Sally Eva Wommack

  General Notes:

The stories for Lemuel Loffer and Sallie Eva were provided by their granddaughter, Marilyn Smith Williams of Omaha, Texas, in 2007.

"The following is an observation and an account of the lives of my maternal grandparents, Sallie Eva Loffer (Granny) and Lemuel Emery Loffer (Granddaddy). The information is derived from information that Granny and Granddaddy, and others, gave me first hand, and observations that I made living next door to them and seeing them almost every day for 18yrs before I left home for college.


My first recollection of Granny was that of the hard work of a housewife in rural East Texas in the late 1940s and the 1950s. While progress was rapidly coming to post war America during that time, it was coming a little slower to Marietta, Texas. For example, Marietta School consisted of 8 grades in three rooms with only three teachers. For much of this time, there was no in door plumbing in the school. The students pumped water for drinking and washing, and of course, there was an outdoor privy for the boys and one for the girls. That type of life style was very common to the citizens of Marietta, and though Granny and Granddaddy, and my family, were more fortunate than some, Granny's work, as a homemaker in the Loffer household, was not easy. I still think about how she went about it, though, without complaint or hesitation. As I think back on it, she went about like it was second nature to her. I remember the work in the hot summer months most vividly. My mother would often help Granny in the more difficult tasks. Those tasks consisted of boiling bed linens in a wash pot as a hot fire under the pot brought the water to a boil. Granny and Mother were fortunate to have a wringer washing machine in the “wash house”. The wash house was a separate building behind Granny and Granddaddy's house. The clothes would be washed in the wash house and run through the wringer to squeeze as much water as possible out of them, then, they would be hung on the clothes line to dry. The washing process usually occurred on Monday, and it was hoped that Monday would be a clear dry sunshine day. My family raised chickens, and they could usually be found walking all over our yard (watch where you step!!) Mother and Granny frequently went through the process of catching and killing chickens for the families to eat. The process was pretty gruesome! I remember Granny, with a full length homemade apron spattered with chicken blood, wringing the necks of the unfortunate chickens. Headless chickens would be flopping all over her back yard as she pulled another head off! There could be as many as ten headless chickens flopping at one time. I later learned that it took a very strong grip to pop the heads off like Granny did in rapid succession. In those days, Granny was a strong woman. She would have been 5'6” or 5' 7” and would probably weigh approximately 175 lbs. Her normal outside attire would be a bonnet (Little House on the Prairie type) with a full length apron. If she was to be in the sun, and she frequently was, working in the family vegetable garden, she wore a smock to cover her arms in addition to her ever present bonnet. Because, our families raised vegetables, a certain part of the summer was taken up by the canning process carried out in Granny's kitchen. Vegetables were canned and others were, like peas and corn, were prepared for freezing (Granny was fortunate enough to have a freezer). The canning process was an extremely hot process, and air conditioning was unheard of. The participants were always dripping with perspiration throughout the process with bandanas tie around their brows to prevent perspiration from filling their eyes. Granny's activities were constant interrupted only long enough to prepare meals for her and Granddaddy. He would always come home for dinner (lunch) from the sawmill. She would know when he was coming because the mill, about a quarter of a mile from the house, blew a steam whistle four times a day, when it was time to start work, when to stop work, and at noon, when it was time to break for dinner and when it was time to return to work after dinner. Dinner always, seemed to me to consist of peas and cornbread in addition to other things. Granny had several desserts that she specialized in, but the best one was the famous soggy, layer, banana cake! Granny was also frequently cooking something. Granny was a loving person, but I suspect that she was the type of person that you had to get to know because she had a no nonsense demeanor about her. One of the things that stand out in my mind about her was the intense way that she went about her work. In later years, after one or more surgeries (gall bladder for one), her health and strength seemed to decline. I am sure that age played a part in that. By the 1960s, Granny's activities had declined considerably. She spent her days knitting and watching soap operas on TV. During her active years, she had one pleasure that she dearly loved. That is fishing in the area creeks and ponds with a cane pole. My Dad would frequently pick her up and they would go fishing late in the afternoon, she loved that. They would dig a few worms in the back yard and put them in a coffee can and off they would go. She did have one secret vice, snuff. She dipped Rooster Snuff all of her life though few people knew about it. My sister, Marilyn, would be called to her house, on the sly, when Granny ran out of snuff. Marilyn would then be secretly dispatched to the store to replenish Granny's snuff supply. When the preacher started getting on to snuff dippers in his sermons, Granny was heard to say that, “that preacher has now gone to meddling!” In her latter years, Granny settled into, more or less, the ruler of the manor role. She had never learned to drive, trying only one time in a Model-T and finishing in the ditch, she vowed never to get behind the wheel again. And, she never did, dispatching everyone else in the family for her errands. Granny always enjoyed a position of great deference where Granddaddy was concerned. I never heard him refer to her as Eva, but only, “Miss Eva.” He always called her that with a twinkle in his eye though. As a boy, I was fortunate to go to the pasture with Granny on certain special occasions, berry picking. One of her specialties was blackberry cobbler. She would sometime take me along to pick the berries. Of course, before we left, we would undergo a good dusting with sulphur to keep the chiggers off! She would wear her bonnet and her smock. We sometime went near the place that she called, “the home place”. I learned that the home place was where Granny spent most of her years as a girl. There was no house there when we went, but we could see where the well was. There was usually some berry vines close by. She told me about some of the things of her youth when we went on these excursions. She told me how her family washed their clothes in the spring down the hill from the house. She also pointed out the trunk of an old oak tree that had fallen down across the creek and told me how they crossed creek on the tree on the way to school. She told me how she fell in to the creek one freezing morning and had to return to the house. Granny did not have much youth because she started her career as a housewife at the early age of 15 yrs.


