Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County, Texas) Page: 39

DeValle, who worked in the shop on the
Coffey place. Later Carl Braune had a shop
acorss the road west of the store.
Dr. J.T. Glass lived in a two-story house a
mile north of the store where Fred Boecker
lives now. He was practicing there as early as
1893 when he delivered Walter Anz, son of
Edward Anz. Dr. Glass' sister Annie married
Rufus Womack.
Other early doctors were Dr. Shipp and Dr.
Phillip at Chase and Dr. Honeycut at Wo-
mack.
Dr. T.C. Coston practiced at Womack,
1909-1920. His office and drug store were in
a wooden building in the corner west of the
store. He lived behind the office in a two-
story house.
"Die arbeit macht das Leben suss." -
German proverb. ("Work make life sweet").
Caring for livestock and crops occupied all
ages with women and children often joining
men in the fields. Cotton, corn and oats were
the main crops. Some of the farmers who
operated threshers were Adolph Bernhardt,
Ernest Anz, Carl Braune, Joseph Knust, Lee
Conrad, Emil Prescher, Henry Knust, Henry
Meinkowsky, John Helms and Will Hafer.
August Spitzer ran one north of Garnersville.
Although the area is generally thought of
as a farming community, there were also large
tracts of land used primarily for raising
cattle. Ranches were owned by Tom Oswald
and John Moore at Garnersville and Will
Ragsdale, Ben Prather and brothers Blake
and John Jameson near Womack.
Few buildings from the early days remain.
The Charley Arthur house, now vacant, sits
on the south side of FM 219 a quarter mile
from the church. A man named Seedig built
a two-story frame house between the school
and the store around the turn of the century.
Emil Prescher bought it and E.R. Stanford
lived there while he operated the Greenwade
Gin. Others who lived there were Argyle
Biffle and Gus Treude. The Treudes oper-
ated it as a rooming house during the years
of the Reichert Gin. Some of the teachers at
the Womack School lived in the house which
was commonly referred to as the Womack
Hotel. The Henry Hafers bought it from
Prescher and his parents lived there for a
time. They sold the house to J.E. McDonald
who moved it three miles west to the corner
across from the old George Oswald place.
Later the top floor was removed and the
house remodeled.
There were two school buildings at Wo-
mack. The first one was built around 1890.
It was set back from the road and had a long
porch facing east. There were three rooms.
Some of the teachers were Robert Epps,
Evelyn Stanford, Addie Womack, Lillie
Richards, Hazel Jameson, Will and Ella Lacy,
Emma Knust, and Fred Rhodes.
The land was donated for use as a school
and place of worship. Methodists, Baptists
and Church of Christ groups had services in
the building. Baptizings were at the
"baptizing hole" on Childress Creek on the
Joseph Knust land. The cemetery at the
corner of the school grounds was a commu-
nity cemetery and has never had any connec-
tion with Zion Church. The earliest identi-
fiable death date in the cemetery is 1891.
Surnames on the tombstones include Grif-
fith, Williams, Prince, Murphree, Gant,
Martin, Wilcox, Culp, Wright, Waggoner and
Simpson.
A new school, across from the church

Bernhardt Band

4

Womack Basketball Team

Steam Thresher on Bernhardt Farm

Womack School, built in 1929

A
Zion Evangelical and Reformed Church
(1913-1955)

Interior of Church at Chase (1892-1913)

39

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