Shelby County Today

August 2, 2024 - HOPE Community Medicine are excited to announce that they will be attending the Community Wellness Fair on Friday, August 9th from 9am-2pm at the Windham Civic Center!

HOPE will have 3 booths offering CPR education, FREE blood pressure checks with a medical professional, proper medication disposal, and behavioral health tips and info!

There will be lots of goodies and 30+ vendors present! Y’all come and check out the communal efforts to live a happier and healthier life! 

50 Women Impact representatives present check to Timpson Food for Thought volunteers.

July 31, 2024 - Due to the emergency situation in Timpson following the destruction caused by the tornado which hit July 8, the 50 Women Impact voted to give their 3rd quarter donation of $11,100 to the Timpson Food for Thought pantry. The donation was given slightly ahead of schedule due to the immediate need caused by tropical storm Beryl.

City of Timpson Mayor and Food for Thought representative Debra Smith shared, "First and foremost I just want to thank the organization, 50 Women Impact, and all of the women that help organize and that donation because it's such a blessing to receive this award this quarter especially after the beginning of July." On July 8, 2024 a tornado hit downtown Timpson resulting in damage and power outage which extended into days. 

Mayor Smith gave some information about the food bank, "We give food out for the people in Timpson and Tenaha primarily. We have a few people that come from Garrison when theirs closed. We are open the 3rd Friday of each month from 9 to about 11am and we generally give out about 120 boxes of food to each family that is represented. And then those that are 60 or more and qualify through the USDA program, they get a senior box and that gives them an extra box of food. So, some of our clients actually leave with produce and two boxes of food, if they fall in that qualification, and there is usually between 50 and 55 of those clients that apply and qualify."

"It is a blessing to be able to give the food out and see our clients helped. We also helped the community because during the power outage some of our stores that were losing freezers donated food immediately when they knew it wasn't going to come back on and we have a generator, so, we got our freezers quite stocked." Mayor Smith did advise the food pantry did loose a freeze during the storm so the extra food brought in helped bolster their pantry and made it possible to help new families who came in for assistance solely because of the storm and power outages. "It all worked out, God always makes it work out."

The 50 Women Impact group was started in November of 2017 and selects a non-profit organization to support each quarter of the year. Applications are due in February, May, August, and November. In total, the power of giving as one has distributed $288,555 to worthy organizations!

If you would like to be a part of giving as one, email lindamiller@hotmail.com or lmcadams62@hotmail.com or aleasecopelin@yahoo.com for more information.

July 30, 2024 - We will have a book signing on August 9, 2024 at Excelsior School Library from 10:00 A.M. – 1:00 P.M.

Take a step back in time to a small community in Texas called Aiken. Learn about her citizens through the eyes of their neighbors and families. As the narratives come together and expand, nearby communities are included. A few historical figures are mentioned, but they take second place in our stories. The heroes in this collected work are the men and women who lead quiet, dignified lives in a little corner of the USA.

About the Author:

Pamila Hooper Adkison and Barbara Williams Scates

Pamila Hooper Adkison and Howell, her husband, live in Aiken, Texas with a stray bulldog named Stink. Around the age of two, Pam moved with her parents to Aiken to be near her paternal family, which can be traced back through records of Shelby County to the mid-1830s. She is honored to take part in the preservation of some stories of West Shelby County, Texas.

Barbara Scates was born and raised in Shelby County, just a stone's throw from Aiken, Texas in the Mount Herman community. Only an imaginary line separates the two communities. Barbara attended school in Center, Texas, but was closely associated with all of the events that took place at Excelsior School in Aiken. Her three children attended Excelsior ISD, and she later became employed there. At long last, she achieved her dream of being a part of Excelsior School and is dedicated to making every student a part of the Excelsior family. Her love for the school and all of the students will last a lifetime.

July 20, 2024 - No one living in Shelby County, or anywhere else for that matter, can remember when King's Nursery wasn't in business in Tenaha. Established in 1915 by J.B. King Sr. as a strawberry farm, the plant nursery has been in continuous operation by the King family ever since. “Some people think all East Texas soil is red clay. West of here in Nacogdoches County certainly is and I have had an interesting experience working with red clay for the past year at the SFA Gardens and the SRC, but here in Shelby County we have sugar sand and that is perfect for growing strawberries. My great-grandfather J.B King Sr. started growing strawberries in Tenaha in 1915 and shipping them by train to Shreveport for sale. However, his success caused a number of other strawberry farms to spring up around Tenaha and his profits declined. He decided growing and selling fruit trees offered a better chance of success and that's what we have been doing ever since,” began Dr. Andrew King.

