Tickets for the June 10, 2023 Historic Home Tour are now on sale! $20 for adults and $8 for kids 12 and under to visit five locations on S. Center and S. Bois d’Arc streets. Tickets are available for purchase at the Spellman Museum of Forney History and select other locations. We hope to see you there!
If you’re interested in volunteering as a docent for this event, please email us at historicforney@gmail.com.
Save the Date for our upcoming Historic House Tour!
Saturday, June 10th we’ll be hosting a summer home tour of some historic houses and buildings along Center St. and S. Bois d’Arc. Tickets will go on sale soon! Follow the Spellman Museum on our facebook page for the latest info on the event. We hope to see you there!
The FHPL is please to host a tour of historic homes in the downtown residential area of Forney. See this poster for information. More details will be released as we get closer. Tickets will go on sale in early-mid November.
We are happy to introduce a new and hopefully ongoing event at the Spellman Museum. The Forney Historic Preservation League is partnering with the Forney Arts Council to host 3rd Thursday Evening at the Spellman Museum!
Themes are developed based on the traveling or rotating exhibit currently on display in the museum’s multi-purpose room (MPR). These 3rd Thursday Evenings will include activities such as guest speakers, demonstrations, crafts, films, music, and more – all plus food and drink! We have the first three months planned through April and are developing programming for dates beyond.
The first event is Thursday, February 16th from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. to complement our Literary East Texas exhibit from Humanities Texas. This exhibit honors the work of 25 authors selected from more than 200 writers who have lived in and written about the eastern half of the state. This expansive part of Texas allows for a variety of settings from the Red River to the Piney Woods and the Gulf Coast. Passages of their works are illustrated by photographs taken especially for this exhibition by Nell Blakely. As the brochure states, “the goals of Literary East Texas are to encourage readers to discover and rediscover writers of the region, to match the words of these authors with photographs of the people and landscape they described, and to honor representative writers of the region.”
Activities for the event on the 16th include a book “blind date”, decorating journals and bookmarks, and book signings and sales from local Forney authors. Featured authors are:
Mike Farris, author of legal thrillers like A Death in the Islands, Isle of Broken Dreams, Wrongful Termination, and more.
(Author photos link to their pages on amazon.)
Arlene G. Stein, who will tell us about the adventures of Serious Henry and her line of children’s books.
Brian Moreland, writer of supernatural horror such as Dead of Winter and Blood Sacrifices.
and Elizabeth Lawless, author of Creative Monster and Western Legends, and more.
All will be joining us February 16th for our first 3rd Thursday Evening at the Spellman. We hope that you will too!
Tomorrow is Halloween, a holiday which some celebrate by watching scary movies. The 1940s were a wonderful time for scary movies with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Gaslight. And don’t forget The Wolf Man, Ghost of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and then of course House of Frankenstein which featured Frank, the Wolf Man, Dracula, an evil scientist, and a hunchback. That pretty well covered all the bases. Think of it as The Avengers for horror fans – combining all of their favorite characters into one movie.
The head honcho of horror movies at the time was writer and producer Val Lewton. Russian-born but having moved to the United States as a child, Lewton began writing at an early age and dabbled in everything from newspapers and magazines to novels and film scripts. He hired on at RKO movie studio in 1942 to head their new horror unit. He initially made B movies that were cheap but profitable and eventually moved his way up to the A list films and actors. His credits include these horror classics:
Cat People (1942)
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
The Ghost Ship (1943)
The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
The Body Snatcher (1945)
Isle of the Dead (1945)
The last two films starred none other than Boris Karloff of Frankenstein fame. In The Body Snatcher, Karloff stars as a “resurrection man” (more commonly known as a graverobber) who relentlessly torments and blackmails the doctor to whom he provides bodies. Isle of the Dead depicts Karloff as a Greek general who quarantines an island after a mysterious outbreak starts killing inhabitants and giving power to a vampire. Spooky stuff.
