car a team of mules, one horse, two dogs and household "stuff". During the five-year absence, the Sweetwater land was rented to Dick McElroy and Sheriff John Bond; Fannie Louisa (1910) and Abbie (1912) were born; Joshua Butcher died and was buried there; and Joe Nunn died in Sweetwater.
John tired of Falfurrias and returned home. Lucy, barely 23 years of age with two babies and pregnant, returned to Sweetwater in 1914, several months ahead of Tom. She lived with her widowed mother and brother, Charlie Nunn. Thomas was born in December of that year. Lucy's health was very poor for several years, and Tom was both father and mother to his young family, helped only by John, hired girls, and Mama Nunn. The children matured early and soon helped with the work.
Farming at best was difficult. All planting and plowing was done one row at a time with plows pulled by Bill and Donk, the mules. Cotton was chopped and picked by hand, hauled five miles to the gin and sold for $.05 a pound. Grain was cut by reaper or binder, tied into bundles and hand shocked until the thresher came to separate the grain from the chaff. Threshing day was a great day. Neighbor women and Mama Nunn came to help Lucy feed the laboring men. The children carried water to the workers and brought wood from the woodpile for the cook stove. When Tom almost died with a carbuncle on his neck, neighbors came in great numbers with their own machinery and laid the crop by. That's the way neighbors were in those days.
Tom had a competence in mathematics equal to that of a high school graduate even though he had about seven years of formal schooling and one bookkeeping course by correspondence. Lucy attended fewer years, but she always expressed gratitude to Tom's mother for teaching her spelling, grammar, numbers and to read and write well. Both Tom and Lucy valued education and made sure their children never missed school. All three graduated from Sweetwater High School and all attended institutions of higher learning, becoming business persons and teachers who assumed responsible positions in their communities.
Tom and Lucy supplemented their income by selling butter, cream, eggs and turkeys. The drought of 1917-18 forced them and John to spend all their cash to try to save their starving cattle and land. Tom left home to pick cotton and later moved to town when the flu epidemic was raging.
WWI was drawing to a close and Tom expected to be drafted and went to work for Walker-Smith Wholesale Grocery. They almost recovered from these catastrophes when drought came again, grasshoppers descended, banks closed, illness struck the family and debts mounted, but they persevered. There were good times with the bad, all simple pleasures of interaction with family and friends. They included hiking, fishing, celebration of holidays, birthdays, church, singings, ice cream socials, play and game parties, parlor games, pitching horseshoes and dollars, "42" dominoes, "Flinch", "Old Maid" and baseball, but not on Sunday.
Tom died of a cerebral hemorrhage 6 June 1946. Lucy died two days before her 89th birthday, 29 Jan 1980, at Holiday Retirement Center in Sweetwater where she had been a resident for eight years. Both are buried in the Whittenburg family plot in Sweetwater Cemetery.
Lucy Whittenburg, during her 34 years of widowhood, moved from the family home on Roby Highway and lived in Sweetwater, earning her living as a practical nurse. She spent her spare time as a volunteer in women's work at Fourth and Elm Street Church of Christ, was a member of Eastern Star for a time, loved the museum and was tireless in visiting and writing letters to the sick and troubled. Although a blizzard raged at the time of her funeral many registered, attesting to her contributions as a friend.
* * * * * *
NOLAN PIONEER DIES AT HOME
SWEETWATER, June 6th - Thomas Searcy Whittenburg, 72, a resident of Nolan county for 56 years, died at his home on the Palava road north of Sweetwater at 1:25pm on Thursday. He suffered a stroke on Sunday. Mr. Whittenburg was born October 12, 1873, in Caldwell county.
He came to Nolan county as youth and engaged in farming and stock raising.
Survivors in addition to his wife are two daughters, Mrs. Fanny Suffel of San Saba and Mrs. Abbie Whorton of Tahoka, and a son, Thomas Whittenburg, of Sweetwater. There is also a niece, Sally Campbell of Clayton, N. M., who was reared in the Whittenburg home. A sister, Mrs. W. A. Dobkins of Fort Worth, and five grandchildren are other survivors.
