East Montgomery County Historical Society - January 2010 Meeting and Goals

The following information was submitted to the Texas History Page by East Montgomery County Historical Society Historian, Barbara Hamilton.

Happy New Year!!!! The East Montgomery County Historical Society is planning another great year. Our first meeting of 2010 will be January 12th at the R B Tullis Library, on the Hwy 59 access road just north of Community Drive. Meet and Greet at 6:30 and the meeting starts at 7 p.m.

Our speaker for the evening will introduce us to his ancestor Jeremiah May. Tracking down an ancestor can be a tedious and difficult job but as you follow all the routine steps you don’t find just a name and dates. You find a person. A person who lived in a particular time period, who participated in certain events of history. Each step of the search reveals new insights into who this person was. Clifford May will introduce us to his ancestor Jeremiah May and tell us how he found Jeremiah’s history.

Short term goals for the Society include continuing the restoration work on the Old Porter Community Building so that we may open an East County Museum to spotlight the local history from the time settlers moved into the area just after the Civil War until about the mid 1950s when the telephone and electricity connected everyone with the rest of the world.

We plan to continue periodically display historical artifacts at the R B Tullis Library. The next display will be on personal care items from shaving gear to hair dryers. Later a display of small kitchen appliances is planned and then one of old hand tools. Most of the items will be of the “before electricity” genre. If you have items that would make an interesting display please contact Barbara Hamilton, Historian, at 281-689-2772 or retired@icansurf.net.

Publishing more books is on the list, specifically books on Fostoria, Grangerland, New Caney and Porter. These will be like the “Splendora” book published in 2009 with an expanded view of the communities featured in “Towns of East Montgomery”. If you have pictures or stories of these communities that the Society may use in these publications please contact, Jerry Gay, President, 281-851-6545; Kay Lynn Meyer, Vice President, 281-446-1200; or Barbara Hamilton.

Several cemeteries in the East County boundaries are being looked at for clean up and refurbishing. Lone Star College students partnered with us to clean up at the Enloe Cemetery and we look forward to working with them again.

We are always on the lookout for monthly speakers to tell us about the history of a local family, community, church or other interesting factors of East County history. If you would, or know of anyone who would, like to speak at one of our monthly meetings, please call Kay Lynn Meyer.

The Society will again be front and center at many of the local community events just as in the past. We have more pictures to look through and we continue to gather identification on those we don’t know about. Be sure and come out and look for the split log buildings and the people in the dress of the days of yore.

Although 2010 looks to be a busy year, long term goals, or dreams as the case may be, still focus on having three to five acres to create a living history museum with several old buildings or reproductions of the types of buildings prevalent in the area to demonstrate how life was lived in this section of Montgomery County referred to as the Wild Woods.

Please join us to learn more of the local history or to participate in saving that history for future enjoyment.