Philip de la Mere, of Nunney Castle, in the County of Somerset.
Sir Knight of Nunney Castle John Paulett
Sir John Paulet, Knight, of Paulet and Gotehurst, in the Coumnty of Somerset. This family is believed to have descended from Hercules Sieur de Tournan, a knight from Picardy, who was granted the lands and manor of Pawlett in Somerset in 1134, and whose descendants were said to have taken the name of that manor (Poole, p. 106). The earliest accurate record of the Paulet/Powlett family dates from 1356.
All the genealogy on the Paulets in England was researched for Adelia Stewart Sallee by Ken Smallbone, B.A. (Hons), AGRA, Genealogist & Historical Researcher, 47 Ochil Close, Basingate, Hants RG22 BBY, England: 10 Sept 1987. Sources: Burke's Peerage K.B. Poole: Historical Heraldi Families (David & Charles, 1975) Visitations of Hampshire (Harl. Soc.) Oldham Parish Registers Monumental Inscriptions in Eling Church Will of Chideock Paulet, PCC 12 Pyckering Will of Thomas Paulet, PCC 4 Drake Will of Francis Paulet, PCC 77 Kidd
Cooper, farmer.
American Revolution: He served as a conductor of express, 1779-1781, for transportation of supplies from Lebanon CT to the Continental Army.
Immediatley after his marriage, he settled in the northern part of Lebanon, which in 1804 was set off to form what is now the town of Columbia, residing for many years upon what was known as "Metcalf Hill." From the town records, it appears he made no less than seventeen purchases of real estate while at Lebanon. He was elected to town offices as follows: 1782, collector of taxes; 1785, surveyor of highways; 1795, grand juror; 1797, constable and collector of state taxes; 1798, constable; and in 1801 constable and collector of state taxes.
Lived in several communities in New York and held various offices: Justice of the Peace, Captain of a Cavalry Company, and a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity .
ANNIE BELL GORDON BOTTOM’S STORY
SEPTEMBER 1, 1882
MAY1980
I was born in Jack County in North Texas Sept 1, 1882 the year Longfellow died. The 6th child of a family of 11 children, 5 older - 5 younger, I was the middle few of 2 bro. Older, 2 younger - 3 sisters older - 3 younger! So I was distinct in this respect. My recollections of 1st 2 years are meager as to details, but I remember this occurrence dimly. One winter day, when the ice was very thick on the stock pond where Papa had chopped out a small square hole where the herd of sheep could drink - our Mom let me go (or I suppose she let us, any way we were there) with my 3 older sisters, skating on the pond. A sister on either side held my little arms and skated me along, which I liked very much. Later they got to playing around and forgot to watch me so I tried some skating on my own and into that hole I slid! Self preservation is the 1st law of nature they say which I suppose accounts for my throwing out my little arms wide and caught onto the sides of that chopped hole - which act probably saved my life. I held on till the sisters Laura (8 or 9), Fannie (about 6), and Ivy (past 4) quickly rescued me. I’m sure there was great commotion when they went to the house leading or possibly carrying “little Annie” and Mama, hearing the disturbance, came running from her sewing - scattering thimble and thread and maybe little garments, (for I like to believe that she was sewing clothes for another babe (Eppie) expected soon! Anyway I was stripped of my wet clothes and put into a warm bed, I thought I would die, and they told that I asked if “recon I’d live till my Papa could get home?” from town where he had gone in a wagon. Well I lived or would not have become your mother and at age 83 beginning this story of my life!
Another early dim memory is of going to church services somewhere in a little country school house with my mother and an aunt - Aunt Willie. I do not remember who else but am sure all the two families were all there. What I do remember is seeing the solemn ritual or ceremony of a “foot-washing” my 1st and my last! It made a deep impression on me. My next memory of importance was in 1887 when our family was moving from Texas to the Chickasaw Indian Ty.
The next baby, as I before mentioned, had arrived in due time and was named “Eppie” (Eppie in the tole hole) and I have wondered if Mom had read Silas Marner’s story and named her for that little waif - “Eppie”. Anyway there were now seven children in our family - Eppie was past 2 years old and my 2 brothers Andrew and Lewis were older.
Since your dear Grandparents have long since gone to their reward and all my older brothers and sisters - one by one have gone - I will have to rely wholly on my own memory of their pioneer move and leave out all those preparations necessary to start a trip by covered wagon. Of course your Grandpa Gordon had sold the sheep. He had quite a nice little herd of cattle and a red Durham bull. (“Nice” women and girls would not use the word “bull” in those days but would say “the surley” under breath.) The incidents of this trip that I remember but dimly since I was only 4 (past) - was that when we came to a deep river with no bridge - they drove the wagon onto a ferry and I think there was a young colt on that ferry beside its mother. They swam the cattle over and then we camped for the night. Next a.m. my brother Lewis, who was about 11 years old, was keeping watch over our cattle, there were other loose cattle and soon the 2 herd bulls got into a fight. Lewis was behind a big clump of bushes watching them when a big bear reared up on the other side. Of course this scared a little boy nearly to death and he started running to camp but was so out of breath when he reached the wagons, that all he could whisper was “b-e-a-r”. And Mama said he was white as a sheet. They got a few men and dogs together and chased the bear but he got away I think.
The next I recall was the day we reached our destination the place where we were to live. Wild Horse Creek in the Chickasaw Nation, near the small town of Velma, in what is now Stephens county Oklahoma. A man by name of Jim Doak owned this fertile creek bottom farm, rail-fenced. It had what was called a “double” log house (which had 2 large rooms joined by a sort of hall-way the full width and size of rooms roofed in with open south front and a big sliding door on north side like the old time sliding barn doors, and like the breezeway of today. When open in summer tho closed in winter. There was in the back yard a “summer-kitchen” also of logs (this with a hard dirt floor) also there was a dugout. The house has a good white limestone chimney and fire place with mantle. There was a good well of water with the old wooden iron bound “moss covered” buckets with a pulley and rope to draw the water.
This was in the month of May, late I think, very warm and there was already a fine cotton crop up but lost in weeds and crab grass so Papa bought the crop from Mr. Doak, for whose little deceased daughter the town “Velma” was named.
Well we moved in and since 1st things should come first the most needful thing was to clean out that choked cotton field, so everyone who, as they said “could carry a how”, went to the field - even my 33 year old mother! - and this was the only time I ever saw her working in the field. Well on the very night after it was cleaned and “chopped”, there came a devastating hail and leveled it! Of course this was a terrible blow, but it was soon replanted and, as I remember, made a fair crop that fall.
I remember that was my first cotton picking (not compulsory) in a 50 lb. Flour sack with strap sewn on and brother Andrew (and nearly 15) would look out over the field and say “Annie you see that real white patch there? You go and fill your sack with just the biggest prettiest balls”, and I did.
I was five that Sept. I remember there were large green worms on the stalks that could sting, they called them “tobacco worms”, so he would peel a leaf off the plug and moisten it and stick it onto the stung place that was thought to be a good remedy. I think these were the same worms that we see today on our tomato vines. Neighbors were few and far between we had two doctors Long and Davis at Velma. Velma was our P.O. “Velma??? Also had a gin and a corn mill where we had our own corn ground into good corn meal. Your Grandpa planted a patch of cane for sorghum, a big garden was planted, but people that far back didn’t can everything as they now do. Mostly peaches in tin cans sealed with sealing wax, but Papa made the best cabbage kraut by the bushel and they would put up cucumbers in brine for winter use pickling as needed. We also raised plenty of sweet potatoes and turnips which were “banked” for winter before freezing weather. There were also collards a vegetable similar to cabbage in taste that lived thru winter. Mama liked that for greens. There were pecans, walnuts and a lake-like, swampy, place where chinquapins grew.
There wasn’t any organized school system. By winter an uncle from Paris Tex. had come out with 5 children, 3 of school age, so Papa hired a private teacher who taught us (9 children) in one of the two rooms - my first school and we learned a lot. There was a little log school house west of us called Rocky Hill School that kept school part time - think it was a subscription school - the road went by Mr. Midkif’s house who only had older boys and they owned the well-known “old Don” (a dog). He was a huge Newfoundland - black with a white ring around the neck and he would carry in the split stove wood - one stick at a time- always wanting a bite of something after each trip. I’ve seen him go down the road a ways and meet the school boys and would carry their tin dinner pail by the bail in his mouth. There’s quite a story about one time “old Don-he” which has passed down through several generations of our family…
There were no regular church services anywhere but when there was any “preaching” we went to hear it regardless of denomination. At Christmas time we hung our stockings on nails in edge of the fire-place mantle - each child got a toy or doll or some small gift and plenty of goodies. My sister Ivy, two years older than I, took me outside after Christmas - showing me the scratches and chipped places on the chimney rocks and in her wisdom of 7 years told me “you see those scratches on those rocks? That’s where Santa’s claws scratched it climbing up with his pack.” It was at this place that Andrew and Lewis need an extra ox to pull timber for wood out of the wood. They were breaking in a young steer and he would “sull” and lie down in the yoke - so Andrew (15 now) devised what he thought a good way to make him get up - he put a handful of dead grass on his side and set it afire, it worked! We had so little money to spend for sweets as children of today, but winter nights we could make taffy which is made by boiling down good sorghum or a mixture of sorghum and sugar sometimes, with a little vinegar and or cream of tartar til it forms a soft ball when dropped into cold water - then poured into portions onto butter plates til it can be handled- then pulled with your two hands til it is ‘white’ or real light and twist it into a ‘rope’ and quickly coil onto the plate to cool then break into desired lengths - it is delicious! They used to have regular “candy-pulling” parties and the partners pull together - it is fun! Then we always had a wire corn popper with a lid and a long handle to reach it out over a bed of hot coals to bake in the fire place.
In Jan. of 1888 when Eppie my younger sister was 3 - another babe was welcomed into our home, another girl, who was named “Jessie” the 8th child and 6th girl - who was about 15 months old when old Oklahoma was opened to settlement - I was 5 now and remember distinctly when my father drove in a big covered wagon to Oklahoma City and took part in that “run” - he only staked some city lots in Oklahoma City - then sold them, or rather traded them, to a “Jewelry man” for $25.00 worth of gold jewelry! Good stuff but not enough pieces to go round. I had my little ears already ‘pierced’ for “ear-rings” so I was the youngest to rate a pair of these! When Papa returned home with these my sister Ivy and I were sick - lying on the trundle bed- having malaria “chills” - and taking (quinine?) pills and the old “Cheathams” chill tonic - too sick to be very proud of such.
Papa decided to leave that Wild Horse place - there was a plan where you could get a 5 year lease on Indian land in its virgin state pretty reasonable I think, by clearing it of its timber and improving it - so- with gathering that years crop and clearing and building a 2 story log house - with back part ‘frame’ - he had to work very hard. He sued the nicest straight big logs of oak to build a house after hewing them nicely and they had an old-fashioned “house-raising” when they were squared and notched etc. and everything was ready. This was probably 8 miles south of where we had farmed for 2 years.
It was a big day when that house was raised. Mama baked a “stack” of pies, cookies and a lot of good things to feed the men and boys who helped. He (Papa) then built a wonderful fire place in the north end, put a full length side-room on west of lumber. Good pine floors and made his stairway and front porch on the east and dug a well. The day we moved there was a happy day for us children. We had never lived in a house with “upstairs” so we thought that was great. There was still much to do - fencing using the rails they had made when clearing the land - it was mostly oak post-oak and black jack timber and the soil was very sandy. He put a rail fence around the yard, placed the trees and white-washed them up a ways. He chopped out a huge watering trough of a big cottonwood tree, built a smoke house also of logs and a chicken house, and sheds for the horses with cribs for corn, and put out a peach orchard and fenced it, made an ash hopper, and made a pond for stock water. Papa was only 40 years old then and in his prime so he was a fast hard worker. Several times in the spring at night I think our whole family turned out to burn the brush from clearing away the timber - even we children could help by piling it in piles to burn, and it seemed fun to see all that fireworks! When corn was planted he had to make numerous “scare crows” for there were many crows.
Another baby was on the way and this time it was a boy. Everyone was proud of a little brother and he was given the name of George Walter - the George for our father George Washington, and was called Walter, so as not to confuse the two Georges. Their initials were the same, G.W. He was born on May 21, 1890; we had corn up knee high at that time.
Velma was still our post office but our school was south - looking back it seemed 3 miles to me, through timber all the way. It was a log school house with a high rock, very rugged hill right back of it sloping down to a creek south, in front was a small open prairie, where the boys played baseball. We had the same man who had been our private teacher on Wild Horse Creek and he boarded with us. His name was Chas D.? and he called my parents Uncle George and Aunt Molly. I can’t see how we made room for him, but as people used to say “always room for one more’, and he was the oldest of 13 children and used to being crowded. He slept with my older brothers and shared our frugal fare. All walked to school someone carrying a big tin bucket for dinner.