Lem and Eva


I don't know anything about the courtship and marriage of Granny and Granddaddy except the circumstances of the marriage ceremony related to me by Granny. It seems that young Eva and Lem (he was 17) had decided to get married. They were on their way to meet the preacher in a horse drawn buggy in 1911 when they encountered the preacher. Since it appeared that everything was in order, all decided that the preacher could perform the ceremony as the couple sat in the buggy, which he did. That event started what was to be a 59 yr. marriage resulting in three daughters and all of us! I don't know much about the early years of the marriage. I know that Granddaddy tried farming, which was the common occupation of that time and place, but he did not like that. His father, C. W. Loffer, was a blacksmith by trade. I believe, from what he told me, that Lem also learned that trade. The blacksmith of the late 19th century and early 20th century directed most of their work to making and repairing farm plows and tools, and of course, shoeing horses. Most of us Marietta natives remember having a blacksmith in the community well into our childhood. I am not sure of this, but I believe that it was Granddaddy's experience with the type of work that his father did, working with heat and metals, and perhaps wood saws of various types, that eventually led him to discover what was to be his secular calling, that of sawmilling. I believe that he started his first sawmill at Elmira (Dog town) Cass County. That is approximately 10 miles east of Marietta. I do not know how he financed that operation. I believe that he simply set the mill up on property belonging to others and milled the timber on the land much like a sharecropper did in the south, sharing his product with the owners. He had three or four employees (“hands”). My mother told me that she was very young, but she remembered that he went down to Elmira and lived there while he was setting up the mill, and he would come home on the weekend. I do not know if my Aunt Lillian was born at that point, but I believe that she was, and Geneva was born after the Elmira enterprise. Mother told me that Granddaddy sent for them to come to Elmira when he built a house. She told me that they traveled the 10 miles in a wagon. Granddaddy told me how he built the house at Elmira, and that story has stayed with me through the years because it told me the type of modest house that the Loffer family lived in! He told me that he shut the mill down one afternoon, and that he and he hands started and completed building the house before dark that day!!



Lem Loffer (the Husband, the Father, the Grandfather, the Citizen, the Businessman, the Christian)

My Grandfather was a complete man because he was all of the above, completely! I have already pointed out something of the relationship that he had with my Grandmother. With regard to his relationship with his wife, it was complete respect, and there was a hint of a bygone era. An era that is Gone With the Wind! Granny worked hard, as I have already pointed out, and she definitely kept up her end of the bargain, but she was accorded a respect and deference that was hard to put into words. Frequently one will say “my wife and I have never had a cross word!” Of course, such remarks are generally accepted as a lie, but I can truthfully say that I never heard him say a cross word to my Grandmother. I also never heard her say a cross word to him, but then, she did not need to!!! There was a silent understanding that she was the Queen of her domain!! His public references to her, as “Miss Eva”, said it all. I realize that some of our relatives reading this may not fully understand what I am saying if they are not from the South, but for more enlightenment, go somewhere and rent a CD of Gone With the Wind and watch it again. You will see several “Miss Evas” and observe the lofty status accorded them by the men folk.

