Touched by A Monarch

A Rare and ByChance PhotoOpportunity

It's past time for the Monarch Migration through Texas, but this Prince of Butterfly's

 must have gotten a late start on the Annual Monarch Migration Trip to Mexico.

You can read about it in my post ... Monarch Migration Through Texas.

The Handsome Prince made a PitStop in my backyard to fill up for the Trip South of the Border.

Usually the Monarch's feed on the Autum Joy, but it was occupied.

Needless to say neither the Butterfly or this photographer wanted to be Touched by a Bee!

I hope you enjoyed these Photos. I sure was thrilled with the ByChance PhotoOp...it was a Rare Opportunity that I'm pleased to share with Ya'll. Feel FREE to Capture any of these photos for your personal use and collection. Although I have not signed any of them, I appreciate credit. (click on photos to enlarge)

Linking to Beverly's Pink Saturday at How Sweet The Sound.

And as Always...Thanks Beverly for Making Saturday Pink!!!!

Workday Wednesday ~ Cotton Pickin' In Texas

For generations of Texas Cotton Farmers, blue skies with fluffy clouds and fields of fluffy cotton bolls has been a sign for 'Cotton Pickin' Time'.  Many of my Texas Ancestors were Cotton Farmers in West Texas where Dry Land and Ditch Irrigation provided the water for cotton farming,  and Hand Hoeing and Pickin' provided the lively hood for farm workers and their families.

  T.N. Brown's Gin

That's what is written on the back of this photo from my Great Grandmother's Photo Album.  Martha Jane Marley Carroll was a cotton farmer along with her father, Elisha Smith Marley.  After the death of her husband in 1903, she returned to her father's and brother's farms in Borden County, Texas.   I suspect that T.N. Brown's Gin was the cotton gin nearest their farms.  I've studied this photo many times and looked for signs that would hint as to it's location, and the only solid piece of evidence is the lettering on the chimney stack...Munger System.  (click on photo to enlarge)

If you are regular reader of CollectInTexas Gal and Tracks of My Texas Ancestors, you know that I love the detective work involved in finding my ancestors.  You also know that the facts of their lives often spark my 'Fact, Fiction and Folly' stories.  I just knew there had to be a story about T.N. Brown's Gin and why it was in my Great Grandmothers Album.  So, I Googled for some clues....

"Robert S. Munger, a young man operating his father's gin at Mexia, Texas from 1883 through 1885, conceived the idea of handling the cotton to the gins by air.  It would then be distributed to two or more gins in a battery with a belt distributor, using a common lint flue behind the gins to take the cotton to a battery condenser.  The cotton would then be moved to a double box cotton press."

Munger Gin Company Website

Photo ~ Robert S. Munger, 1854-1923, Inventor...Facebook

Fact is... Robert S. Munger was a hard workin' cotton ginner and an inventor. 

Fiction is that if anyone would have told my Great Grandmother, her cotton farming Father and Brothers

that someday there would be a machine that picked, blocked, and delivered the cotton

to the gin via a horseless wagon, they would have had a good laugh and said,

'That's just pure Folly'



Wonder what they would say about a Pump Jack in the middle of their Cotton Field?

Welcome Workday Wednesday GenaBloggers!