Pioneer Lured By Mineral Waters
SLOCUM, Texas -- Built at a crossroads of wagon tracks prior to 1895, this southeastern Anderson County school and church center first was named Crossroads.In 1895 came Edgar Threadgill McDaniel from Prescott, Ark., and established his store in Crossroads. Two years later, in 1897, he succeeded in getting a post office designated, and named it Slocum.
"Fortunes will be made here, but they'll be slow coming." McDaniel predicted, hence he combined "slow" and "come" to coin the name "Slocum."
What brought the pioneering McDaniel to Anderson County was the wonderful health- giving mineral waters of the nearby Elkhart Mineral Wells -- a spa that lured thousands of other health-seekers from far and wide around the turn of the century.
Merchant McDaniel, back in Arkansas, had suffered fainting spells; he'd pass out and could find no cure whence he came. But at Slocum, he found his Fountain of Youth and continued to live to a ripe, old age.
Once a week at first when the Slocum Post Office was established, and later, twice a week, Postmaster McDaniel would mount his horse or hitch it to his buggy and ride into Elkhart to fetch the Slocum marl off a train.
The first store at Crossroads had been operated by Elbert Powers. He built there at the juncture of narrow wagon roads north and south between Palestine and Percilla and east-west between Nacogdoches and Elkhart. The latter now is State 294 and the former is FM 1990.
Other early settlers included Redden Alford,, Daniel and George Denson and Frank Gray -- and the Day family.
Mrs. Zetta Alsobrook Day, E.T. McDaniel's granddaughter, was born July 24, 1892, near Roston, Ark., and came with her parents to Slocum when she was 3. Her parents were T.O. and Terry McDaniel Alsobrook.
At age 7, she started to school in Slocum's first school building, a one room frame with a curtain dividing it into two classrooms. It then was "Crossroads School." Later, a two story frame school was built; next, the buildings destroyed in the April 24,1929, tornado.
Last year, a three- building brick, steel and concrete school plant, built at a record low cost within $10 per square foot, was completed with funds from a $400,000 bond issue.
The Slocum Independent School District, heart and soul of the community's spirit, is a consolidation of several former common school districts that embrace an area of 132 square miles.
Gaylord H. Limerick, Slocum district superintendent, says the district has 232 scholastics. Former rural schools consolidated at Slocum
Limerick said. Redden Afford was president and W.A. Rains secretary of the Slocum School Board then.
The minutes of the school beard meeting on that date listed Prof. L.H. Greenwood as principal at Slocum, employed at a salary of $150 a month, Mrs. Ethel Denson, intermediate grades teacher, was employed at $85 a month, and Mrs. L.H. Greenwood, primary teacher, at $75 a board to deliver 15 cords of firewood at $4 a cord. The three new school buildings now are centrally heated and cooled.
Slocum for many years was famous for its amateur baseball team, spearheaded by Pitcher F. Ernest Day, a blazing fastball wizard who never really met his match.
Day was so good that he was lured into the Texas League's Waco franchise. He could as easily have become a major and stood out against doing so.
"But what really decided me was that they insisted I live with a bunch of girls," Ernest said at his beautiful brick home, surrounded by flowers, on Highway 294 in Slocum, where he and his wife, the pioneer merchant McDaniel's granddaughter Zetta, live in quiet retirement. Their pint-size grandson, and a chum were batting and catching a baseball, wearing mansize baseball gloves, in the driveway.
"Mr. Gatlin (Thomas Gatlin, heroic Slocum School principal) was there in Waco. I told him that if they didn't let me move away from the girls, I was going home next day.
"Next day, they sent me out to pitch for batting practice. The Waco players couldn't hit me. I fanned them all. Then, when I asked to let me move, they said no, so I went home."
Looking at a picture of the 1912 Slocum baseball team that virtually couldn't be beaten. Mr. Day recalled, "Lovelady had a professional team that year. We went down there and beat them three straight games."
They also regularly in later years mastered a semi-pro Palestine town team, and others of semi-pro types.
Ernest Day continued to play and master batters into his 50s.
He was born of a pioneer Anderson County family east of Slocum, Nov. 22, 1892, and has lived his entire life in and around Slocum.
For 33 years he taught in Anderson County schools, including Slocum, Broyles Chapel, East and West Shaids, Brushy Creek, Pert, Sand Springs, Hickory Grove, Phillips Springs, and at Swanson Hill at age 17.
His wife, Zetta, taught in the same schools at the same time as he; she continued teaching after he quit to run a peanut thrashing machine, and she taught 35 years before retiring.
The Day couple's daughter, like her great-grandfather McDaniel, is postmaster at Slocum. She is Mrs. Willene Day Killion, and is a part owner with her daughter, Mrs. Bobby Don (Jeanelle) Jones, of the J&K Grocery in which the post office is located.
During the noon hour on April 24, 1929, the Slocum School and virtually every house along the highway east for a mile or more were destroyed by a tornado. Eight persons were killed and many others injured by the storm.
The school plant rebuilt after the storm was replaced last year by the new permanent buildings.
From farming, the community has turned largely to livestock. Fine homes are dotted on and near the highways through the area.
Oil development which began in the early 1930s developed several producing zones on both sides of the Salmon Faultline, which runs through from southwest to northeast. Subsurface formations are 400 feet deeper on one side than the other of the faultline, trapping oil and gas at varying depths. There are hundreds of producing wells in the area.
Thermal recovery from shallow sands has opened them up to commercial development in several areas near Slocum. The Slocum Gas Company, with a plant one mile west of town, receives gas from an extensive gathering system.
The sandy loam soft of the area produces abundant vegetable, fruit and field crops, with corn and peanuts the principal row crops now.
A large monument fronting the new school plant memorializes Thomas Gatlin, the principal credited with saving many children's lives by getting students to take cover under their desks when the tornado approached in 1929.
Slocum was able to build its new school plant through the volunteer efforts of Jerry Sadler, whose home is east of Slocum and who served the district as construction manager, holding cost of the plant to a record low within available funds of $400,000.
Sadler, former Texas Railroad Commisssioner, also served six years in the Legislature and 10 years as commissioner of the General Land Office of Texas.
Col. Nelson V. Strong and his wife, Mrs. Cora Gray Strong, were prominent citizens of Slocum. Strong Memorial Cemetery bears his name. He operated a business in Slocum and served in the Texas Legislature.
Ernest Day coached the first girls' basketball team while teaching at Slocum. A picture of the team with Day hangs on the wall in an office in the new Slocum School Gymnasium.