THE BATTALION.
11
ed between crop seasons. His mother died in 1861, and
his father enlisted in the service of the Confederate States
and served in Lee’s army as captain of Company E, Twen
ty-second Georgia regiment until the close of the civil
war. During the war Mr. Foster and his brother and
sister, constituting the family, lived with their grand
mother who was a woman of marked intellectuality, and
strong Christian character. The vicissitudes of war
swept away his father’s property in common with many
others who were near the line of Sherman’s march. to the
sea, and at the close of the war the country promised little
for the future to the young and ambitious. Therefore
Mr. Foster came to Texas, arriving- at Horn Hill, Lime
stone county, Dec. 12, 1869. He was penniless and in
debted to an uncle for the money that paid his expenses
to Texas. Nothing daunted by the trials to which for
tune subjected him, he sought honest employment and
during the next four years cultivated the soil, picked cot
ton and worked at the brickmason’s trade as opportunity
offered to obtain the means with which to educate and fit
himself for the duties and responsibility of professional
life, it being his object at that time to enter the legal
profession. Later he seriously contemplated entering the
ministry, but providence directed his work along other
lines as we shall hereafter see. By industry and frugality
he earned money to pay his expenses at Waco University
where he stood well with his teachers and classmates and
acquired a fair English education.
In 1873 he removed to Groesbeck and at the earnest
solicitation of the citizens of the place established the