Eloise Lane

Lula, born April 8, 1883 in Collin County, Texas, was the daughter of Robert Walter Yeager and Mary Elizabeth Reasor. Because of Lula’s ill health, Lem was in search of new land near Roswell, New Mexico, when he came through Pampa on the train. He stopped at Pampa to visit his cousin, V. S. (Scott) Keahey. He liked what he saw, decided to stay and moved his wife and small son, Robert Henry, to Pampa in 1906. For a time Lem’s family lived in town where Lem and his cousin, Scott “Jack” Keahey, operated a dray business. In April 1906, when L. L. Ladd decided to move his newspaper, The Crony, from Miami to Pampa, Lem and Jack went to Miami and transported the old George Washington hand press. to its new location in Pampa at 123 South Ballard. L. H. Greene was the first of the 250 subscribers who paid $1.00 each for a year’s subscription to the Pampa Crony which was renamed The Pampa News in 1907.

Leaving the dray business, Scott became a pharmacist and was listed as pharmacist at City Drug Store, Inc., 300 West Foster in the 1929 Pampa City Directory. Lem bought farm land two and one-half miles southwest of Pampa. The L. H. Greene farm residence at that location is pictured in the 1910 booklet advertising White Deer Lands. Augustine “Guss” Vaden and William “Bill” Alston were born while Lam’s family lived southwest of Pampa. Lem and Lula would have been charter members of the First Baptist Church (organized April 6, 1907) except that Lula was pregnant with Guss, and it was the custom at that time for women to stay at home during a pregnancy.

About 1910 Lam and Lula purchased a farm four and one-half miles northeast of Pampa where some of their descendants are still living in 2000. A map (ca 1928) shows L.H. Greene on Sections 70 and 71, Block 9, I. & G.N. Survey. A stagecoach route (begun about 1878) from Mobeetie to Tascosa sopped regularly at a spring on the land bought by Lem and Lula The area around the spring became known as “Greene’s Pasture” and was a favorite picnic spot for members of the First Baptist Church and many others as well, Jim and Kathleen Greene now own “Greene’s Pasture.”

Lem died in July 1921 after an operation for appendicitis at St. Anthony’s sanitarium in Amarillo. His obituary states that he had a host of friends and was a successful farmer and stock raiser who had unlimited confidence in the country and in his fellow man. He was a 32nd degree Mason and a member of the First Baptist Church, the School Board and The First National Bank Board. After Lam’s death Lula, with Guss and Bill, lived on the farm until 1928 when she moved into Pampa at 510 North Somerville. She traded about 100 acres of land to W. R. “Bob” Campbell for this house where she kept boarders — many of them were teachers, including Violet Durrett, Florence Jones and Frances McCue. Bob Campbell continued to live in the house as a boarder until 1929 when he married Jenkie Collins, former seventh grade ~teacher at the red brick school (309 North Cuyler).

Lula died May 28, 1973 at St. Anthony’s Rest Home in Panhandle. Robert Henry Greene, son of L. H. and Lula Greene, was born near Garland, Texas, October 16, 1903. He married Mamie Elizabeth Mitchell on December 23, 1923. Their children are Louise Greene Spilker, Doris Greene Dowdy and Joy Greene Holt. The Robert Greene family lived at Gruver. Stories of other descendants and relatives of L. H. and Lula Yeager Greene will follow later.