Funeral services will be held at the First Christian Church in Sweetwater, with the Rev. J. T. McKissick of Abilene, the Rev. Hugh B. Warner of First Christian Church in Sweetwater, and F. B. Shepherd, minister of the Church of Christ, officiating. Wells funeral home has charge of arrangements.
From THE ABILENE (TX) REPORTER-NEWS (June 7, 1946)
Obit courtesy of norannl - 7/02/2013
* * * * * *
NOLAN COUNTY DEATH CERTIFICATE
Name: Thomas Searcy Whittenburg
Event Type: Death
Event Date: 06 Jun 1946
Event Place: Residence, Sweetwater, Nolan, Texas, United States
Cause of Death: Cerebral hemorrhage; hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease; hypertension
Gender: Male
Marital Status: Married
Age: 72 yrs 7 mos 24 days
Birth Date: 12 Oct 1873
Birthplace: Texas
Father's Name: J B Whittenburg
Father's Birthplace: Alabama
Mother's Name: Sallie Rideout
Mother's Birthplace: Missouri
Occupation: Farmer-stockman
Residence: Route 2, Sweetwater, Nolan, Texas
Burial/Removal: Sweetwater
Date: 07 Jun 1946
Informant: Mrs. T. S. Whittenburg (wife), Sweetwater, Texas
Certificate Number: 28459
GS Film number: 2218377
Digital Folder Number: 005145072
Image Number: 02055
* * * * * *
From First 100 Years Nolan County Texas, page 397, published in 1985 by the Nolan County Genealogical Society (no longer in print, but transcribed with permission):
THOMAS SEARCY WHITTENBURG-LUCY MAUD NUNN
When Tom Whittenburg was born 12 October 1873, youngest son of Joshua Butcher Whittenburg and Sallie Ridout on Plum Creek in Caldwell County, Texas near Lockhart, he was christened Thomas Searcy Whittenburg, being named for Dr. Searcy who delivered him but who almost lost Tom's mother. However, it was a black servant woman who saved Tom's life by nursing him with her own infant.
He was about twenty when with his parents, two older brothers and four grown sisters, moved to Sweetwater where he worked with his brother John and father in the family store until it went bankrupt. Then he worked for Mose Newman at his race track where Sweetwater High School is located.
His sister Sue Ella taught school in "Ole Grover" near the Nunn Ranch where she boarded and Tom's future bride was one of her pupils. Lucy Maud Nunn was born in Roscoe, Nolan County 1 February 1891, daughter of Joe Nunn and Fannie Wright. They were married Christmas Day 1907, with Tom's father performing the ceremony when she was 16 and he was 34. They moved into a two-room cabin located on Kildoogan Creek on the farm located north of Sweetwater on the Roby Highway. This farm is where John and Tom farmed and ranched as they grubbed out mesquites to clear more land for cultivation near the creek (which at time was a flowing stream with an abundance of fish, walnut trees, wild game like rabbits, squirrels, quail and dove which John hunted for food).
Soon the cabin was removed to the present location of the farmhouse and Tom, with his carpenter skills, incorporated it into a larger house, dug a rain water cistern and built tanks for water. This was to be the family and John's home until 1924 when Tom and John divided the land and Tom built his own home on the west half-section near the highway. After Thomas Whittenburg bought his Uncle John's land, he remodeled the old house in 1954 and still lives in it, the house where he was born.
The weather became unfavorable and crops were poor, so the family in 1909 was persuaded to go to Falfurrias (Brooks County, Texas) to operate truck farms for Dr. H. M. Bennett, husband of sister Anna Louisa Whittenburg. The trip was made by train with Tom taking in a box car a team of mules, one horse, two dogs and household "stuff". During the five-year absence, the Sweetwater land was rented to Dick McElroy and Sheriff John Bond; Fannie Louisa (1910) and Abbie (1912) were born; Joshua Butcher died and was buried there; and Joe Nunn died in Sweetwater.
John tired of Falfurrias and returned home. Lucy, barely 23 years of age with two babies and pregnant, returned to Sweetwater in 1914, several months ahead of Tom. She lived with her widowed mother and brother, Charlie Nunn. Thomas was born in December of that year. Lucy's health was very poor for several years, and Tom was both father and mother to his young family, helped only by John, hired girls, and Mama Nunn. The children matured early and soon helped with the work.
