The Sherman Courier
Wednesday,
August 15, 1917
Pg. 19
Fiftieth
Anniversary edition
UNCLE
BUCK TOLBERT TELLS OF EARLY PRICES OF BLACK
LAND AND GENERAL OPINION CONCERNING IT
The
following interview with Buck Tolbert first
published in The Courier
seven years ago will be found of interest,
especially as it shows the
value placed on the fine black lands of
Grayson County in the early
days:
"I came to Grayson county in 1857, and one
of the first
men that I saw when I got here was Dick
Randolph whom I had met two or
three years before in Nashville, Tennessee.
I was surely glad to
see Dick when I first met him here and I
have been glad to meet him
every time I have met him since then which
has been thousands of times.
When
I came here this county was all outside with
just an occasional little
patch here and there being cultivated, and
lots of people put no value
on the land. A few years after I first
came, I bought one tract
of 320 acres of land and paid $2.50 an acre
for it, and there was quite
a little patch, probably 40 acres in
cultivation and a pretty fair
shack of a house on it. Later I bought
another tract of about 500
acres at public sale at the court house door
and it cost me $2.00 an
acre in green back, and the green back then
was worth only 60c on the
dollar in gold which made the land cost me
on $1.20 an acre. Just
about the close of the war I traded Joe
Huffman a pony horse I had for
170 acres of land he owned down here close
to where Dorchester now is,
and a year or so ago I sold part of that
land I got from Huffman for
$50 an acre.
All before and during and even after the
war, people
generally put no value on these prairie
lands in this county and lots
of them would not have paid the taxes on it
if you had given it to
them. There has been a wonderful
change in this country since I
came here 53 years ago, and most of the
people who were here then are
gone and that makes me gladder when I met
one of my old time friends
like Dick Randolph.
