R W Higginbotham believed very strongly in education for all his children. When Louise was ready for college he sent her to Baylor in Waco. At that time not only were the dorms segregated for men and women, but the classrooms in the main buildings and even the staircases were segregated for men and women. Elihu had noticed Louise on campus but had not had an opportunity to meet her or to talk with her. He then saw her starting down the women’s staircase and he dared to “break Baylor’s rules” and dart up the women’s staircase to meet her! It was the start of a long and loving adventure for them both.
In the first Higginbotham cookbook “This Little Higgy Went to Market” there is a picture of Horace Aurelius Smith with his greyhounds. The caption under the picture states that Louise and her sisters Nina and Alice and their beaus along with their brothers Horace and Wilson used to race lickety-split on horseback with the dogs after jackrabbits. Of course the girls rode side saddle. This information is included as an example to show that our Grandmother was not a “little lady” all the time and had a great deal of what she used to call “gumption.”
Louise’s many friends in Dublin were very interested and strongly opinionated about her choice for a husband. The story is recounted in the second Higginbotham cookbook entitled “This Little Higgy Stayed Home.”. I will repeat it for those who do not have a copy of the second cookbook.
Lorine Higginbotham (Rufus’ niece) reminisced about her cousin Louise as follows: “Louise was most sought after by all the young men and potential beaux: other girls were second choice. She was never a flirt but so beautiful and good they all loved her. I could name them all, including Mr. Lee Harris, a bachelor and leading banker. Another of the swains was Maurice Reed, manager of the Higginbotham Bros. store in Dublin. He asked me if I thought he had a chance. I couldn’t say, but I didn’t think so.”
“The girls went to Baylor, and Louise was going with El Nash. Later when I was in school in Denton, Aunt Hattie called me one evening asking me to come to Dallas and meet them at the Oriental Hotel for the day: they were shopping for Louise’s wedding.
Surprised, greeting her I said ‘Who is it?’. She answered ‘Maurice’. I burst into tears there on the street, as she hastened to say ‘You silly goose, of course it’s El’. After that El called me the cousin who cried at the idea of her marrying anyone else.”
After the formal engagement Louise’s father sent her on the train to New York to learn the latest styles and the “correct” colors for her trousseau. He wanted her to be seen in the latest fashions which would set a stylish example for Dublin, Texas and reflect on his knowledge and ownership of a fashionable company store. When she arrived and looked at the very latest styles and colors she was enormously disappointed to discover that the latest must-have color for fall fashions was “BROWN!” She wrote a letter to Elihu describing her findings and describing her deep disappointment in BROWN!
In one of Elihu’s letters to Louise while she was in New York he told her about feeling sorry for a young widow in their church whose husband had suddenly died. He invited the widow to go roller skating with him and she did. Louise’s letter back to Elihu could have burned his hand and eyes! She was furious! And she even hinted that the event was enough to make her call off their engagement! Needless to say there was never again even a glance at any other young lady or a thought of being nice to another young woman.
In a letter which I have that El wrote to Louise probably the REAL story was told: when she was on a month long trip to New York and on up to Boston and Maine to be with family with Hattie Smith and Frances he told of going to church and finally securing a new preacher after not having one for a time, of looking forward to moving into the new church; of taking Alice and Ola out to Baylor in his buggy, and of being asked to be in a “Skatillion” on Thursday or Friday night with another lady who was married but good looking and sweet. They represented Levinski – a store in Waco. Mr. Levinski said that they could have anything in his store to wear.
Ell went on to say “Perhaps you’ll read in the paper about the grand picture that the young and handsome Mr. E R Nash Jr. and the beautiful Mrs. McLendon bedecked with diamonds and pearls made last night at the skating rink. Now doesn’t that make you feel a little jealous?”
