Crockett's Bluff Easter Egg Hunt: circa 1930?

This image provides an excellent example of the merit of old photographs, regardless of their condition.  Unfortunately this one suffers from a flaw in the development process, quite sharp and clear in its lower half and yellowing and losing its sharpness in the faces of the figures in the back row.  It appears to be an Easter egg hunt at the great Prange yard at the Bluff directly across from the Prange water tower, for so long the landmark of the Bluff.

Not great quality but clear enough to preserve images of people, two of my brothers and others I would know well in my youth -- though it was probably taken before I was born.  Youthful ghosts from the past -- found in one of "Miss Cora's" albums -- thanks to Jean Prange.

The second from the left (standing) is my brother Bill.  My brother Shelby is standing slightly to his left and front with his hands folded.  I think next to Shelby is Betty Anderson with her brother Bud sitting on the ground (dark jacket) near August Prange (with his head tilted)..  Ida Carolyn Prange is in the center obviously, holding an Easter basket.  I think Neva Graves' sister Willine? is directly behind her, second from right..

I don't recognize anyone else, but there must be folks alive who do.  There are no doubt stories behind such a picture.  An annual affair?  Who might these other children be? 

DPW

Crockett's Bluff : A 1930 View From Above

From David Prange's Crockett's Bluff As I Remember It

This view, looking north from the top of the [August] Prange water tower, was made in 1930 by Louis Prange, a cousin of David Prange whose Crockett's Bluff As I Remember It is to date the only known memoir of a Crockett's Bluff resident.

It shows a relatively flourishing community on the banks of the White River that can be seen in all its relative majesty drifting down around the bend at the right.  On the left one can see the Prange sawmill, the [Adolph or "Pete"] Prange store, the wagon shed, the Lutheran church, the Pool store, and the River.  Just down the lane to the west and up a gentle rise from the Lutheran church sat the house where I would be born five years or so later.

Fortunately for us, Louis was apparently on a mission to capture and record what central views of the Bluff looked like from the air.  More stores can be seen in this southward view -- on the right the Schwab store and the wagon shed and on the left the Inman store and, most significant, the irrigation canal that extended out into the prairie and the rice fields, and that served as a "swimming hole" for every child in the Bluff well up into the 1960s and 70s.

This was the Crockett's Bluff into which I was born but a Bluff that was already in the process of rapid change as the Great Depression came to an end and the World War II years began.  My earliest recollections do not include either a Pool store or an Inman store.  My family would in 1941 migrate first to DeWitt; then briefly to Conway, and then to Little Rock where we would live until the war's end in 1945.  When we returned to the Bluff that summer we would find no Adolph Prange store.  The entire family had by 1944 migrated to California.

1930's Road Work: Where?

These interesting photographs are of elaborate road work going on either in Crockett's Bluff (or perhaps in St. Charles) during the late 1920's or early 1930's.  They contain a few buildings and landmarks that might offer clues.  They come courtesy of Jean Prange from an album that belonged to her mother-in-law "Miss Cora" Prange Swindler.

A clear view of a storefront and a distant house.  Could this have been the WPA project [see note below]that transformed the dirt road through the Bluff to gravel?   Nice shot of the state of the art machinery at work.

Mules at work and clear views of structures on both sides of the road.

Schwab family house?

If the major storefront here is the Prange store, then the mystery is solved.  Was the structure on the canal side of the road the Inman Store?  What appears here to be a power pole would date it after the arrival of electricity at the Bluff.  Even I can remember when it arrived at our place.  (At least, I think I can.) 

[In his memoir David Prange alludes to the red clay of the Hill Road before the marvelous improvements brought by the WPA graveling of the road through the Bluff: 

"The Hill Road designation was not due to having been named for the Hill family, which was in residence there, but because within the first one-half mile upon leaving the Bluff three hills were encountered which were uniformly situated and almost equal in the height of about fifty feet.  To navigate the Hill Road during and immediately after a rain was a very real challenge because it was comprised of red clay.  At a later time, during the Great Depression, the WPA graded the road to be more level after which they surfaced it with loose gravel."  

So, these pictures could very well be of that WPA effort -- historical indeed!

Footnotes of a Recent Visit

Images acquired from a visit to the Bluff in 2011.  The W.R. Smith family farm was located to the southwest several miles well out of the Bluff, but they were members of the Lutheran Church that was located at the end of our driveway beside the Adolph Prange Store on the bank of the river.

