Big Thicket Legacy

Ellen Walker

Introducing Mrs. Ellen Walker "Aunt EU" Walker, as she was affectionately known,lived ninety-nine years within seven miles of where she was born. She never wanted to live anywhere else. After her husband died she lived alone and regularly walked six miles-to Saratoga and back-for her mail and occasional groceries, until she broke her hip at ninety-two. She remained active until her death, though one of her daughters and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Shortie Jackson, lived with her the last four years. Aunt EU loved the woods. She never let the commonplace become common but retained a positive appreciation of her environment, which she knew like the back of her hand. She was neither surprised nor concerned at the scream of a panther in the draw behind her house, which she continued to hear till she died. Her favorite flower was the wild honeysuckle, though in her yard she nurtured a burr rosebush from a cutting her mother brought from Alabama when the family headed for Texas over a century ago. Mrs. Walker worked in the woods with her husband until she was fifty-three, when an injury to her husband forced them to quit. Most people would think of it as hard, physically demanding work, but she said, "No, Iwouldn't say tiehacking is hard work. I enjoyed it." Despite the demands of a rugged environment , the years dealt kindly with Aunt Ell. She was interested in life and people till the day she died. Diminished hearing was the only noticeable impairment of her faculties. Her gnarled hands that gripped the broad ax in years past served her reliably as she moved about the place with her walking cane. On our many visits during the last eight years of her life, we never saw her when she was not pleasant and cheerful. She was widely known as "Ma Thicket," a title that seemed to fit, and certainly one that she earned. MRS. MARY ELLEN WALKER ("AUNT ELL") y grandmother and grandfather come from Alabama to Texas in a ox wagon. They stayed one year in Mississippi and then come on to Texas and located about five miles from Old Hardin, on Big Cypress. Old Hardin was the county seat. There was my grandmother and grandfather, three aunts and one of my aunt's husband, Charlie Rowers. He was my uncle on both sides. My grandfather was William Brackin, and my grandmother was Ida Sneider before she was married. My father was Irving Rowers and my mother Lottie Brackin. Bud Brackin was my own uncle. My rna and pa married durin' the war. My daddy got a furlough and come home and they married over there on Cypress Creek at the old Brackin place. Iwas born at Honey Island, October 10, 1874, but when Iwas ten years old we moved from Honey Island down there, five miles from Saratogie and six miles from Honey Island, right in the middle of the Big Thicket. My daddy built our house out of pine, hand-hewed logs, notched and fitted and leveled. The floor was three inches thick and hewed out of logs. The kitchen wasn't built on to the rest of the house but was connected by a shed. It was built out of round logs, not hewed. The floor was red clay, built up about twelve inches higher than the ground. They'd always have a mudcat chimney, take about a day to build, neighbors help. Women would cook and men built the chimney. I stayed right there till I was twenty years old, when I married and moved to Saratogie, and I've been here ever since. Uncle Bud and Uncle Jim was our closest neighbors, six miles to their house. Uncle Bud hunted a lot. He called me to the gate one mornin', said, "Come here, Igot a purty for ya." Iwent out there and he reached back in his saddle pocket, and he had a little old bear about ten inches long. The old mama bear had one of his dogs hugged up and about to kill it. He run in and jabbed his gun in her mouth and shot her, and the print of her teeth was on each side of his Winchester. She had two little cubs in her bed 6 Ellen Walker and he carried'em home and raised'em. They was about a year old when...