County Line (Upshaw)

Nacogdoches County, TX

Status: Located

Year Established: Unknown

Council of Governments: DETCOG

Public History: Upshaw, a rural community on Farm Road 343 eighteen miles northwest of Nacogdoches in northwestern Nacogdoches County, was settled before 1900. The community was founded as a freedmen’s settlement, and was called County Line in the early years. By the mid-1930s the community was called Upshaw and had a school, a church, a store, and a number of houses. After World War II many of the residents moved away, but in the early 1990s two churches, a school, and a cemetery remained. No population estimates are available.

Community History: “Excerpted from chapter four, A Biscuit for Your Shoe: “Church Establishments,” by Beatrice Upshaw
As I think back, I realize that getting prepared to go to church was a cultural undertaking in and of itself. We were a long way from wealthy so we had to “make do.” These days most of us would hesitate to admit some of the things we “made do” with back then, let alone try them. Someone on Oprah’s show just the other day mentioned eating Vick’s salve for colds. They said you should not do it, but if the stuff was bad for you, we would all be dead. It was all part of our local culture.For breakfast on Sundays Mama usually fried a big batch of chicken. This was served with homemade biscuits, rice, and gravy. We ate like hogs before getting dressed. Mama always made the Sunday dessert on Saturday afternoon, often baking a cake in her huge, stainless steel roasting pan. Mama would prepare the rest of Sunday dinner as she made breakfast. The meal was reheated when we returned from church.After breakfast we began getting ready for church. We pressed our clothes the day before. Mama did not allow us to iron on Sunday, but for some inexplicable reason it was fine to polish shoes on Sunday. Our black patent-leather Sunday shoes were shiny due to their factory finish. Patent leather is always shiny, but to really gloss them we used a biscuit leftover from breakfast. We took a cold biscuit and briskly r\ubbed it into the leather. The shortening in the biscuits made the shoes really glisten. The only problem was that if we walked to church, the shortening also attracted the red sandy dust to our shoes. We solved this by always carrying a rag with us. Once we got inside the church we whipped out the rag and dusted our shoes off, refreshing that wonderful shine.A funny thing about those biscuits: if they were particularly tasty, our shoes oddly didn’t need much shining. If the biscuits weren’t that great, it was, “Boy, are my shoes dull!” That took care of the rest of the biscuits and saved us from having to eat them.Our shoes were not the only things shining—our legs and faces were as well. We achieved this shine by smearing them with small amounts of tallow. Tallow is rendered pork fat. No wonder the dogs were always following us.
Sunday school started promptly at 9:45. There were separate classes for the adults (them) and the children (us). Cousin Puff taught the children’s class for several years while she lived in the community.Uncle N. E.’s youngest daughter, Anita (Puff), grew up in County Line but had married and moved away. She came back to be near her parents while her husband did duty in Korea. After he came home they moved away again. From that point on, we either taught ourselves or joined in with the adult class.
As time wore on, we young ’uns became a more integral part of the adult classes. One of us often served as Sunday school secretary. We wrote and read the minutes or Sunday school report. It was an honor. The church minutes have hardly changed through the years. Minutes and Sunday school reports—a record of each Sunday school session—are still handwritten, either in a ledger or a regular school-style spiral notebook. Our minutes tended to be long and wordy documents written to showcase our writing talent. Once we took over the duties of keeping them we never abbreviated or wrote anything other than grammatically and politically correct statements. No “moved in second” for us. “Moved in second” is a corruption of the parliamentary term “moved and seconded.” It is sometimes seen in earlier church minutes because of either ignorance or tradition, or perhaps it was written by the “traditionally ignorant.” At this time the church secretary is Sis. Claudia Maye Joyce (formerly Claudia Maye Ross). The treasurer is Sis. Gertie Lee Ruffin. Deacon Monel Upshaw still serves as Sunday School Superintendent, after about a hundred years in the position. Sis. Ruffin’s husband Willie Ray (B) is the Assistant Superintendent. The superintendents use the little chrome and black dinner bell to dismiss classes and to bring meetings to order. The bell has been in service longer than I can say. It is one of the few original icons of past church history remaining. The church has been remodeled and reoutfitted. The old homemade pulpit is gone and the homemade benches were given away or stored. Standing in their stead is a traditional pulpit finely crafted of lustrous solid maple. The new pews are equally luxuri- ant, with solid foam, built-in cushions and color-coordinated covers. The church has central heat and air now, so the cardboard hand fans are seldom used. Carpet and new sub-flooring replaced the three-inch pine planks of yesteryear. Before the remodel, there were several places in the floor where the pine knots had fallen away; you could see the ground beneath the church. No more! … I miss the people who were the church’s foundation.”

Cemetery: Stonewall Baptist Church Cemetery

Church: County Line Baptist Church, Stonewall Baptist Church