There was a set of rules given the first day of school so that all know what was or was not expected of him! Also what the penalty if rules were disobeyed, broken. The seats were crude home-made benches, likewise the teacher’s desk. There was a big blackboard the length of the room and a big cast iron box stove in the center for winte4r heating - a low shelf in one corner held a wooden water bucket with tin dipper where all drank out of the same dipper. Girls and boys used separate play-grounds.
We girls in winter would go to the “water hole” and if it was frozen over, would skate a bit, but it was to small to do much at that. There was another thing they could always do - swing on a grape vine swing that hung across the dry bed of the creek. This gave such a thrill to me and in later live when I heard the “Grapevine Swing” given as a reading my heart thrilled with poignant memory of childhood!
Swinging in a grapevine swing, listening to the wild birds sing.
Oh to be a boy with a heart full of joy
and swing in a grapevine swing
In summer a very fascinating pastime was making dresses, aprons, or caps, etc. using oak leaves and pinning them together with dead straws of last years dead grass broken into about one inch or less pieces suitable for pinning. All the girls took part in this project and were sometimes loath to leave off, when that brass school bell rang out.
Another amusement was “preaching” and my sister Fannie, was one of the best; all would join in the singing. Her oratory would sometimes bring some to shed real tears and she would pretend to baptize the converts. She was only about 12 or 13 at that time. When these goings on got to our mother she thought of it as bordering on sacrilege and it was discontinued.
Long winter evenings, while the log fire was heaped high we would sit around it in a semi-circle popping corn while Papa told tales of the Civil war days when he was growing up in Missouri. Also Occasionally Mama would tell of her old “nigger mammy”, whom they left crying on the Mississippi River Banks, when our widowed grandmother with her family migrated to Texas after that war was ended. Old mammy wanted to stay with them even tho now free, but she had lost her husband by drowning in the Pearl River near Jackson Miss. And it gave her such a fear of crossing a big stream that she would not make the crossing tho it broke her heart to say good-bye. Papa’s most touching story concerned his young brother CHARLES JUST OLDER THAN HIMSELF< WHO HAD BEEN HANGED WHEN BETWEEN !$ AND !% YEARS OF AGE< YES HE WAS HANGED THE #RD TIME BY Federal soldiers (when he refused to tell) trying to force him to tell where their horses were hidden out in the timber. They knew that this family still had a few head of good horses, for this was not their 1st raid thru these parts. They had previously taken several head (at the time when they took) and now needed more. The family’s supply of cured pork that Grandpa had hidden down in the grainery deep under the grain the raiders knowing it should be somewhere around the place - so they had used their spears to stab down into this grain and find the hams shoulders sides and jowls. So they took my uncle out into the timber away from sight and after he would not tell, where these horses were hidden-they put the rope around his neck and drew him up-once, twice, and three times and still he wouldn’t tell-so they then told him they meant business (and I suppose already had him pretty well scared- that if he didn’t tell that next time they would break his neck-so he agreed to take them to the horses and papa said that when they came back by the house Charley was riding up behind one of them crying from both pain and anger and sorrow at losing. Not too long after this he remembered this boy volunteered to fight in the Rebel army too young, but he was accepted. As were many others because they were sorely needed!
At the close of the Civil was in 1865, Grandpa Gordon migrated to East Texas to make a new start since he was ruined financially and Texas sounded like an opportunity. How I wish that I had all the details or even a few of that fateful move! Anyway within a few years my father George Washington met and married my mother Mollie Mary Mobley when she was only 17 and he was 22. I’ve heard Papa say that their first year of marriage that mama cooked on an open fire place and today there is (still in existence) one of the cast iron utensils she used. It is a deep bowled little pot like and with a long handle also of cast iron. A niece of mine (living near Castle Rock, Wash.) has this treasure, filled with flowers-setting upon her baby grand piano today. She is Mrs. Lola Campbell-daughter of Fannie or Folley whom was before mentioned as being that fake preacher at the very primitive school, back in what is now Stephens County OK. I almost envy Lola, that little skillet! I must go back to the old place Papa carved out of the Wilderness on the head of “Pipe Creek”, South east of the present City of Duncan, some 18 miles. So called Pipe Creek, because of the numerous families who settled in that frontier place who smoked pipes. Both men and women, and the old women wore bandannas around their heads. Mostly immigrants from Ark. I think children that your Grandfather named that Creek and I have wondered if it is still called by that name. Some of you find out. Please! One such family, good honest and hard working was our closest neighbor.
I want to speak of our thicket there, it was a wonderful place to us children- a little retreat of mostly dogwood bushes. So sweetly fragrant in the spring when in bloom. While at the south and lower side was the swimming hole and it was just that! Almost a mud hole for when a bunch of us with sometimes cousins would get into that hole of water in old dresses and drawl around trying to swim it was soon churned into the muddiest water you can imagine. But it was all we had to “swim” in and we did enjoy that so much afterward we had to draw water out of the well and have a bath in the big old tub out in the smoke house.Just above that waterhole was the largest cottonwood tree I’ve ever seen! It was lying on its side dead. Had probably fallen several years before we went there and was long enough that the bark had all slipped from its huge trunk and left it bleached white and smooth, like drift wood tossed on the oceans breast. This smooth surface provided the finest place for our barefeet to run and play to our hearts content. Then we could wander through the thicket and beyond to find a few wild dewberries to eat or pick wild roses that grew on vines along the ground. Also occasionally we would find a wild plum tree- yes a tree- not a bush as the wild plums you know. Ivy and I had a way of pulling a few that were turning and bury them in the warm sand in a secret place that way they would ripen faster, and we felt we couldn’t wait; then we would steal away real often --- too often-to see if they were ripe! Well to the thicket we went to play the afternoon of Aug. 19, 1892, our next baby was born and when Papa called us we found Mama lying in bed with a tiny little baby girl by her side and again we were all so proud of her. We were told that her name was Bertie Inez and we thought she was pretty. Now she was the tenth child and my parents were of course expecting her and waiting for her arrival, so that we could make a move to our new home. (NOTE: Grandma Bertie always told us that she was born in a dugout but that doesn’t match with aunt Annie’s story! jb) Yes, all our own, not rented or leased as we had done in the past. In fact Papa and Andrew had just returned (a second trip) from our free claim, some 100 miles away(to the NW of us). Where it was staked in the historic run of April 18, 1892-the Cheyenne country. They had gone in the big wagon leading a coal black young mare “Pet” that Papa had raised from one of his work mares. It was on Pet that he made the run from what is now the Kiowa Washita Co. line north 3 miles. Right there he staked our homestead for he saw a lovely running creek with an abundance of good timber on it and he was delighted. The had taken along a hand turning plow so they immediately plowed a fire guard all around the 160 acres and cut down enough cottonwood trees to build a dugout. Dragged them up into the hill where he planned to build. They then came home to tell the news, of the new home and the people they had met who would live near us etc. A Negro man had staked the claim joining Papa’s on the south. It looked good to Grayson Clark Bottom, a Kentuckian from Anadarko. So he offered the colored man $25.00 to relinquish his right to him and the offer was accepted readily and he went on to stake another claim. Grayson Clark Bottom was 2 years younger than my father who was now 43 years old. They both wore beards as was the custom of most men those days.
Well Papa and Andrew helped in the crops at home awhile, that late April, May, and June and Papa found a buyer for his Indian lease, that hadn’t expired yet and other business. The corn crop was laid by etc. and they returned to the Cheyenne claim-hauling lumber from Chickasha to build a three roomed house. Storing it at Mr. Bottom’s place one half mile south of our claim. deep. He felt this would be a safe place to stack the lumber. They then returned to Pipe Creek bringing along a two seated white canvas topped hack. Borrowed from the new friend G. C. BOTTOM. It was the type of vehicle that the Government at that time issued to the Indians. Mr. Bottom had procured it from one of them in some deal. It would be nice for the family to make the long trek in. Much easier for Mama and the new babe than a wagon and too would leave that room for our household goods.
Well on the day that little Bertie was one month old, we departed from the place where we had dwelt for a few years. The two wagons had been loaded partly the day before then the necessary furniture was loaded in very early in the morning on Sept. 19, 1892. I aimed to say that Papa and the boys had rigged up 3 yoke of strong oxen to pull those two heavily loaded wagons. One trailed (or hitched onto the other) behind the other. The wagons were carrying beside the needed pieces of furniture--2 large barrels of freshly home made kraut and one barrel of sorghum, some cured meat etc. Two coops of hens fastened on somewhere! The big old steel bound curved top trunk all our books and enough corn to last through the trip and then some. How could those six oxen “Tip, Tyler, Lep, Dick, Rack, and Bright pull so much weight? But oxen are tough and stout animals. So with brother Lewis (17 years old past) in the drivers seat or at times walking beside when in critical places, cracking the bull whip and hollering Gee and Haw the wagons began to creak and then those oxen bowed their necks in their yokes and began to heave left and right things began to slowly move.
When we passed our close neighbors house we in the back stopped to say Goodbye for good to “Uncle Tom” and “Aunt Sally” and their children. It caused a lump in the throat. These were the most primitive people that we had ever known but they had hearts of gold. They raised tobacco and corn, cotton etc. They twisted their tobacco and hung it overhead along with strips of pumpkin to dry in the same room, where they lived and slept. Uncle Tom was such a hard worker that his hands were very callused. He used to show us children how he could take a live coal of fire from the hearth with tongs and then deftly roll them between his two hands til it went out or was “dead”.
Papa had sold off the surplus hogs that ran loose in the woods, keeping only enough to butcher for meat that winter. Penning those and made arrangements with Mr. Lowe who had bought the place to feed them corn we had raised til he was to return for them. When they were fat enough and the weather was cold enough. While we had lived there Papa had a horn that he had scraped and polished on ‘til it was dressed down to suit him. Which he used to call the hogs in each night from feeding on the mast. He would feed them a small amount of corn so they would want to come at loud long toot of that horn they knew what it meant and come running from all directions. He also sold the geese. Likewise the cattle he rounded them up and sold off all but then of the best milk cows, with calves beside most of them and his prized red Durham surley and “Filmore” the pacing gaited mare.
Sister Laura riding Lucy on a side saddle and our faithful dog “Old Coaley” trotting along beside. We made quite an impressive sight-an immigrant train-moving slowly up that rutted road to apparently no where! It was quite an adventure for us children and we were happy for our family was our whole world and we were all there together! When we passed by Duncan it was getting late and they had to find a camping place in time to have supper over before dark. Duncan at that time had very few buildings-one big rough frame store building, a blacksmith shop. I believe the Post Office was in that store. Well we camped out a few miles Northwest on the prairie, not a stick of wood in sight to build a campfire on which to cook supper. They knew what to do though and got busy gathering up cow chips and we soon had a fire. The teams were tired and hungry and hot. So was I imagine also my dear mother and sister chousing our little herd. The teams were content to graze and after being fed grain the boys put hobbles on the horses and probably on some the oxen.
One young (neighbor) man, Oscar Midcalf, whose family owned “Old Don” dog, had overtaken us to spend that night in camp with us so they visited till dark, and dishes washed and then put away and our beds made down and all went to bed. Everything was in a big stir at the first peep of day next morning. Someone had milked and strained up some milk the night before, for milk was a regular part of our diet. I don’t remember just how that was all handled for I had no responsibilities in those dear old carefree days. Fannie and Ivy took turns with Laura driving the little heard so that none need get too tired. Different ones gladly took turns in camp holding and ‘making’ over the baby sister while Mama made and baked biscuits each meal in a big Dutch oven over a hot camp fire and there was little brother Walter past two and sister Jessie getting close to 5 now who, I’m sure, needed quite a bit of care. Mama always had each girl as far back as I can remember wearing little white nightcaps to sleep in to take care of our “nice hair”. Laura and Ivy had curls while the other five of us wore it in braids. Everyone admired our “pretty hair” and mama would at intervals, long as she lived, carefully look it over for “split ends” and would clip off each split hair so it would keep growing.