One could always see how proud Granddaddy was of his children. It was a delight for him to have them around him, and he always seemed so interested in their lives and the activities of their children. I don't know too much about the details of the day to day activities of raising the children, but Granddaddy did tell me about a project that he undertook which was almost exclusively for, “those girls”. Granddaddy was a very progressive thinker for his time and place. I think that it was in the 1920s that he came upon the idea of a phone company for Marietta. I am not sure whether he bought some existing phone equipment or whether he started the company from scratch. It started out as a few subscribers in Marietta, expanded to the area outside of Marietta proper, to Bryans Mill, Union Chapel, and Douglasville. Marietta Telephone Company consisted of Granddaddy, as the maintenance man, and “Central”, or the switchboard, located in the Loffer home. The switchboard operators and bookkeepers were, “those girls.” He told me that he started the company simply to give the girls a sense of responsibility, and they were rewarded for their efforts by sharing in the profits. The girls actually handled the day to day operations of the phone company for sometime. Granddaddy's activity with the phone company was always limited because most of his attention was always directed to his saw mill. By the 1920s, he had moved his operation to a much larger mill in Marietta. My mother and her sisters used their earnings from the phone company to finance their personal activities during their teenage, high school years. I don't know, but I believe that enterprise assisted my mother when she went off to college in the 1930s, first to the College of Marshall, then, East Texas Normal in Commerce. Granddaddy continued to own and operate the phone company until approximately 1960 when he sold it to Aunt Lillian's husband, “Uncle Tubby.” The story of Marietta Telephone Company was a story of one man's progressive and forward thinking in a rural area, but it was also a story of how one man, of modest means, sought, in very imaginative way, to provide extra finances to his children while teaching them independence and responsibility.

Granddaddy was a loving and playful grandfather, and all of us knew it and loved to be around him. He always scouted around and would find the most novel toys to surprise us with. It could be a wind up barking dog that would excite him more than it would us, or some interesting puzzle. I think that Marilyn and I were the most blessed of the grandchildren because we spent most of our childhood and teenage years living next door to Granny and Granddaddy. Since my Dad died when I was 12, I spent hours with Granddaddy and talking to him about all kinds of subjects. I believe that he had very little formal education, but he seemed to have knowledge of a broad range of topics. I recall one thing with great interest. I am sure that he never had any formal history courses, but there was one historical character that he seemed have a special knowledge about---Jesse James! Indeed, he spoke quite knowingly about the “James boys”. I personally did not know much about Jesse and Frank James, but as I came to learn more about them, it dawned on me why Granddaddy probably spoke so authoritatively on the subject. Of course, Granddaddy was born in 1894 in north Arkansas (Bruno or Yellville). His mother and father, Charles Wesley and Mahalia Ann, migrated there from southern Missouri. That entire area was a hideout for the James Gang! No doubt that Granddaddy's mother and father told him over and over the stories of how Jesse and Frank fought the evil railroad and actually helped the poor folks of that region!! He also told me how his family came from Bruno, Arkansas to Texas in a wagon looking for opportunity. They actually initially settled in Saltillo in Hopkins County (near Sulphur Springs, Texas) I believe they stayed there only a short time before going on to Marietta. I never asked him why they came to Marietta.

Granddaddy was a good citizen and a patriotic American. He liked to talk about our country. He believed very much in the high ideas of this country. He was extremely respected throughout the community, people in the black and white community, alike, spoke respectfully of him as, “Mr. Lem”. To tell the truth, in our little community, I really thought I had special standing because he was my Granddad, and the truth of the matter is, all of us related to him did have special standing. The best way to tell how he was thought of in the community is to simply tell about his service on the Marietta School Board. He was on the school board for 35 yrs, and he never put his name on the ballot for election----he was a write-in for 35 yrs!!


