Mamie was born on February 20, 1883 at Hempstead, Texas. She was raised in the Pine Island, until she was 14 and her parents took over the store in 1897 and they lived in the house attached to the store. She and Harry Lee Milam were married on August 13, 1905 in Hempstead by O.M. Smith. They had four children, Frankie Lee, Mamie Lucille, Chalista Jane and Harry. They were living in Reagan, Texas (Falls County) when Frankie was born, but had moved back to Pine Island before the other children were born. She worked as a postal clerk at the Prairie View Post Office, after attending business school in McKinney Texas, following high school. This served her well in later years when she scored higher then all of the other applicants including her brother, James, on the Civil Service Examination for the Post Master of Prairie View. Harry died four years later in 1918 and she was able to raise the four children on her own. When the Post Office was later merged with the Hempstead Post Office, she went to work as a clerk in the Waller County Court House at Hempstead. In later years after she moved to Houston she worked for the "Harris County Medical and Dental Bureau" until her eyes got so bad that she could no longer work.
Mamie and her family attended the Pine Island Baptist Church until after Harry Lee died. A few years after Harry died Mamie and the children attended an "Evangelistic Tent Revival" meeting in Waller. After the meeting was over, the preacher ask Mamie if she knew of a place at Pine Island that he set up for a revival meeting. Being a good Christian, church going woman, she offered to let him set up in her pasture across Cochran road in front of her home. After the revival was over Harry Lee's uncle, the deacon Silas Austin Garrett, informed the widow Milam that she and her children were no longer welcome at the Pine Island Baptist Church. So, there after, they attended church in Hempstead. So much, for Christian charity and brotherly love in the 1920's.216 |