They were married on November 28, 1906 in the Higginbotham home in Dublin, Texas where most of the Higginbothams lived. I now have two letters sent from Daddygrand, who was working seemingly long hours at Nash-Robinson in Waco to Grandmother in Dublin on June 25th and July 1st when, counting the months, she must have been pregnant with Alice Louise. She had left on June 24th to go to Dublin. He also asked her if she had seen Mr. O.S. Boggess in Dublin, because he had not seen him in Waco for some time! (O.S. Boggess later married Aunt Nina.) It also seems, perhaps, that they may have been living with his parents, because in the second letter he talks of taking his mother and the rest of the family, except his father, to the Metropole for dinner. His father and mother then went to church. In the same letter he encouraged Louise to order her phaeton and the one she wanted and not to consider the price so much since he wanted her to be happy with the purchase. They were also planning a Galveston trip and he wanted to know how many were going from Dublin so that he could make arrangements. He also mentioned getting a bill from Higginbotham Brothers and wanting her to okay it before he sent the check, since he had not received a bill from them before. (These letters give a wonderful insight into their newly married lives.)
Alice Louise was born in Dublin on January 25, 1908. (Right now I need to try to find more information on those two years and the next two and a half years.) By the time Ruth was born April 3, 1911 Grandmother and Daddygrand were living in Waco.
This is conjecture, but I imagine that they may have first moved in for a time with Daddygrand’s father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Elihu Reuel Nash Senior, perhaps while they were building their house on the Morrow Avenue property only one block away from the senior Nash family. Also probably by that time Elihu Nash Junior may have started working for his father in Waco at Nash-Robinson Lumber Company..
I know from my mother – Alice Louise – that her great grandmother and great grandfather built a house next to Grandmother and Daddygrand (1615 Morrow) when Horace Aurelius Smith retired and when Alice Louise was a child. I know this because Mother told me that when she misbehaved and was going to be spanked by her mother that she would run next door and that her great grandmother would hug her and tell her mother that she couldn’t possibly have misbehaved, etc. I also know from what mother said that she was the only great grandchild that the Smith’s knew well and, consequently, they left their house and property to her.
E R Nash Sr. was the Treasurer of the First Baptist Church in Waco for years. He also was responsible for the design of the present church with its lighted dome. Later E R Nash Jr. took his father’s place in the same position as treasurer of the church.
Both Grandmother and Daddygrand became active members of the First Baptist Church. There was a Nash pew in the church three or four rows from the front on the choir side of the church in the section just to the right of the center section of pews. When I wasn’t singing in the choir I sat in that pew along with the others in the family. The pew directly behind the Nash pew was the Jenkins pew where Josephine’s missionary aunts sat. Miss Sallee had been a missionary to China and she was put under house arrest for a year before she was able to return to the United States.
I believe it was very early when Grandmother started her Louise Nash Sunday School Class because the class celebrated its fiftieth year when I was living in Waco with Mother in the ‘50’s. (I believe it was 1956 but “doing the math would make it later.”)
Grandmother’s place to study her Bible and prepare her Sunday School lesson was a niche with a window between the fireplace and the built in book case in their bedroom where the chest of drawers and the dressers were – the beds were behind doors that could be closed off in what they called the sleeping porch.
After Daddygrand passed away I spent every night near her in what had been Eleanor’s room and would see Grandmother sitting in that chair reading her Bible as I came in from studying and doing homework next door at 1615 Morrow for my classes at Baylor. Each morning I would fix her breakfast and set the table for her before going next door and getting ready and leaving for my classes.
After taking many classes in music-especially voice- first from Martha Barkema starting as a class voice student in Junior High and then from Tina Piazza after my mezzo-soprano voice developed – Bards and Rhapsody Choir, and singing in many music department oratorios even when I was in high school I finally decided on Theater as a major although I also had enough credits in English and also enough in Education. In the Theater Department I worked with Jearnine Wagner teaching children and teenagers in the afternoons after formal college classes were over and performed in several plays in the department. From time to time Paul Baker invited several internationally-known performing artists to come and stay for periods of time to teach in classes – Juana LaBan to teach movement; Ettienne DeCrouix to teach mime; Charles Lawton to teach about using the voice to deliver ideas and words; Burgess Meredith to teach about acting and directing.
