“The story begins in the late fall of 1886. As I recall it now, the fall crop had just been harvested and the Knox family was on its way to a new home . . . twelve miles due north of Dublin . . . The family consisting of a father, mother, and nine children all the way from a youth of sixteen to a baby in arms, were either in the Ox-wagon or scattered advantageously around it, best suited to the function he or she was to preform on the trip. There was hardly a semblance of a road for us to follow until we came to Hazeldell. So father and brother Jimmie, carrying axes, walked at the head of the procession cutting away the underbrush and guiding the four-head of oxen along. The wagon was piled high with household plunder. It was covered over with a wagonsheet fastened down at each side, leaving a small opening at the hindend. A chicken coop, bulging with various colored chickens, cackeling and crowing continuously, was fastened to the hind-end of the wagon, while a mother pig with her litter of ten babies found travel accomodations in a huge box fastened beneath the latter. Mother sat on the flat board placed across the wagon at the front end to assist in directing the procession and otherwise keeping an eye on things in general. In her lap was baby, Hawkins, who fretted continuously because a little baby lamb, riding at my mother’s knees, kept sharing the refreshments at my mother’s breast with him.”

Effie Knox Cooper. Egg Custard and Blackstrap Molasses: Tales of Texas Pioneers. Dallas: The Story Book Press, 1954.