Edith Pfeiffer

Edith Pfeiffer was born in 1916, she is the oldest resident still living in the Round Top area (she passed away in March 2016). She not only remembers the house near the centre of town where her grandparents lived but could tell me who else had lived in that house, right up to the present day. She recalls that her grandparents were first generation Round Top residents, her great grand parents being among the first German immigrants to the area. Her age got me thinking about the large number of elderly ladies in Round Top. What is the secret of their longevity? After all Edith, with her slender frame and delicate features, does not look as though she would thrive on working a farm under the brutal Texas sun. In fact, she originally became a teacher at the little schoolhouse, a profession for which she looks far more suited. Unfortunately, at the same time as she started teaching, pneumatic tires were taking the place of the old steel tires on farm vehicles and eventually the government banned the old tires from the roads. Without the financial means to comply with the requirement and without any other means of getting to work, Edith’s teaching career was forcibly ended.
So Edith had no option but to return to her farm. She and her daughter picked cotton, raised hogs and chickens, and cared for the horses. She still lives in the same house on the same land as when she first married. Today, her daughter and son-in-law live in their own house on the farm. The cotton, hogs and chickens have all gone, but they still have horses and raise cattle, though the years of drought has left them with a smaller herd than previously. So they have sold off a few of their 145 acres, and she mourns the fact that the drought has killed off some of her trees, too, forever changing the landscape.
Adapted from Marilyn Albert's essay Townsfolk - the Round Top project and book