My grandmother, Lilly Lucretia Stephens Donaway, had an aunt who died crossing Sandy Creek at high water in 1926. Her name was Missouri Margaret Nusbaum and my grandmother inherited her 80 acres and a trunk that was stored underneath the kitchen sink at my grandparents' farm west of Cisco. I was told “Stay out of Aunt Sis' trunk.”
When my Uncle Milton Donaway married the widow of his older brother, Vernon Donaway, he took the trunk to Putnam. My Uncle asked me, “What happened to the metal box that was in the trunk?” I told him, “Your brother in Odessa took it.” I did not tell him that I had taken the 3 stockshares out of the box before it went to Odessa. Aunt Sis chased her husband off for buying the stock shares in 1919. One stockshare was the Stephens-Ranger Oil Company and another was the Hog Oil Company, both dated 1919. Everyone died and I have the stockshares on display at the Lela Latch Lloyd Museum in Cisco.
My cousin, James Reese, checked with the Corporation Commission in Austin a few years ago and found out that these companies had merged with other companies that went out of business and are not worth anything. Actually there were three Hog Oil Companies tied in with the Desdemona boom. One was the Hog Creek Oil Company.
