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- The type-written manuscript details the movement of John and Minerva Abercrombie from Alabama to Texas. It gives an account of their early years in Waverly, Texas, where Sallie Abercrombie was raised and educated by her mother's large library. Soon after, a community school was formed in Waverly, and the Abercrombie children were educated in all the arts, music, and dancing, as befitted a cultured class. The manuscript gives accounts of Leonard Abercrombie, Sallie's older brother, and how he went of to Virginia to study at the university, while Sallie was left in Waverly to finish her education locally. The manuscript gives account of several stories, such as the only murder in Waverly and an account of a panther attack. The manuscript then follows the events surrounding Sallie Abercrombie's wooing by Horatio White Fisher, an older widower with an 11-year old daughter. It then recounts the events at Waverly during the Civil War, when Texas Seceded. Leonard joined the Virginia army, and Horatio raised a company of cavalry, the Abercrombie Lightguards. Shortly after receiving news that Leonard had died in Battle at Bull Run, Sallie and Horatio were married. The manuscript then recalls her war-time years, during which she grew close to her new father-in-law, William Phillip Fisher. The manuscript then recalls the period after the war, and the trials of learning to manage a plantation with hired labor instead of slave labor. It then recounts Sallie's illness and that she was tended with the first artificial ice sent for in that part of the Texas. The manuscript then follows Sallie's visit to New Orleans and the birth of her first daughter. The next chapter chronicles the life and times of Grandmother Minerva Abercrombie. As a girl, Minerva left South Carolina to go to school in Philadelphia, then lived in Montgomery, Alabama, and eventually found herself in Texas. The manuscript recounts how she married her husband, John Abercrombie, and their early years married together. The manuscript also tells of an business venture by John Abercrombie to buy a pineapple farm in Mexico, the business was halted when Horatio Fisher remarked that Mexico was no place to raise his family. Though John had been an apt cotton farmer during the slave years, Minerva persuaded him to let their son Jack run the plantation after the war, when hired labor was needed. Jack ran the plantation to ground and it was sold to pay the mortgage. Jack then bought a cotton farm in Brazos, Texas, and died of malaria. The manuscript then recounts the years of Minnie F. Cunningham's parents, Horatio and Sallie Fisher, as cotton farmers in Texas during the Reconstruction era. The manuscript then tells of the changes brought forth with the coming of the railroads into Waverly.
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