Killed in accident at age 17.
The following article, written by Robert M. Hayes, appeared in THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS on February 28, 1954.
Ninety-two-year-old JOE WATKINS, Upshur County farmer, always gets restless about this time of year.
He wants to get started on his spring plowing.
Watkins lives in the oil-rich Union Grove community and collects royalty from sixteen wells.
But he doesn't think royalty checks are as importatnt as preparing his land for a corn crop.
"How's a fwllow going to make a living off the land unless he works at it?" he asks.
Watkins, who could easily pass for seventy, does all of his own work.
"You can't pay hands what they are asking these days and break even," he complains.
Watkins came to East Texas from Mississippi about sixty years ago and bought about seventy acres of land four miles north of Gladewater. That was long before the discovery of oil in this area.
"I raised mostly cotton," he says, "and sold a great deal of it for 5 cents a pound."
There were seven children and Watkins wanted them all to have a good education. The district schoolhouse was an old frame building with no modern conveniences.
Watkins became a school trustee - a post he held for nearly twentyyears - and devoted a great deal of his time to school improvements. He not only contributed land when expansion was necessary, but often cut firewood and carried it into the schoolroom himself.
In the early thirties when the East Texas oil field was discovered, Watkins was one of the few to remain calm during the excitement that followed.
Reluctantly, he allowed drillers to move in on his place.
"I don't like to see good farm land punched full of holes and sprayed with oil," he told his friends.
Pipelines, too, were another source of annoyance. Digging crews didn't seem to have the least bit of respect for his fine rows of cotton and corn.
As his boys grew up, Watkins cut up his farm and shared it with them. But oil income never dimmed his love for the soil.
Today, the old man cultivates only about six acres. He has a vegetable garden where his wife, who is eighty-one, spends much of her time.
He has a mule and a horse and raises pigs. He generally kills about three pigs a year to take care of the meat supply.
Watkins says he quit raising cotton because there was "too much stooping."
"For a man my age," he says, "it's much easier to stand up and follow a plow than to stoop over and pick cotton."
What does he think of modern farming methods? Some of them are a little hard to understand but he guesses they're all right.
"These new tractors are pretty things," he says, "but I guess I'm too old to learn to use one."
Watkins lives with his wife and a daughter, Dessie Mae. They keep a cow and a flock of chickens.
"We are able to live comfortably off our small patch of land," says Watkins, "and raise enough feedstuff for the livestock. That's about all you can expect nowadays."
Though Watkins can't forget how drillers tore up a lot of good farm land, he admits East Texas oil has been a boon to education.
"Just take a look at that Union Grove School," he says. "Used to be just a little frame shack. Now they've got everything money can buy - a fine band, good teachers and equipment second to none."
"For all that we can thank oil."
The Graham family left Belfast, Ireland in 1858 and located in Philadelphia.
Died of heart disease
MARTHA and Hugh Graham had seven children. Two of them - who died
prior to the death of Martha - are unaccounted for.Died of heart disease
Marriage Notes for Hugh Graham and Martha GRAHAM-453596
Parish Church in Parish of Craigs (Church of Ireland)
County of Antrim