For thousands of years before the white man came to Northeast Texas, Caddo Indians inhabited this area. The Caddo was a peaceful farming tribe, and Titus County's fertile land, temperate climate, and plentiful rainfall provided them an excellent place to raise the crops they depended on for survival. The Caddo raised corn, squash, beans, and cotton as staple crops. In addition to the crops they raised, Titus County woodlands provided them with seasonal foods like pecans, walnuts, hickory nuts, black berries, persimmons, and other native foods.
For over 100 years from the time when Anglos first began settling in Titus County in the 1830s until oil was discovered in early 1936, Titus County's economy continued to depend almost solely on agriculture. Most Titus County farms were small, ranging from a few acres to a few hundred acres. As far as we are aware, from the 1800s to the early 1940s, only a few Titus County men owned farms or ranches that contained over one thousand acres. The ones that come to mind were H. L. Hess, Sr., Augustus Hoffmann, Paul H. Pewitt, Leslie Sanders, and John B. Stephens. The Pewitt Ranch was primarily located in Morris County, but parts of it covered northeastern Titus County as well as northwestern Bowie County. We hope to be able to specifically highlight each large ranch in detail in future updates.
Farmers raised gardens and crops for their own use, and sold or traded surplus crops to obtain other things they needed. Cotton was Titus County's first primary cash crop, as was the case in most southern states. Buyers from distant markets came to Mount Pleasant, bought and packaged agricultural products, and shipped them by ox cart, and later by rail and truck, to other places for processing or sale.
For many years, farmers were on their own to devise the best farming and planting methods to obtain the best crops possible. They had to control pests as best they could. Farmers lost much of their fertile farmland to soil erosion due to poor farming practices.
In most places in Northeast Texas, including Titus County, farmers weren't the only ones who needed to have a good crop in order to survive. In the latter 1800s through the early 1930s, there was very little industry in Titus County to provide jobs outside of the farm. In the early 1900s, coal was mined in shaft-type mines in the Winfield and Old Union areas for a few years, but our largest industry was Augustus Hoffman's Heading and Stave Factory, which made wooden barrels from oak harvested from the White Oak and Sulphur bottoms. At one time, it employed over 200 people, which was only a tiny part of the county's population.
Titus County's banks, feed suppliers, grocers, and other merchants depended on our farmers having a good crop to create their sales and maintain their solvency.
In the 1920s, and possibly before, things began to change. Many people realized the importance of agriculture to the State of Texas and Titus County, and other groups and organizations began to assist farmers to maximize their crops and utilize their land properly to preserve and improve it for future use.
The Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College (Texas A & M) was created in Bryan, Texas as part of the national A & M system. In addition to academic courses, Texas A & M offered courses designed especially for farmers and conducted and supported agricultural research. They also provided extension agents in each county to assist farmers in learning improved farming methods right on their own farms.
Shipping Titus County agricultural products elsewhere provided substantial revenue for the Cotton Belt railroad. Therefore, both the Mt. Pleasant Chamber of Commerce and the Cotton Belt Railroad did everything they could to help and support the farmer, many times teaming up with each other and the Texas A. & M. University extension agent to create and implement specialized programs to help farmers.
The Mt. Pleasant/Titus County Chamber of Commerce assisted farmers in many ways over the years. They established an Agricultural Committee specifically to help farmers identify new cash crops to raise and improve farming methods. The Chamber organized meetings so local farmers could meet with agricultural experts to learn about the latest farming methods. The Chamber also tried to establish new markets for local farm products.
The Chamber of Commerce was very active in trying to establish the dairy industry in Titus County so farmers would not be as dependent on seasonal crops that were subject to failure, providing them with a steadier source of year-round income.
Along with the Cotton Belt, the Chamber of Commerce worked with city and county officials to adopt a milk ordinance to guarantee that milk sold in the county was safe for public consumption.
In order to produce milk, or anything else for that matter, there must be a market for farmers to sell it. In early 1929 the Chamber of Commerce worked with Ben Grisham of Little Rock, Arkansas, to establish Grisham's Ice Cream and Butter Plant in Mt. Pleasant. Grisham's used lots of whole milk and cream in the production of its ice cream and butter, which provided local farmers with a ready local market for their products that did not require shipping them. Before Grisham's came to town, many farmers didn't even bother to save their excess milk, so the additional money that it brought was welcome as the Great Depression took hold in the country.