Well this camp and travel procedure was kept up for five days and not a house did we see but began to encounter quite a few Indians, Comanches, and Mama was a little afraid of them but were friendly and in a way they were a help to us in locating a watering place to camp. They would lead us to the place then stay and eat with us. At one camp site, sister Eppie and I found some pieces of broken dishes that we thought were beautiful for they were flowered and our dishes were all so plain and we had neither one ever owned a child’s tea-set, so we picked up the pieces and washed them in the creek near by and put them in the horses feed-box which was fastened onto the back of end of the trailed wagon. We had to watch out tho and remove them, till papa had fed the horses at each stop then pack them back in, in this way we kept them to the end of our journey. Near that campsite, some Indians lived and had a little patch fenced and had raised some squaw corn, a spotted vari-colored little ear. This was the nearest to civilization of anything we had encountered on our trip so far. I think the next day tho we reached the wonderful Fort Sill and Papa stopped the team so we could watch those wonderful soldiers on drill in uniform and with shining muskets and the bugle call etc., it was an impressive sight to all. However all the pleasure of it was spoiled, when it was about over, Papa tapped the horses, who had sort of gone to sleep, I guess, and they started with a jerk that threw my little sister Jessie out the back onto that hard “mecadamized” street and burst an ugly place on her little forehead. Papa and Mama took her at once to find a Dr. One of the officers in charge had seen the accident and came to offer assistance, taking them to the Army hospital where it was bathed and a medicated dressing was put on. The Dr. would accept nothing for his services so after thanking him very kindly they came back to the hack, to resume our journey. It healed quickly and I don’t think it even left a scar.
One day at noon we had found, with help of an Indian rider, a nice camp site on a creek and Mama was cooking the usual light biscuits with hot coals covering the lid of the Dutch oven when up rode a huge Indian on a little paint pony who alighted to eat dinner. His name, we learned, was Chief Stumbling Bear. He really marveled at our big family and altho he could speak very little English he would try to find out if mama was the mother of all 10 of us. He would ask, pointing to each one separately “you bama?(mama), “You bama?”, “You bama?” “All you bama?” She was only 38 and the mother of 10 children. Anyway Stumbling Bear could hog a lot of biscuits “good conkey” (coffee), beet pickles (of which mama had fixed up a 5 gal churn full for the trip), fried meat and plenty of sorghum with butter stirred into it and what have you.
The last night we camped out was on Rainy Mountain Creek where we saw a historical sight. As our caravan drove up the Kiowas were out in full force, it seemed, on colorful paint ponies, shooting a fat beef from their herd with their bows and arrows. And blood was spurting out. Women and children, the first we had seen, were all round that camp, a whole heard of the little paint horses were grazing near - a sight to see for we children had never in our lives seen a paint pony before.
Since this Bottom family had in the meantime built their house and had a good well dug 65 feetFording the stream, we made camp on the opposite bank. Soon supper was cooked and over, the fire put out, and everything put up. Bed for the last night out made down under the wagons and the hack and under a canopy stretched from wagon to hack. I think everyone slept pretty well as on other nights, as all were tired from jogging along over rough roads; however this night I had a frightful dream - I could just feel an Indian standing above me ready to grab me and carry me off, but I was afraid to open my eyes or even breath for a time or call out to Papa who was sleeping rite near me, finally when I could hold my breath no longer I opened my eyes and there was nothing unusual near and I realized it was only a dream. This was on a Sunday morning and soon everyone was stirring - getting oxen yoked, horses harnessed and ready to start on the last lapse of our long trek.
We struck out from here near noon without a road over the bumpy “bunch” grass much of the way. We crossed what is now the Kiowa Washita county line south of Oak Creek - some nine miles south of Washita County’s first county seat of old Cloud Chief named for a Cheyenne chief.
We passed the Tutin homesteads on Oak Creek, 2 big dugouts and a small “box” house about 12 X 12 on the corners of their 3 quarter sections. Fording that sandy creek we drove slowly on reaching what was the G.C. Bottom homestead, a new unpainted story and a half house with porch and a new dug well, a grass covered cow shed with good new corral.
Papa had as I’ve said gotten acquainted with this fine family and told them all about his family, the new baby and all about what date he would arrive back there with his family. So they were expecting us and saw the caravan coming afar off.
Mrs. Bottom, Aunt “Vici” Mayes a widowed half sister of Mr. Bottom who made her home with them, Addie 16, several little boys in knee breeches and little plump 3 year old Anna May, stood by the road side with hot coffee for my father and mother, a gesture of their inbred hospitality. A few words of friendly greeting and we moved on one half mile to the corner stone which marked the S.W. corner of the quarter section of land that was to be home from then on.
I was deeply disappointed not to find a house there for I had imagined, when papa would speak of our new home, a real nice two-story and painted white house with a long porch - something even nicer than the two story log house we had just left! But there was nothing on that bald prairie except a pile of cottonwood logs which Papa and Andrew had sawed down on the creek, first planning to make a dugout of them.
We continued sleeping out for another week when Papa and Lewis had the roof on our 3 room box-house and we unloaded the rest of our wagons and moved under a roof once more. We ate dinner the next Sun., Oct 1, in our modest home, with no doors yet hung or the windows yet in, and the stairway not completed. Papa had to haul limestone rock from some distance away (from Kiowa) to build the fire-place of. He worked very hard to get everything snug before cold weather set in, a mantle as always was set in above the fire place on which set the clock etc. The hearth was almost one solid bit of flat smooth rock which extended way out into the room to eliminate any danger of sparks popping out onto the white pine floor. The big andirons were soon in place and wood had to be hauled up from the well wooded creek bottom. Each night kindling and chips were carried in; corn cobs also were all utilized as well in the kitchen stove. Nothing but the bare necessities was hauled, beds and bedsteads, trundle bed, one rocking chair, and other chairs and table with a long bench used behind the long homemade dining room table and old time toll dish cupboard with perforated tin doors, the flour barrel. Yes, and the living room boasted a homemade book case with a few books mainly the big family Bible with its picture album and family record. Dr. Chase’s big heavy thick “doctor book” we called it, which contained a little bit of everything. A lovely Bible story book called “Beautiful Story”, with many beautiful full page pictures which fascinated all of us children. Also another book or two of which I do not remember the titles and numerous school books. Later that winter papa bought Mama a new dresser with a mirror and 2 small drawers on top on either end; needless to say the whole family was proud of this piece. Few pictures adorned our walls. Mama had “oil” paintings of George and Martha Washington, the “Holy Family” and “springtime”, also an enlarged picture of our father wearing a beard when yet a young man.
A porch went the length of the front house and on one end Papa built a water shelf on which set a cedar water bucket with brass bonds, a dipper and a wash basin and near by a home-made towel roller which held a long heavy linen crash roller towel about 2 ¼ yards long, ends sewed together, so that when each person dried his face and hands he pulled it to a dry place and of course the wind dried it quickly outdoors. In extremely cold weather all this had to be kept in the kitchen.. These towels washed so easy and lasted well.
Our living room the first winter was papered with a thick soft gray felt paper which came in big yard wide rolls. It looked nice and kept out a lot of cold. With a big crackling log fire things were pretty cozy. Everyone in those days dressed much more warmly than in the present time with our better homes.
Your Grandmother Gordon knitted nearly all the stockings for the family; the older girls wore the store bought ones. I remember some real pretty stockings that she knitted for sister Eppie and me about this time of clouded yarn or as the now say ‘variegated’, anyway, they were pretty we thought, like bright clouds of shaded blues, reds, and greens etc., very distinctive no one else had them, and very warm. We wore these on our 1 ½ mile walk to school. Even my two older brothers did some knitting in spare time - such as the colorful clouded thread into tightly fitting wrist bands and ‘newbies’ a scarf like piece for the neck. They made their own needles of bone. Mama used the steel variety and she taught my 3 older sisters to knit some in case they needed to know.
We had a kitten and if Mama dropped her ball of thread the kitty loved to run after and play with it. One day little sister Bertie was sitting on the floor in a little pallet - someone put new fuel on the fire, from a arm load of the thick cotton wood bark - chipped from the logs still lying out waiting to be built into a corn crib - when a huge centipede rushed out of the bark and two or three rushed to pick up our baby and Mama killed it with the fire shovel.
Another time when the baby, Bertie, was older Mama had ridden “Lacy” on a side-saddle and went to see a sick neighbor several miles away, leaving all the girls in charge. Little Bertie was cutting teeth and we let her play with a long handled “button hook” (used to button up high top button shoes). This hook got hung in her throat some how, our new neighbor girl Addie Bottom was spending the afternoon so all were frantically trying to remove the button hook which was choking her and she turned so pale. Little old Annie thought of the camphor bottle which was setting on the mantle and I grabbed it and it helped to revive the baby after hook was dislodged and Addie praised “Annie” as being the “thoughtful one”, which made me feel pretty mature.
Well your Grandpa Gordon had located a man to dig us a well, a little Irishman by name of Mike Neff who dug it quite a way, but for some reason that I do not recall he quit before completing the job. While he was still with us grandpa asked him one night “Mike, how come you never married?” And he replied,” Well, Mr. Gordon the ones I wanted I couldn’t git and the ones I could git the Devil wouldn’t have!” Anyway another nice young German bordering on bachelorhood was secured to finish digging the 81 foot deep and papa promptly put a platform and well box with pulley and new rope fastened to the new “old oaken buckets” which in a few years became “moss covered”. It was a very strong vein of water and incidentally a fork from a green elm tree was used before the well was ever started to “witch” for water. You see this “witch” would spring or bend whenever, one slowly walked around with it. It bent, and would point downward whenever you got to the exact spot over where a good vein of water stood.
Your Grandfather was a person who loved fruit so he always put out an orchard one of the first things he did on a new place. A true pioneer always moving on out on the Frontier? So at our county seat of Cloud Chief, 6 miles straight north of us, he learned or a man north who had planted a little nursery. In the spring of 1893 these seedlings were ready for planting. He harnessed up the faithful team and hitched them to a big wagon and sent my oldest sister, Laura (soon to have her 17th birthday), and I went along for company, an early start but it took the greater part of the short day to make the trip of about 16 mi. round trip. Your Grandma Bottom sent by us for trees to plant their orchard also. Your Grandpa B. had gotten a job at the Rainy Mountain Government Indian School, so was at home only on weekends. Well our trees were set and we had to wrap them with stalks tied well to keep jack rabbits from eating off the tender bark, and too we had to draw water from the deep well to keep them well watered especially in a dry year. So on watering days there was a regular brigade of water carriers even the smaller children could carry a little bucket and wanted to help. Later in 1894 we purchased more fruit trees from an agent selling Stark Bros. Nursery trees and since there were 7 sisters of us the salesman gave a gift of a “seven sister rose bush”. Mama had had the brothers, Brother Lewis and Frank Siebert bring back shrubs from the place near Velma, when they went back down there the first winter. We butchered our meat hogs. Mr. Seibert was a very efficient worker and he and brother Lewis cut up and salted the meat and rendered the lard before bringing it home.
We put out a few shade trees including several cedars, only one cedar ever lived, (we did not know the, of the compass method of planting evergreens). We planted flower seeds next spring and soon had a pretty yard, with our roses including a yellow one that Mama brought originally from Texas. I have wondered if it might have come from her native state of Miss., we called this rose the “mama” rose. The lilacs grew fast, the old fashioned fragrant kind and Rose of Sharon or Altheas. Then there were most o f the common annuals, including “sweet Basil”, four o’clocks, balsam, morning glories and Jack-beam vines round the porch and the delicate cypress vine running on tepee poles. Mama also had her own sage row for seasoning sausage etc and the proverbial winter onions and shallots.
A cellar was dug under the side room. A smoke house built nearby where the 2 barrels of kraut were put and the ham shoulders, sides of bacon and hog jowls along with sausage stuffed into small white muslin sacks were hung for smoking. A place was hollowed out in the dirt floor where a small fire of green chips and corn cobs were kept smoldering. For handing the meat Papa used baca grass, our beautiful yucca plant blades, run thru a hole which he punched with his jacket knife, these were stout and grew plentifully on the hill sides. He fenced our yard with barbed wire but the gate boasted an arch and just beside the gate he placed two big blocks on end sawed from a tree to form steps. This was called a stile, used by women to mount their saddle horses. Only side saddles were used by girls and women in those days. Where there was no “stile” to use, the lady put her foot in her stooping escorts hand and was boosted upon the horse.Annie’s story #4
Our yards were kept free of grass and were swept weekly with brush brooms. These brooms were made of green brush usually the wild dogwood bushes, enough to hole in the hands comfortably were tied together with stout strings. These saved the ordinary straw brooms for no thrifty family such as ours (or otherwise) would dare to use our store bought house brooms outside! Many other pretty economies were practiced, such as using paper tapers, for lighting the coal-oil lamps from the fireplace, whose fire seldom died during the cold season. We children usually made these little tapers by using about 8 inch squares of any kind of paper. Beginning at one corner you roll it, not too tightly, then fold over and crimp one end so it would not unroll, a holder full of these usually hung beside every fireplace therein.
I must also tell of another economy practiced earlier. It was the old “ash hopper” of which there are few people of this present day who have ever heard. But your Grandfather knew well how to construct one. It was built of boards probably five foot long slanted in a Y shape so that the bottom ends came together forming a sort of trough some five foot long with closed ends to hold all the ashes from cook stove and fireplace, then a tight little trough maybe 4 to 6 inches wide was under the hopper to run off the lye into a big bucket, that was formed whenever rain fell on these ashes and more often buckets of water was poured over the ashes and that reddish brown lye was “leached” from the ashes. Then your grandmother used discarded fat such as meat rinds with this liquid and when boiled formed what is called “soft soap”. This of course was to save buying concentrated lye or hard soap.
