Email Museum

White Deer Land Museum

116 S. Cuyler

Pampa, TX 79065

George Washington Birthday Tea of 1919

The First Christian Church Ladies George Washington Birthday Tea of 1919 occurred at the home of Henry J. and Alice (Ayres) Lippold who lived then at the corner of East Francis and North Starkweather Streets.

Henry J. Lippold was a former manager of the Home Land and Cattle Company when it operated the N-N Ranch on part of the White Deer Lands. In the early years of the First Christian Church, the buggy of Alice Lippold was a familiar sight on the streets of Pampa as she called on "her children," the members of her Sunday School class.

The Reverend Paul J. Merrill served as minister of the First Christian Church from January, 1919 until 1923. The church building then was a white frame structure at the corner of East Kingsmill and North Ballard. The parsonage was at 309 North Ballard.

Leta (Farrington) Lewis was the wife of Joe Lewis, a son of Matthew A. Lewis who was a noted lobo wolf hunter. Leta's parents were J.C. "Pap" and Margaret Farrington who farmed east of Pampa. "Pap" Farrington had a country school named in his honor, grew wheat successfully and was proud of his yard with beautiful flowers and shrubs.

Eliza Ann Gragg and her husband, Leander Smith Gragg, were passengers on the first "local" that ran from Wichita Falls to Fort Worth over the Fort Worth  and Denver Railroad constructed in 1887. L.S. Gragg with Tobe Odom (Eliza's brother) operated the Z-Z Ranch in the neighborhood of Cantonment Creek before it was eventually sold to George Henry Saunders.

Fannie (Hopkins) Lovett was the wife of Henry Bell Lovett, who came to the area of Mobeetie in 1876 as a buffalo hunter. The Lovetts bought land southwest of Lefors and lived on Grapevine Creek and then Turkey Creek before building a gray stucco house at 121 North Houston in Pampa. The Lovett Memorial Library, funded through the estate of Henry and Fannie Lovett, was constructed at the location of the gray stucco house.

In Pampa about 1909, Edith Barnhart met Claude Lawrence who had left his father's tobacco farm in Kentucky to learn the new trade of carpentry in Texas. They married soon after they met and spent the rest of their lives in Pampa. In 1932 Glen Redman and Claude Lawrence formed a partnership as paint contractors. They were the contractors that completed the new high school built "way out in the country" at 111 West Harvester.

When Marion (Anderson) Walstad, age 24, left her native Norway with four young children, she knew not a single word of English, but she had a piece of paper on which was her husband's address. This piece of paper never left her person, and it finally brought her to her husband, Christian Jacob Walstad, in Iowa. The Walstad family lived in Iowa and Medicine Mound, Kansas before they moved to the "flats" in Ochiltree County in 1886. Later they moved to Roberts County where they were neighbors of the Henry Ledrick family on Chicken Creek.

Carrie Walstad, a daughter of C.J. and Marion Walstad, married Lee Ledrick, a son of Henry and Amanda Jane "Jennie" Lard Ledrick. Lee had a brother Paul Claude. The Walstads, Lards and Ledricks were the first families to homestead in the Panhandle (Billy Dixon Book).

About 1905 the entire group of Ledricks and Walstads moved to Pampa to educate their children. They built homes on four blocks of East Kingsmill on one-half blocks each extending from Kingsmill to Francis, including barns, corrals and orchards. George Walstad (son of C.J. and Marion) took half the 400 block; Claude and Fannie Ledrick the other half; Lee and Carrie Ledrick the first half of the 500 block; and Grandma Jenny the other half. Grandma Marion occupied one-half of the 600 block. The Lee Ledrick home at 505 East Kingsmill was the first solid brick house in Pampa.

Mr. and Mrs. Vestus Emmett Fatheree with their two sons, Clyde, age 21, and Gene, age 8, came to Pampa about 1920. V.E. Fatheree bought several drug stores in Pampa and in Lefors. Mrs. Fatheree was very active in civic affairs such as PTA, WCTU and church women's organizations. She loved music, good books and beautiful things, including flowers. During her lifetime she gave hundreds of books to school and public libraries.

In 1907 John Tate, a barber at Mobeetie and Miami, opened a shop on South Cuyler which became a meeting place of the cowboys. In the winters they sat around the large stove that burned coal. When the supply of coal was gone they replenished it in appreciation. Howard Monteith was also a barber.

Mrs. Ora Duenkel was the mother of Charlie Duenkel who had partnership in the Duenkel- Carmichael Funeral Home.

Nettie Tinsley and her husband Alfred were the aunt and uncle of Marie (Tinsley) Smith, Marie was the daughter of Roy Tinsley and Edna Walberg who lived east of Pampa.