W. P. A. Sanitation Project

Duane's take

Now, this one comes straight off an official Texas Historical Commission marker, and I'm gonna do it the justice it deserves. Some stories are about battles and founding fathers. This one is about a privy.

And I mean that with complete sincerity. The year is 1937. The country is still climbing out of hard times, and out in Hardeman County, folks are feeling it.

So the State of Texas and Hardeman County sat down together and shook hands with President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, the W.P.A., and together they set out to do two things at once. Put indigent citizens back to work, and replace unsanitary privies with something better. Now that might sound modest.

But think about what was at stake. The old facilities were linked to typhoid fever. To hookworm.

To dysentery. These were not small concerns. These were the kinds of things that swept through communities and left grief in their wake.

So when the W.P.A. came to Hardeman County with hammers and a plan, people paid attention. The new structures featured fly-tight construction. Every one of them was carefully placed so it could not pollute the water supply.

That is not a detail. That is the whole point. And right here, behind the Hicks and Cobb General Merchandise store, they placed one of those toilets on this very site.

At some point, that one was destroyed. Gone. But the story doesn't end there, because another privy was moved from where it originally stood on the property of the Bellamy family, and it took that first one's place.

The Bellamy family. Worth a pause on that name. W.

H. Bellamy and his family were the founders of Medicine Mound, the town you're standing near right now. So here is what you have: a little wooden structure, built by working hands during lean years, connected to the founders of a town, sitting behind a general merchandise store, fighting typhoid fever one fly-tight door at a time.

Texas history is not always a monument on a hill. Sometimes it is exactly this.

What the marker says

In 1937 the State of Texas and Hardeman County worked with President Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration in an attempt to provide much-needed employment to indigent citizens and replace unsanitary privies with improved facilities. The advantages of these structures included a decrease in such diseases as typhoid fever, hookworm and dysyntery. The privies featured fly-tight construction and were carefully placed in areas where they could not pollute the water supply. One toilet was placed on this site behind the Hicks & Cobb General Merchandise store. When it was destroyed, another privy was moved from where it originally stood on the property of the Bellamy family. W. H. Bellamy and his family were Medicine Mound town founders. (1999)