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Memories of Ennis

Ennis in the beginning: From prairie town to modern city

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What may be the earliest account of commercial life in Ennis appeared in the New Orleans Republican on Thursday, August 8, 1872, the year the city was established. The piece appeared in a regular column of correspondence called “Our Texas Letter,” written by a journalist who signed his article “S.C.J.” This particular installment was datelined “Ennis, Texas, July 22, 1872.”

It’s an incredible document, full of the optimism of a new enterprise, in this case the founding of a small town. Below follows an excerpt of this rare picture of the Bluebonnet City as she was 145 years ago:

‘The night my house burned:’ An 8-year-old’s memories

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Editor’s Note: This article first ran in The Ennis Daily News, June 25, 2008.

Ennis, Texas - Spring 1944 - My pretty blue Easter dress made by my mother was hanging in the closet. The stuffed Easter rabbit that was a gift from my brother, Joe Riley Crow, was next to me as I slept. The youngest of eight children, I was sleeping in the front downstairs bedroom with my parents, Lee and Margaret Crow.

Remembering the Ennis Country Club

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The Ennis Country Club, once popular for its golf tourneys and lunch time gatherings, has been gone for nearly a decade. The brick structure is now demolished and a new home has been built on the site by a local businessman and his family. In recognition of the land’s history, the property is being called Country Club Ranch.

Off the rails

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A total of 17 Southern Pacific freight cars derailed in Ennis in 1955. It had been en route to Ennis from Hearne when one of the boxcars developed a “hot box.” The derailment blocked the SP’s main line but a bypass line was laid around the wreck scene to continue traffic.

Movie house mayhem

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Charges of burglary of Ennis’s Plaza Theatre were filed against two Dallas men in 1941. Isaac Tomerlin and Frank Lee were arrested for the looting. According to the February 27, 1941 issue of the Waxahachie Daily Light, “tools found in their possession at the time of their arrests in Waco fit the marks and scars left at the theater.”

 

Bluebonnet Trails in Corsicana?

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Bluebonnet Trails in Corsicana?

Speaking of bluebonnets, Ennis and surrounding communities haven’t always had the market cornered on the state flower. It looks like our Navarro County neighbors in Corsicana started a Bluebonnet Trails tourism-aimed affair 14 years before Ennis began its annual event.

Forgotten railroad: All aboard the Bluebonnet Limited

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Here are some interesting local history items from the archives of the Ennis News, the Waxahachie Daily Light and the Corsicana Daily News:

The Bluebonnet Limited

A tardy Christmas

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A post office snafu made headlines in 1951 when a package of $250 worth of Christmas gifts, intended for an Ennis family, dropped out of an airplane onto a plantation in Louisiana.

Air Force Capt. C. L. Muirhead of Ennis was en route from Washington, D.C. to Fort Worth aboard his bomber when he opened the bomb bay door to check on a vibration. The package holding presents for his family had shifted in flight and got sucked out. With the help of a reporter from the Shreveport Times and workers in the fields of a big estate the package was recovered.

Live well and long

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The following piece appeared in 1955: “A man living near Ennis, Texas, claims to be 109 years old. He came to the section in 1870 and has lived there ever since, according to his story. We don’t doubt his age. Any place half as good as our friends say North Texas is ought to cause people to double the Biblical span three score and 10 years!”

Strange bedfellows

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Strange bedfellows

Two Houston-based railroad-employed brothers who shared a room in Ennis on stopovers actually went two years without even seeing each other, or so a 1939 syndicated column claimed. The brothers’ shifts never overlapped so, although they shared the same bed in the boarding house, they were never there at the same time. The men, J. E. O’Leary and Conductor D. L. O’Leary, maintained separate residences in Houston and in different parts of town