Perhaps one or more of these movies played at the Spann Theater here in Forney. The movie theater was on Main St. near present-day City Hall and was owned by Milburn Mitchell, part of the same family who also had Margaret Mitchell Furniture across the street (present-day Eric Davis). In Forney Country, Jerry Flook relates this remembrance of a local boy visiting the Spann movie theater in the 1940s:
“On occasion, when a horror movie was showing, an employee of the Spann would come down the aisles costumed as one of the creepy characters of the movie. One Forney resident tells a childhood story of fleeing the theater in fright after a mummy unexpectedly appeared in the aisle during the midnight movie. As he ran for home a few blocks away, he encountered the Forney night watchman, Bob Crawford, on his nightly rounds. The surprise meeting of Crawford, who was a hulking figure himself, turned fright into outright terror and the young man never looked back until he stumbled breathless through his front door and locked it behind him.”
We don’t have night watchmen any more, of course, because we have a full time police force. Forney had only one law enforcement officer, the marshal, up until the 1950s. But fire insurance companies required that commercial structures have 24-hour surveillance in order for their rates to be affordable. One marshal couldn’t patrol downtown at all hours, so business owners pooled resources to hire a night watchman. He watched for fires downtown during the night but also possessed a certain degree of police power. He was assigned a specific route around the business district and checked in at each building by inserting a key from their front firebox into a time-clock which he carried. That record could tell where he had been throughout the night and when. The city of Forney took over the watchman’s salary beginning in 1924. The last record of a marshal being elected was in 1948 with Bondie Richman. I suspect that means that by the time the position was up again in 1950, the city had hired a more complete police force at which time the need for a night watchman would have been eliminated. Some of the Forney night watchmen over the years were: (?) Eudy, W.J. Pettigrew, Jesse Hawks, Robert W. Crawford, Ed Davis, Elvis Hamm, B.B. Henderson, J.H. Frame, and John Freeman.
If you’re out and about after dark this Saturday night and see a hulking figure in the street, it’s probably not the friendly night watchman of 60 years ago.
Or is it?
<dun dun DUN!>
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to check out our facebook page.
Kendall
You can read more about 1940s horror movies on blogs HERE and HERE.
School started back this week for some area students and will next week for the rest. Summer break ends as classes begin. But did you know that in Old Forney some schools met only in summer so children could help on their family farms during planting and harvest? And private school years could be as short as 4 months, sometimes depending on curriculum and sometimes on when the money ran out.
There were various and assorted schools in the Forney area long before there was a Forney. As far back as the 1850s there were the Mustang School, East Fork, Union Hill, Wheatland, and others – all private and often held in private homes. Families pooled their money to hire a teacher for area students who could afford to take classes. Children usually attended just a few months before farm work took priority, and most quit lessons entirely well before anything resembling high school graduation.
In 1869 Harbin H. Self erected the Brooklyn School at the center of town near modern S. Bois d’Arc and College streets (where the current FISD building sits) in a building that also served as community center, union church, and Masonic meeting hall. By the early 1880s the school building had become so dilapidated classes actually met outside instead and at two different locations – south Forney and north Forney. Of course, back then north Forney really wasn’t all that far north. The new north school was built at N. Bois d’Arc and Aimee.
Students at North Forney public school, 1888.
Soon the north side of town had another school in the Lewis Academy, a preparatory school opened and led by Edward C. Lewis in 1894. The private academy taught primary, intermediate, and advanced students and not only offered classical instruction in Greek and Latin but also formed Forney’s first football team. It had male and female dorms and occupied both sides of Cedar Street between Buffalo and Kaufman. Over time the preference for free public schooling and the consolidation of north and south Forney schools reduced the number of students at Lewis Academy until it closed in 1903.
The Lewis Academy was in operation for only nine years (1894-1903) but was held in high esteem during its tenure.
Forney public school after consolidation, 1895-1896. This shows classroom #1 with S.J. Lewis, principal and teacher.
Classroom #2 with teacher Howard Parker.
As Forney grew it built new schools and upgraded old ones, receiving new buildings in 1903, 1922, 1938, 1968, and 1974. When a new high school was built, the old one usually became an elementary or middle school although some were torn down completely.
Forney HS, now FISD administration building, in a 1939 aerial shot. The school was built the year before.
Since then the number of schools in Forney has exploded. As recently as 1988, Forney ISD was only 3 schools: elementary, middle, and high schools. Forney now has 9 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 2 high schools for a total of 13, plus the administration building and academic center.