This brings to mind how mothers utilized different things for dyes. My mother saved the big flour sacks which were then all white and she would sew them together for quilt linings. She would experiment with green walnut bark, sumac berries and poke berries all of which made a very satisfactory dye by boiling in water. I remember another small economy about the time the use of slate and slate pencils began to be discarded, buying tablets for a large family was quite an item, since we drew lots of maps and did a lot of diagramming in our Grammar work, so Papa bought a large roll of white wrapping paper at old Cloud Chief and each one made himself large tablets and small ones by sewing folded sheets of this paper together neatly and even the making was fascinating work.
Also Papa made all the everyday shoe laces by dressing his usually deer skins then cutting tiny little strips of this for sewing rips in shoes and boots, larger strips for laces for work shoes. He also had different sized awls and did all our shoe repair work including new half soles, some children’s shoes those days had brass tips on the toes, using varied sizes of lasts. He was a great advocator of using tallow to grease everyday shoes to keep soft so it wouldn’t break so easily and prolong wear. Bless his heart, and he greased his harness at intervals after washing it in hot soapy water in a tub. The saddles got the same treatment only with neat’s-foot oil. Also Papa kept a jar of tallow mixed with a small amount of turpentine for use on his hands which often callused and cracked in winter. He never used tobacco in any form, but my brothers did!
It may interest you to hear how we managed to bathe in cold weather. It was like this: On Saturday nights a half circle of chairs was drawn up around the fireplace and quilts spread on chair backs to avoid too much draft in the inner circle and we were scrubbed clean in the big tub near the hearth. Few tooth brushes were in use then, however we children would make little green stick brushes by chewing one end of a length of usually dog-wood limb and mix salt and soda, sometimes salt and soot which cleaned the teeth nicely, and all had good teeth except Mama who had to have some dental work. Papa had nearly all his teeth when he died at the age of 79 years.
I wish I could paint a picture for you of our evenings in winter or during rainy spells, the boys and Papa nearly always played checkers on a home made board, or Fox and Geese which required a special board, also “hull-gull”, handful, how many or what have you were played, your Grandmother Gordon was a good singer she had a sweet high soprano voice and we loved to hear her play her accordion. She would sing some of the Southern war songs such as
In the year of 61 those bloody battles first begun
The North and South once wore a yoke
but now the two forever broke
On this A.M. at the break of day orders came
to the battle fields where you must lie
where the young and brave must bleed and die
To leave your wives and sweethearts dear
to weep and mourn and sigh and tear.
Hurrah hurrah for the sunny South so dear
Hurrah for the homespun dress,
the southern ladies wear.
And Dive, Nellie Gray, Mollie Darling, Sand Bass, Charming Billy, Gentle Annie, Way Down upon the Swaney River, Jennie Jenkins, Home Sweet Home, and others accompanied by her little accordion. Papa was very proud of her accomplishments. I’ve heard him say too that she could “spell any word in the old Blue Back Speller.”
A cousin lived with us quite a lot who had a violin or “fiddle” and possessed real natural talent, tho had had no opportunity to take lessons. However he learned to play real well by ear and we enjoyed his music so much. Sometimes my sister Eppie and I (7 and 9) would take off our shoes and get back of the family circle and dance to the music in our stocking feet. Another young man by name of Emmet Davenport, who worked for Papa at times, played an auto-harp, a stringed instrument that made sweet music and hoe would sing ballads and fold songs, some of the best loved ones were, There’s a silver lining to every could, Goodbye to the Stepstone goodbye to my Home Ship that never returned, Gooseberry Pie. Brother Lewis played the harmonica or “French Harp” rite well, also the “Jew’s Harp” (which I called juice harp!) So we always had some kind of music at our house.
The young Frank Seibert, before mentioned, was a good singer and would on occasion sing for us of nights, one I remember best was “Fair Sharlette”. Your Aunt Addie, when a girl, used to sing real sweetly “The Gypsies Warning” and “A package of Old Letters”. The singing of old ballads was a favorite pastime and was often indulged in when young people or families assembled. Also on Sun p.m.’s the whole neighborhood would meet at the school house and have neighborhood singing from regular song books. These singings continued intermittently through the years til the more prosperous farmers were buying Ford Cars and many came from other neighborhoods. One man decided that gas was to expensive and he put a tongue on his Ford and hitched a good team of horses to it and traveled luxuriously!
While our house was being built, we were getting acquainted with the Bottom neighbors (One of them was to became the most important person in my whole future life.) Their five boys ranging in age from 14 to 3 would come up often and eat raw kraut from our barrel. My sister Ivy and I (12 & 10 year old) were the ones to haul the water that half mile in a barrel with a cloth and a tub over the top. Still it sloshed out quite a bit on the bumpy road. This sled and hauling of the stacked lumber in a wagon helped to make us a pretty smooth road in a short time.
Within some ten days some of us developed a cough and Mama figured that we had caught it in the Chicksaw Nation before starting on our move! Of course the Bottom children too got it from us and we had regular whooping cough “parties”. The weather was perfect and it didn’t hurt any of us to much but as I remember lasted quite sometime.
There was fencing to do and plowing as well as a barn, privy, smokehouse etc. to build. Time slipped by and Christmas was coming soon. The older girls especially Laura and Addie were full of secrets-making little gifts such as wall pockets for letters, hkf cases etc. of hoarded scraps and briar stitched or otherwise enhanced.
Your Grandmother Bottom-to-be invited our family to Christmas dinner and that was a memorable day to all of us. It was I’m sure a good dinner-with plenty of her famed tiny biscuits. But all I remember is her beautiful set of Haviland China which she had ordered from a mail order house. It had not yet all been unpacked. It was stored upstairs in a big “hogshead” barrel and I got to go upstairs with her and help carry some down to set the table with. The thing that stands out in my memory on that table was a bowl of ambrosia.
After the meal was over and the little kitchen cleared 8 to 10 of us children played some games. Such as “cross” questions and silly answer etc. in that small space. Pairing off like this according to ages: Burk and Fannie, Elwood and Ivy, Annie and Herman, Shannon and Eppie and maybe Jessie and Foster but I think that these two were around the fire with our family. Along with Anna May and Walter and probably baby Bertie 4 months old now asleep on that big fat feather bed in one corner of the dining room tho was also the family room where the heating was. (All of this took place in the house where 6 of you were born in later years, from Alta down.) I don’t remember now but I suppose Addie and Laura were off in the “parlor” or upstairs telling of “bad” friends. Where were Andrew and Lewis, that too has slipped my old memory! Anyway Brother Andrew and Addie became sweethearts for a time and many years later (after each had been married and raised their children) were wedded and were very happy. Fannie and Burk dated quite young.
On brother Lewis’ 18th birthday Dec. 29th of that same year Mama invited the Bottom family to our house to his birthday dinner. It was a gala day with much merriment around the fireplace including some singing and few books or papers to read. There was not yet a school house in the country so it seemed a long winter. Our nearest post office was 6 miles away at Cloud Chief. Most of the time we only got our mail once a week. One card game called “Authors” which we acquired saving signatures from Arbuckle Coffee packages. It was enjoyed by us children and was also educational. In the summer of 1893 our parents got up interest in building a school house. First the place was decided on - a bachelor man gave a corner of his ¼ section on which to build. The neighbors responded right well in the work plan. They sawed cottonwood trees down and hauled it to a little saw mill several miles southeast across the Washita River, called Oakdale. It comprised of one store, later on with a post office in it. There was not a bridge any where in the county so of course the river had to be forded. Finally there was enough lumber and all who would or could turned out to help on that first school house named “Hagy” for the man Captain Hagy who gave the ground. Since the country was so new there was yet so little money in the county treasury to pay a teacher so we could only have a 3 month term of school that first year. A Miss Ella Thomas got the job and she rode a little paint swinneyed pony, side saddle of course, about 5 or 6 miles each day to teach for a mere pittance.
Even our mother had solicited donations for our school and they managed to get pine lumber enough for the desks. Your Grandfather Gordon made also a crude teachers desk. A huge cast iron box style heater was purchased. Your Aunt Anna May remembers that the big letters it spelled out “CUPRESS’ all tho she wasn’t old enough to start to school for several years the same stove was still in use. Patrons hauled wood there and the older boys chopped it into proper lengths to burn. Water was carried ¼ mile from the old Ikard place later owned by Price Stubblefield and now the W.D. Ward Place.
Our next teacher was Mrs. Birge a widow with children, Willie, Mamie and the boy “W.W.” a four month term. Next Mrs. Martin was the teacher with 2 small children it was 5 months. Mr. Martin was a young farmer, he lived north of Star in a dugout and kept the little boy and she boarded with our family and mama kept her tiny little girl, Lil Elma. On July 2nd of 1895 another baby boy was born and named Elm Clark. The Clark was for our neighbor Grayson Clark Bottom. He was named for the celebrated Champ Clark of Kentucky an early teacher who later became speaker of the house. Mr. Bottom was later on to become my father-in-law and your Grandfather.
During the winter of 1894-95 after Mrs. Martins last term of four months school at Hagy ended (what today is called mid term) she moved away to teach another school near Marlow and your Aunt Laura and Fannie and another neighbor girl May Ikard moved with Martins to get a few more months schooling. So they had to live under very primitive conditions again. Also took our little seven year old sister Jessie along to baby sit with the teacher’s little girl “Lilelma.” An unheard of procedure but since Mr. Martin was a farmer he planned to be in and out of the house often to check on them. They managed some how to survive! The corn rows came right to the very door almost and each round he would look in on the little children. At the close of that term of school we and the Ikards took two wagons and moved them back home. Brother Lewis and I made the trip with sister and the Ikard girl. Needless to say part of it was a rock rough road and also sandy on the Marlow end. Virgil was born July 2nd after the sisters returned home.
To me, who seldom left our won neighborhood, this had been quite an adventure. The closing school program was something to long remember.
Each one had a part, even I was asked to recite. There were dialogues, tableaux with colored lights flashing, declamations, recitations, pantomimes and Negro Minstrel and lastly making awards. My sister Fannie received an engraved gold metal for making the greatest improvement in penmanship during that school I think she still had the medal now at 88 years of age. Of course while our sisters were away Ivy - 14, Eppie - 10, and I -12 had to assume more responsibilities at home and began to feel more important. Little Walter was near 5 and Bertie near 3.
Your Aunt Laura eventually became a teacher and was teaching country school N.E. of Cordell (Counter Point?) the fall of 1897 and staying with our Uncle Matt Mobleys family. Sister Fannie was working in the home of Rev. S. V. Fait Supt. of the Presbyterian Mission School “Moutame”, east of Anadarko. Sister Ivy was attending a school “Navajo” in old Greer County staying with a Dr. Granfield and frail young wife. He had been an early day Doctor at Cloud Chief before moving to Greer Co. I think he was the Dr. in attendance when Virgil was born.
Mrs. Jordan was teaching our Hagy school when our dear Mother became ill the fall of 1896. Lewis rode to the school house to bring the news and all of us were allowed to go home at once. Dr. Dee Reynolds of Cloud Chief treated her for some time with no improvement. Next Papa got a big German Dr. from Old Shelly up on the Washita and he would drive down in his one horse buggy wearing a big fur coat (wish I could remember his name). He prescripted poulticing the terribly caked breast (hard as stone) with linseed meal, which we cooked in the ancient “little skillet” on the open fire place. This was kept up constantly for a long period of time. Finally sharp piercing pain cut through like knifes almost unbearable. The Dr. advised that she get to Ft. Worth for surgery. So Papa rigged up a bed in the wagon and took her to Chickasha the nearest railroad at the time. Put her on a Pullman car and took her to Ft. Worth, Tex. The Dr. who examined her told your Grandpa that he could do nothing and to get back home for she could not live long. In a down pour of rain he got her back on a train. When they reached Chickasha an awful blizzard of drifting snow had struck. They stopped at the Fait Mission as could not travel farther. There they were lodged several days til the weather moderated and snow drifts melted enough for them again to travel. Then they came through the slushy snow.
My mother went to her reward at the early age of forty two years 9 months and 20 days. A more pathetic scene cannot be imagined that this weeping family of eleven children. Our dear young father left with several small children the youngest Virgil at only 18 months old, Bertie 4, Walter 6, Jessie 9, Eppie 12, Annie 14, Ivy 16, Fannie 18, Laura 20, Lewis 21, Andrew 23. Andrew was not a Christian and he blamed God for taking Mama from us. He voiced his sentiments in no uncertain terms, saying that it was a very unjust God to take a mother from her little children like that! That was the darkest night in our lives. Mrs. Bottom and Aunt Vici Mays an older sister of Mr. Bottom also Kenner Coker were with us to do what they could. It was another very cold time and tho Papa and the boys kept a roaring fire in the big fireplace, it was hard to keep warm. Next morning Mr. Bottom sent Elwood and his fleet footed little glass eyed white pony “Snow” through the sleet and snow on a more than 40 mile round trip ride to take the sad news to mother’s brother and family Uncle Matt Mobley. Also to try to get a preacher, of whom there were very few in the country. Years afterwards your Papa said that was the coldest ride he had made! My Uncle could not come as had to try to keep his family from suffering with the cold blizzard.
