Dibqufs!2 From Alabama To Texas (1877 1898) John Franklin Norris was born September 18, 1877, near Dadeville, Alabama, to James Warner and Mary Davis Norris. Dadeville was a small town about eighty miles southeast of Birmingham in Tallapoosa County. Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek Indians in a battle there in 1814. More than eight hundred Upper Creek warriors died defending their homeland against the troops of General Jackson. The young Norris couple and their infant son lived in a modest country home. When Frank was only three months old, he was stricken with diphtheria. The neighbors came together to comfort and help, as was customary out in the country. They said, Mary, prepare for the worst; the doctor said there s no chance that your baby will survive. They laid him out, and they saw that he was black. They thought he was gone. She went into an adjoining room, and there alone prayed, God, no, no, no he s not gone. She went back in the other room 1
J. FRANK NORRIS and saw life in him. Frank had survived the first serious crisis in his life.(1) The Norris family moved to Pike City, Arkansas, a hundred miles southwest of Little Rock. Warner bought a piece of land, but soon decided there was no future for his family in Arkansas.(2) From here the family moved back to Alabama, to the city of Columbiana just a few miles south of Birmingham. Two more children were born into the Norris family, a girl named Hattie and another son, named Dorie. Poverty was a way of life for most sharecroppers, and so it was for the family. Most of the poor in the South after the Civil War had no choice but to turn to this way of life, which usually bound them to the landlord in perpetual debt. It was during this time that Warner Norris began to drink as often as he could get a little money together. According to E. Ray Tatum, Each year he managed, with the help of his family, to somehow get the seed into the ground. Generally this was with borrowed money, and when, with months of tedious hard labor the crop was gathered, there was never enough to go around. The naked barren poverty continued. More and more, Warner turned habitually to drink. He was not a man who occasionally drank too much, but a man who was altogether obsessed with drink. For years he had but one purpose in life to drink. The guilt of his waste, the shame which his drinking brought to those around him, and the irritating benevolence of his wife, only added to his misery. He drank not only to the discomfort of his family, but to their utter abuse; Warner Norris seemed to have cared little for the earthly relief and welfare of his family. Often he would physically abuse those around him. (3) The heavy drinking and deprivation became so great that one night Frank had seen and experienced all that he could take. Even at a young age, he became so upset with the tears he had seen his mother shed that he thought he would do something to help her. Frank s longtime friend Louis Entzminger recounts the story in this way: On Christmas eve when the boy was seven years old he decided to empty his father s supply of liquor. When 2
FROM ALABAMA TO TEXAS (1877 1898) his father found the liquor was gone he came out to the barn and found Frank had broken the bottles and emptied the jug. He said, Frank, did you empty my liquor? Frank looked at him, and said, Yes, I did it because I love you, and I love mother. The father was so enraged, as liquor will enrage a man, and he took a heavy blacksnake whip and nearly beat the seven-year old boy to death, and would have but for his mother s throwing herself between the boy and the enraged father. His nose was broken, his head was lacerated, and his body was cut from head to foot. The doctor came and bandaged him up. The next day was Christmas, and what a Christmas! His father was a very tender hearted man, as most drinking men are, and when he came to himself and saw the lacerated body of his little boy he fell down on his knees and kissed him and said, Daddy didn t do it! Daddy didn t do it! Liquor did it! Then he prayed a prayer that was etched in the boy s memory for the rest of his life. O, God, liquor has ruined my life, and my home. Take this boy that I have been so cruel to and send him up and down the land to smite the awful curse that wrecked his father s life and broke his mother s heart. (4) Frank recalled an incident from his childhood when he had experienced the uncomfortable feelings associated with poverty in Columbiana. Years later he related what happened: I was about eight years old, one day I was standing on the porch of the Public School in Columbiana, two boys came up, one was twelve and the other one fourteen, each one of them had on a nice suit of clothes, a nice overcoat. I had on a little cotton suit, no overcoat, and the coat was tight around me these 3
