Without knowing her story, anyone looking at the 1940 U.S. Census record for Mabel Morriss (one of my second cousins, twice removed*) would have no reason to think that her life was any different from the other farm wives in Cass County, Texas. It seems there's no census category for "tireless pioneer."
[1940 United States Federal Census. Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.:
National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. T627]
The Bowie-Cass Electric Co-op wouldn't exist without her vision and hard work. This is from the co-op's history page:
The slight, pleasant East Texas lady with limitless hope for the future and belief in her fellow East Texans brought the Douglassville co-op into being almost single-handedly, braving numerous condemnations of the project as "economically unfeasible." A few years back when employees and members of Bowie-Cass Electric Cooperative were asked about the organizing of the co-op, they would reply, "Ask Mabel Bryan Morriss. She did it."
It all started one warm night in May 1935, as Mabel Bryan Morriss read the latest issue of the Atlanta Citizens-Journal. If she hadn't been too interested in the story about the new-born Rural Electrification Administration and its offer to finance electricity for everybody who could qualify, Mrs. Morriss could have heard the whispers from other pioneers about the obstacles to be encountered along unblazed trails, and the heartaches and rebuffs that go hand in hand with the challenge of leadership.
Over the years she served on the board of directors, as secretary-treasurer, and even donated the land that the co-op's offices occupy to this day. Go read the rest of the story to get an appreciation of how hard Mabel worked to achieve her goal: "John Carmody [the government official in Washington DC] approved the project in August 1937, but his reservations were far from resolved, for he commented even while approving, "I know this thing will never pay out, but this is the only way to get that woman off our necks!' "
The Cooperative currently serves over 36,000 members.
[Originally posted on her Ancestry.com family tree by SummerGBmore]
[From the Bowie-Cass Electric Cooperative website]
You can read more about the Cooperative here, which includes some background on the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). Here's the application form that Mabel had to fill out to start the process:
[Source: East Texas History-Bowie-Cass Electric Cooperative]
*Here's how we're related:
© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.
Love this! I'm so glad you created this writeup. She was my great grandmother and was definitely a force. Diminutive in size only, you didn't cross her! :-) She made things happen! I like to think that a long line of influential women have been inspired and are related to her.
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