Papa had some nice walnut lumber sawed from trees during the preceding four years and it was stored in the barn loft. So he and Mr. Frank Stewart, a neighbor, got started at an early hour and made the coffin which was lined with black as was customary in those days. It was trimmed with black satin ribbon. Also, material for the shroud was purchased at Cloud Chief -- another cold trip!
Aunt Annie #5On the second day her dear body was placed in the new coffin and loaded into the big wagon and in zero weather we drove 5 miles to old Mountain City to the only cemetery in the new county. A fire was built to keep from freezing and a selection of songs was sung by all. Brother R.B. White and Miss Ellen Tuitin and probably Ella White and I think a passage of scripture was read and the one song I remember was “Farewell Mother” God knows best when to call thee home to rest. A very somber funeral with no flowers. But we knew she had passed to be with Jesus. With freezing tears we turned homeward leaving her there on the lone prairie. Her grave being probably the 4th or 5th grave in the new burying ground near the Washita -Kiowa Co. line.
Dear Mrs. Jordan the teacher and mother of two little boys had stayed home with the 4 youngest children and kept the fire going from a stack of wood stocked inside and she probably had something cooked. Time and grief have dimmed many details. All I recall is that the whole world seemed so bleak and even now after a lapse of almost 70 years the memory of that time strikes a pain through my heart.
Time nor Tide wait for No Man-so life had to go on someway. We had to pick up the broken threads of life’s weaving and try to smooth and weave them back as best we could. Andrew and Lewis were soon off to jobs. Laura went back to finish her school. Fannie back to Mrs. Faits and taking 12 year old Eppie to go to school at the Mission. So Sister Ivy and I took over with Papas help the management of our household. That was a “far cry” from our present day homes with made in conveniences.
Spring came with its sunshine and since your Aunt Laura and Kenner who had set the date for their wedding long before Mamas death. It was to be April 4th his 21st birthday so the plans went on. It was to be at home and every one was invited. Miss Ellen Tuitin again was called into service making the trousseau and the wedding dress. It was creamy cashmere with the then popular muttonleg sleeves and trimmed with much soft lace. Also new chambray dresses for Fannie and Ivy who were to be bridesmaids. Yes, “little old me” who was growing like a weed they said “getting so tall” had a new spring dress of calico. I don’t remember that the younger ones had any. Too many people came to get in our small house so the wedding ceremony was performed on the front porch with the guest in the front yard. A good time was had by all. We could ill afford it but a big dinner was served to all.
The next day as was the custom of those days the grooms family, the Cokers, gave an “Infare” dinner at their home some 5 miles east of us across the Washita River. It was near there Laura and Kenner set up housekeeping in his new 2 roomed little house on his own quarter section of land.
We were a forlorn little family after Laura married. Fannie went back to the Faits home with 12 year old Eppie going with her. Which had been a request of our mother to attend school at the Presbyterian Mission. Andrew to work there on the Mission farm and Lewis off to a ranch job on Red River. Laura & Kenner came home as often as they could. Especially on Sundays but it was now crop time and everyone busy.
When we children needed new clothes we would go to Laura’s and stay a week at a time for her to sew for us. Once when on our way there we were fording the river and it was deeper that we had judged and water came up through cracks in the wagon bed. It washed bundles to the back and got some of the new material pretty wet in spots and scared us nearly to death. All the while your Aunt Ivy,16, was pouring on the whip and we went up that steep sand bank. We went pretty fast and the water was running out. Miss Hannah Tutin was on the spring seat with Ivy and I was down on a pallet behind with Jessie, Walter, Bertie and Virgil. And none of the young ones cried for long and I went home leaving the children.
On another visit to Laura’s that summer there was to be a party at Stewart’s some 8 miles back on the east side of the river and south. The river got up bank full and logs floating down, so it was a problem as to how we could manage to get there. Onnie Coker put saddles for himself and 2 sisters into a boat and swam their horses over and your Papa was waiting on the west side on his horse and leading little Snow with a side saddle for me. The two other boys from our Hagy neighborhood also were waiting for Chloe and Grace Ashley. I remember they were Charley Ward and Henry Singley. Anyway we mounted the horses and away we rode to the Frank Stewart Place (Frank H _____ of Elk City is a grandson). Which at that time was a big long half dugout with a shingle roof and hard dirt floor. That however was no barrier to a frolic with such swinging games as little brass wagon, Skip to my Lou, Old Joe Clark, Miller Boy, Pretty little Cousin, Hog Drovers and many more. When we got back to the river it had run down and I think we rode across instead of taking the boat.
No difference how much or where we went our young hearts were ever sore and lonely from the loss of our mother. At intervals we had to give way to our feelings and about the whole family would weep and cry aloud mourning. We could scarcely eat our meal after it was ready and on the table.
Old Brother B.B. White taught a 10 day or 2 week singing school that spring at our little cottonwood school house at a very nominal fee. Sister Ivy and I got to attend this school walking the mile and a half each morning taking our lunch. I think the younger children stayed at Laura’s during this time. I just cannot remember.
A new neighbor moved into our midst about this time. Mr. B.F. Canterberry bought the Waitland Place joining ours on the west. Papa always a very hospitable and had them move in with us until they could get their little 2 room house built which didn’t take long. Even sister Ivy helped put the shingles on it. Their family consisted of the man and wife and 3 children by a former wife. The 4 younger ones all girls except the oldest Asa who was already married. Bell and Mary were older than Ivy and I probably 20 and 19. Lively girls so brought new life to the neighborhood with some new games etc. Often they would spend a night with us even after they moved out of our house into their new one near by. Your Grandpa Gordon worked hard and needed his rest so sometimes would call Ivy to “hush up and get quiet” after going to bed after a late party somewhere. Bell was quite an entertainer in her own way-telling of all her life in Texas, her beau, her school life etc. As usual most girls have a lot to talk about. All of this late laughing and talking disturbed our dear tired Daddy. Bell immediately began going with Burk Bottom. Mary with Tom Stansberry and sister Ivy with Sam Ward who had lost his young wife when her second babe was born (both babes were dead). I didn’t care especially about (and I was too young, too) anyone, but would go with Elwood occasionally in a group of several in a wagon. He was nice and good company. He would sometimes come up to our house that summer and we would have a water fight. He always won out even tho every one of my younger sisters and brothers were on my side helping draw the water out of that 81 ft. deep well and carrying it to help me throw it on him. It ended up tho by me and all the others being drenched. My dress clinging to me which was embarrassing.
When the cane crop was ripe Papa was too busy in the other crops to take care of it. So he had Ivy and me grind and cook off several batches of sorghum. Somehow we managed to care for the little ones and do this too! Virgil was two July 2nd, Bertie nearing 5, Walter 7, and Jessie 9, Eppie could keep the team going round and round to the “sweep” (turned the big steel roller) that ground and pressed out the sweet juice to boil down in the big vat built over a furnace.
Other times we would take our dirty clothes down to the creek to the cane mill well to do the family wash. As the well was very shallow and water was easier and faster to draw up with buckets. Also wood was plentiful down there. We would rub the clothes in warm sudsy water usually through 2 waters with homemade soap. Then place in the big black pot of clear water with plenty of soap shaved into it. Keep a brisk fire going under it and “punch” them frequently with what we called the “clothes stick” a smooth broom stick usually or a narrow paddle. When well boiled, they were lifted out into a tub of clear cool water rinsed well, wrung hard and put into another tub of clear water to which the proper amount of bluing was added, rinsed well and again wrung hard. When the rinse waters became too sudsy we had to change it. Now the clothes were ready to hand up to drying the sunshine on a line, at the times we washed at the cane mill we had no line down there so we had to hang them on the barbwire fence and on the green dogwood bushes. They smelled fresh and sweet when dry. They we would gather them and carry them up the steep hill to the house to be ironed later on with the old time flat irons heated on our 4 hole cast iron cook stove.
One day when we were at finishing up work at the cane mill Elwood and Will Tuitin rode up on some little Indian Ponies, Elwood was breaking several to ride for an Indian down on Rainey Mountain Creek. I have forgotten his name now, anyway he wanted me to ride it and see how gentle he had it, so he took my foot and helped me mount it, sideways of course, for no “nice” girls then would have ridden astride.
When our first peaches began to turn on the small young trees little 2 year old Virgil would pull and eat the half ripe peaches which made him sick so sister Ivy had to resort to a switch to make him leave them alone. I, the tender hearted one, had to cry over this and tried to protect him.
This year of 1897 was a very eventful one. When 12 year old Eppie came home from the Mission at close of school sister Fannie had a short vacation at home and they brought Blanche Thomas, one of the older girls from the Mission for a visit that same time. This young lady was later on to become my sister-n-law. I wish she were living today she might remember some of the details of that little visit.
The busy sad summer passed what with oat harvest, tending a garden and chickens etc., and stripping cane and making the juice from the tall stalks held into tasty sorghum to be used at home and to sell, milking some 10 cows, attending singing school, a singing convention up on Calvalry Creek SE of Cordell, an occasional sermon at Hagy school or Star, mostly by a transient preachers, a few I remember were old “ Bro. Brown, “Bro. Giliam”, Maley, Sampson etc. were a few early ones, these with a play party now and then and Sun. afternoon singings at the school house was about all the recreation we ad that summer.
Your Grandpa Gordon-to-be hauled his wheat to Chickasha to sell and he was hauling back a load of pine lumber to build a new school house since cottonwood lumber exposed to the weather doesn’t hold it shape, warps all out of shape, and our first school house had to be replace. Well as he passed the mission, he stopped by of course to see sister Fannie and incidentally made a deal with Mr. Fait, the Supt., whereby I was to attend school there for the next 3 years, full 9 month! Terms and Papa was to pay for all this with a horse, a team of young mules, a bushel or more of sorghum and some hogs and or pigs and I was to work every summer vacation, except 2 weeks also one week at Christmas time, for there were farming operations going all summer and men to cook for.
The news of this was rather shocking for it for shadowed a separation from my dear family, even more closely knit together since our dear mother’s death early in the year. However, it was a great opportunity for schooling and our parents’ decisions were never to be questioned so I became rather sadly resigned to the idea.
Dear sister Ivy, 16, with Mary and Bell Canterburry planned a farewell party for me, not the right season of the year for a candy pulling which requires cold weather, but we couldn’t afford a “candy breaking” so a “pulling” it was! To add to the unfavorable heat it rained a little that night and we had a “sticky” time as it wouldn’t pull very well! We played the usual games and sang the sad songs such as: “From this valley they say you going; We shall miss your bright face and sweet smile”, another: “Oh who will glove her lily white and who will kiss her ruby lips…While I am in that distant land”, and gave the parting “lock of hair”. Mary C. instigated this act, several days before she cut out a tiny wisp of my long brown hair and wetting it she braided a tiny tight little braid which would have been suitable for a watch chain.
Next a.m. early the wagon already loaded with wheat and a cover stretched over the bows, a bed roll on top, my little antique trunk with its meager supply of clothes carried out and loaded, the team of fat mares curried and brushed, hitched and ready to start our, old watch dog “Coaly” black as coal, seeming to sense the tension stood by waiting, til all the tearful good-byes were said, and we climbed up on to the springseat, gave the word to the horses and were off. Leaving those five precious young children alone with only darling Ivy. Words cannot describe the pathos of this scene. Ivy with her dark curly hair, holding little 2 year old brother Virgil, little Bertie 5 years old with her tabby braids, dear Walter 7, with his forlorn little face, fat little 9 year old Jessie and dear Eppie with her tear stained face, all looking so pathetic but having baby Virgil wave.
