Our father was a farmer from his youth.  Our mother attended Denton Normal School in the early 1900’s and taught school in Hill County before she married.  They were active in affairs in the Starkweather Community and school, and attended the Baptist Church.  In about the middle 1920’s, when the Home Demonstration work was getting under way in Coleman County, Miss Gertrude Brent organized the women in the Starkweather community and Mother was an active member.  We children attended the Starkweather school through the 8th grade, going to Voss through the 10th grade.  Thelma finished high school (11th grade) in Coleman and Bill was in the first group to finish the 11th grade in Gouldbusk school, the year before Mozelle school started.  Our parents both died in Coleman County, he on May 15, 1963, after a sudden illness, and she lived until June 26, 1969, both buried in Coleman.

In the spring of 1927, Carrie finished the 10th grade at Voss High School.  In 1928, she went to Abilene and attended Draughon’s Business College.  Her first job was helping with the 1930 U.S. Census as a Clerk in Abilene.  This was the beginning of the “depression” and “dust bowl days” of the 1930’s.  In May 1942, Carrie went to Washington, D.C. as a clerk-typist and stenographer, working for the War Production for a time and most of her four years there was with the Office of Price Administration.  After returning home in 1946, she worked in the County Tax Office in McLennan County, and in September 1951, started to work in the County Clerk’s Office in Coleman as a Deputy.  She remained there through 1975 when she retired.  In 1979, she started doing some part-time work for the Coleman Abstract Company and Standard Abstract Company, now the Coleman Title Company.  She is a member of the First Baptist Church and keeps busy visiting old-time friends.

Thelma finished high school in 1929.  She did not go to college until 1934, when she entered Howard Payne College in Brownwood.  She went two full years, then started teaching, finishing her college work in the summers.  Her first school was at Red Bank one teacher school, in 1936.  The next year this school went into the Mozelle school district and she came to teach in the primary room at the Starkweather school, one mile from her home.  That summer of 1938 she graduated from Howard Payne College with a B.S. Degree in Elementary Education.  In the fall she went to teach 5th and 6th grades in the Priddy school in Mills County.  She remained there until the spring of 1942.  Her high school principal and English teacher, J. T. Runkle, had become Superintendent of Coleman School and her Voss school teacher, J. Lee Farmer, was principal.  She was elected to teach third grade and taught there four years.  In May 1946, Thelma married Otis Throgmorton, whose parents’ farms joined.  She and Otis had been neighbors and school mates (see Richard Throgmorton).