PATRICK'S PEOPLE: Barbara Foulk Morris puts history in her painting

Founded in 1854, Cato occupies a unique place in Crawford County history. Among other distinctions, it had the first coal mining operation, the first school and the first county fair in Crawford County.

So much of that history can be seen now only in old photographs or in lovingly created works of art such as the oil painting that Barbara Foulk Morris  made of the old rock bridge at Cato.

Now on view in the Arcadia City Hall, the painting was donated to the Cato Historical Preservation Association by artist Barbara Foulk Morris to raise money for ongoing restoration and preservation work in  the Cato area.

“I was born and raised in Arcadia and love the place,” Morris said in a telephone interview from Marietta, Okla., where she now resides. “I was a rural letter carrier for 25 years and delivered mail on the Cato route up until 2004. There’s not much left there now.”

The main things remaining are the Cato School and nearby Cato Church. The old rock bridge was demolished by order of the Crawford County Commission years ago.

“That was a shame because it was a beautiful old bridge,” Morris said. “A girl living in the area started a petition to keep it from being torn down, there were several petitions,  but they didn’t do any good.”

Susie Stelle of the Cato Historical Preservation Association said that the bridge was located one mile east and half a mile south of the Cato School, over Drywood Creek, near a place called “Rocky Ford.”

“The bottom of the creek there was rocky and you could walk on it,” Stelle said. “When I was in high school, people used to take cars there to wash them. In a deeper part of the area, the bend west of the ford, was a place where people were baptized.”

Morris said she believed that the bridge was built sometime in the 1800s. It’s her personal theory it was built so that the Cato community could get to the Drywood Railway Station, which was just half a mile east of the bridge, during times of high way. On the other hand, she noted that the bridge might have been built before the railroad came through the area.

Morris said that she based her painting of the bridge on an old photograph provided by Jerry and Lilly Coonrod, Arcadia.

“The painting is looking north to the bridge,” she said. “Most pictures have been looking south to the bridge, which makes this painting an unusual setting.”

In  the photo and in the painting, an unidentified man with a horse and buggy and dog are on the bridge.

“It’s an interesting piece of time in the painting,” Morris said.

She hopes that smaller prints of the painting may be available in time for sale at the Arcadia fall celebration, while the Cato Association board can decide how to sell the original painting.

Morris said that she had painted for school projects, but began painting more seriously when she was about 20.

“When I was first married, we lived in the country with several children but no TV and no telephone,” she  said. “My mother got me some tubes of oil paint and brushes, and said, ‘Maybe this will give you something to do’. At first I painted on those old paper window shades you rolled down and on wallpaper. I got some books, but I mostly learned by trial and error over the years.”

Morris learned so well that a demand developed for her work.  

“I did maybe 20 pictures of old Fort Scott buildings back  in the 1970s for the Cheney Funeral Home,” she said. “I don’t know if they still have the pictures or not. I’ve done a lot of drawings for Arcadia benefits. I did old Arcadia buildings that the Young Moms put on coffee cups and sold. I did it all free gratis because nobody wants to pay for paintings.”

She also does a lot of paintings for family when she can.

“I’m on a cause to paint portraits of all my granddaughters,” Morris said. “A man now is asking me to do portraits of his kids, but if I can do anything, I’ll paint my grandchildren.”

Health problems have prevented Morris from doing a lot of the things she’d planned to do after her retirement. She now undergoes dialysis three times a week. Nevertheless, she hopes to do other historic projects.

“I kind of promised Arcadia I’d do one for the Arcadia City Hall on how Arcadia began,” Morris said. “I’ll do it if I can.”

Meanwhile, she hopes that those viewing the old bridge painting, and its eventual purchaser, will enjoy it as much as she enjoyed creating it.

As a bonus, the bridge painting already has its own unique frame, created by Sam Knight, Marietta, Okla., a part-time driver who for a transportation service that takes Morris to and from her dialysis sessions in Ardmore, Okla.

“He is a master craftsman in woodworking, and Mr. Knight volunteered to do this because he liked the painting that well,” she said. “The material for the frame came from an old barn built more than 90 years ago on a farm a few miles south of Marietta. The frame made the painting beautiful and finished it perfectly. This painting is something of our past that can only be seen again in paintings such as this.”