One thing has remained constant, however. Since Harbin Self’s Brooklyn School in 1869, there has always been a school building (either classrooms or administration) at S. Bois d’Arc and College streets. And next week it will usher in yet another school year just as it always has.
Thanks,
Kendall
Don’t forget to visit our facebook page!
Today finally there is a little sunshine in Forney after storms last night. And the night before that. And the weeks before that. It’s been very wet and very cloudy this spring which means you should take advantage of the nice weather and maybe take a walk or eat your lunch outside today. One of my favorite places to take a quick breather in downtown Forney is the Xeric Garden. If you voted at the sub-courthouse in the elections earlier this month, perhaps you saw it right next door. The garden is maintained by the Forney Garden Club.
The Forney Garden Club held its first meeting on May 23, 1984 with 9 founding attendees: Pauline Hays, Azaline Montgomery, Brenda Bradden, Tim Bradden, Bryan Ayers, Diane Matthews, Jerry Flook, Patt Jordan, and Linda Jordan. Those early members went through the process of establishing a formal organization and received guidance from both the White Rock Garden Forum and the Dallas Council of Garden Clubs, becoming a member of both groups.
In short order the Forney Garden Club received recognition for various projects and won awards such as an “Adopt a Highway” award, a “Community Achievement Award” from Governor White, a “Keep Texas Beautiful” award, and various ribbons at FFA shows and craft fairs. They donated books on wildflowers to the Forney High School Library and started a scholarship fund for deserving high school graduates planning to attend college. The biggest project undertaken, however, was the Xeric Garden.
County Commission Ken Leonard first approached the Club about creating a garden by the sub-courthouse in October, 2001. They decided to tackle the project and took about a year to prepare. In 2003, the Club developed a plan with an architect, raised the lot with over 50 truckloads of soil and compost, supervised the construction of a 16 x 16 foot gazebo pavilion, designed the arbor with crushed granite pathways, and constructed an Information Center with display cases. They received help from lots of volunteers including students from the National Honor Society and Student Council, Master Composters, friends, spouses, and many others.
Sign at garden during construction
Walkways are laid out
The last remaining project before completion was the erection of the wrought iron fence. Panels were sold to individuals, businesses, and community organizations with their names included on the finished fence. This fundraising project plus a silent auction and other money-making endeavors helped raise over $32,000. The Club also received grant money from the National Garden Clubs, Inc. In 2008 the garden received a Blue Star Memorial Marker at its eastern edge. The marker honors all the men and women in uniform – past or present – from District X of the Texas Garden Clubs. Counties in District X are Kaufman, Rockwall, Hunt, Grayson, Collin, Ellis, Dallas, and Navarro.
After completion with plants, landscaping, and fence
With scarecrow decorations in fall. Plants-in-bloom and decorations change with the seasons.
The Xeric Garden was built as an educational tool as well as a public park. Information is available on topics such as recycling, composting, rainwater harvesting, and various others. The purpose of xeric gardening (as opposed to regular gardening) is to use native and adapted plants that need less water and require less maintenance to thrive. This type of landscaping conserves resources and is better able to survive in harsh or dry climates. It’s important to remember that just because we have rain now doesn’t mean we will for long. We were in a full-fledged drought last summer.
The Forney Garden Club hosts demonstrations and classes on landscaping, horticulture, bee keeping, and many more topics throughout the year and at their meetings. They also take field trips and hold an annual luncheon. The Club meets at the First Baptist Church on the 3rd Thursday of the month, September through May. That unfortunately means it will be a few months before they hold their next meeting. In the meantime you can visit the Xeric Garden, pick up a pamphlet, and enjoy the view. Hope to see you there.
Kendall
Many thanks to Nancy Harris for providing me with information on the Forney Garden Club and the Xeric Garden in particular. Visit the Garden Club facebook page to stay up to date on events or to contact them for more information. Memberships are available for $25.
And leave us a message on our facebook page, too!
