Fay

No story of my dad’s life would be complete without a large part devoted to Fay, Oklahoma. There’s no way that I can do justice to this remarkable little community, but I’ll have to try.  

Don’s home was Enid, Oklahoma, where my grandfather worked as a barber, but Grandmother was from Fay, and most of her family still lived there. She visited as often as she could, and of course when she went she took her sons along with her. I was raised on stories about Fay, about my dad’s aunts, uncles and cousins. After Don got out of grade school he spent his summers in Fay, working for one of his uncles, on the farm or in town at the filling station.   

Fay would seem to be just an ordinary farming community, inhabited by hard working men and women trying to make a living and raise their families, but it had a fascination for my dad that made it seem almost magical, and he transmitted that feeling to me. 

When I was in college at the University of Oklahoma, Bud, one of my cousins from Fay, was also in school there studying engineering. He was a year or two ahead of me and I’ll never forget a conversation I had with him just before his graduation. He told me that he couldn’t go on in engineering, because he’d have to move away from his home and his family, so after going all the way through the engineering school, he changed his major to education, and went back home to work as a teacher in Thomas, just a short distance from his father’s farm. He became principal of the junior high school there, and that’s where he lives today.  

The other kids from Fay were the same way. My uncle Boyd, who spent his summers in Fay like my dad, worked for the University of Oklahoma, and it was a standing joke that he couldn’t get any one from Fay to go to OU. They all went to Southwestern, a junior college closer to Fay. Actually Bud was the first to attend OU, but now you know how that turned out.

 

    Boyd in Fay Band (standing between two drummers), about 1925

 

It has always intrigued me that the kids from Fay were so reluctant to leave. Maybe it’s something about farming, about working with the soil. My dad felt it too. He spent his life living in a city working for an oil company, but he told me once that he wished he had an acreage, just a small piece of land where he could go and putter around, plant a garden and some crops. He always grew flowers and vegetables in our yard, even when I was little. I used to hate his rose bushes because I would scratch myself on their thorns while I was playing.  

My mother also understood the virtues of farm life. I recently ran across a paper she wrote while she was in College in the school of social work. The paper is about Garvin County, the community where she was raised. In it she describes how farm families have a low divorce rate. She concluded that it was because everyone on a farm has to pitch in and work together, and this makes their conflicts seem less important. I think there must be something to that.  

Still, there has always been something special about Fay, and the Boyd family. I know a little bit about the Fay’s history, both from what Don told me, and from a book written in 1994, on the occasion of Fay’s centennial celebration.  

The area around Fay, north of the Canadian River, was first settled by white men during the land run of 1892. The town wasn’t named until a federal post office was placed there in 1894. When the railroad was built in 1903, it only came within one and a quarter miles of the town so the town was moved. Some of the buildings were torn down and reassembled and others were pulled by teams of horses over bridge pilings laid end to end.  

Back then Fay was a bustling town with several hotels, cafes, bars, a  grocery and dry goods store, a blacksmith shop, livery, bank, cotton gin, stockyards, a telegraph office and three newspapers. My great grandparents, Grant and Laura Boyd, came from St. Joseph, Mo. In 1893 or 4 and bought their farm west of Fay for $35, the price of a train ticket home for the man who had unsuccessfully homesteaded there after the run. They also ran a hotel. (see my post of Jan. 13, 2013)  

 

 

                                     Fay during the early 1900’s. 

 

Probably Fay’s earliest claim to fame was Joe Gillespie, who won a 1000 mile horse race in 1893. Joe was working as a cowboy breaking horses in Nebraska when some businessmen decided to organize a horse race from Chadron, Nebraska, to Chicago, Illinois, where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was scheduled to perform. Doc Middleton, a Nebraska horse thief, wanted to enter the race, and he asked Joe to be his guide since Joe knew the Nebraska countryside.  

After a few days, Doc fell behind from spending too much time in bars along the way, and so Joe Gillespie decided to finish the race on his own. He had two horses, Billy Shaffer and Billy Mack. Someone gave Billy Mack an extra bucket of oats along the way and foundered him, so Joe had to go on with only Billy Shaffer. Joe was six feet tall and 180 pounds, bigger than most of the other riders, so he would get off and run to give the horse some relief. When he got too tired to run, he held onto Billy Shaffer’s tail and slid along on his feet until his boot soles wore through. Joe won the race and the prize of a Colt 44 six-shooter, a new saddle and two hundred dollars. Joe and his wife stayed with Buffalo Bill’s show until it left the country to tour Europe. They decided not to travel overseas, and to move to Oklahoma where they settled in Fay.   

