Red River County Town Shrinks
FULBRIGHT
-- This old Red River County town called Fulbright is less full now than it was a week ago. And it was less full then than it was a few decades ago.There was a time when Fulbright boasted 11 businesses, including grocery store, barber shop, hardware, blacksmith shop and three cotton gins. It also had four churches, a high school, service stations and several hundred citizens.
OVER the years, and especially since the coming of good roads, Fulbright has dwindled, shriveled and shrunk. The post office, established in 1882, was reduced to a branch office out of Detroit a few years ago and was operated by Mr. and Mrs. D. C. McDonnold in connection with their small grocery. It was the only business, besides a service station, left. The school was lost to consolidation and the gins ceased to hum as a new era of farming dawned on the prairie.
And last week, without so much as a whimper, the branch post office died, Old Glory came down for the last time and Fulbright lost its postmark, its zip code and its identity as a speck in the nationwide postal system.
For several years, Bill Baker ran the only service station in town. But a few days ago, due to ill health, he retired and Travis King stepped in to keep it open until perhaps a new operator can be found.
THERE'S HOPE that someone will re-open the grocery which the McDonnolds owned on the north side of the street. "I hate to think about driving to Bogota or Deport or Detroit for a load of bread," Morris Fisher said recently. Morris is one of the more than 30 citizens who had boxes at the post office.
County highway department workers put up mail boxes and stenciled them free of charge for former post office patrons who furnished their own boxes.
According to a history of Fulbright compiled by Mrs. Iva Lassiter Hooker on information supplied by John Ford and Miss Edna Howison, all of Bogata, the town was named for County Judge John David Fulbright who, with his wife, the former Permelia Smathers, came to the community from Missouri in 1842. They were the parents of twenty-three children, fourteen of whom lived to adulthood.
A MAN by the name of Flem Elmore built and ran Fulbright's first grocery store, in the 1880's, according to the Hooker history. Early-day merchants included E. R. Horn, Simmons and Houston, Sam Bright, Joe and John Ford and A. Y. Boyle.
The town's first school was at Bethel, more than a mile to the northwest. But the school was later moved to town and into a new building. Some of the first teachers were L. W. Lassiter, George Morrison, Joe Cunningham and a Mr. Harrison, according to Mrs. Hooker. She adds that in 1902 a larger school house was built and George Trice was its first teacher. Then, about 1913, an eight-teacher brick school house was built, along with a large auditorium
A POST OFFICE was established in 1882 with John T. Hardin as the first postmaster. Others to serve were John J. Perdue, J. L. Fulbright, Samuel G. Bright, Susan A. Senter, Alonzo C. Davis, Joseph H. Ford, Elbert Tucker, William E. Fuller, John R. Bright, Orene N. Bell, Mrs. Lela Rozell and Ward Baker. Baker was the last postmaster before it became a contract station and the McDonnolds took over.
Congressman Wright Patterson's history of post offices and communities says Fulbright settlement was first called Possum Trot, about 1850, and that a village developed after the War Between the States when John L. Thompson built a cotton gin and James A. Abbott opened a grocery store.
Mrs. Hooker's history, written in 1963, pointed out that Fulbright had only one store, one filling station, one gin, and two churches, still active, and ended on this prophetic note.
"THERE IS nothing to stimulate growth. So, it is believed, that some day there won't be anything left of Fulbright."
Less full now than then, Fulbright still has about 200 citizens,
two churches and a community center. And who knows but what something may happen to turn the old town around and restore it to its former glory? Who indeed?
(Contributed by Chris Wilson)