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Continued: Although the records say that Carrie Bright was born in LaGrande, Oregon, she told her grandson that she was actually born in a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail. She spent her infancy in Oregon while her parents were making an unsuccessful attempt at farming in that soggy climate, then in her childhood the family moved via covered wagon to California. They tried their hand at mining gold, and Carrie said they did find enough to have a few coins minted, which she said she still had. These coins were never found after her death. Finally, the family traveled, again in their covered wagon to Runnels County, Texas where they established a homestead and farm in the village of Content. At the time I met Carrie she was well into her 70s. She was a kind and gentle person who seemed out of place in the 20th century. Carrie was fond of describing life in the Wild West in the 1800s. In her youth she had survived several encounters with hostile Indians, and had the arrowheads to prove it, some of which she had pried out of the covered wagon with her own hands. Carrie's arrowhead collection was donated after her death to a local museum by Icy Bright, Carrie's sister-in-law. Carrie disliked electricity and she didn't want it in her house because it might leak out of the outlets. She was a pacifict and a strict vegetarian. Carrie said she had been brought up in the Quaker faith , but she attended a Seventh Day Adventist Church because there was no Quaker community in West Texas. She was fond of growing cacti. She spent most of her time reading the Bible by the light of a lovely red oil lamp. Carrie said that this lamp had been brought from Germany to America in the early 1700s by her grandfather's grandfather (Johann Michael Brecht). This lamp, which survived the sea voyage, numerous cross-country moves by covered wagon and later by auto, and many generations of rowdy children, is now in the possession of Carrie's grandson. Photo of Carrie Bright, about 1905: http://img348.imageshack.us/img348/3430/carriebright5lm.jpg Death notice from San Angelo Standard Times, 11 Jun 1971: http://img328.imageshack.us/img328/9233/carriedeathnotice0wf.jpg
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