Jackson Mercantile history preserved in family album

Myrene Jackson Dinan

Cheryl Bean of Kountze recently took a wild tour seeking out, and maybe finding, childhood landmarks in a changing Jasper landscape.

The population of Jasper hasn't grown much over the years, but Jasper descendants are many and scattered across the country. Some, like Bean, have fond memories of summers spent at Grandma's house, but exactly where was that old homeplace?

In Bean's case, she has a lot of clues because her family wisely had Myrene Jackson Dinan write down as much of history as she could remember in 1970. (She died in 1985 at the age of 88.) Arelative typed up her handwritten essay and had it bound for the family.

It begins simply, "Great grandfather William Thompson Jackson was born in Georgia. I don't know any more about his life."

It goes on to describe grandfather Richard Jackson, who had three wives including one related to President Maribou Lamar of the Republic of Texas.

"Myrene Eloise Jackson, myself, was born Sept. 27, 1896, on a Sunday in Colmesneil," Myrene says in her account.

Her father and uncles moved the Jackson Brothers and Collier Mercantile to Jasper in 1900. Myrene's parents built a house on the corner by the Baptist Church, two blocks away.

"We had a wonderful home, fine parents, and the best life had to offer at that time," according to Myrene.

Her parents planted two oak trees, one for Myrene and one for her brother, who died of diphtheria at age 5.

People died then of ailments now preventable or curable. Myrene's account includes the story of one family member who "had hiccoughs 56 hours before he died from effects."

There are a lot of gaps in Myrene's account, such as the story of cousin Zephyr Walters, who "was real young when she died, but she did marry someone, I don't remember who."

You get a feel for the times when Myrene describes Grandpa Jackson's good works: "He sat up with the sick, sometimes held the dying in his arms, comforted the alcoholics with their terrible delerium (sic) tremors and performed other neighborly deeds."

Jackson Mercantile

Courtesy photos above and left JACKSON MERCANTILE, as it looked about 1905, and the old Jackson home before it burned.

The family business started in Colmesneil but moved to Jasper about 1900, when Myrene was only four.

"The thing I really remember about this move was hauling everything from Colmesneil to Jasper in wagons pulled by horses. It is very sandy and deep at Colmesneil and the wagons were so heavily loaded, the horses had a hard pull, and when they balked they were unhitched and whipped, cruelly," Myrene says.

She even remembers the horses' names, Prince and Charly, and that they pulled the delivery wagon for many years for the store in Jasper.

For the first few years, they "lived in Uncle Eli's house, situated where the Belle Jim Hotel is now."

The home they built in 1905 was shown in the Jasper Board of Trade booklet printed in 1906 (a forerunner of the Chamber of Commerce).

By 1917 the family was prosperous enough to replace the wooden building with brick. Different family members helped with the brick making.

Below: Cheryl Bean stands by oak trees that her ancestors planted more than a hundred years ago. Newsboy photo/ Sharon Kerr

According to Myrene, Jackson Mercantile "sold everything a person could need from the cradle to the grave."

Sure enough, an advertisement from that era offers dry goods, notions, corsets, men's hats and shoes, farm implements and coffins, sold for cash only, of course, to "spare you the annoyance of being dunned."

Myrene remembers playing hide-and-seek in the store after school, "I can remember hiding among the feed sacks and such but never around coffins, but the boys did."

From Myrene's account, you can see the Jacksons were ahead of their time. Richard Elmer Jackson (1881- 1958), was a conservationist. "He helped organize the East Texas Big Thicket Association during the 1930's, being the first president," Myrene says.

Myrene's mother had the millinery shop in Jasper and went to Dallas market at least twice a year. Merchandise for the mercantile was bought in St. Louis, a two-day train trip in a Pullman car.

Myrene remembers, "The first automobile I ever saw - Prentiss Seale drove a white steamer something like the old Franklin." Her family had the first bicycle in Jasper, but "the very first Sunday... Tom Seale was riding it and someway, broke all the spokes."

Myrene first married Emzy Smith, who eventually worked for Joe Stone, but she left him.

"Poor Casanova. He loved women," is all she has to say on the separation.

She then married John Dinan, perhaps on the rebound, because she says, "Too bad he never grew up."

Cheryl Bean

Bean can remember seeing the old Jackson house as a child, but of course that was before the new Baptist Church replaced the one that burned.

The old mercantile is probably where Sample's Furniture is today at the corner of Lamar. You can just see some rough bricks peeking out from a chipped corner outside the building.

The oaks in the First Bank and Trust parking lot are probably the ones she remembers standing on either side of the driveway, the ones planted for little Myrene and her brother more than 100 years ago.

Bean does have the gold signet ring that Myrene earned at age 10 for playing in the Sunbeam Band at First Baptist Church.

And she has an account that is more treasured than another family heirloom, Andrew Jackson's pistol used in a duel with Charles Dickinson in 1806.

Myrene says in her account, "No matter what, this gun goes only to a new born Jackson blood line son."

But a first-person account like Myrene's, and with keepsake photos all labeled and identified, are the kind of project someone with older relatives can capture and pass on to the whole family.

It isn't the big events that make the history books which make Myrene's account so fascinating. It's the fleeting images children remember of early years in a different Jasper, when life was both more simple and more hard.