On the Line: Will a Dallas-to-Houston Bullet Train Revolutionize Texas? - Dallas Observer
The Houston and Texas Central Railroad had come to Ellis County two decades earlier and transformed the area from lightly used pastureland to a powerhouse of cotton production, a place where an enterprising young man with a knack for farming might... He made enough off his first year's harvest to buy the property and enough in subsequent years to acquire neighboring parcels. By the time he died in 1939 he'd accumulated some 2,000 acres, which were divided equally among his three children, and then further divided among Sullivan's descendants as the years passed, some of whom farmed and some of whom went on to other work. Grandson John retired from farming in 1985. His son Jim, in his mid-30s at the time, had spent the past decade working in town, supervising tellers at Ennis State Bank, but he'd begun to chafe at the bland monotony of office work. "He had the equipment and all, so I made him a deal and moved in and started farming," Jim Sullivan recalls. Though Sam Sullivan's original 2,000 acres has been carved up among his various descendants, it has remained basically intact, enough so that the family still refers to it collectively as "the Sullivan land. " Jim grows a smattering of crops — corn, wheat, sunflowers, milo, some soy beans — on about 1,000 acres, some of which are in his father's name, some of which he rents from his non-farming relatives. Source: www.dallasobserver.com