During my senior year at Baylor Mr. Baker, the head of the Theater Department, told us that he had been hired by a group of people in Dallas to be the director of the Dallas Theater Center, which was to be built there. This group of theater-lovers had also hired Frank Lloyd Wright to design the theater building. One afternoon we all gathered in the lobby of the theater to meet Frank Lloyd Wright as he came to have talks with Mr. Baker about the use and design of the new building. These experiences plus many hours of study and experiences in performance made me answer the call to continue in theater studies to obtain a master’s degree in Dallas. My senior year I went to Dallas during the winter break to help formally open the theater and to help mount the first show. So I left Waco and my family to live in Dallas, although I returned from time to time to visit.
In one phone call from my mother I learned that Grandmother had had a stroke and was still alive but no longer able to speak clearly or to walk. She was bedridden and had been moved downstairs to the bedroom there. When I came to visit of course I visited her and talked of Ramsey Yelvington, a playwright and actor who had been in the Baylor Theater and had dated Ruth Nash when they were in Baylor. I had worked with him one summer in presenting his play “The Drama of the Alamo” in San Antonio. Then mother asked me to sing to Grandmother. I chose “I Come to the Garden Alone” which Grandmother had asked me to sing at Daddygrand’s funeral and was one of Grandmother’s favorite songs. It also reminded me of Grandmother’s many morning visits to her rose garden which I had observed for years. The song seemed immediately to enable her to relax. I sang that song and several others each time I came to Waco to visit.
The experience of seeing her reaction to the song caused me to investigate the latest scientific and medical investigations of the workings of the brain and the functions of the various parts or sides of the brain. I learned that one side seemed to enable speech and that the other side seemed to influence or emphasize the arts. It was a revelation to me and helped me in working with children.
Mother told me that when Grandmother had another stroke and was taken to the hospital for the last time she and the other brothers and sisters came into the room to see her for the last time. As she was dying she began singing “I Come to the Garden Alone” as she passed away. Neither Mother nor Ruth nor the others had ever remembered her singing.
In 1940, Grandmother was the President of The Hamilton House in Waco which was similar in nature to the Dallas Woman’s Club in that it had an officer roster of prominent Waco women, a membership fee, served luncheon every weekday, and could be reserved for private parties, etc.
Daddygrand and Grandmother had an early and long membership at The Fish Pond – a rather low key “homey” country club which had been around for years as the first country club in Waco where Bob and I swam often. It had a regular Sunday buffet lunch which the family attended at times. I remember attending a high school dance there once. Mostly I knew it for the swimming pool. Ridgemont Country Club was a much later club right next door which was much more elite in its attitude and a bit more modern in its design and “ambiance” – It was visible from the swimming pool of The Fish Pond.
Grandmother got a great deal of exercise from gardening which could be a challenge in Central Texas with the heat. She always had pansies in the fall and winter in the two front beds on either side of the front sidewalk. She had daisies in the spring in the back yard beds at the back. Trees and green bushes surrounded the perimeter of the back yard.
There was a rather formal round rose garden with a bird bath in the middle on the street side of the house, but I do not remember many rose blooms there. I think that the trees planted by the side street had grown quite tall and pretty much kept the sun from reaching them or it may be that as she became more and more interested in roses that she focused on her new rose plants which she planted in new and much larger beds between the driveway and the 1615 Morrow fence line. She spent about two hours every morning after Elihu went to work feeding, tending, trimming or pruning, and poisoning or fumigating for a variety of problematic diseases or pests. Alice Louise and Ruth were very concerned about her use of chemicals and what they might be doing to her health.
On Mother’s Day everyone would get a rose of an appropriate color – red or pink for “living” or white for “deceased” mothers. However, I do not remember very many cut roses in vases in the house. When she and Daddygrand married, cut crystal was the new “must-have” elegant gift, so they received many gorgeous bowls, pitchers, vases, etc. Grandmother was embarrassed to keep so many and such elegant crystal pieces out (and perhaps a little concerned about their being broken by children) so she kept them put away in cabinets until Ruth and Alice Louise persuaded her in her later years to bring them out and place them in the dining room on the built in shelf by the window so that the sun would shine through them.
–Louise Mosley Smith
E R Nash Sr. and Family 