Corsicana
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Winfield Scott Barr Blacksmith shop at Corsicana |
On the Banks of Joyce Creek (Corsicana) by Jeanie (Bates) Eubanks |
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W.S. Barr General Blacksmithing Corsicana Missouri |
In wagon trail days, there were several thriving businesses, such as a store built by Silas May in 1870, blacksmith shops, a drug store owned by a Dr. Overton, a creamery, and improbable as it may seem, perhaps even a horse racing track. There were houses scattered about and roads with traffic, And the heart of the community and the key to the economy, were the big mills that constantly worked grinding cornmeal, wheat into flour, and making all kinds of grain products. At one time, there was one owned by a man and his son named Blankenship. And of course, the power for the mills was provided by Joyce Creek. |
Mill at Corsicana |
A little later, there was a canning factory where ladies worked for a few nickels a day peeling tomatoes until their hands were raw and bleeding. There was a little white school house up on a hill where a man by the name of Charles Frazier taught classes. And there was a grocery store and station with fuel for gas-powered automobiles. N.L. (Barney) and Lucile Bates owned the store for many years. Their home was across the road southwest of the store. There was a home owned by Chart and Nora Garrison that had been partly built about 1880, which is still standing. There were homes of the John Rodgers' family, the Simpsons, and the former Clarence Aderhold house which was by now occupied by the widow, Ellen and her second husband, W.E. (Bill) Smith, a kinder and more gentle man never to be known. |
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Corsicana School |
| At Christmas time, it was Lucile Bates' pleasure to fill as many large food baskets with fruits, nuts, candies, and whatever else she thought would be a treat to the families that came to the store. Many children never had oranges except at this time. Then on a Halloween evening in 1943, Joyce Creek saw a tornado sweep through, destroying everything in its path. The whirling, twisting winds demolished the peaceful, little community in only a few seconds, leaving boards and straws driven into the oak trees along the hillsides near the creek and twisted metal everywhere from the canning factory. It washed sun perch and other fish out of the water and dropped them on the ground to die. It took the barns away from cows waiting to be milked. It picked up the school and scattered it in the trees on the hill. Chickens ran around, if not half dead – scared to death - with feathers blown off. The Bates' home was flattened with the exception of one leaning wall, which was held up by a rafter. Lucile had gathered her two daughters in front of the west wall of the kitchen and they stood there watching as everything was swept away, with bricks driven through the floor and into the ground just in front of their feet. Miraculously, no one was killed, but Lucile was hit by flying glass and blood gushed from the slashed vein in her head. Barney Bates was in the Army and halfway around the world and received a telegram notifying him there had been a tornado that blew Corsicana away, but he didn't know until later that his family was alive. The Red Cross moved in soon to help in any way possible and crowds of people came from everywhere to see the damage. Lucile and the girls stayed with Sophia and Harry Boyce until they bought a home in Wheaton, Missouri. Barney was discharged in January of 1945. Corsicana became a thing of the past, never to be the same again. Joyce Creek flowed on by, with many memories… |
Corsicana Page on Rootweb |
