November 8, 2019
Retracing Lena Huppler Bevers’ Travel Log
Sat. – Nov. 8.
Started out and got in Raymondville about 10 o’clock A. M. and went into our new home.
We crossed 4 toll bridges and was ferried across the Canadian river. – Lena Bevers
On the twenty-seventh day after leaving Watertown, South Dakota, Lena Bevers recorded that her family arrived in Raymondville, Texas about 10:00 AM. Her daughter Florence wrote in her travel log that they had driven 50 miles that morning.1 They were still traveling about 15 miles per hour.
Raymondville was only 15 years old when Herbert and Lena arrived there. It was a small town. By 1914 the population was only 350, but there were “four general stores, a bank, a newspaper, a hotel, a cotton gin, and a lumber company. Agriculture, primarily the raising of sorghum, cotton, citrus fruits, vegetables, and corn, drove the town’s growth in its early years.”2 Today, my mother and I didn’t find any dated historical buildings of the early 1900s.
On January 5th, 1920 a U. S. census taker visited the Bevers family. At that time, Raymondville was in Cameron County, then in 1921 Willacy and Cameron Counties were reorganized. Raymondville became the county seat for Willacy County. According to the census record, Herbert was a farmer and he and his family were living on a rented farm.3 Herbert was 50 years old and Lena was 48. The six children that rode with them in the car are listed on the census record, as well as their son Willis who had accompanied the livestock on the train. Today, my mother and I spent a couple hours at the Cameron County Archives Office in Brownsville, Texas. We uncovered enough information that we believe will lead us to the area where Herbert Bevers was farming and we will go there tomorrow.
Notes:
- B. Winkelmann, Our Trip to Texas [Transcription of Our Trip to Texas by Florence Bevers, 1919] (unpublished, n. d.): 5.
- Handbook of Texas Online, Stanley Addington, “RAYMONDVILLE, TX,” http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hfr02.
- “United States Census, 1920,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9RX1-KXK?cc=1488411&wc=QZJT-MQX%3A1037034201%2C1036604401%2C1037078301%2C1589332571 : 14 September 2019), Texas > Cameron > Justice Precinct 8 > ED 38 > image 3 of 25; citing NARA microfilm publication T625 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).