When the Loffers came to Texas from Arkansas, all their earthly belongings was in the wagon in which the family was riding. When Lem went to Elmira, he had little but the shirt on his back. However, he was a hardworking man with much vision. As stated earlier, by the 1920s, he had increased the size of his saw mill and moved it to Marietta. All of Granddaddy's sawmills, until the early 60s, ran in a very energy efficient manner. They operated exclusively by steam. Not long ago, I saw an Oregon sawmill on TV and the commentator was talking excitedly about the energy efficient operation that ran only on steam. I had to chuckle. Granddaddy, at least 70 yrs earlier, had mastered the steam engine sawmill. In short the mill was powered by a steam boiler that ran a system of belts that pulled all the saws as well as the cutting carriage. The slabs and sawdust that fell off of the logs fell on to a conveyer system that carried the waste back to the boiler and continually provided fuel to the boiler. The boiler was fired 24-7 by the belt and conveyor system, during operation, and the night watchman at night. His first such mill was in Elmira, then, the larger mill on the east side of Marietta, and finally, the mill that he operated about a quarter of a mile from our house on the west side of Marietta. He operated these mills, along with the phone company until the 1960s. I believe that he operated the sawmill until approximately seven years before his death. Materially and financially, Granddaddy started with nothing, but by the late 50s, he owned a house and 260 acres of land, Marietta Telephone Co., and L. E. Loffer Lumber Company. The Lumber Company sold southern pine lumber to several outlets. One of his largest customers was Casa Linda Lumber Company of Dallas, which, I would recall, sent one eighteen wheeler a month during part of the 1950s and 1960s to pick up a load of lumber. Another interesting aspect of Granddaddy's business life was his ability to form very useful partnerships, even with people who seemed quite different from him. As I have noted, I believe that his Elmira project was some type of partnership with the timber owners in that area to cut and mill the timber in a joint venture type of arrangement. When he moved his mill to Marietta, I believe that he was faced with the need for financial support to obtain timber for the mill. Harold Ingram was a well to do man that lived in Marietta. I do not know much about how “Mr. Harold” acquired his resources, but he was known to own a significant amount of land, and a prosperous cotton gin in Marietta. My impression is that he was very unlike Granddaddy. In appearance, he was a typical southern planter---- straw hat, big cigar with an African-American driver who chauffeured him about town. He had a gruff appearance though I think Granddaddy thought he had a good heart. I am not sure how the Ingram-Loffer partnership worked, but from what I have heard Granddaddy say, it was simply a situation where Mr. Harold bought the timber and Granddaddy milled it. I do not know when the partnership began and when it ended. I know that it was in existence in 1937 because minutes from the Oakridge Baptist Church make mention of the fact that Mr. Ingram and Mr. Loffer donated the lumber for the construction of a house for the pastor. I believe that Mr. Harold passed away in the late 40s or early 50s. I have a vague recollection of some business dealings that Granddaddy had with “Miss Annie”, Mr. Harold's widow. It could have been the winding up of the partnership. I do know that Granddaddy considered Mr. Harold a friend and always spoke with great respect for him. Another interesting partnership that Granddaddy formed in the late 50s involved Velmer “Fat” Tenbrook. Fat was a sawmiller somewhat younger than Granddaddy. He and Granddaddy were polar opposites!! Fat was a mean talking man with a tendency toward profanity. Rumor had it that he might be prone to drinking alcohol to excess! Apparently, Granddaddy was willing to look over those vices, and he would frequently say: “Nobody can set blocks like Velmer!” Now, to this day, I am not sure what, “setting blocks” means, but I think that it has something to do with setting the log on the carriage so that when it was carried into the saw for cutting, the log is precisely cut for the type and size of board that is being cut (i.e. 2 x 4s; 1 x 6s etc.). I once heard Fat say, “nobody can sharpen a saw like Lem Loffer when he sets his mind to it!” He went on to say, “you can tell it is going to be a good job by the way that he looks at the saw, but if he looks like he is thinking about his Sunday School lesson, it might not turn out too well!!” It seems that Fat thought that thinking about one's Sunday School lesson was not too productive!! I observed this relationship first hand because I worked at the mill in the summer of 1959, and though these men were opposites, it was apparent that they could set that aside and recognize that each could bring their own particular abilities to the enterprise. Fat was right about one thing, Granddaddy's Faith was always with him. His Faith was genuine in every way. It was not just something for the church house, but it was vital and real and he took it into the market place. His Faith did not exclude, but included and accepted folks like business partners that might not have been like him in many ways.

Granddaddy was ordained as a deacon in the Oakridge Baptist Church in Marietta in 1921, and he served faithfully in that church until his death in 1970. As I stated earlier, though he was loyal to his church, his Faith was an overriding force in his life. I would have to say that his lasting legacy is the power of his Faith in his life."

Sally married Lemuel Emery Loffer, son of Charles Wesley Loffer and Mahala Ann Perkins, on 24 Dec 1911. (Lemuel Emery Loffer was born on 9 Jun 1894 in Bruno, Marion County, Arkansas, died on 26 Mar 1970 in Marietta, Cass Co., Texas and was buried in Oakridge Cemetery, Marietta, Texas.)