Grandmother's Education

 

 

           Grandmother, Victoria Rosser, and Sister Ada (standing)   

          This is the oldest picture I have of Grandmother, at age 16 or 17?

Grandmother didn’t have much in the way of formal education. She mentioned in a letter that her older sisters Kittie and Lillie got to go to school in Hyde Park,  Arkansas. They stayed with their oldest sister Cora who was married and living there, but Grandmother and her younger sister Ada were too young, so they were home schooled by their mother. 

In 1889 the family moved to Indian Territory. They settled on an acreage north of Pauls Valley, in an area that would later be known as Klondike. At first, Grandpa sent the girls to school in Pauls Valley, where they had the teacher with the big ears, described in the following paragraphs that Grandmother wrote many years later – I guess kids will always make fun of their teachers. 

The first public funeral home must have been built in 1890. It was the first public school in the Territory. The first superintendant was J W Wilkerson a small stoop shouldered man and wore a derby hat pulled down so that it made his ears stick out. The building was a square building with an upstairs & the advanced pupils was upstairs. The low grades down stairs. & we drew the water that we drank from a well. Waded mud shoe top deep. There were no sidewalks in town. It was at first a pay school. In 1896 the principal was D W McKee. He was a Quaker. Was a great educator. His wife taught us music. Miss McDaniels taught elocution & was also a primary teacher. & a Miss Ramsy from Virginia primary grade teacher. D W McKee also taught short hand & typing, was great on giving lectures to the students.

At that time there were no pavements or sidewalks. We had a Methodist Church a wood building & an old Presbyterian Church that had been moved here from Cherokee town. That is about 2 miles from our depo. We had one store C J Grants & Snede later on & then Kendal. Blacksmith shop. An opra house. One Hotel. Across the railroad known as the McClure House. & one known as the Commercial House owned by a widdow campbell. We hada no shows only what the school put on. & some time troops would come here. Our first carnival was in 1903. Our first Mayor was in 1899. Pauls Valley was incorporated in 1899. We had a beautiful park. All pecan down below the depo free Bar bque and free bakers bread. Large loaves 4 times the size that we have now. Purk Bruce had a drug store & in his drugstore a lending library that was a boon to everyone. 

According to the interview from 1937 cited in my Nov. 7 post, Grandpa and some others hired a teacher and had a building moved from Pauls Valley to Klondike so the girls would have a school closer to home. 

During the next couple of years Grandpa and Grandmother’s older brother Tom worked to try and make their acreage profitable. They grew cotton and probably other crops and the railroad went through Pauls Valley so they didn’t have far to go to sell their crops. The country was still pretty wild, and having the railroad near didn’t help. It was during this time that grandmother swore Grandpa had a visit from members of the Dalton gang. Here’s what she wrote: 

1894 J T Rosser planted 125 acres of cotton Hands were hard to get. day labor was cheap but scarce. one evening late two young men rode up into the yard. they had opened wire gates & rode thru the field. & said How Dad do you want two bad boys to chop cotton. papa hired those two young men. & they worked 10 days or 2 weeks. they were quiet had excellent manners. good choppers for cotton seemed to know good farming. Rode good horses had a pair of pistols strapted to their sadles were short shot guns. they did their work well ask for their wages & took their departure. late one eve. shook hands with papa. thanked him for giving them work they were evidently members of the Dalton gang that had just raided Coffeville Kan. 

In 1890, Grandmother’s mother, Emily Bass Rosser, died, of a tumor growing in her abdomen. At that point, Grandpa sent the girls to live with their older sister Cora again. Cora and her husband had divorced or separated – I don’t know any details of when or why. At that point, she was living in Wynnewood, about 7 miles south of Pauls Valley, and was the proprietor of a millinery shop. She made hats. There’s conflicting information about the time of Emily’s death. It might have been as late as 1894. 

I doubt if Grandmother had much schooling after her mother’s death. She started dating my grandfather shortly after that, and Grandpa sent her to Georgia to stay with his mother for a while in hopes that her feelings would cool off. Actually it did the opposite. Grandmother and her grandmother, Susan Whitehead Rosser Lumpkin, really hit it off. They shared a passion for gardening, and Grandma Lumpkin was fascinated by Grandmother’s stories of Indian Territory and of her Chickasaw beau. 

To be continued.

Uncle Tom's Memory Book

                                         Cora, Thomas, and Ada Rosser

Among my mother’s keepsakes is a “Memory Book” with autographs and notes collected by my great uncle, Thomas Spurgeon Rosser. The book looks like it probably had a cover at one time, but all that is left now are a few pages of brittle paper with notes written in pencil. It contains notes from classmates and family members written between 1890 and 1892.

Uncle Tom was 21 years old when he started his memory book. He had spent his life moving from one place to another as his family migrated over the 800 miles from Georgia to Indian Territory. His education would have been haphazard as they moved from one place to another in an ox drawn wagon. As the only son he helped his father build or repair cabins where they would settle, plowed the fields, and hunted game. They would live for several years in one place before moving on, becoming part of each community.  

The Rossers spent the most time in Palmer Station, Arkansas, about 8 years. You won't find Palmer Station on a map, but it's in eastern Arkansas, not far from the Mississippi River, where Tom would later return to start his own farm. My grandmother, Tom’s little sister, loved Palmer Station, with it’s rolling hills, wild flowers and birds. That’s where she spent her childhood and where Tom probably got most of his education. The older children went to school at Hyde Park. You won’t find it on the map either. 

Grandpa, as my mother called her grandfather, had been headed for Texas, where his older brother Ed had settled years earlier, but he was enchanted by the rich bottom land in the Washita Valley in Indian Territory. In 1888 when he paid the $5 fee to live in the Chickasaw Nation and rented a farm near Cherokee Town, it had been 22 years since he and his wife Emily had fled the turbulent South.