The Chamber was also instrumental in attracting the Texas Milk Products plant, later to become Borden's, to Mt. Pleasant. In order to attract the big Texas Milk Products plant, Mt. Pleasant and Titus County had to raise $100,000, or half of the plant's cost. This may not seem like much in 2008, but it was a tremendous amount of money in 1929, comparing to several million dollars today. Not only was the sum substantial, but the United States was falling into the grips of the Great Depression and investment money was scarce. The Chamber of Commerce raised the needed funds through local businessmen and civic leaders and secured the plant for Titus County. The milk plant's presence during the depression helped many farm families in this area weather difficult economic times. Sales of milk provided the farmer with a regular paycheck every two weeks, and also helped free their children from work in the cotton fields, allowing them to attend schools for longer terms. Mt. Pleasant's plant received and processed as much milk as several of the company's plants that were better established and in larger dairy areas of the state.
In a late October, 1930 Chamber of Commerce meeting, figures were presented from the records of the Mt. Pleasant Texas Milk Products Company plant showing payments to certain Titus County farmers for milk in the less than three months the plant was in operation. They showed that farmers milking six or seven cows sold milk for more money in three months than the average cotton grower received for their entire year's cotton crop. Milk could be produced for much less than 20c per pound of butter fat, and the local plant paid 47c for it.
The Texas Milk Products plant bought lots of milk from Titus and surrounding counties for many years and provided a great boost to farmers throughout the area.
In August, 1930, the Chamber of Commerce sponsored a permanent pasture contest for Titus County to promote better pastures and more feed to assist the dairy industry.
The Cotton Belt Railroad assisted farmers in many ways. They had staff agricultural experts who aided farmers in learning the best farming and dairy methods. As early as 1925, the Cotton Belt worked with Texas A. & M. University by offering highly discounted tickets to enable farmers from their service area to attend special courses at Texas A. & M.
The Cotton Belt also created special trains to bring various experts and farming demonstrations directly into the communities they served. In 1925, the Cotton Belt operated a special demonstration train equipped with exhibits for farmers who operated orchards showing different diseases and insect pests. They showed improved methods of combating the pests and diseases and demonstrated different kinds of orchard cultivators and spraying and pruning equipment. A complete exhibit of spray materials and methods of applying them was included.
Experts left the train at different stops to demonstrate in actual orchards. They demonstrated how to select orchard sites with proper air movement, water drainage and soil types and explained how to select disease-free nursery stock.
In 1928, Titus County was trying to increase its dairy herds both to provide farmers with a steadier cash crop and to attract a large milk plant to the county. The Cotton Belt, again working with Texas A & M University, built a special sound truck to aid in the local program. Titus County was the first area in the Cotton Belt's service area to use the truck. Because electricity was still unavailable in most rural areas, they equipped the truck with a generator that was large enough to run temporary lighting in buildings where meetings were held so meetings could be held at night when farmers weren't working. The truck was state of the art in its day, providing a public address system so speakers could be easily heard, a movie projector, and a radio receiver.
When the truck arrived in Titus County, it was driven around Mt. Pleasant to advertise the meetings and so that people could see the truck's capabilities.
The meetings were presented by the local A. & M. Extension Agent along with the Cotton Belt Agricultural Department's dairy specialists. They discussed dairy and feed problems to benefit communities that were considering engaging in the dairy business on either a large or small scale, and were very well received by local farmers. On Thursday night, March 20, 1930, 374 farmers attended the meeting held in Cookville. The sound truck and Cotton Belt agricultural specialists spent five weeks in Titus County assisting local farmers.
The Cotton Belt also had large packing sheds at the Mt. Pleasant Depot where local farm products were packed for shipment on rail cars. At other times, the Cotton Belt made their packing sheds available to buyers for other uses in order to help local farmers sell their products.
Mt. Pleasant's movie theaters, which provided not only entertainment but provided news and information to their viewers, supported the farmers by making their facilities available for educational films and public meetings to benefit the farmers.
In April, 1924, the Martin Theatre ran two free motion pictures on profitable cotton production under boll weevil conditions. The movies dealt with land fertilization, the selection of seed, and proper care of the land after the crops are gathered, and showed how farmers should properly mix their fertilizer.
In 1932, the Palace Theatre was made available for the Farmers' Short Course sponsored by the Mt. Pleasant Chamber of Commerce and presented by the International Harvester Company. Six sessions were held, and although threatening weather prevailed almost the entire two days and nights of the course, around 1,800 people were present at the six sessions.
Titus County school schedules and curriculums were arranged around agriculture. School terms ran from approximately October to March to allow boys to both attend school and work in the fields planting and harvesting crops with their families.
Mt. Pleasant, Old Union, and Green Hill employed Mr. Rollins a vocational agriculture teacher in the early 1920s. The positive results of his work attracted a lot of attention throughout the county, and by August, 1924, other schools realized the necessity of adding vocational agriculture classes. Talco, Maple Springs, and Stonewall school boards voted to add vocational training to their curriculum with Talco retaining a teacher for half of the term and the other schools dividing the other half.