We had some food packed up in what was termed a “chuck-box” and feed for the team. Leaving familiar sights behind passing the Bottom homestead or 1st Thompson place. Then later the Penn place which was first homesteaded by a man by the name of Thompson (which you know only as Greenthal) and still later came the Gale Hortons, cross the creek past Hensons, “Lithe” and Townsends. Mrs. T was Lula Ward, a sister of your Uncle Sam’s. Past Ferrel’s who gave a corner to build Star school on, we forded the Washita at the Old Oakedale Crossing, taking the Ridge route keeping on north side of the river, we stopped for “noon” on Cobb creek at the Jess Sturms crossing. A well known camp site, and our camping place that night was some distance NE of Anadarko, near family by name of Kelly, a motherly Irish woman was she. We reached “Mautame” the Indian name for Mission school by late afternoon, I believe. We first visited sister Fannie in the Fait home and later walked over to the 3 story bldg, which at that time housed the dorm for both boys and girls and on 2nd and 3rd floors. The first floor was used for living room and play room in east half and dining room and kitchen in west half, with wide halls and nice porches. The back porch on North had two big cisterns with chain pumps. A wooden tower held a big bell, pulled by a length of rope. This bell was rung for meals and to wake up the children of a morning and a signal for other things. Well I was assigned a room on the 2nd floor at head of the long stairs, middle room on west side with double windows, with two beds, an improvised box wash stand with a curtain on its front onto which was a wash basin of white enameled ware, also a slop jar underneath of the same white enameled ware shelves in this for the bed linens and towels, a clothes closet was in each room, no chair or mirror tho a small 10X12 inch mirror hung in the hall. The building was heated in winter by hot air from a huge furnace in the basement. No heat was piped upstairs except to the matrons’ and teachers’ rooms, and into the halls. There was a front porch on both the first and second floors with banisters. A large store room for the kitchen supplies also the coal bin was in the basements, reached by inside and outside stairways. A large laundry room set out on the lawn half way between the big building and the superintendent’s home, with board walks leading to all buildings and outhouses, connected to this lawn was the “mens room” - a room for the men employed on the farm, a store room, for the proverbial “Missionary goods”, or used clothing donated by people in the East, also a big room which they used for cutting and preparing the meat at butchering time for curing, later the room was used temporarily for the big boys dorm as the school attendance increased till a new wing could be added to the 3 story building. Across from the laundry were the classrooms, built in an L shape for 2 classrooms.
A meat house set in a convenient place way out from kitchen. They butchered as many as 25 big hogs and it was smoked and cured in the old fashioned way with green chips of wood or clean corn cobs. The barn lot and barns and chicken house set east of Mr. Faits home. A small creek ran across the big grounds and there was a picturesque bridge across it with banisters. Altogether it was a lovely place to see with its well kept lawn and white painted buildings with green trim.
One wall of the living room was lined with books, these, the big upright piano, a few straight chairs and a tag carpet were all the furnishings. These books furnished me with hours of pleasure whenever I ad any time for such, which was mostly during my summers there. Or at time on Sat or Sun. P.M. Everything went like clockwork and since this was an industrial school we were placed on certain rotating details. The older girls took turns, a month at a time on kitchen duty, one older girl with a younger maybe working under the supervision of a kitchen matron.
I started as an “older girl” although I just turned 15 and had really very little responsibility since I had had 3 sisters older than I still at home. I got by very well but left sugar out of my first batch of cookies! Ha! Ha! My teachers were for the most part lovely women, sympathetic and understanding. The head matron was more severe in manner. My room mates that first year were, Erma Rose about my age from Chickasha, Mary Dickens a younger girl from Colony, and one other girl whose name I’ve forgotten during my busy life. Vernie Baker or Ellen H. - two double beds in each room.
It was rather an awkward and or cumbersome job for a young slender girl, to mix up a tub full of light bread dough twice a week which was part of my duties on the kitchen detail (mixed at night after study hour and let rise all night) and I had my first experience of getting up to the tune of an alarm clock - very early of mornings and going down to the big kitchen carrying my lantern to work down the tub of bread dough and to build a fire in the big range and then helping the kitchen matron fix breakfast for that gang and to ring the big bell for everyone to rise. (this all before daylight in the winter months, I had been raised to rise early, but always went downstairs to the warmth of a roaring fire in our big fireplace and to the smell of bacon or ham frying in the kitchen, so this was a rather bleak experience.) I was never one to feel sorry for myself but I did get so homesick that it nearly killed me.
God was my refuge and my strength tho as I had long since learned to lean on Him for comfort, so I prayed myself to sleep each night asking Him to care for my Papa and each member of our close knit family clear down to the baby Virgil, a special blessing for each dear one at home.
The long golden sunny afternoons in the class room, that first year I would hear the rooster crowing out in the chicken yard some distance away and that was a familiar sound, a home sound, the lonesomest sound in the world, and my heart nearly burst of homesickness and I would lay my head in my arms and choke back the tears and try not to let anyone know my grief.
When your Grandpa would come by on any subsequent trips to Chickasha, I would fall into his arms crying. Somehow the days wore on. Thanksgiving was observed and soon Christmas programs were being practiced and I did enjoy these to a certain extent, but was only just living for the time that I could again see my family again! Happily it was always arranged to have the school Christmas program and tree early so that the ones going home could get there for Christmas Eve. Papa drove down for the program and spent the night and was out early, fed and harnessed old “jumbo” and Dolly and if very cold he would heat a big rock in the basement furnace to put at our feet, for we rode in an open hack (no top) and even then at times he would get out and walk awhile with the lines in his hands as, he said, to keep up circulation. The road seemed long but I always felt so secure and content with Papa by my side and he was such an interesting talker. He would point out interesting landmarks. We always had our lunch along on the long drives. Of course he always had feed along for his faithful horses so we stopped on a creek at noon where water could be had for horses. Once when it was awfully cold we came upon a bunch of freighters who had stopped for the noon hour and had built up a huge log fire and were eating their dinner so we joined them. One of them was Johnson Dellinger who lived just south of Old Star school house. Mr. John Godfrey years later lived at that place as you children know.
On another such trip we got so cold in that hack that we stopped in at the little log cabin to warm way out in the timber east and north of Anadarko somewhere? There used to be a lot of timber out in that area, anyway the young couple and a little child maybe two were eating a late breakfast and welcomed us into the comfort of their lonely little home. We recognized him as one of the Banks boys either Newt or ??? whose folks lived between Star school and the Washita River! I understand that he is still living at this writing. After visiting a while we warmed by their red hot fire, we left and made out fine until dinner time came further up the old trail.
I aim to say that a family by the name of Boston lived out in this forest in this area. They had several girls, I am sorry I do not remember any of their names. Doubt if any are living now for they were older girls. One of them was a sweetheart of your uncle Andrew for a time. What I remember is that later on we stopped in summer when passing through to get a drink of cool water at their place. This time, it was my cousin Henry Gordon driving and sister Fannie, Miss Ellen Tutin and sister Jessie then a young girl about ten or eleven years old.
The 2nd year I was at this Mission your Aunt Jessie went there also. She was a lot of company to me and I to her. As I have before said that your Aunt Fannie was with the Faits so each of us found comfort in the other. Also my cousin Henry Gordon was working on the farm there and he was most like a brother to us.
Brother Andrew too had worked there for a time and he met Blanche Thomas one of the three sisters there and after a rather hampered courtship. After he left, her father came for her and they were married that winter of 1897. They went to live on a ranch northeast of Anadarko, where their first child Mary, was born early in the year of 1899. Also, your Uncle Lewis and Aunt Ivy had married in a double wedding at Old Hagy School house in Feb. of 1898 to Mattie Bunch and Sam Ward. Ivy just passed 17 year thus leaving your Grandpa in a lurch, with no one to take charge of his household and baby Virgil not 2 years 7 months old and Eppie the oldest only 14! He was looking for a wife (he was only 49) a year after our mothers death. He heard of an old maid, who was cooking for the “mess”( a term used to designate the teachers and all employees at the Rainey Mountain Government Indian School.) Some 12 miles south of us, who wanted to get married. Her mother was a widow living on a farm near Altus, Oklahoma with a grown son in the bachelor class and a teenage sister lived with her. He was told by Mr. Bottom (who was employed at this school) that she was a good cook etc. So Papa sought her out and first thing I knew Papa told me at Christmas about hr and he was going to marry her. He had gone to visit her at her mothers one weekend when she was home and had taken the three youngest children (Little Walter, Bertie and Virgil) with him on this visit to meet their future mother and to get acquainted with her family. He told of a funny little incident of this visit! They, as on most farms, milked some cows. The calves had never seen any children, so stampeded and ran away off in the pasture in fright, when they saw the children.
They were married in April of 1898 and he brought her home in a covered wagon. So she could bring her personal belongings which included an old fashioned organ and a canary bird “Pete” in his cage and various assortment of boxes and bundles and I THINK A TRUNK. Your Aunt Ivy and Uncle Sam Ward had stayed with children while Papa made this long trip by wagon, a two day trip to Altus to get married. He went one day and your Papa’s cousin John Bottom went with him. The wedding was that night and they returned home the next day.
My cousin Henry Gordon had taken Fannie and me home to meet Miss Coen or the new Mrs. Gordon and to be present the following day at a big dinner in honor of the newlyweds. It was a rather forlorn group of children who greeted “her” that evening tho we tried to be respectful. None of us older ones had ever seen her. Sister Fannie reacted in a rather strange, wild or crazy way, I thought, by trying to break our old cast iron cook stove. It was already cracked and held up inside by a brick. All this taking place about the time we saw the covered wagon coming up the section line. Not a very good example to set for the younger children! However, in later months Fannie accepted her and got along better than some of the others.
Well the neighbors were invited to the wedding dinner and of course sister Laura and Kenner with their new baby boy “Willie” (1st baby) came home. I suppose Lewis and his new wife Mattie-I can’t remember about all that happened. I do remember that we went back to Mission next day taking Jessie with us. However home again late in Aug. for two weeks vacation and that little Beulah Bottom was seriously sick with a slow fever. Seeing your (future) Grandma sitting out on the porch with Beulah in her arms. Anyway I had a letter in October from Elwood saying that she had died. This letter was sent to my cousin since we had, through him, been carrying on a clandestine correspondence. So I could not tell of her death. Much as I wanted to for the Faits were also good friends of the Bottom family. I felt terrible but had to wait until we got a letter from home with the sad news. So I bore my grief in silence and alone. Didn’t even tell Jessie or Fannie.
Well time went on and of course I had a feeling of guilt because of this deception. I was almost constantly uneasy for fear of being found out by the girls matron who I feared might snoop around and find my letters. It was against the rules and I had never disobeyed the rules at home or school. The letters at first were not really “love-letters” in the truest sense but we could both read a lot between the lines. Come the fall of 1899, your future Papa was sent to OU. Enrolling in the preparatory Dept. which was maintained in those early years at our state university. He continued to write me. We saw each other during the Christmas Holidays. Soon as he went back to Norma, he wrote me a most astonishing love letter and asked me to marry him!
I was not too pleased with this letter for the reason that he had gotten his roommate to write it! I believed that affairs of the heart were too sacred to share with others. Especially a stranger and to the extent of having him helping to compose and write such a missive. And too I had not awakened to loves call wasn’t yet sure of my feelings toward him. So I frankly tried to explain myself and feelings and said that I was afraid that I didn’t yet know the true meaning of love. That I felt it would be something wrong and true to last a lifetime. I was very fond of him and loved being with him and I could probably learn to love him if given more time to analyze my feelings for an answer. He had ask me to give my answer by return letter. If we could have been together this would probably have been answered in the affirmative. Well he gave me more than 3 years to decide.
The next year my three year term of school was up at Mautame and I was influenced to go to OU. But had no means so agreed to work for the Supt. and family a year at $2.50 per week and save my money to go to school (the year of 1900-1901). So this is what I gave my word to do. Though I did aspire to higher learning. We continued to correspond and were together as much as possible considering everything.
The “Big Pasture” had opened to white settlement the summer of 1900. Elwood filed on a quarter section of land in Com. County, so did not go back to school but built himself a little cabin on the head of Sugar Creek batched there. He held a bunch of cattle belonging to his family and himself which could graze also in the Preserve. While he was doing this I was in school at OU (Preparatory) studying History, Arithmetic, Latin, English, Music, Reading etc. Working for my room and board in the home of OU’s 1st president and family. It consisted of one daughter “Alice” of 15 with whom I roomed and we became good friends. Of course my mail was not censored here and I was out from under that burden of guilt and deception that I had before felt and received many letters as indeed Vanderslice who carried the OU mail said that I needed a “secretary” to take care of all my correspondence.
I was now 18 and getting ‘weaned’ away from home to some extent yet missed getting to go home at Christmas time, but always considered duty before pleasure as the old saying went. I could not afford the expense of a train trip home. Elwood wrote and said that if I would come that he would send me the money for the trip but something I had heard or read sometime that to accept money from a young man was not in good taste so I felt it would be indiscreet to accept it much as I longed to see everyone! So I wrote that I couldn’t come. So that was a very long time from late Aug. till June, not even seeing one of my family. You see I went early before school began to help can pears. Mr. Boyd had a large acreage rite on the Boulevard, an orchard in what is now the area of the Faculty House etc., where he had a variety of fruit, mostly pears and cherries, enclosed within a hedge of quince along the Boulevard walk. The pears and quince were ripe for canning and Mrs. Boyd asked me to come in advance of school, to help take care of the fruit.