Farming at best was difficult. All planting and plowing was done one row at a time with plows pulled by Bill and Donk, the mules. Cotton was chopped and picked by hand, hauled five miles to the gin and sold for $.05 a pound. Grain was cut by reaper or binder, tied into bundles and hand shocked until the thresher came to separate the grain from the chaff. Threshing day was a great day. Neighbor women and Mama Nunn came to help Lucy feed the laboring men. The children carried water to the workers and brought wood from the woodpile for the cook stove. When Tom almost died with a carbuncle on his neck, neighbors came in great numbers with their own machinery and laid the crop by. That's the way neighbors were in those days.
Tom had a competence in mathematics equal to that of a high school graduate even though he had about seven years of formal schooling and one bookkeeping course by correspondence. Lucy attended fewer years, but she always expressed gratitude to Tom's mother for teaching her spelling, grammar, numbers and to read and write well. Both Tom and Lucy valued education and made sure their children never missed school. All three graduated from Sweetwater High School and all attended institutions of higher learning, becoming business persons and teachers who assumed responsible positions in their communities.
Tom and Lucy supplemented their income by selling butter, cream, eggs and turkeys. The drought of 1917-18 forced them and John to spend all their cash to try to save their starving cattle and land. Tom left home to pick cotton and later moved to town when the flu epidemic was raging.
WWI was drawing to a close and Tom expected to be drafted and went to work for Walker-Smith Wholesale Grocery. They almost recovered from these catastrophes when drought came again, grasshoppers descended, banks closed, illness struck the family and debts mounted, but they persevered. There were good times with the bad, all simple pleasures of interaction with family and friends. They included hiking, fishing, celebration of holidays, birthdays, church, singings, ice cream socials, play and game parties, parlor games, pitching horseshoes and dollars, "42" dominoes, "Flinch", "Old Maid" and baseball, but not on Sunday.
Tom died of a cerebral hemorrhage 6 June 1946. Lucy died two days before her 89th birthday, 29 Jan 1980, at Holiday Retirement Center in Sweetwater where she had been a resident for eight years. Both are buried in the Whittenburg family plot in Sweetwater Cemetery.
Lucy Whittenburg, during her 34 years of widowhood, moved from the family home on Roby Highway and lived in Sweetwater, earning her living as a practical nurse. She spent her spare time as a volunteer in women's work at Fourth and Elm Street Church of Christ, was a member of Eastern Star for a time, loved the museum and was tireless in visiting and writing letters to the sick and troubled. Although a blizzard raged at the time of her funeral many registered, attesting to her contributions as a friend.
* * * * * *
NOLAN PIONEER DIES AT HOME
SWEETWATER, June 6th - Thomas Searcy Whittenburg, 72, a resident of Nolan county for 56 years, died at his home on the Palava road north of Sweetwater at 1:25pm on Thursday. He suffered a stroke on Sunday. Mr. Whittenburg was born October 12, 1873, in Caldwell county.
He came to Nolan county as youth and engaged in farming and stock raising.
Survivors in addition to his wife are two daughters, Mrs. Fanny Suffel of San Saba and Mrs. Abbie Whorton of Tahoka, and a son, Thomas Whittenburg, of Sweetwater. There is also a niece, Sally Campbell of Clayton, N. M., who was reared in the Whittenburg home. A sister, Mrs. W. A. Dobkins of Fort Worth, and five grandchildren are other survivors.
Funeral services will be held at the First Christian Church in Sweetwater, with the Rev. J. T. McKissick of Abilene, the Rev. Hugh B. Warner of First Christian Church in Sweetwater, and F. B. Shepherd, minister of the Church of Christ, officiating. Wells funeral home has charge of arrangements.
