The Community News
Your Parker County
2013
63
Traditions
Mary Kemp has offered Living History for 32 years By Katie Martinez The Community News
Mary Kemp grew up living off the land in Parker County. Born into the great depression, some of her favorite memories are hunting squirrel with her father in the fields and valleys around FM 51 in Weatherford. “I’d carry the bag and hold the feet while he skinned them,” she said. “When we got back home, mother would cook them up – oh boy, we’d have squirrel and dumplings, squirrel and dressing. We loved it fried, and when our cousins would come to visit they’d ask her to fry them up some squirrel.” Life was a lot slower and simpler in those days, and one day in April every year Kemp opens up the doors to the past for everyone to come and see. The Shaw-Kemp Ranch Open House celebrated its 32nd anniversary this year. It takes guests back to Parker County, as it was, with a collection of old buildings, fully furnished with antique furniture and goods. The oldest, and the original home on the property, The Shaw Cabin was built in 1856 by Thomas Jefferson Shaw. It contains the portraits of the cabin’s original homesteaders. Other antique structures have been brought to the property and furnished with period pieces from the area. Few, if any, in Parker County are more qualified than Kemp to paint a picture of historical life around Weatherford – and not just because she has lived there for 85 years. A long-time member of the Parker County Historical Society, Kemp was instrumental in getting markers at 17 locations throughout the county. She kept historical scrapbooks for the county and she, along with her lifelong friend Leon Tanner, has written four books on interesting characters in Parker County history with all the proceeds going to local charities. She was a founding member of the Abandoned Cemetery Association, which tends to 62 abandoned cemeteries in Parker County, cleaning away brush and weeds and preserving or
KATIE MARTINEZ/THE COMMUNITY NEWS
Mary Kemp stands in front of her home on the historic Shaw-Kemp Ranch south of Weatherford.
restoring headstones when possible. “I’ve had people ask me before why I do it, and I really don’t know why I care about history so much,” she said. “But I do. I guess it’s because I’ve spent my whole life here, and I’ve had a great life.”
The Ranch Kemp set up an entire town at ShawKemp Ranch in a field of bluebonnets. There is an old general store, with an antique cash register and dry goods that line the shelves behind the counter. A bank and dentist’s office look like they were plucked right out of a western film. The barbershop is furnished with the same antique chair where her husband of 53 years, V Kemp Jr., who died in 1998, had his first hair cut. There is an old school house and church, and a jail that houses the old metal bars from the original Parker County jail. There are thousands of items and
photographs on display and Kemp can tell a story about almost every one of them. For the last 32 years, she has, but she doesn’t know how many more Open Houses she will be able to attend. “I am afraid this might be my last,” she said. “I’ve been to the hospital five times since Christmas – once with a heart attack and it’s not that I want to die, but when you get to be my age you kind of make peace with it. I have had a great life.” She came a long way from her early days, graduating school and taking a job as secretary to the Superintendent of the Weatherford ISD, where she worked for 18 years before retiring to help her husband run the business he founded, Texas Butane. She said her mother never moved from the house of her childhood. “She died in a house without water or electricity, sitting on the back porch
where she used to sit and tell me stories,” she said. “She was 97 years old and never went to a doctor or a hospital a day in her life. If something was ailing us, she would boil up some horehound or something else out of the garden for a remedy.” Kemp has won awards for her service to preserving local history, locally and state-wide. She has raised two children, son Rusty who is heir to the ShawKemp Ranch and daughter Judy, who took over operations at Texas Butane when V died. She has five grandsons, 11 great granddaughters and one great-great grandson, with another great-great granddaughter on the way. She said she is proud of some of the things she has been able to accomplish, but she feels like there is so much more to be done and she just can’t do much more. Turn to KEMP, page 64