Knight Family

Bennie Knight was born in 1893 at Aspermont in Stonewall County. He was born in a half dugout. One room dug back into the side of a little rise of dirt. The biggest salt cedar bushes were used to build a kind of porch roof. The Salt Fork of the Brazos is ten miles north. In certain places when water evaporated, clean sparkling salt just lay there. People came in wagons and got loads of it. Most of the country was good flat cotton land, no trees, no logs, just cotton.

Hettie was born 16 months earlier. He never liked it that she told everyone, “I just raised Ben and the other kids.” Two years later Fannie was born, 300 miles east, in Rains County. Bill and Jim were born in Aspermont in 1897 and 1898. They moved nearly every year to another small farm. James Sterling Pierce was Alice Pierce Knight’s father. He was wounded in the Civil War. He lived with them. He was shot in the left leg and always slung that foot. It slapped the floor. Hettie said, “I can remember the way he walked yet, slap, slap, slap.” In the winter they like to quilt. They all embroidered a block on a friendship quilt. Gatling - 1905, Aspermont – 1905-6, Malakoff – 1907, Maybank – 1908-10.

At one time, the Knights owned a section of land near Odessa. He traded it for a span of mules and moved near Spur. There they got acquainted with the Mings family, who owned two big cotton farms. His first wife had died. He married a girl not much older than his daughter, Annie. He had a son, Kelse. He gave them all three a whipping when they needed it. They later had several more children.

The Knights were visiting the Mings. Kelse and Hettie liked each other. The women were cooking dinner in the fireplace. Mr. Mings was reading the paper, in his usual place. He was sitting in his chair, rared back, with both feet spread apart, up on the mantel. No one dared ask him to move. Ben’s mother, Alice, gathered up some light kindling and threw it in the fire. It blazed up. Mr. Mings jumped up, started slapping his britches legs and dancing around. He didn’t say anything. He knew who did it.