Pumphrey

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Pumphrey, out in Runnels County. Now, some towns announce themselves. Big signs, water towers with the name painted proud, maybe a billboard or two.

Pumphrey isn't that kind of place. But what happened here — and what the people here endured — that's worth slowing down for. The settlement was founded about 1899, and it carried the name of Wm.

M. Pumphrey, an early settler who came into this country and put down roots deep enough to last. Born in 1849, he would live all the way to 1937, long enough to see a great deal of what the world could throw at a person.

He was a deacon of the Baptist church, and that faith wasn't just a Sunday-morning kind of thing. On weekends, Pumphrey would load his organ into a wagon — his actual organ, mind you — hitch it up, gather his wife and his eleven children, and make the trip to Wingate for services. Eleven children, one organ, one wagon.

If that family didn't fill up a pew, they brought their own music to fill the room. As the settlement grew, the community built itself a one-room frame school in 1900. They called it New Hope — a name chosen, the marker tells us, to embody the aspirations of the citizens.

That's not accidental language. These were people who understood what it meant to will something into existence out of flat land and hard work, and they wanted a name that said so. The community kept building.

A post office opened in 1901 and ran through 1912. Several stores took shape. Two churches rose up to serve the faithful.

Pumphrey was becoming something real. And then came 1906. In a single terrible moment, lightning struck and killed four men.

Four. And when the grief settled and people counted the cost, they found that more than twenty children had been left without fathers. More than twenty orphans, in one small community, from one storm.

There's no dramatizing that. The marker states it plainly, and plainly is the only way it ought to be said. That Pumphrey kept going after 1906 — that the post office stayed open, that the churches held services, that the school kept its name New Hope — says something about the people who stayed.

They had already loaded their organs into wagons and driven them across open country. They weren't the leaving kind.

What the marker says

Founded about 1899. Named for Wm. M. Pumphrey (1849-1937), early settler. A deacon of the Baptist church, he would put his organ in a wagon on weekends and take it, his wife and 11 children to attend services in Wingate. In 1900, as the settlement grew, a one-room frame school was built and named New Hope, to embody the aspirations of the citizens. The community came to have a post office (1901-1912), several stores and 2 churches. It withstood tragedy in 1906 when 4 men were killed by lightning -- leaving more than 20 children orphans.