J. FRANK NORRIS boys, sons of a banker they came up, looked at me, and they said, Your coat is too little well I knew it. Then one of them pointed his finger at me while all the boys gathered around and said, Your daddy is a drunkard and mine is a banker. I turned, went into the school and buried my face in my hands. The dear school teacher came up to me, put her arm around my shoulders and said, Frank, what is the matter? I couldn t say a word. She said, You must be sick. I am going to send you home. I fairly flew home when I got home, mother said, Frank, are you sick? I said, Yes. She said, I ll give you some medicine. No, no, no, I am not sick. Well, she said, what are you crying about? I can t tell you. I wouldn t tell her what happened. But that night after I had gone to my room she came in and said, Tell mother what is the matter? I begged hard not to tell her, But she said, I must know, so we may cry together. I said, Mother I couldn t help it. And I told her what had happened, how those finely dressed bankers sons had come up, pointed their finger at me and said, Your daddy is a drunkard poor daddy was in a room drunk then. Mother said, as she put her tender arms around me, brushed away my tears, Son, it is all right, someday you are going to wear good clothes someday you will make a man someday God will use you. I said, Mother, please don t make me go back to school. She said, You don t have to go back; mother will teach you. And it was a great blessing to me I read all the histories, memorized whole chapters in the Bible. Now wasn t it a great blessing to me?(5) 4
FROM ALABAMA TO TEXAS (1877 1898) Life had become so difficult for the family in Alabama that the decision was made to move to Texas. The family boarded a train for the grueling trip to the city of Hubbard. E. Ray Tatum tells the story: For three nights and three days the little group had been confined to whatever rest and comfort they could find on the hard, rocky coach seats. It had been a difficult trip. But there had been no dread of the trip. The few earthly goods that could not be brought with them had been sold or traded on indebtedness. The purchase of the tickets had taken most of the remaining amount. Yet, there were no regrets. Life in Alabama had been hard for the young family. There were scars to show for it. In Texas there would be little more to look forward to, but it would at least be a new beginning for Warner Norris. He could start again. Free from the smoky holes and the hardness of the steel mills; from the sickness and rebellion which enslaved him. Warner Norris had not intended to squander the meager resources he had in the pursuit of drink. He had made many resolutions, and yet, it always happened. The habit had grown and grown. More and more it had come to control the man and more and more he had lost control of himself. At first his wife had reacted with violence to him, but then in the recent months, she had persisted to get him to move west. If we could go to Texas, she would say. Warner Norris had listened until he could put her off no longer. Any little resolution he had left was gone, and at last they had the price of the tickets. (6) Frank later described one example of the many hardships experienced on this train trip to Texas. It happened when the family was crossing the Mississippi River: We got off the train at Hubbard when I was 11 years old it took us three days to come from Alabama 5
J. FRANK NORRIS because of changes and slow trains. Indeed, it was a slow train through Arkansas no steel bridges across the Mississippi, and we crossed by ferry, and had to wade in the mud on the Arkansas side, and I had on a pair of new boots and lost one of my boots in the Arkansas mud. Dad and Mother each had a younger child in their arms, and I was squalling my head off when a great big, burly negro pulled me out of the mud. I tried to tell him my boot was in the mud, and it s still there. I never knew his name but when I get to heaven I want to thank him for pulling me out of the mud. I shall never forget the day we got to Hubbard I was 11 years old and we had eaten up all the grub we cooked in Alabama in the three-day s journey, and we had solid fat meat, and I still don t like fat meat.7 The Norris family settled into a modest frame country home as sharecroppers in Hubbard in Hill County, located about twentyfive miles northeast of Waco and seventy miles south of Fort Worth. Hubbard was formally organized when the St. Louis Southwestern Railway of Texas located a station depot there in 1881, which was just seven years before the Norris family move. Residents held a meeting to organize the town, and former Governor Richard B. Hubbard was present. The town was named in his honor. A post office opened in the same year. Later, the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway intersected the Cotton Belt at Hubbard. When the city drilled for water in 1895, the drillers found hot mineral water, and the town became a health resort. One resort was still standing until 1980. Hubbard s population during the time that Frank lived there was about five hundred and peaked at 2,702 in 1925. Today there are about fifteen hundred residents. The most famous person to reside in Hubbard other than Frank was Baseball Hall of Fame member Tristram E. (Tris) Speaker, a lefthanded centerfielder who had a lifetime batting average of.345 and 3,514 hits. He played from 1907 to 1928 with the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics.(8) 6