Albert M. Hamby
Watlington Manuscript
Only two miles north from Hooks, is the pretty home and farm
of A. M. Hamby. Mr. Hamby is one of the many successful
farmers in this section, who, by hard work, frugality and good
management during his past fifteen years residence in Bowie,
has now a competency for his declining years, and this too,
from a small farm of only one hundred acres. His method of
farming has always been intensive, and to this, and his good
wife's ever ready and willing help and cooperation, he modestly
admits, is due his success.
He never fails to raise plenty of corn and other grain for home use,
besides potatoes, syrup, and always, in season, a fine garden and
turnip patch, and with plenty of fine meat hogs, it may be truly said,
that Mr. Hamby "lives at home and boards at the same place". His
cotton crop he regards as an after thought - a side line, he says, but
it is usually a matter of notice that he markets quite a considerable
amount of cotton annually, produced principally, by his tenants.
Mr. and Mrs. Hamby and their two eldest children, Galen and Nettie
Belle, are members of the Myrtle Springs Baptist Church, both the
father and son, the latter but sixteen years of age, taking an active,
leading part in worship, and in Sunday School work.
Galen is a home-loving young man, but still a youth; of modest,
studious habits, and with a degree of piety far beyond his years, he
bids fair to grow into a useful member of society.
Mr. Hamby is a native of Arkansaw, and born in Polk County,
Forty three years ago.
Six children have been born to this couple, five of whom are
Living, and as he says, his family is now so large, that he has recently
Purchased, for his "wife's and children's" better comfort and convenience,
A large Dodge car, for which he paid the modest little sum of $1,400.00.
It is pretty steep, he says, "but if it is any pleasure to them, I'll try
somehow to live over it."