Early voting has started in Kaufman County as Forney is set to select 2 council candidates, 2 school board candidates, and a new mayor. Early voting runs through Tuesday, May 5th with election-day voting on Saturday, May 9th. If you attended either of the candidate forums held last week, you got a chance to hear from most of the candidates and form an opinion as to how you’ll vote.
Forney first elected a mayor and city council in June 1884, approximately ten years after its founding but having just been incorporated. At that time, the city government was a mayor and several Aldermen. It didn’t last long. The officials elected in 1890 were never seated due to a technicality. In Forney Country, Jerry Flook describes city government from 1890 to 1895 as being “in a state of flux”. Then in September 1895 the city charter was abolished by popular vote, and there was no city government at all.
So what happened in Forney with no local government? A group of men called the Forney Commercial Club took it upon themselves to run the business of the city. They acted essentially as boosters: recruiting businesses to town, encouraging improvements and beautification projects, and establishing basic utilities such as water, electric, and sewer systems. They were able to do so in part by raising money from family, friends, neighbors, and businesses. During their tenure they re-shaped downtown Forney – literally.
Forney’s first commercial buildings relied on the railroad for transportation of supplies and the export of agricultural goods. Businesses and gins were built close to and facing the tracks since most of the activity occurred on the railroad side of the building. But beginning in 1899 a dramatic shift occurred as new businesses were built between the streets of E. Main & E. Trinity and S. Bois d’Arc & N. Elm (still our central business district) with entrances to Main. Existing businesses relocated their primary entrances to face the street as well, including Tom Layden who had built the first brick structure facing the tracks. There is no official reason why this happened, but it seems to have been a trend of the times since other area municipalities noted the same shift. Although some of the buildings have burned or otherwise come down, most of downtown Forney as it stands today was built between 1899 and 1910.
Downtown businesses in 1889 facing the railroad tracks. This is Front St. (or the back side of Main St. depending on how you look at it).
Layden building, 1899. You can see this at far right in the picture above. Although this shot was taken from the tracks, this is around the time that Layden added on to the building in the rear to make a new entrance on Main St.
Forney well, 1909 or 1910
Forney tank built over the well, 1910
In 1909 the Commercial Club was instrumental in developing Forney’s water supply and raised funds to drill a new artesian well. The need for a steady water supply had recently become tragically apparent due to a drought which dried up the ponds needed to operate the cotton gins and a deadly fire which broke out in the City Hotel near the corner of S. Bois d’Arc and W. Front streets. In fact, the drilling had struck water a few months before the fire, but the distribution system had not yet been completed. Needless to say, that become a top priority and was in place by summer of that year.
Also in 1910, members of the Commercial Club petitioned to Kaufman County commissioner’s court to set an election to reincorporate the city of Forney with a new mayor, council, and marshal. Naturally the slate of candidates consisted of Commercial Club members, all of whom were elected. Forney selected as mayor Avery Duke, as marshal Robert Crawford, and as councilmen Richard Pinson, John M. Lewis, James Cooley, Yancy McKellar, and James C. Reagin. Since these men had essentially been running the town for the past 15 years (with others), it was a pretty smooth transition.
Building on the success of the water system, one of their first acts as a council was the organization of a volunteer fire department. The first fire chief was J.E. Yates, and the VFD was ready as soon as the water distribution system was complete. Their first call was on July 11, 1910 when two houses in two different parts of town caught fire. One was saved while the other was lost, but the community was pleased with their efforts.
Volunteer Fire Department, 1912. This is on Trinity St. before the brick fire station was built at Trinity and Bois d’Arc in 1913.
A water supply also made possible electrical service in Forney since the electrical generators were steam powered. The Forney Light and Ice Company was privately owned and was built in 1910 for $25,000. Its construction was rapid, as was the wiring of businesses and homes. Electric lights hummed in Forney for the first time on August 12, 1910.
As you can see, 1910 was a busy year here. In about 6 months Forney was reincorporated with new officeholders, completed a downtown overhaul, received water and electric service, and organized a new volunteer fire department. It could be considered the beginning of “modern” Forney, and the town boomed for the next 20 years or so until crop prices tanked in the 1930s.
