Abandoned Sam Gary Farm
Sam Gary was a distant relative who lived near Starrville. He had a good deal of property and ran cattle on most of it. I only knew him in the late 1940s, when we visited Uncle Sam at his newer house on FM 757. This was a 1940s house, set just off the road, surrounded by barnyards where chickens ran wild and cows wandered about. The cows provided fresh milk to wash down the unfortunate chicken that had been killed in the barnyard and then cooked up for Sunday dinner.
I don’t know when Sam abandoned his first house, the one in these photographs, but my father told me he often stayed there in the 1920s. In 1971-72, the various buildings were primarily used for storage. I thought the old farm was very atmospheric and these were the first photographs I took in Texas. I tried to find the farm in 2005 but the buildings were pulled down some years ago and, I suspect, the land was sold. This is a pity because the house that belonged to his brother, Rev. John Gary, just down the road, was carefully disassembled and rebuilt in a historic setting near Mineola as a classic example of East Texas architecture.
