Ethel Arrine Thompson

Ethel Arrine Thompson was born on September 30, 1890, at the McAdams Community in Walker County, Texas — the first-born of identical twins. Her sister Edna Alline arrived about thirty minutes later. They were daughters of Thomas Jefferson Thompson and Margaret Annaliza McAdams, whose mother Mary Frances Bankhead was a daughter of John McAdams Jr., the Texas Revolution veteran and pioneer who founded the McAdams settlement.¹

The twins were inseparable from birth. They were always dressed identically and treated as a unit by their family. Their father Thomas Jefferson Thompson died when they were about nine years old, after which their grandmother moved in to help manage the household and farm.

Marriage

On September 30, 1906 — her sixteenth birthday — Ethel married James Walter Morris at the home of their neighbors Shiles Marion Fraser and his wife. The Baptist minister Robert Day Sr. performed the ceremony. Jim was her only sweetheart; he had first kissed her on the porch of the old Grandma Barron Place.¹

Ethel’s widowed mother gave the young couple fifty acres of land as a dowry, along with a horse, a cow, a Poland-China sow, a bed, a stove, ten new quilts, a trousseau of hand-sewn lingerie, and many sundry articles — all packed in a new trunk.¹

Farm and Family

The young couple farmed the fifty acres from 1906 to about 1912. Their first son, R. E. (Robert Edward), was born June 29, 1907. William Otho “Jack” followed on January 2, 1911. Their daughter Margaret Alline was born April 12, 1913. A fourth child, James Walter Jr., came later.¹

About 1912, while visiting neighbors, their farmhouse burned. They rebuilt it but soon decided to give up farming. In October 1913 the family moved to Huntsville, where Jim opened a barber shop. They settled into the house at 1425 Fifteenth Street, where they would live for the rest of Jim’s life.¹

Widowhood

Jim died of cancer of the esophagus on March 12, 1925, at age thirty-nine. Ethel was left a widow at thirty-four with four children. She carried on, raising her family through the Depression years in Huntsville.¹

Her twin sister Edna had married Thomas Claud Roberts and lived nearby. In their later years, both widowed, the twins lived in almost identical houses, side by side. Their children were interchangeable between the two households.¹

Death

Ethel died of heart failure on November 16, 1948, at the age of fifty-eight. She is buried beside Jim at Oakwood Cemetery, Huntsville. The gravestone reads: “MORRIS — Ethel Arrine 1890–1946 / James Walter 1885–1925.”²

Edna died in April 1954, also of heart failure. In her personal effects was a note: she never had to call for Ethel, because just when she needed her, she would look up and see Ethel coming.¹