"To really appreciate Texas..."

[Kirk Hunter]

"To really appreciate Texas as it should be, one needs to have first lived in Arkansas for three years." Addison Young (A.Y.) Kirkpatrick from the forward of his book "The Early Settlers Life in Texas and the Organization of Hill County."

 

A.Y. Kirkpatrick was my great-grandfather. His family came to Texas in the 1840s from Abbeville, South Carolina by way of Arkansas. According to his account, they were water bound in Arkansas for nearly three years before they could make their way to Hill County.  Those three years were not pleasant. He writes:

 

"For nearly three years we were forced to stay among the

horseflies, buffalo gnats, bull frogs, alligators and mosquitoes,

and the biggest mosquitoes I ever saw. They sucked all the

blood out of a fellow. O, the horrors of such an experience!"