W.R. and Elsie Smith "around 1950"

Crockett's Bluff School class  late '30's?

BR: Duke Trice _ Lewis Rush, Willine Graves _ Harold Rush _ Shelby Woodiel.  FR: _  _ Ida Carolyn Prange _ _ _ _.

Janice and Carlotta Smith

Prange home in snow about 1930.

Grand Prairie Historical Society Meeting

A fall meeting of the Grand Prairie Historical Society was held October 20, 2011 at the Schwab's Store building at Crockett's Bluff.  As one of the society's newer members, having only heard of its existence on a few months ago, I was pleased to be able to attend.  When Eddie and Thelma Schwab retired in the mid 1980s their store was closed.  Throughout my childhood from the mid 1930s until then it was the center of activities in the Bluff.

 

Darrell Gardner, a son-in-law and wife of their daughter Vickie, addresses the group regarding the general history of Crockett's Bluff, as well as the history of the store and the Schwab family that began in America with Eddie's father Sebastian whose blacksmith operated for years near the back entrance of the store.  (Someone noted on a picture made  in the 1930s of the store from the top of the Prange water tower that Sebastian could be seen -- to those with a keen sight -- moving through a gate when the picture was taken.)

DPW with Raymond Sweetin, Jr. of Stuttgart at the meeting.

Notes on the Eason Family's Continuing Saga

This  marvelous image is of Jesse Eason in front of a Crockett's Bluff store in 1926.  Vickie Schwab Gardner passed this along, having received it from John Cover whose grandfather John A. Eason was Jesse's older half brother.  John Cover's details are listed below.  - DPW

"Floyd Eason told me the photo was taken in 1926 at the old store in Crockett's Bluff.  Floyd was Jesse Eason's youngest son.  His older son was called J.L. Eason  Both sons are dead now, but both lived into their 80's. 

"I have attached the picture of my grandfather John A. Eason's younger half brother Jesse Eason.  I think Jesse was the oldest child of my great-grandfather John L. Eason's second marriage.  My grandfather was about three when his mother died and his step-mother was Etta Watkins Eason. 

"Grand-dad's biological mother's gravestone is in your Crockett's Bluff cemetery;  Emma Caroline Lowe Eason.  I helped some of my mother's younger sisters replace the old hand carved stone with a more modern one about thirty years ago, and would you believe we got her death date wrong by two years!  She died in 1891 but somehow we gave the stone mason 1893.  My grandfather was born in 1887, but some places he is listed as born in 1888.  

"The old John Loyd Eason land in Crockett's Bluff is still in my Eason family.  Robert Eason, my mom's older brother, ended up with the land and passed it down to Maurice Eason who still owns it.  I don't know where it will go when Maurice is gone, but he does have a daughter that I do not know except by name."-John W. Cover

[Like the individuals and incidents in so many posts on this site, this one produces questions.  For example, which of the "old Crockett's Bluff stores" would have been functioning in 1926?  Inman?  Prange?  Schwab?  And what is that apparently freshly killed beast that Jesse has attached to his saddle?  Bob Cat?  I welcome -- in the "Comments" space below this article -- your added information, your questions, and your general reactions to the site.] 

Further note re early Bluff stores:  In Crockett's Bluff as I Remember It David Prange, in captions to two photographs made from the water tank in about 1930, notes four stores: from the north, the Poole Store and the Prange Store; from the south, The Schwab Store and the Inman Store.  In addition, there must have been the August Prange (company) Store that can't be seen in the picture. DPW 8.24.11

Eason Family Note: September 3, 2011

John Cover's notes re his maternal Great-Grandfather, John Loyd Eason, pictured above, taken in 1931:

John Loyd ( b. 1863, d. 1943) would have been 68 years old in the picture, and the baby he is holding is Maurice Eason the older son of Robert L. Eason (b. 1910).  Robert was my mother’s oldest brother, and the oldest child of John Abner Eason (b. 1888, d. 1969) and Mary Malinda Watkins Eason (b. 1894, d. 1962), with mom (b. 1919, d. 1964) being the next child (they lost 2 or 3 between Robert and mom). Great-Grandfather John Loyd Eason arrived at Crockett’s Bluff in 1878 along with his brother, Samuel Abner Eason. In the 1880 census he (John Loyd) was listed as a boarder in the home Nancy Crockett, the widow of David Crockett who died in 1869.