Olin W. Elliott
Pioneer Callahan County Farmer
contributed by Glenn Elliott and Betty Elliott Hanna. We're grateful to them for sharing this bit of history from old Callahan County.
Olin W. and Nancy Delaney Brooks Elliott
Olin Elliott was truly a Callahan County pioneer farmer. His farm was located 3 miles south of Moran, between state highways 6 and 880 and near the Dennis Cemetery.
Olin always carried this gold Waltham pocket watch. It still bears the partial hoofprint from being stepped on by a horse.
Olin Elliott's character was best described by Betty Elliott Hanna of Breckenridge in her book, "Doodle Bugs and Cactus Berries, a Historical Sketch of Stephens County" reprinted here with permission of the author.
When Olin Elliott drowned in a tank at 84 years of age, many thought it a terrible tragedy that an old man should have to lose his life that way.
But others felt that Olin Elliott died just as he would have had it-while out doing a job that had to be done.
Elliott was an independent little man. He refused to believe a man should quit work just because the years were catching up with him. One fall he climbed a tall pecan tree to flail his crop of pecans, just as he had always done. He did take the precaution of tying himself to the tree, just in case he slipped.
Slip he did, and it was almost the end of him, because he could not regain his footing, and he hung helplessly from the tree for nearly eight hours until a neighbor passing by happened to see him. They cut him down, but he was nearly unconscious, and turning blue all over, and it took him a week in the hospital to recover.
But he was soon out and about his work again. He lived alone on his farm, and raised a magnificent garden each year. He could pick bushels of beans and peas, and would sell them or share them with his friends. He drove his pickup with reckless abandon, and thought nothing of driving to Breckenridge or Lipan to visit with friends and relatives.
He was always a welcome visitor. His irrepressible chuckle as he told a good story was a thing to liven up any day. He appreciated the basic things of life. . . a good meal, a pretty woman, a bargain made where he saved a dime or a dollar. He savored all facets of life. He enjoyed politics, and kept careful watch over men and issues during political campaigns. He was a religious man, but found good in all churches. At various times he had been a Methodist, a Baptist, and a Catholic, though he chose the Methodist Church to be buried from.
Elliott was a sight to see as he strode along, his long arms swinging and his stride like a hurrying camel. He was short, but he seemed even shorter, because he wore his trousers hitched almost up to his arm pits, held there securely by suspenders. He always wore high top, laced-up shoes, and his face was weather-worn and red from the outdoors.
One day he discovered his pump was not drawing well. He evidently found the trouble to be a stopped up pipe which led into the nearby tank. He went to the tank, carefully removed all his clothes, and slipped naked into the tank to clean out the pipe.
No one knows for sure what happened then. Maybe his 84 years caught up with him, and he could not make it back through the muddy bottom and tangled moss that lined the tank. Maybe he struggled and finally sank tiredly beneath the waters. But regardless of how the end came, he must have thought to himself, "Oh well, it's not a bad way to go."
He was getting a job done. It was better to die fighting and trying to finish a job than to be lying sick in a bed and waiting for the end to come. No man could ask for a better death after 84 years of good living.
© 1975 Betty Elliott Hanna - photos © 2003 Glenn Elliott