The night that I was to arrive, the Boyd’s surrey met that certain train, but I was not here so they didn’t know when to expect me. The fact was that we stayed in El Reno for several hours waiting at the hotel, where I met a nice lady and her two small daughters, who had been over to the new Anadarko to visit her husband. He was one of the new town’s businessmen. I helped her with the two lively children and we became friends at once. Well to our surprise and chagrin when we reached Oklahoma City where we were to again change trains, we found that there was a broken down freight train on the RR south to Norman and that we could go no further till the next day It was now night and was thankful I was to be in company of the lady I had met else I would hardly have known which or what place to choose to go for the night, as I had never traveled any and anyone else is living today who remembers that confusing scene and sound. There were numerous busses and cabs, each driver hawking and clamoring loudly for this, that and the other hotel, rooming house, or what have you. Mrs. Blank, I will call her, tho I believe her name was Kerfoot, and I had caucused a minute and we realized our predicament. I told her my hard luck story. I in worse predicament than she since on being advised that when traveling not to carry more money that you need had put my little savings down in my trunk, which was of course checked and did not have enough left in my purse for a nights lodging! She said not to worry that we would go together and get one room with two beds, so I gave her my little “pile” as I knew she would know better how to stretch it. We went to the Lee which is now Lee Huckins, quite a grand place even in that pioneer day. We made out fine. She had our breakfast brought to the room on a big tray. All I can recall now of that breakfast in my first hotel, is that there were lovely big concord grapes on the tray.
There was quite a delay next day before we could entrain for that wreck had to be removed from the track first. I don’t recall how we passed the time while waiting. Anyway we finally reached that station at Norman and we said goodbye to each other and the train carried them on. There was no one to meet me. There were no phones and I would not have known how to sue one if there had been one!
I inquired at the ticket office as to where the Boyds lived and struck out in the August heat to walk that mile down a little board walk. At my knock, Mrs. Boyd met me at the door. I was given a warm welcome when I explained who I was. I was given a cool drink from their cistern with its little chain pump and offered some juicy ripe pears, since she was already on that canning job. Later she sent for my trunk so I did have a nightgown to sleep in that night.
She was a pleasant faced woman and we were favorably impressed with each other and got along just fine. Mrs. Boyd was a good cook making most all of the bread that we ate and she made the finest pear and quince preserves, about half and half. The quince caused them to jell and ‘twas delicious. I had no washing to do and she did part of the ironing she had a woman come and wash once a week and it was done on an old time rub board. She said she liked the way I sprinkled her clothes and ironed.
The Boyds gave a reception for the members of the faculty. There were numerous “mixers” the first and second weeks of school also a hay-ride so the students could get acquainted. Several churches sponsored these affairs and some were held way out in the country.
I saw my first football game, when Texas came to play OKU and “Hi Rickety Whoop to do Boomer Sooners! OKU!” resonated with much gusto!
I had many opportunities which I had never had before. I saw my first opera, when Shakespeare’s Hamlet played there. A lyceum course was brought there and we had some wonderful programs, hearing some of the world’s best music, one troupe brought what was report to be the world’s finest lady violinist.
I had never heard of basketball then teams were organized for both boys and girls. I was eligible for the girls’ teams, but felt I needed to put all my spare time in on my studies so I only went when there was a matched game. The suits the girls wore then would make the present day public laugh. They were real full bloomer style and so hot with long sleeves and heavy long hose.
Alice told me of some of the escapades of the student gangs at Halloween time the previous year. How her Daddy gave the boys a talk and told them not to do the destructive old tricks of former years, but to try something new this year. So they ganged up on him that night and cut one side of his nice mustache off!!!
Elwood had related all of these happenings to me when he was there the previous year. However he was not one of this gang. He was in another who put the President’s surrey on top of some building uptown, while another bunch led a donkey up the stairs and into the auditorium where he spent the rest of the night and there he was found when it was time for chapel exercises next morning. Also a rooster was put inside the old hand organ that a “Frenchman” played each morning. So when he began turning the crank the rooster got excited and his squawking caused a lot of commotion as you can imagine. But I don’t think anyone was expelled from school.
A Annie #6We drove to Church each Sunday , the four of us in the little one seated surrey drawn by the little fat roan horse. Mr. Boyd was Supt. of the Presbyterian Church S.S. I haven’t told that and I gave my heart to God and was baptized into Christ the summer before I was sixteen, while on my little vacation. Brother Johnny Harrel baptized me in the little Oak creek or a dam forked pond on the creek. Foster, then about 10 years old and full of mischief said that if my sins were washed off in that stock pond the stock wouldn’t drink the water. Elwood was baptized while in school at OU.
Well time gradually slipped by nothing very eventful happened to me unless it was the severe case of mumps that I had in the spring of 1901 and had to miss a few days of school. Mrs. Boyd gave me mulled buttermilk. Also I got to see someone from home, John Bottom who at this time was a deputy sheriff in Washita County my home county brought a poor woman to the mental institute at Norman and incidentally stopped by for a brief visit. Mrs. Boyd thought he was nice looking! I studied hard and although this may sound conceited and they say “self praise is half scandal” I was at the top of my classes, but you see we were a bunch of numskulls when I tell you that the whole class of forty-five flunked first algebra the first six weeks test! Some of the blame for this failure, I for one felt very embarrassed over this, was put on our instructor who was a student teacher. So Professor Elder himself, Prof. of all math, took charge of our class and pulled us out of the kinks. I had never before been called “Miss Gordon”. It was the custom there to call all students Mr. or Miss. It was distasteful to me for the reason that it made me feel that I was among strangers and too it made me feel too mature and older than my years. Anyway we were all in the same boat and many younger than I had this prefix to their names.
There were no dormitories on campus in those days since OU was only in its infancy, however this year a two story red brick building was purchased down town, a former hotel I believe, and redecorated for a girls’ dorm and it was named Erline for the owners deceased daughter, I wonder if anyone else remember this home, there have been so many changes and improvements since that distant day 66 years ago. The three story building that I attended classes in burned down more than fifty years ago and other and larger buildings have replaced the old and have spread out and taken in near by farms. I imagine that the Loomis homestead just southwest is now part of the big campus. This was the home of the late Mrs. Fred Carder the former Alva of Cordell a long time teacher and Supt. of the Cordell schools. She was a classmate and chum of Alice Boyd.
Well when school was out I stayed on long enough to help Mrs. Boyd can the cherries. That summer of 1902 I attended the summer normal school at old Cordell, boarding with John and Chloe Bottom, then on the extreme north side of town. Also two young men John Ferrel and Gordon Vanscoy boarded there. Norton was Co. School Supt. and Mr. Coffee and a Mr. Schneider’s wife were the main instructors.
I passed the exams and received a teacher’s certificate and without trying got a place as “assistant” at old Redwood a one-room school with an enrollment of above 80 pupils, with only around 65 in regular attendance. I got board with the nice family of Welson Heynes real near by. School started in Oct. as I remember and my pay was $35.oo per month and these school warrants were discounted 10% when cashed at the old Kobs bank in old Mountain View! School was mostly “recitations” and with all eight grades in one room one can imagine the confusion!
On Friday afternoons we usually had either a ciphering match or a spelling match choosing sides.
In March the school board hired me alone to finish out the two remaining months of school and let my superior (a Mr. Franklin) go leaving me with the sole responsibility and raising my salary to $50.00.
By now I had changed my boarding place to my sisters home in a large half-dugout some five miles away and was riding horseback to and from school.
I began teaching my pupils a lot of songs, by writing the words on the big blackboard and leading they soon learned the new songs and all seemed to sing and enjoy them. We had a period of singing each morning one that all liked was “Spring time”. Went like this:
Swiftly now the spring advances
Silver streamlets brightly flower
In and out the sunlight glances
In and out the breezes blow
Chorus:
Springtime, beautiful springtime
bringing gladness in your train
Springtime, beautiful springtime
Welcome once again.
Children laugh and sing together
Echoes ring from wood and glen
Shade or shine we bless the weather
Glad that spring had come again.
This with the well known patriotic songs were mostly what we sang and they loved it.
Time came for school to close we and we prepared a closing program of songs reading etc. A big crowd came with well filled baskets. There was dinner on the ground and soon after I told them precious boys and girls to “hitch their wagons to a star.” Farewells were said and some tears were shed and we went our separate ways to see each other no more.
I went to your Aunt Laura’s in old Mt. View, they were all at the closing program and picnic dinner. Eddie and Ethel were small children. Next I made a little visit to Hobart to your “Grandpa Gordons” and “Aunt Rose”. Walter was 13 years old then, Aunt Bertie and Virgil eight years. Jessie was 16 and home from the mission and Aunt Eppie was 19 and doing some custom sewing for women in Hobart.
While on this visit your future “Papa” (now 22 years old) who had started himself a small dairy there the winter before and with the help of his brother Herman (who was in school) was doing right well. While the two batched in his little new 2 room house. Built on only four town lots in the extreme far corner of the townsite would visit me of nights. He was working hard and saving for the time he could support a wife. He got the gold band which I am still wearing and which has never tarnished in these 64 years and it was there one night in early June on south Monroe St. on your Grandpa’s front porch that it was placed on my finger, and we set the date for the wedding to be the last Wed in June. I hurried back to your Aunt Laura’s and bought the material (a creamy white material called, I think, “Mull”) anyway it lent itself beautifully to shearing. I found a seamstress- a Mrs. Jess Whaley- who began real soon on my Wedding dress and another one. Eppie and Laura helped me with the rest of my things. In the meantime there was a terrible rain almost a water spout and the bridge that had been built on the Washita River between Old Mountain View and the depot (where the present town of Mountain View sets) went out and they had to run a boat. All the bottom was under water a mile wide. A rumor of tornado and many spent the whole night in storm cellars. Many had to flee to higher ground. It was a hectic night your Uncle Andrew Gordon then lived in Mountain View. He was the one who operated the boat between town and the Little Rock Island station on the south side of the river.
It was to be the simplest of weddings with only the relatives and a very few of our closest friends there. Elwood had come down on the train. While I was out bringing my dress from the dressmakers and he got behind the door and gave me such a surprise. You today can imagine his big laugh when he jumped out at me. Then he went to a friend to dress for the big occasion. I know you wonder how we had room for around 30 people in that two room house. Well they took down the bed and fixed seats around the wall for them. Our Aunt Fannie and Uncle Claud owned and lived on what you know as the Kelsoe place. They had oodles of ripe berries so Jessie was out there and helped her pick a lot for refreshments that night to have with ice cream and cake. Blanche baked us a lovely wedding cake and put “1902” in colored icing on top. However none of them came to the wedding. Andrew, Mary and Emmet were small. Preachers were rather scarce then. So the Methodist pastor J.F. Lovett performed the ceremony and these are the ones present: Laura, Kenner, Eddie, Ethel, Fannie, Claud, Ralph and Glenn, ivy, Sam, George and myrtle---Eppie, Jessie-Mr. & Mrs. Wilson Dellinger, Amboyne and Iantha-Miss Ellen and Will Tutin-Burk, Bell and Roy-Your future Grandma Bottom and Anna may then 15yeear s-Edna and Herschel Stubblefield-the preacher and us. We had a “trip” out to the old homestead in a sulky pulled by a high stepping stallion belonging to a friend, Mr Swinford in the dry goods business there.
By hiring Mr Beazley to help your uncle Herman run the dairy Elwood got off for a few days “honeymoon”. There was a neighborhood 4th of July Celebration down on Aunt Hannah’s place on Oak Creek, everyone took picnic dinner and their ice cream freezers and someone brought a 300 lb. Cake of ice and salt and froze it right there. I remember that your grandma baked a couple of her ‘specialty’ transparent pies, (made with unsalted fresh butter, sugar, and eggs). The thing that stands out in my memory tho, is that poor old Grandma Tutin who was a shut-in was brought down to the creek in an old rocking chair, and her sweet wish to the bride and groom was, “I hope you’ll always be as happy as you are now.” (And that wish came true, almost.) We spent a day and night with Fannie and Claud and I had to have a bad sty on my eye.
Finally we loaded my trunk, our gifts, etc. into an open hack and with a team borrowed from Mr. Bottom and started for Hobart. Elwood bought me my first kid gloves when we passed by Ramsey’s country store which set just east of the present Odessa Church and on south side of the road.
When we reached our little two room home a disgusting sight met our eyes. That Mr. Beasley had gotten drunk, had vomited on the floor, and poor Herman hadn’t had a chance to clean it up. It didn’t take long for Elwood to get rid of him with his bedroll. Well no one had much furniture back in those days and for a time we had only the barest necessities and high hopes for the future. So I set in to make the most of what he had been batching with had to be a real helpmate.
