The Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum

I have always been a firm believer that you should go out and see everything this country has to offer. Everyone goes to the main museums, parks, and sporting events, but I love the little out of the way places that you never hear about. My husband and I love to go out on a Saturday or Sunday for a convertible ride and visit one these hidden gems. We have done this forever. Over the years the car has changed, and so has the state, but our sense of adventure has not. This weekend we scored again with the Audie Murphy American Cotton Museum in Greenville, TX in Hunt County.  We had a great drive and a fun visit to the museum.

The Audie Murphy American Cotton Museum in Greenville, Texas.

This pasture was beside the parking lot, I guess this would be the 1800s convertibles.

First you may be asking,  "Who is Audie Murphy?". Audie Murphy grew up near Kingston, TX to a very poor family of sharecroppers. He left school in the 5th grade and worked odd jobs, like cotton picking to help out his Mom, who was abandoned by his father. His mother died when he was a teen and he wanted to join the army. He was a small kid, and by the time he was 18 years old he was still only 5'5" and weighed a whopping 110 lbs. He was turned away by the Army for many years because he looked so young.  In 1942 he was able to enlist at the downtown Greenville Post Office, but not before he had to have a document signed by his sister that stated he was old enough to serve, along with a notarized copy of his birth certificate.

Audie Murphy and his medals. The Medal of Honor was in a different case.

Audie was sent overseas to fight in WWII. He returned after
the war as the "most decorated" solider of WWII. Audie earned every medal possible, including the Medal of Honor, and he also received awards from France and Belgium. He did all of this before he turned 21. When he returned home from the war he had a lot of mental healing to do. Audie suffered from PTSD, or back then what they called Shell Shock, or Battle Fatigue. He was put on the cover of Life Magazine and was then approached by James Cagney, a famous actor, to come work for him.  Audie went under contract with Cagney Production Company, and even though he didn't star in any movies for Cagney, this gave him time to heal and take some classes on acting. He went on to other production companies to star in many movies, including one based on this book "To Hell and Back". Audie stared in movies, mostly westerns, was a screenwriter, a poet, a songwriter, and he bred and raced horses.  He went on to marry twice,  and have two boys with his second wife. He died in 1971 at at the age of 46 in a small aircraft crash in VA while on a business trip. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His is reported to be the second most visited grave site, after JFK, at Arlington.

This was the instrument panel from the plane that crashed, killing Audie , 4 other passengers, and the pilot. Creepy!

The museum also had sections on the history of Hunt County, the importance of Cotton in the region, and a section called the Hall of Heroes. The history of Hunt County was interesting, it had exhibits I found gross, but most were rather interesting. The wreath of hair being the grossest display I have seen in a long time.  The fact that people in the 1800s would use human hair to braid and weave into a wreath is completely out of my comfort zone. I saw the wreath at first and thought it was pretty until I read what it was made of. Yikes!

From a distance this is really kind of pretty.

Then you look up close and read the sign and it is grossly fascinating. The only parts not made of hair are the center of the flowers. Really creepy!!!

Some of my favorite Hunt County displays were of the stores and items from the early 1900s including a Hair Salon's permanent wave machine. I also liked the barbed wire display. Who would have ever guessed that there could be so many types of barbed wire. The question that comes to my mind is, "Why?".

This was a permanent wave machine. The curlers were heated to 120 degrees and the fan in the back was to keep the customer cool. The charge was $1.00 per curl and took all day starting with a wash and ending with a wave. Not cheap for the late 1920s.

This was just one of the displays of barbed wire. Oh, how to choose?

Different phases of cotton.

The Cotton section in the museum was pretty cool. They had miniatures of electric cotton gins and one of a horse operated cotton gin. The gin would pull the cotton up a vacuum, it would go into the gin where the seeds were separated from the lint, then the lint was put into bales and taken to market. The seeds and the small fibers still attached to the seeds (linter) were also used for many item. The kernels would be made into refined oil (like cooking oil) fertilizer, livestock feed, fish bait, and crude oil (for explosives, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and more). The hulls were used for livestock feed, mulch, poultry litter, synthetic rubber and petroleum refining. The linter was used for many thing like, dynamite, fingernail polish, smokeless gunpowder, hair care products, food casings, ice cream, salad dressing, felts, yarns, plastics, films, fiber pulp and the list goes on. I truly had no idea that all parts of the cotton plant was used to make so many items. It really is the fabric of our lives, lol.

This was a picture behind one of the cotton gin miniatures that showed the bales and bales of cotton that was produced at the Greenville cotton gin. The largest number of bales ginned in Hunt County was 90,833 in 1931.

This oil was made from cotton kernels.

The Hall of Heroes in the museum had a movie and display about Audie Murphy, and also had sections on the Civil War, WWI, WWII, The Korean War, and the Vietnam War. It was not a large display for each war, but they still had some unique items, and the displays were full of information you don't hear about. One thing I learned, for example, is that in WWI the men that were killed in the trenches were buried where they fell. So, when soldiers went to dig new trenches, or dugouts, there were decomposing bodies right under the surface. This along with the soldiers disposal of trash and food attracted hundreds of rats. So the trenches were swarming with rats. The rats would run over the soldiers while they slept and the last few years of the war the rats spread Weil's disease, an infective jaundice that could be treated with penicillin, and in some cases could be fatal. Is it not enough that these poor men had the enemy shooting at them, bombing them, and gassing them, they also had to put up with being in the trenches with rats and lice?

There is a memorial in the front of the museum grounds that have plaques listing the names of the men from Hunt County that served our country in each war up to the Vietnam war. The statue is of Audie Murphy depicting him in one of the battles that earned him a metal.

I hope you enjoyed the recap of the the Museum. If nothing else I hope y'all go out and see the little out of the way historic homes or museums in your own state. It is an amazing country we live in, and you could spend every weekend just learning about the people and places that made it that way.