Mary Devil's Pocket. Its matriarch gone
Mary Susan Ray (1882-1973), born to Naomi E. Bean and Hugh "Trump" William Bingham and wife of McDaniel Ray (1876-1914) was the mother of six children. She and her husband worked together on a 320 acre plantation in Old Laurel (Devil's Pocket) until his death in 1914. Mary was 31 years old and her oldest child was ten years old. When they married Mary moved into the Griner home with McDaniel. Mrs. Griner had her own room in the house. Cooking was done in a room separated from the main house, a practice done in previous years to prevent fires from burning down the entire house. They worked together to make a chimney of mud and moss, kept the smoke house full, took care of their children and met social obligations. Together they raised vegetables; gather berries, hunted wild turkeys, deer and squirrels. There were fish in the clear holes, creeks and river. Corn was harvested and stored in cribs; sweet potatoes stored in cool dry places and gallons of corn syrup (300 gals. one year) and sugar cane and cotton raised and hogs killed. Logs were sawed for fence rails and wood gathered for the cook stove. After McDaniel died Mary, her children and her brother, "Uncle Joe" Bingham kept up the plantation with all the crops, sawing and selling logs and managing a herd of 100 cattle. She remained in the 100+ year old house until her death in 1973.
The homestead included a well and a smokehouse. Inside the smokehouse was a pit in the floor where fire lay smoldering and giving off a pungent curing smoke. Overhead rafters held sausage, bacon, and hams on hickory sticks. The ceiling was sooty from the smoke. The house was built well before 1912 before 1912 and rebuilt in 1912. The smokehouse was older than the house.
When the Mary came to Devil's Pocket there were only two families on her side of Nichols Creek and two on the other side-the Binghams, Williams (first family to settle there) and the Rays were the first settlers in the Pocket. The community was known as Old Laurel at first but Mary's slant on the name Devil's Pocket seems sensible. She claimed that, "twas because the old slough back in the Sabine River bottom over which folks had to pass to get here created so much difficulty. There was just enough space for the horse to come across and folks started calling it the devil's pocket."
The mail came from Buna Post Office. Resident Mrs. Peel reported that at one time long ago the Pony Express came through here to Kirbyville. Mary's brother, Joe had a store called the Pocket Store on Highway 87 in the Pocket.
The old Ray homestead was all that remained of the pioneer vintage in Devil's Pocket as of 1973 when Mary died. Mary was as tough as they come and resisted modern conveniences as long as she was able to fend for herself. She was 91 years old when she died in her home in Devil's Pocket.
---Jonnie Miller, NCHC