It seems as though Forney is in the middle of another big boom today. The population is rising, the number of schools has grown three-fold in the past few years, and construction is trying to keep pace with both retail spaces along 80 and housing developments a little farther south. Voting in local elections is a way to voice your opinion about how Forney manages its growth and continues to prosper. So take the time in the next two weeks to go do it.
Thanks,
Kendall
Information about the election and polling places can be found here.
As always, we’d love to hear from you on our facebook page.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day this week. For most people this is a fun day to wear green, watch a parade, partake of libations, and generally have a good time. For Irish Catholics and others the day holds a more meaningful significance commemorating St. Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland.
I fall into the former category. I’m Irish but not Irish Irish. I’m an American mutt who’s probably more Irish than anything else and at least 3 generations removed from anyone born in the old country. And I’m not Catholic. Basically I don’t have any plans to celebrate on the 17th unless I happen to have potatoes for dinner.
But the Forney area has a strong connection to the Irish, or at least it used to. Talty, which is just south of town on 1641, was settled by so many Irish immigrants that the area was called Irish Ridge.
In 1873 when the Texas and Pacific railroad made its way across Kaufman County, many of the laborers were first or second generation Irish immigrants. When construction of this section of line ended, several of these Irish workers and their families chose to build permanent homes in the area between Forney and Terrell. The land was good blackland prairie soil which made it very conducive to growing hay and cotton. Within just a generation or two some of the descendents of the early Irish Ridge settlers were among the most prosperous famers, merchants, and bankers in and around Forney.
In Forney Country, Jerry Flook lists the names of the earliest Irish settlers as the Layden, Maloney, Vaughn, Spellman, and Collins families. A little later came the Adams, Brennan, Cochran, Costello, Dennehy, Glynn, Henry, Higgins, O’Connor, Sline, and Talty families.
Irish Ridge was a tight-knit community. Irish immigrants in the northeastern US often encountered prejudice and discrimination and were widely viewed as poor and uneducated second-class citizens. For these reasons and others the Irish often settled close together where they could live and worship together. In Irish Ridge, the Catholic diocese established a parish in 1891 and built St. Martin’s Church. In 1901 the St. Martin Convent and Academy was established next to the church and administered by the School Sisters of Notre Dame. The boarding school closed in the summer of 1945.
St. Martin’s Church, 1891
A more recent photo of St. Martin’s
After World War II when populations shifted from rural to urban areas, the “Irishness” of Irish Ridge declined. Old families moved out and eventually new families moved in. Sometime between the late 1950s and the early 1970s people stopped calling the area Irish Ridge and referred to it as Talty. Talty actually was a slightly different area centered around Mike Talty’s general store established circa 1900 near the intersection of Talty Road and FM 148. But the name Talty took hold over the nearby area, too, and was in use well before Talty officially incorporated in 1999 with an in-city-limits land area of 4.0 square miles.
Mike Talty Store and the old Talty cotton gin, ca. 1912
Connections to the town’s Irish heritage have waxed and waned over the years. St. Martin’s Catholic Church still sits at the intersection of 1641 and Interstate 20. A new subdivision called Shamrock Ridge Estates was built on 1641 south of Helms Trail. The subdivision features streets named after early Irish Ridge families like Delaney Lane and Dennehy Drive plus more overtly Irish nods in Clover Lane, Dublin Drive, Shamrock Circle, Limerick Lane, and even St. Patrick’s Drive.
How did Irish Ridge inhabitants celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? According to reports from local historian Pat Costello, it was a major all-day event at the turn of the century. St. Martin’s held a special mass. Resident Michael Collins (b. 1884) recalled that after mass the Irish parishioners went from house to house, “celebrating with whiskey and Gaelic dance until the small hours of the morning.”
Today there might not be all-night parties and dancing in the streets, but I hope at least a few residents of old Irish Ridge say “sláinte” in memory of its founders this Tuesday.
As always, feel free to share your thoughts on Irish Ridge or other Forney area topics on our facebook page.
Thanks,
Kendall
For this post and many others, I’ve borrowed liberally from Jerry Flook’s book Forney Country. The section specific to Talty begins on page 276, and the section I quoted is on page 277. Copies of the book are available in person at the museum (please call first to make sure I’m there) or via our website.
