I used to see the cow boys ride through and shoot up the town, but they didn’t mean any harm; they were just having a good time.

At that time there was just one Sunday School and it was a Union School. Judge Barwise was superentendant. Miss Lula Barwise played the organ. Mrs. George Knott, and her sister, Miss Nellie O’Donnell, both nee, Miss Nellie O’Donnell, taught classes in the Sunday School. The first Christmas we were here, they had a Christmas tree and all the children got candy and nuts.

When school started in September, we met in the little building that stood where the Masonic Temple now stands, and Mr. Cherry was principal. He was one-eyed and the boys would throw paper wads in the part of the room to which his blind side was turned. Miss Lula Barwise and Miss Nellie O’Donnell were teachers in that first school. As the school grew the authorities put up another room out on the school grounds, and when that was outgrown they put up another, until there were several little separate rooms on the lot.

In September they had the first annual picnic. Barbecued beef, pickles and light bread were served to all who came. The picnic was held on the old Williams place out on Holliday Creek. Lots of people came from nearby towns. Many of them did not come prepared to pay hack fare from the depot to the picnic grounds, and they had to walk out through the deep sand, There were no side walks anywhere and the sand was several inches deep in the roads in some places. Hundreds of Indians came, and that night they got together out at the Knott Barn on the hill and had a War Dance.

Old man Gilbert from Gilbert Creek neighborhood used to bring milk and deliver to everybody who wanted it. He had. chain harness instead of leather on his old horse, and we could always hear him coming. We just hung our bucket on the fence and when he came along he just measured a quart of milk and poured into it. He was a very kind hearted old man. One time a widow woman was about to stop taking milk because she couldn’t pay for it; he found it out and brought the milk without pay.

My husband, Mr. W.H. Downing came here in 1885, and he and his brother and a man named Dudd Hart started the first nursery in this part of the country.

They bought a piece of land just north of the river where they grew their nursery stock. The drouth came in 1886 and they did not make anything. Their former employer at Terrell, Texas, offered them jobs if they would come back, but they refused. During that year carloads of flour were sent in to drouth sufferers, but they didn’t accept any help.

In 1889 Mr. Downing and I were married. There was no Christian Church here so Mr. Downing joined the Methodist Church with me, intending to change his membership when the Christian Church came, but he never did.

The rains came and times got better, and the Downing Bros. Nursery began to be a going concern. They bought more land, south of town known as the Keen place, where the Cedar Park Pool is now located. Mr. Downing had the first green house in Wichita Falls on our little home place north of the river, and people drove out from tow in their buggies after flowers.

In 1904 we had a terrible sandstorm. Mr. Downing was plowing in the field, and the wind became so strong that it blew him out of the row, so he quit and came in. There were other bad sand storms in those early years; sometimes we could not see the building across the street. One storm lasted for three days and nights.

Mr. Downing and his brother had a windmill on their farm south of town and did some irrigating on a small scale. and raised all kinds of vegetables for market. Later when water was available from the Wichita Lake, they knew how to use it, and had irrigated gardens all the time. Later, Mr. Downing sold out the Nursery Business to his brother and he spent his time raising strawberries, tomatoes, green peppers, etc., for the wholesale produce market. One wholesale man dubbed him "The Pepper King", for he seemed to be the only man around here who could grow sweet peppers. Each spring he raised early vegetable plants and sold them all over the vicinity.

Mr. Downing and my mother, Mrs. Bettie Gentry, organized a little Sunday School across the river in 1891. Mother went out and collected money and built a little house, which had two rooms and an ell. The preacher lived in the two rooms and the Sunday School was in the ell. It was made a mission Sunday School. Brother Kerr was the regular preacher and he had preaching every Sunday. It was later abandoned when so many people moved away from that side of town.

Mr. Downing was very active in the work of the Methodist Church, and was superintendent of the Sunday School for sixteen consecutive years. He was one of the earliest stewards of the Church and at the time of his death in 1926 he was the oldest steward in point of service and in point of age.

I have been a member of the Methodist Church here for forty-nine years, having joined in August, 1885.