
Newly Planted Daylilies at Our Home 
I built this house a few seasons ago and this picture was made before the house and 
grounds were finished—I wanted to get my garden started as early as possible. It’s 
a huge 11-room house with 4 baths. I wanted to build it large enough, especially so 
that we would have room for our large family and the many out-of-state visitors who 
have visited our gardens every year. We have had as many as 12,000 visitors in our 
fields on one Sunday and if you ever get a chance to visit us during the blooming 
season | promise you a treat you won't easily forget. 

Je eh USSEEG 
At this time more than ever, | think of 
my father. While I have the pictures of 
my family before me, certain thoughts 
come to me concerning the things I have 
been able to do for my family and that 
my father was not able to do. 
My father died more than forty-eight 
years ago when he was thirty-nine years 
old and left my mother with ten children. 
He was the originator of the Russell 
Big Bowl Prolific cotton, creating a 
record that has never been equaled to 
this date. He had moved his family of 
eight children from Alabama to Indian 
Territory, which has since become the 
state of Oklahoma, and there my twin 
brother and | were born four months 
6 
4d. ©. Russell 
1862 - 1901 
before he died, after living there less than 
two years. It is one of the most magnif- 
icent little spots you could ever imagine, 
where we left my father, and the coyotes 
howl today within half a mile of that spot. 
I want to go back there some day myself. 
My mother moved her family back to 
be near her people in Alabama. I imagine 
we surely must have been a comical sight 
at that depot in those days—a woman 
with ten children from a few months to 
sixteen years old. 
As we got older, we scattered out. I 
moved my family from South Carolina 
15 years ago. 
I never heard my mother complain, | 
consider a glorious heritage to the living 
that she never spoke ill of any human, 
not even to say “they weren’t good look- 
ing.” She raised all the children except 
one little boy who met with an accident 
at fourteen years old—five of the boys 
are gone now. We carried my mother 
there eight years ago. 
It was not always easy for us, but I 
was more fortunate than some people. 
I got no kick coming; I almost finished 
the fifth grade of school, but I have 
worked with college professors in more 
than fifteen states swapping notes for 
many years. 
RUSSELL GARDENS, SPRING, TEXAS 