From THE ABILENE (TX) REPORTER-NEWS (June 7, 1946)
Obit courtesy of norannl - 7/02/2013
* * * * * *
NOLAN COUNTY DEATH CERTIFICATE
Name: Thomas Searcy Whittenburg
Event Type: Death
Event Date: 06 Jun 1946
Event Place: Residence, Sweetwater, Nolan, Texas, United States
Cause of Death: Cerebral hemorrhage; hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease; hypertension
Gender: Male
Marital Status: Married
Age: 72 yrs 7 mos 24 days
Birth Date: 12 Oct 1873
Birthplace: Texas
Father's Name: J B Whittenburg
Father's Birthplace: Alabama
Mother's Name: Sallie Rideout
Mother's Birthplace: Missouri
Occupation: Farmer-stockman
Residence: Route 2, Sweetwater, Nolan, Texas
Burial/Removal: Sweetwater
Date: 07 Jun 1946
Informant: Mrs. T. S. Whittenburg (wife), Sweetwater, Texas
Certificate Number: 28459
GS Film number: 2218377
Digital Folder Number: 005145072
Image Number: 02055
* * * * * *
THOMAS SEARCY WHITTENBURG-LUCY MAUD NUNN
When Tom Whittenburg was born 12 October 1873, youngest son of Joshua Butcher Whittenburg and Sallie Ridout on Plum Creek in Caldwell County, Texas near Lockhart, he was christened Thomas Searcy Whittenburg, being named for Dr. Searcy who delivered him but who almost lost Tom's mother. However, it was a black servant woman who saved Tom's life by nursing him with her own infant.
He was about twenty when with his parents, two older brothers and four grown sisters, moved to Sweetwater where he worked with his brother John and father in the family store until it went bankrupt. Then he worked for Mose Newman at his race track where Sweetwater High School is located.
His sister Sue Ella taught school in "Ole Grover" near the Nunn Ranch where she boarded and Tom's future bride was one of her pupils. Lucy Maud Nunn was born in Roscoe, Nolan County 1 February 1891, daughter of Joe Nunn and Fannie Wright. They were married Christmas Day 1907, with Tom's father performing the ceremony when she was 16 and he was 34. They moved into a two-room cabin located on Kildoogan Creek on the farm located north of Sweetwater on the Roby Highway. This farm is where John and Tom farmed and ranched as they grubbed out mesquites to clear more land for cultivation near the creek (which at time was a flowing stream with an abundance of fish, walnut trees, wild game like rabbits, squirrels, quail and dove which John hunted for food).
Soon the cabin was removed to the present location of the farmhouse and Tom, with his carpenter skills, incorporated it into a larger house, dug a rain water cistern and built tanks for water. This was to be the family and John's home until 1924 when Tom and John divided the land and Tom built his own home on the west half-section near the highway. After Thomas Whittenburg bought his Uncle John's land, he remodeled the old house in 1954 and still lives in it, the house where he was born.
The weather became unfavorable and crops were poor, so the family in 1909 was persuaded to go to Falfurrias (Brooks County, Texas) to operate truck farms for Dr. H. M. Bennett, husband of sister Anna Louisa Whittenburg. The trip was made by train with Tom taking in a box car a team of mules, one horse, two dogs and household "stuff". During the five-year absence, the Sweetwater land was rented to Dick McElroy and Sheriff John Bond; Fannie Louisa (1910) and Abbie (1912) were born; Joshua Butcher died and was buried there; and Joe Nunn died in Sweetwater.
John tired of Falfurrias and returned home. Lucy, barely 23 years of age with two babies and pregnant, returned to Sweetwater in 1914, several months ahead of Tom. She lived with her widowed mother and brother, Charlie Nunn. Thomas was born in December of that year. Lucy's health was very poor for several years, and Tom was both father and mother to his young family, helped only by John, hired girls, and Mama Nunn. The children matured early and soon helped with the work.
Farming at best was difficult. All planting and plowing was done one row at a time with plows pulled by Bill and Donk, the mules. Cotton was chopped and picked by hand, hauled five miles to the gin and sold for $.05 a pound. Grain was cut by reaper or binder, tied into bundles and hand shocked until the thresher came to separate the grain from the chaff. Threshing day was a great day. Neighbor women and Mama Nunn came to help Lucy feed the laboring men. The children carried water to the workers and brought wood from the woodpile for the cook stove. When Tom almost died with a carbuncle on his neck, neighbors came in great numbers with their own machinery and laid the crop by. That's the way neighbors were in those days.
