Obituary

Aged Hale Co. Resident Died Early This Morning
W.P. Long, 79, died at one o?clock this morning at this moe two miles southesast of Plainview. Mr. Long was an old settler in this part of the country.
Funeral services will be held at five o?clock this afternoon at Garner Gros. Undertaking parlors. Interment will follow in the Plainview cemetery. (Plainview Evening Herald, June 25, 1926)

Biography
The W.P. Long Family by Erald Long Gross
One day in late fall of 1890, W.P. Long and wife, Annie Elida, were loading all their family?s possessions to leave the Palestine area. When friends asked where they were going, Mr. Long answered, ?to hunt health.? They had buried three infants in that area. So, working a team of oxen and leading a saddle horse, they started out for West Texas. There was Mr. Long, his wife, an infant son, Richard Burnie, and a daughter, Lida Launa, who was six years old.
They camped under the Caprock, and met a Mr. Albison and Mr. Buntin. After visiting with these men, they decided to come to Hale County. Mr. Buntin had a sod house on his place, and he let them winter there.
The next year Mr. Long (my grandpa) filed on what the family refers to as the Alvin Matsler section. This place had a dugout that was just a hole in the ground. Henry Long was born here on April 27, 1892. The story is that they proved up on this place, paid the taxes and then let it go back to the states. (I carefully checked records, and found on record of this.)
They then moved to what they referred to as the Swint Section (Section #30, Block D7, which was about one mile East of Happy Union according to County maps.) This place had a much better dugout, it was about two feet about ground and had a shingle roof.
At both of these locations, Granpa had a post office known as Progress. I do not know how long this post office was in existence.
When Henry was a small baby they made a trip back to Palestine and Oakwood to get their horses. A Dr. Harp at Abernathy had told Grandma that she could never make the trip. He had diagnosed her as having a bad heart and said that if she tackled the trip, she would be buried by the side of the road. She made the trip fine!
May Long was born in 1894,l then Sam (my father) was born in 1896. Sometime after this they moved to town to send the children to school. Here Clyde Raymon was born on March 28, 1898. He was never well and he died August 25, 1898. During this time they lived in a small house belonging to Dr. Wayland.
Daddy always told this story about his old rocking chair (which my son still has). In the summer of 1898 a freight wagon loaded with furniture pulled up in front of Bain?s Furniture. There were two big rocking chairs tield on top of the load. Grandpa and another man crawled up and untied the Rockers and got them off the wagon and bought them before they were ever taken inside the store.
Grandpa then bought a house at the Northeast corner of Beech and Fourth Street. Aunt May told be several years ago that here most vivid memory of living here was Aunt Launa having her first bad asthma attack and grandma sending her across the street to get Dr. Dye. She was so scared that all she could say was ?Sister.? Dr. Dye grabbed his bag and ran home with her. This was the beginning of a lifetime problem for Aunt Launa, and the reason she never visited Plainview in later years. Aunt Launa, Burnie, Henry and Aunt May attended school at East Side and I am sure Launa attended the Llano Estacado Institute.
This place was sold in 1903, and they all moved back to the farm. Grandpa had improved the dugout to a two room and shed house.
In 1978 Frank Buchana told me: ?We came out here to visit seventy-five years ago, and the Long girls, Launa and May, came and took my sisters to church with them in a buggy. Burnie was on horseback, and he rode circles around the buggy aggravating the girls.?
On October 24, 1904, Launa married J.A. Gregg, who was kid to the Maatslers and they went back to San Saba. That was where Uncle Jake was from.
In October 1905 Grandpa and Henry left and went to New Mexico. Grandma, May, Burnie and Sam (my daddy) stayed on the farm until the fall of 1912. Then they sold the farm to Lee M. Springer and moved into Plainview.
Daddy drove the College Wagon and went to Seth Ward College in 1913 and 1914.
After Christmas of 1913, Dadd, Grandma and Burnie moved to Seth Ward. (Hale County History, vol. XIII, No. 2 - May, 1983)