“People sometimes ask why we plant our trees in the ground instead of in pots. The answer is because that's the way my great-grandfather and my grandfather and my father did it, so that's the way we continue to do it,” King continued. Family tradition is obviously important to the Kings and as evidence, Andrew King brought his seven-year-old son Aubrey to the meeting and gave him a few minutes to speak about the importance of fertilization and insect control later in the program. “My great-grandfather realized that what he was really selling was a stick with hopes and dreams that it would become a beautiful tree. In order to help customers visualize what the stick would become, he had a picture book created with color illustrations of what the flower or fruit would look like when the tree reached maturity. My great-grandfather began selling ornamental plants after about ten years, with arbor vitae being very popular.” Clicking to an old black and white photo, King continued, “This is my great-grandfather, J. B. King Sr. I sort of romanticize what the business was like back in those days because you note that even though he worked outside with plants, he is wearing a tie. Super classy! It was he who coined the company motto, 'Where the name of the firm indicates the class of the stock.”

“This is my grandfather, J.B. King Jr.”, King continued. “Some of you might remember him. He went by 'J.B'. My great-grandfather was the trailblazer of the company but my grandfather was the pure horticulturalist. He loved working with plants and he would have been out there grafting trees whether you were going to buy his plants or not. He just enjoyed it. He was a sophomore at SFA when his father died and he had to drop out and come home to take care of the nursery. His son, Aubrey King, grew up on the place, just as I did, but he wanted nothing to do with the nursery business. To him it just represented hot, hard work, so he enrolled at SFA as a Political Science major. His goal was to become a lawyer. After graduation he took a job in a bank. Having worked at the bank for two years, my dad made the mistake of coming home for a weekend to help my grandfather with a landscaping project,” King revealed. “Monday morning he gave his two-week notice to the bank and came home to the nursery, where he worked for thirty-eight years. He was a great horticulturalist, but more than that, he was a great man who loved people. To him, plants were a way to connect with people. He thought he could root a Number 2 pencil. I once told my uncle that I thought Dad would have been a fine teacher, to which he replied 'Are you kidding? He WAS a teacher and this was his classroom!' “He died in 2012. His mother is still active in the family business, however. “She is the reason King's Nursery still exists.” King declared.

Like his father and grandfather, Andrew King attended SFA, graduating with a degree in Horticulture. “One day while sitting in one of Dr. Dave Creech's horticulture lectures in an air conditioned classroom and thinking about my parents working out in the hot sun at the nursery, it occurred to me that I could learn to do what Dr. Creech was doing. These plans changed with the death of my father in 2012. My wife and I moved back to Tenaha in 2013 and we ran the nursery until 2015 when I entered graduate school at Texas A&M,” King continued. He completed both his Masters and Ph.D degrees at A&M and joined the faculty. They returned to Tenaha about the time the Pandemic began and took over management of the nursery. Although King emphasized the importance of tradition at the nursery and the fact that their customers liked King's just the way it was, he knew that some changes were necessary. “People ask me what our business proposition is at King's and I say we don't really have one. We are trying to run a retail nursery where there are few customers. That is a difficult, at best. But two things I had learned were essential to the success of a retail nursery were parking and restrooms. We had never had either. The installation of these facilities necessitated the removal of a dilapidated arbor and some weedy rose bushes, but some long-time customers made it known that my father had put those in many years before and they did not appreciate their removal.” Dr. King was accompanied by his seven-year-old son Aubrey, who already takes a keen interest in horticulture and the nursery. Taking the floor for a few remarks, Aubrey emphasized the importance of soil fertilization, proper moisture, and insect prevention in horticulture, to the delight of the audience.

In addition to running the nursery, Dr. King has maintained his association with SFA. He has served as the Assistant Director of SFA Gardens as well as management of the Soil Research Center at SFA's Center for Applied Research and Rural Innovation. He soon will join the faculty at Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Overton, Texas. “I'm pleased to say that accepting the position in Overton will not necessitate our family leaving our home in Tenaha and I will still be involved with the nursery. Some changes are in the works but King's Nursery has been around for over 100 years and I expect it to be there for my son Aubrey in the future.”

The Timpson Area Genealogical Society meets at 2PM on the third Wednesday of each month in the meeting room of the Timpson Public Library on the corner of Austin and Bremond Streets in downtown Timpson. The TAGHS library is located within the Timpson Public Library and is open and staffed from 9AM until 5PM weekdays. Telephone 936-254-2966 and ask for the Genealogical Library.