Tom had a competence in mathematics equal to that of a high school graduate even though he had about seven years of formal schooling and one bookkeeping course by correspondence. Lucy attended fewer years, but she always expressed gratitude to Tom's mother for teaching her spelling, grammar, numbers and to read and write well. Both Tom and Lucy valued education and made sure their children never missed school. All three graduated from Sweetwater High School and all attended institutions of higher learning, becoming business persons and teachers who assumed responsible positions in their communities.
Tom and Lucy supplemented their income by selling butter, cream, eggs and turkeys. The drought of 1917-18 forced them and John to spend all their cash to try to save their starving cattle and land. Tom left home to pick cotton and later moved to town when the flu epidemic was raging.
WWI was drawing to a close and Tom expected to be drafted and went to work for Walker-Smith Wholesale Grocery. They almost recovered from these catastrophes when drought came again, grasshoppers descended, banks closed, illness struck the family and debts mounted, but they persevered. There were good times with the bad, all simple pleasures of interaction with family and friends. They included hiking, fishing, celebration of holidays, birthdays, church, singings, ice cream socials, play and game parties, parlor games, pitching horseshoes and dollars, "42" dominoes, "Flinch", "Old Maid" and baseball, but not on Sunday.
Tom died of a cerebral hemorrhage 6 June 1946. Lucy died two days before her 89th birthday, 29 Jan 1980, at Holiday Retirement Center in Sweetwater where she had been a resident for eight years. Both are buried in the Whittenburg family plot in Sweetwater Cemetery.
Lucy Whittenburg, during her 34 years of widowhood, moved from the family home on Roby Highway and lived in Sweetwater, earning her living as a practical nurse. She spent her spare time as a volunteer in women's work at Fourth and Elm Street Church of Christ, was a member of Eastern Star for a time, loved the museum and was tireless in visiting and writing letters to the sick and troubled. Although a blizzard raged at the time of her funeral many registered, attesting to her contributions as a friend.
* * * * * *
NOLAN PIONEER DIES AT HOME
SWEETWATER, June 6th - Thomas Searcy Whittenburg, 72, a resident of Nolan county for 56 years, died at his home on the Palava road north of Sweetwater at 1:25pm on Thursday. He suffered a stroke on Sunday. Mr. Whittenburg was born October 12, 1873, in Caldwell county.
He came to Nolan county as youth and engaged in farming and stock raising.
Survivors in addition to his wife are two daughters, Mrs. Fanny Suffel of San Saba and Mrs. Abbie Whorton of Tahoka, and a son, Thomas Whittenburg, of Sweetwater. There is also a niece, Sally Campbell of Clayton, N. M., who was reared in the Whittenburg home. A sister, Mrs. W. A. Dobkins of Fort Worth, and five grandchildren are other survivors.
Funeral services will be held at the First Christian Church in Sweetwater, with the Rev. J. T. McKissick of Abilene, the Rev. Hugh B. Warner of First Christian Church in Sweetwater, and F. B. Shepherd, minister of the Church of Christ, officiating. Wells funeral home has charge of arrangements.
From THE ABILENE (TX) REPORTER-NEWS (June 7, 1946)
Obit courtesy of norannl - 7/02/2013
* * * * * *
NOLAN COUNTY DEATH CERTIFICATE
Name: Thomas Searcy Whittenburg
Event Type: Death
Event Date: 06 Jun 1946
Event Place: Residence, Sweetwater, Nolan, Texas, United States
Cause of Death: Cerebral hemorrhage; hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease; hypertension
Gender: Male
Marital Status: Married
Age: 72 yrs 7 mos 24 days
Birth Date: 12 Oct 1873
Birthplace: Texas
Father's Name: J B Whittenburg
Father's Birthplace: Alabama
Mother's Name: Sallie Rideout
Mother's Birthplace: Missouri
Occupation: Farmer-stockman
Residence: Route 2, Sweetwater, Nolan, Texas
Burial/Removal: Sweetwater
Date: 07 Jun 1946
Informant: Mrs. T. S. Whittenburg (wife), Sweetwater, Texas
Certificate Number: 28459
GS Film number: 2218377
Digital Folder Number: 005145072
Image Number: 02055
* * * * * *
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