By Mary Ehel Dickerson Yates, RBHY Board Member and Descendant
Odessa Kilpatrick Punchard was born in Somerville, Texas and later moved to Houston's Fourth Ward, where she lived for some time. She moved from 4th Ward to a home in 5th Ward, where she lived across the street from another Fourth Ward friend, Olee Yates McCullough, Grand Founder of the Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum, Inc. Mrs. Punchard's husband John Punchard retired from Southern Pacific Railroad Co. after many years of service and died in 1981.
Mrs. Punchard began commuting from 4th Ward to Katy in 1929 to teach, where she was the only teacher in a one room school heated by a wood burning stove with no running water or plumbing. She was a dedicated teacher, principal and community worker until her retirement in 1971 after 41 years. As an educator, she emphasized excellence, and many of her students won scholastic honors at Prairie View College. In recognition of her teaching skill and dedication, the Katy Independent School District named an elementary school after Mrs. Punchard. It renewed the honor in 2003, when a school, also named Odessa Kilpatrick Elementary School, was opened.
Mrs. Punchard was an active member of St. James United Methodist Church (located in Freedmen's Town) for all of the years that she lived in Houston. She had no children, but her relatives (including this author) and many friends remember the generosity and kindness that she expressed until her death in1997.
By Debra Sloan, RBHY historical researcher/advisory board member
An early and important citizen of Freedmen's Town was the Reverend Jeremiah Smith, a black minister who lived and worked in the district. He is listed in the City Directory of 1890-91 as a resident and owner of a restaurant on Andrews Street. According to news reports and oral tradition relates the Reverend Jeremiah was an evangelist who used to preach under a tent that he erected on an empty lot at the corner of Gillette and Genesee streets. It is also said that his congregation laid the original bricks along Andrews Street, when the city refused to pave it in the early part of the century. He played an instrumental role in 1910 in the founding of Union Hospital, which once stood on the N.E. corner of Andrews and Genesee- the first hospital in Houston and, perhaps in the state (Post 1984:6), that was owned and operated by blacks.