 

By then it was probably too late for Grandpa to make it to Texas. His older daughter, Cora, was already married, and Lillie and Kitty were nearing marriageable age at 16 and 14. By the time he had saved enough money to move again, even his younger daughters Victoria and Ada, aged 11 and 9, would be practically grown, so he had to give up on joining Uncle Ed. 

Most schools on the frontier were private “subscription” schools. Grandpa actually got together with some other settlers and hired a teacher when he first arrived in Indian Territory, but later he sent his children to a subscription school in Pauls Valley started by one of my grandfather’s cousins, Amos Waite, who had a college education. The Chickasaws actually had public schools supported by the tribe, but white children weren’t eligible to attend. Many Indian children attended subscription schools though. In fact that’s where my grandmother and grandfather met.  

Uncle Tom was 21 when he started his memory book, and he probably figured he had had enough schooling. there aren't many entries in his book. Some sound a little old fashioned, but not unlike notes you'd find today on a high school year book. The notes from his sisters are especially sweet. He must have been a good brother. 

The first note in Uncle Tom’s memory book are from his sister Lillie (age 18): 

Night and day have passed away

The hills and valleys part

But the dear affection I hold for you

Dear Brother shall never leave my heart

This Dec 30, 1890, Your sister Lillie 

On June 20, 1892 my grandmother (age 15) added: 

Sailing down the sea of time in your little bark canoe may you have a pleasant trip with just room enough for two.

Your sister Vicie Rosser 

Next, a classmate: 

To a friend

Oh think of me when far away and only half awake.

Oh think of me on your wedding day and send me a piece of cake.

Mary A. Schmidt 

Another classmate: 

Friend Tommie

May joy through all your future flow

Like water down a tater row

May peace and plenty be your lot

As down the hill of life you roll

Your friend and well wisher,

W.N. Green 

Gag notes were popular then as they are now: 

Mr. Tom

If scribbling in albums remembrance insures

With the greatest of pleasure I’ll scribble in yours

Your friend Josh 

An ornery classmate: 

Well Tom you have a long time yit.

But divil the gal you will ever git.

J G R 

One of the descendants of Jesse Chisolm, after whom the Chisolm trail was named wrote: 

Mr. Tom

Always remember your true friend

Emma Chisolm 

Finally, a note from Sister Kittie:

In the evening of life

Cherish the remembrance

Of one who loved thee

In its morning

Jan. 18, 1891

Your sister, Kittie B. R.

 

Uncle Tom and the Mississippi River

Uncle Tom with his sisters, Cora and Ada 



          Last week I was listening to the news about the flooding of the Mississippi River, and the commentator mentioned that this was the worst flood since 1927. Suddenly I realized that my great uncle Tom was in that flood. He told his sister, my grandmother, all about it.    

          Uncle Tom was an interesting character. His parents, my great grandparents, had left Georgia after the civil war and migrated west. Over the next 20 years they moved from place to place, through Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, finally ending up in Indian Territory, the future State of Oklahoma. Tom was the second oldest of eight children, and the only boy to reach maturity, so he bore a big responsibility for the family's welfare, helping his father with the farm and hunting for game to provide meat.    

          When the Cherokee Strip was opened for settlement in 1893, Tom made the land run, and staked a claim for a 160 acre homestead. Tom tried to work his claim but he wasn't happy with the land, so he moved back to Arkansas and started farming near Kelso, on the Mississippi River. Tom grew tobacco and cotton and he was successful, at one time amassing a fortune of $50,000.  

          Life on the Mississippi was hard though. Not only was the work hard, but malaria was endemic, and it wasn't long before Uncle Tom came down with it. Every few months the fever would come, and all Tom could do was go to bed until it broke. One of the treatments for malaria at that time was to have the fever "boiled out" in a sauna, so every year Tom would make a trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to sweat out his malaria in the bath houses there.

          One year, as Tom started home from Hot Springs, he had a terrible accident. He got a late start on the day he was to leave, and he arrived late to the train station, just as his train was starting up. Tom ran for the train, but when he leaped for the platform, he lost his grip and fell, sliding under the wheels!  Uncle Tom survived, but his leg was severed just above the knee and he almost bled to death. He spent several weeks in the hospital recovering from his injury, waiting for his stump to heal, and then being fitted for an artificial leg.           

          While Tom was in the hospital he fell in love with his nurse, and he asked her to marry him. The nurse said yes, so while Uncle Tom convalesced, they made plans for their wedding. Tom had a productive farm and plenty of money in the bank so he felt that he would be able to support his wife comfortably, but while they were waiting to get married and return to Kelso, a tragedy of another kind occurred. Tom's bank folded and he was left with nothing. Those were the days before the FDIC, and your money was only as secure as your bank. Tom told his fiancée that he couldn't ask her to marry him under these new conditions. He would have to return to his farm and recoup his losses. Then, he promised, he would return for her, and they could begin their life together. 

          Then came the flood of 1927. When the Mississippi overflowed its banks Tom refused to leave. He built rafts for himself and for his horses, but his crops and his home were destroyed. Again Uncle Tom was ruined. It took several years to recover. Meanwhile, back in Hot Springs Tom's fiancee was waiting. Years went by but no word from Tom. Finally she wrote to my grandmother, Tom's sister. Another man had asked her to marry him and she wanted to know whether she should wait for Tom. Grandmother hadn't heard from him either.  She told the lady to get married and to go on with her life.  

          Finally Uncle Tom decided that he had recovered enough to support a family, but when he returned to Hot Springs for his bride, he discovered that she had married someone else. Uncle Tom's comment as handed down by the family was, "Damned woman, couldn't wait."