Wellman's Schoolhouse Once Held Ballot Box 16

When Terry County put a $70,000 courthouse-and-jail bond before voters in March 1925, Wellman's polling place was the schoolhouse. The county election order called it box 16 and named J. R. Garrison as the election manager.

That notice catches the school doing more than teaching. In a spread-out farm county, it was also the room where neighbors settled county business. The proposed courthouse and jail would stand in Brownfield, but Wellman voters could give their answer from their own community.

The Wellman name later turned up in a different kind of state record. The Railroad Commission's 1969 oil-and-gas report listed several Terry County fields carrying the Wellman name. The two records leave a compact local portrait: schoolhouse ballots in the 1920s, oil-field tables decades later, and a small town important enough to lend its name to both.