One for the Dallas Fair: 12-Pound Sweet Potato

In The Dublin Progress, which I have been reading for mention of my Texas family names, I found an article in the October 27, 1897 issue about Dempsey Perry Coor, son of my g-g-great-grandfather, James Madison Coor. His farm was located outside of Dublin and he had brought in a very large sweet potato, of the Southern Queen variety, that weighed over twelve pounds.[1]



I love sweet potatoes, so I wondered what the Southern Queen variety is. According to Mother Earth News article, the Southern Queen matures in about 105 days. It produces “long, narrow tubers with white skin and white flesh. The original strain was introduced from South America in 1870.”[2]  Some people refer to these white sweet potatoes as yams (my father did) but they are not related to true yams at all.



It seems that sweet potatoes grow well in the south because they thrive in “warm, sunny climate and prefers loose, well-drained soil”[3] and have a long growing season. I also learned that southerners tended to like the sweeter varieties and northerners preferred the drier and mealy varieties.

I looked for a result of his sweet potato at the Dallas fair but didn’t find any other mention. However in the next issue the following week, there was another large sweet potato brought into town by E.P. Purvis that weighed fifteen pounds.[4] His certainly topped Dempsey’s sweet potato.

And even though Dempsey was not my direct ancestor, his growing of sweet potatoes was still a clue that my great-great-grandfather, W.C. Lancaster, who married Dempsey’s sister, Martha Jane “Doll” Coor, probably grew sweet potatoes, too.


[1] “Local Items,” 29 Oct 1897, The Dublin Progress, p 5, col 2, D.P. Coor, digital image, The Portal to Texas History (https://texashistory.unt.edu : accessed 27 Nov 2016).
[2] “A Brief History of Heirloom Seet Potato Varieties,” by William Woys Weaver, Mother Earth News (http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/heirloom-sweet-potato-varieties-zewz1310zpit : accessed 11 Dec 2016).
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Local Items,” 5 Nov 1897, The Dublin Progress, p 5, col 3, E.P. Purvis, digital image, The Portal to Texas History (https://texashistory.unt.edu : accessed 27 Nov 2016).

Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, Mam-ma's Southern Family

Comments

Post a Comment

All comments on this blog will be previewed by the author to prevent spammers and unkind visitors to the site. The blog is open to other-than-just family members particularly those interested in family history and genealogy.

Popular posts from this blog

Last One Standing: Reginald F. Lancaster

Image
It is important to document the lives of those who left no descendants. I have been researching and writing as much as I can about family members who either never married or who married but had no children. They have no descendants who will do the research or even take DNA tests. But they will not be forgotten. Reginald F. Lancaster, my second great-uncle, was the son of George Wilson Lancaster and Martha Jane Polly. He was born 22 July 1887 in Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona, the fifth child of six. [1] His parents divorced when he was five. [2] His father moved back to Texas and Reggie probably never saw his father again. Reggie’s mother married Noah Flood Parks in 1893 and he grew up with two younger half-sisters. Sometime in the early 1900s, the family moved to Imperial County, California, to do farming. When Reggie registered for the draft, he was working at ranching. At age 29, he was of medium height and weight and had blue eyes and brown hair. He was still single. [3] I have
Read more

John Coor of Copiah County Made an Agreement with Joel Hoggatt

Image
This week at RootsTech 2024, FamilySearch announced a new feature that an every-word search was available for U.S. deeds and probates. It is still in the trial mode and can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/en/labs/ . This is the search screen. It clearly states it is for US land and probate records and Mexico notary records. You can do a keyword search or if you click on the “more options” you can add a name. My Find I immediately gave it a try and searched first for records of the COOR family using the keyword search. Up first came deeds from Wayne County, North Carolina.  At the top, you can filter using record year, record type, record place, and collection. For the past few days, I have mainly filtered by record place. I filtered down to Mississippi. You can even filter to the county. The first entry was a document I had not seen before. It was an 1826 agreement between John Coor and Joel Hoggatt to build a set of grist and sawmills. John Coor is my 4x-great-grandfath
Read more

Locating the Comic Book that Named My Great-Uncle

Image
Have you ever thought to look for an ancestor in a comic book? Many years ago, while speaking with my grandmother, she told me that a comic book had been written about her brother, Rayburn D. (R.D.) Lancaster while he was serving in the Army Air Forces in World War II. I thought that interesting and tried several times to locate this comic book in comic book stores. However, none of the proprietors knew what I was talking about. These stores were more focused on superhero comics. R. D. Lancaster enlisted in the Army Air Corps on 14 January 1942 as an aviation cadet. He was twenty-one years old. [1] He trained in Chickasha, Oklahoma. When he wrote home, he said he had acquired the nickname “Rip.” During his first solo flight, in checking his parachute, he noticed a string and upon pulling on the errant string, caused him to be lifted several feet off the ground. [2] Fast forward in time, a fellow volunteer at the History Center where I volunteer is an avid fan of comic books, so
Read more