howeenterprise.com
Hall of Honor
Friday, April 24, 2015
Page #2
Continued from Page #1
beautification. As the writer of a weekly column in the Howe Messenger, Mame Roberts promoted her hometown and encouraged its beautification. Her campaign to make Howe the "Prettiest Little Town in Texas" motivated other small Texas towns to take similar action. A series of articles in the Dallas Morning News provided step-by-step instructions for carrying out beautification efforts, and she was in great demand as a speaker at garden club gatherings throughout this part of the state. Mame's work attracted the attention of Life magazine and Reader's Digest, and she was named "Woman of the Day" on May 14, 1949, on Eleanor and Anna Roosevelt's National Radio Program. Her leadership positions included: President of the Grayson County Federation of Women's Club; President of the Texoma Redbud Association, which urged the planting of Redbuds along highways in Texas and Oklahoma; and founder and president of the Howe Sesame Club. Her Mame Roberts' beautification project had Howe featured in numerous magazines and work, which spanned the decades before and newspapers in the late 1930's and early 1940's. Photo from The Rotarian, June 1940. after World War II, is a significant part of the Alexander McGowan Ferguson (1874-1955), civic history of Howe and of all the towns that Jabez Haning (1827-1883) came to Grayson put her lessons into action. a professor at the University of Texas wrote a County with his family in 1846. In the 1850s continued on Page #3 Jabez Haning obtained a grant of 320 acres of book called Elementary Principals of Agriculture which became the accepted land from the Peters Colony. His land was textbook in public schools in 30 states for 12 located about nine miles south of the town of years. He moved his company called Ferguson Sherman. Harriet Campbell (1834-1880) and Seed Farms to Howe in 1931 and shipped Jabez Haning were married in 1854 and between 70 and 100 cars of seed daily by train. established a farm. In 1873 the Houston & Texas Central Railway established a line south Howe was known as the seed capital of Texas. The former seed farm was located at the of Sherman. The route went through the location of A.M. Ferguson Park (named in his Haning property, and they donated land for a honor), which the land was donated to the city town site in 1876. That town later became by the Ferguson family for strict use of a city known as Howe. park. Walter Pratt Thompson (1876-1959) was Mame Roberts (1883 - 1976) lived her entire voted mayor of Howe for at least nineteen life in or near the community of Howe. Largely consecutive terms spanning from 1913-1949. More research could prove more re-elections. self-taught, she worked as a substitute teacher in the lower grades at the Howe public schools Every two years, Thompson would say he wouldn't run for mayor again, but the citizens in the early 1900's before turning to her life's work -promoting civic improvements and re-elected him anyway.
