Kind of interesting to Piney Woods-o-philes …

The people who live in the pine woods of Eastern Texas are very primitive in their habits. As this was the first part of Texas that was settled by the early pioneers, their descendants form the principal part of the population. Traveling through the deep piny woods of this part of Texas, you often find grown men and women that have never seen a prairie country, mountain or valley, railroad or steamboat. They grow to manhood and womanhood in the heart of the thick pine woods, and are contended and happy in their log cabins. Oh, contentment, what a blessing! Their diet would by no means please the stomach of an epicure. Corn-bread, bacon and potatoes, with an occasional treat of venison, give them perfect satisfaction. Nearly all the children born and reared in the pine woods have light hair; it is a rare sight to see a black-haired family.

Very few of the descendants of the old settlers own any land. For the last forty years they have been in the habit of settling upon any land fit for cultivation. After finding a good, rich land (hammock) the piney woods settler will commence felling and cutting the trees and underbrush away from where he expects to have his field. When all the space he wants is cut down he informs his neighbors that on a certain day he will have a log-rolling. His wife makes preparations for a big dinner, and all his neighbors, for miles around, come and pile up the logs that have been cut down, then put the brush in piles and set them on fire. In a few days his field is all cleared and ready for the plow. After working some one else’s land for two or three years, he sells the improvements and his squatter’s claim to one of his neighbors, and then hunts up another piece of land to improve and sell in a like manner. The consequence of this way of living is that they are always moving and their children grow up without knowing the pleasures and comforts of a home that could be made comfortable and beautiful if the land was their own, yet the land can be bought very cheap. The people have been in the habit of using every man’s land as their own for so many years that they believe the land has no owners. Most of the timbered lands in East Texas are owned in large tracts by non-residents and their agents who pay their taxes seldom know where the land is situated; hence the squatter has it all his own way.

– From an article in The Sunny South of Atlanta, Ga., published Nov. 5, 1887