I sent for a box of old old fashioned black stove polish and after scrapping off all the burned grease on the little four hole cast-iron cook stove, I polished it to a satin gloss. I got a scrub brush and scrubbed the bare white pine floors, cleaned the four windows. Immediately we had the windows and doors screened and I cleaned the unpainted walls and wood work. Soon there was a furniture fire-sale, and we bought a nice three piece solid oak bedroom suite, that was damaged very little, and a kitchen cabinet, so with a couple of throw rugs I had and my few accumulated treasures and pretties and everything shining clean things took on a different look and we were supremely happy. I had saved up the big sum of $35.00 from school so we built a little smoke house with that. We didn’t go much since we had no time or money to spare and no way to go only in the milk wagon. There was a big street carnival in tow in August I don’t even remember how I got uptown, but I was all dressed up and wearing my big picture, hat), my wedding hat. a thing of beauty, made of many yards of bias folds of white silk malene netting, circled round and round to cover the big wire frame and interwoven under these folds were little blue velvet forget-me-nots, with sprays of them on the side and streamers of blue velvet ribbon) as the present day teenagers say “I was looking pretty sharp” I guess. I never was in a thicker crowd on the sidewalk and everyone but me, I think, was throwing confetti, a hawker was calling Confetti Confetti, everybody throws confetti!” and it was showered on everyone. Just as a strange young man showered me with a big handful, Elwood walked into the milling crowd and grabbed the boy by his collar jerking him around and getting him told in no uncertain terms. I understood and was not offended although that was my first to see the stuff. Neither had my loverboy ever witness such, so he took it as an insult hence the rough treatment! I imagine that strange young fellow thought we really were from the country and way back!! I was very embarrassed and humiliated to say the least, and I imagine that boy thought twice before he threw any more confetti.
His parents were planning to move to Hobart, namely to get their teenage children in a better school, so, at the beginning of the fall term of school in Sept., Anna May -15, came to stay with us till they could build a house and move. She brought her own ¾ bed, this with Mr. Bottoms and Charlie’s bed made 3 beds in that room and the one iron bed in our kitchen-dining room for the hired man.
Mr. Bottom and Charley his cousin got started right away building a two room box house ½ mile west from us, on the quarter sectio9n he had rented, and staying with us while they built. By Jan or Feb they were all moved into their house and Shannon too was enrolled in school.
In the meantime I learned that I was “in the family way” and made myself my first maternity dresses on a neighbor’s sewing machine. They had a girl Anna Mays age named Vanita Reynolds. Because I had no sewing machine we ordered the whole layette from Peck Bros. in Kansas City and sister Fannie hemmed a couple of dozen twilled canton flannel diapers. On
April 21st our “Pecks baby boy” as his papa called him arrived and was named Clyde for a football hero and friend at OU, Clyde Bogle. Everyone loved him and Grandpa got him a high chair pretty quick and a small rocker for me.
In the fall before Clyde was born, E.W. had heard of some dairy cows for sale up by old Cloud Chief, so he went horseback and bought them from Mr. Drake. He was gone two days and drove them in. The first Holsteins, I think, I ever saw. He was getting new customers all along and needed more milk so now we had it, but we had no outlet and it was a problem to graze so many. There was a lot of good grass lying out, between us and town so we grazed that some by herding, but still a problem and had to buy a lot of hay besides the milled feed. We bought a nice buggy with shoa and harness the spring after Clyde came, and we drove a spirited gray mare “Callie” to it. Elwood also used shafts to the milk wagon some then drove Callie, he used a big weight fastened to her bridle whenever he carried a can of milk into a restaurant. Once she got scared and the snap broke some how and she ran away coming towards home, she split the shelves and run a big splinter into her leg, which injury crippled her for a time. I drove her, and my young brother Walter went with me, to Mt. View that summer of 1904 to visit Laura, when John was a baby.
In the fall of 1904 we bought seventeen acres out west of town on little Elk Creek and had our house and barn moved out there and built a bigger barn and bought more cows, had our house papered and painted made a garden and on Clyde’s first birthday, your Uncle Foster, just a kid, and Sarah Freize had just gotten married and come and visited us, their honeymoon. Out there we leased grazing land from Chief Lone Wolf’s family and made out better.
Sister Jessie came to live with us the winter of 1906. Your Uncle Claud Calvert sold their farm to Mr. Kelsoe, had a farm sale and moved back to Texas (Eagle Lake). They visited us just before leaving and she and sister Ivy tacked a nice wool comfort for me while visiting us a few days in early January of that year (1906), before our first baby girl arrived on Jan 14 after they left Oklahoma. While visiting little Clyde now 21 months old and his little cousin Owen Calvert about 19months old got to trotting around playing: head-go” in what little space there was left with a quilt in the frames. Course they were so little they could go under that. They passed by our little cast iron cook stove each round, and I wasn’t through with the dishes, the little old coffeepot was on the little hearth of the stove with a little hot coffee and grounds in it. Someway one of the boys, both were wearing ‘boys’ dresses, knocked it off and those got grounds spilled on little Clyde’s leg and burned him real bad, which took sometime to heal and was still bandaged, as you can see, in his very first picture made soon afterwards. And by the way I will explain about the little dainty china silk dress which he wears in this picture. I made it especially for a picture and it was partly hand made. All the fine valenciennes lace and insertion was whipped with loving stitches, just as had been one long dress set (dress and long pettiskirt) while he was a ‘baby. The others were bought ones.
However by now we had bought a sewing machine, the first payment made from the $6.00 in pennies, a savings account for Clyde which we never did pay back. I remember that the first thing I made on that Englewood machine was a little red bonnet for my little Clyde, made of a remnant left from putting a quilt together. People those days thought every child should wear a bonnet!
Sister being with us and expecting another babe necessitated another bed, so we solved that problem by buying a folding bed. This was a very elaborate piece of furniture, three pieces in one, the bed or mattress really did not fold but was closed up full length from the back and held by powerful springs. Turning to the wall in day time we had a tall wardrobe with French bevel plate oval mirror in the door on left side with a drop leaf desk on the right side above which was another bevel plate mirror and underneath nice space for books. In this case I had Shakespeare’s complete works and a few other books saved through the years.
Lucille Margaret our first precious baby girl arrived Jan. 14, 1906 a lovely Sunday evening a lovely child with long thick dark hair and big dark eyes. She was a wonder to 21 month old Clyde, who was beginning to talk. Clyde started sleeping with his Aunt Jessie on the folding bed and she would often sing him to sleep, such songs as:
Way Down South in de Spring
where birds begin to sing and
The sun shines gently over the Ohio
Where niggers lub to go down on de Ohio
When darkies all am gay and singin nite and day
Daddy’s little man would clap his little hands and
Crow jes like a rooster in the mornin
or:
Bye bye don’t you cry
Oh hushabye my baby
Your mommy’ll soon be nigh
And den we’ll take you sailin
While de moon am high
etc. etc.
But the favorite was Old Fox which went like this:
Old Fox started out on dark rainy night
He prayed for the moon to give him light
For he ad many miles to travel that night
before he reached the town-e-o town-e-o
(repeat the last two lines)First he came by a farmers yard
Where ducks and gees were always carved
One of you shall grease my beard,
Before we reach the town-e-o
(repeat the last line)
He grabbed an old black duck by her neck
Slung her round a cross his back
The res of the geese when quack quack quack
While he went through town-e-o
(repeat the last line)Old muther Bubdub,out of the bed,
Out of the window she popped her head
Oh John John! Our black ducks gone
And the fox is through the town-e-o
(repeat last two lines)John ran up to the top of the hill
Blew his horn both loud and shrill
But the fox let the best of the music still
While he went through the town-e-o
(repeat the last line)
He ran down to his den
Where he had little ones nine or ten
He carved his meat, without knife or for,
While the little ones picked the bone-e-o
(repeat last two lines)All this sung slowly getting slower and slower and s-l-o-w-e-r till he was asleep and so was she-almost!
There was a little “Swag” (we called it) with sweet scented button willows growing along it between our little house and the big cow barn, when he was 2 years old, one day I found Clyde there with only his “birthday suit” on! He had a yen for running away and could run like a kildeer so could get out of sight before I knew he had left. One such trip took him a mile down the Elk Creek into Lone Wolf’s pasture and was seen by his daughter, look into an old well near the old creek, when I found him he was running back towards home. This was in Oct and I was making apple jelly and since I was a novice at jelly making, I had read in the old Texas Farm and Ranch, a publication given us as a wedding gift (Any couple who was married in the month of June the year of 1903 was given a three years subscription). I read that to make jelly set or jell well to put it in the sunshine. So the only place I had to set the jars in the sun to cool was in a west window over behind the men’s bed, (which had to be in our kitchen-dining room and wash room. Little nine month old Lucille was asleep on this bed. I had to leave her to hunt Clyde, in the meantime she woke up and seeing the bright jelly climbed up to the window and when I returned with Clyde she had her little arms churning the jelly and eating what she could. When I got near the house, I saw jelly running down the outside wall and screen! Such a mess but she was happy and her eyes big as moons.
Another runaway was when he took off up the section line north which crossed the railroad on a hill. I tracked him since he was pulling or dragging a bridle around his little neck and the bits made a track in the dusty road. When I, running fast as I could, reached the RR crossing, I could see him running hard as always. He was nearly to the brick plant where the road would turn, to go to Grandpa Gordons on the hill. I think that was where he was headed. Anyway, I gave a loud scream which stopped him and he turning saw me and came running back toward me just as fast as he had gone. I met him and as we crossed the railroad again where tall sunflowers and other weeds were thick I Gave a big growl and pretended that I was scared and pulled him away in a hurry to try to impress him that there was danger there. Another time he followed the railroad toward town when his daddy overtook him. Next time he tried a new route going straight east in the section line, towards town and was picked up by a young man by name of Charley Brown coming out of town who gave him a big red apple and dropped him out at home.
One sunny morning in early spring of 1907 Lucille was playing just outside the house with Clyde when two or three baby calves came up close (we had no yard fence) and someway knocked out one of her front teeth loose! So she did without one till she was about six years old.
We had bought 20 acres back east toward Hobart on higher ground and had everything moved up there in the late spring of 1907. Clyde persisted in going back down the hill, where our chicken house yet set on our original 17 acres with several farm implements around. I was only about 1/8 of a mile from the house, but much too far for a three year old to be alone! His daddy went after him finding him sitting upon the seat of a riding plow; he slipped into the old chicken house and began throwing clods at where they would fall near Clyde to scare him, but no scare. He got off the plow and went peeping into the chicken house to discover the source of those clods. He had been punished in different ways for running off but finally his daddy switched him almost unmercifully one day which really broke him of these escapades.
Once a big heavy turkey gobbler flogged him pretty badly. Another time before this he was allowed to ride old Tommy a round and round the big old barn which stood in the middle of the corral. Clyde finally went to sleep. My brother Walter who was helping milk, milked a big long steam of milk through an open window onto Tommy’s side (who also was asleep). The horse jumped when that stream of milk hit him, and off went little “Pal” into the soft dry manure and was not hurt at all.
Later when Clyde was four years old he could ride a horse in a gallop. “Old Nig” was his steed now. He could get the horse in a run and holler “go get him!” He also learned to milk and one day to show off a little while Uncle Charlie R was bragging on him, milked four cows in the stanchions, holding the bucket between his little knees and using both hands, just as his papa had always done. The four cows were the four easiest to milk, Jersey’s in the herd of more than a hundred head as Elwood had bought out the Sewell’s dairy south of town, the Statler? Bros dairy north of town and another smaller outfit and owned the one and only dairy there by this time and was bottling all the milk. It was hard to keep hands to milk. Most transient men would try to milk as fast as E.W. “the boss” did so soon blistered their hands and quit. Finally he hired two Negro couples Jacksons and “Rufus and Minnie”.
I have left out a chapter so will go back a ways: On March 6, 1907, after we moved onto the hill towards town and had got settled, adding on another room to our little house and the men had to begin milking very early in the morning in order to get it all done and delivered. It was still quite cold and E.W. and one boy to build me a fire in the big majestic range, burning coal at that time. They started at about 3:30 o’clock a.m. and later Elwood would come and awaken me to get breakfast for them. They had only finished their first string of cows, when Elwood said he looked towards the house and the whole north wing (the new room added) was in flames! He ran jumping a low woven wire yard fence and I think I had heard him calling my name. When I woke seeing the flames was confused at first thinking it was part of a dream. Anyway he broke in and grabbing me and the children forced me outside, when I tried to grab something to save! We stood out in that big icy wind in our night clothes listening to the roar and crackling of glass, away went my cherished new folding bed, all my girlhood keepsakes, my trunk, pictures, books and all! He got what bedding was on our bed including the featherbed. Also the sewing machine which was near the door with his suit of clothes that he wore to deliver milk in, one of the two little rocking chairs and a few dollars in change in the pockets and this was all that we had left! After f