Billy Shaffer was always spoken of like one of the family, and Joe’s grandson, Harold Comer, who recorded his grandfather’s story, said that he was six or seven years old before he found out that Billy Shaffer was actually a horse. Billy is buried near Fay.

 

 

                           Joe Gillespie (L) and Billy Shaefer (Center).

Don

 

Don Gunning, age 10, 1925

 

 

This is a picture of Don Gunning, my father, at the age of 10. I don’t know where the picture was taken, but seeing the black eye and his rumpled hair, I’ve always imagined that it was taken after one of his fights to defend his friend Lloyd Zuck from the neighborhood bullies. The photo is one of my prize possessions.

Lloyd Zuck

Don told me a lot of stories about his childhood, and there wasn’t one of them that didn’t include Lloyd Zuck. He was my dad’s best friend.  

Lloyd flunked the first grade, but after my dad joined him the next year, he never flunked again. Don said it didn’t have anything to do with scholarship. Lloyd just decided that he and Don were meant to be together.  

Part of Lloyd’s attachment to Don was a need for protection. Lloyd was little and the other kids picked on him because he looked funny and spoke with a German accent.  Lloyd had suffered from cruel teasing during his first year in school, but at the beginning of his second year he met Don, who was not only bigger than the first graders, but the second graders as well.  

After that Lloyd was in hog heaven. He would search out some of the bullies who had tormented him during his first year and then taunt them into chasing him. Then he would run straight to Don, who would whip the whole lot, with Lloyd cheering him on, and adding a few kicks or punches of his own after Don had softened them up.  

I don’t have a picture of Lloyd as a boy, only as a young man, but you can see how he might have been teased as a child.

 

 

                                                 Lloyd Zuck Kelly  

 Lloyd’s real name was Lloyd Kelly, but he was raised by his grandparents and their name was Zuck, so he went by their name. The Zucks spoke German at home, so Lloyd could speak German too, after a fashion. When he was luring Don’s victims to their doom he would hurl insults at them in German. Don said the worst insult Lloyd knew was “du bis frich!” I took German in school and I never figured out what that meant. The closest I got to a translation was “you are a fruit.”  

Lloyd was ornery, and he was always getting into trouble. Maybe that’s what attracted Don to him, besides the need to protect him from the other kids. Lloyd and Don would call the Zoo and ask to speak to Mr. Fox. They would put sand on the railroad tracks on the hill into town and hide and watch while the wheels spun. They explored the neighborhood and learned to swim together, and then there were the skunks.  

Lloyd had a fascination for skunks. He liked to catch them and of course he would invariably get sprayed. His grandmother hated it. She would make him take off his clothes in the yard and then hose him down. She tried to get the smell out of his clothes by soaking them in tomato juice but they still stunk. Lloyd’s crowning achievement was the day he put a skunk in his locker and forced the principal to close down the school. The prank got him expelled for a few days, but it was worth it to Lloyd.  

 

Don felt sorry for Lloyd because he didn’t fit in. He not only spoke with an accent and had a big nose, his grandmother used a bowl to cut his hair so he always looked like Moe of the three stooges. One day Don decided to give him a real haircut. After all, his dad was a barber. Well, Don went to work with the scissors and started cutting, but he had trouble getting the two sides even. He’d cut a little off the longer side and then it would look too short so he’d cut more from the other side. Pretty soon Lloyd looked like a new army recruit. 

 

Don and Lloyd remained friends all through school, and when World War II broke out, Lloyd volunteered for the army. Don was married by that time, and had a son – me. He also worked for Boeing aircraft, the biggest supplier of bombers for the U.S. Air Force, so he got a deferment.  

Lloyd corresponded regularly with Don from the front. I still have a few of his letters. Here’s one he wrote from Sicily in August of 1943. All the letters were censored so it doesn’t say anything about combat, but he hints at it. He didn’t like the place, or the people: 

 

S. Sgt Lloyd C Kelly, HQ Co., 3^rd Btn, 26^th (Regiment?), 1^st Inf. Division

To Mrs. R. B Gunning

Dear Folks,

I received your letter dated Aug. 1. Sure glad to get it. We are still in Sicily, doing nothing now. They sure were doing plenty here at a time. Sure glad to hear Boyd is a captain and Don is doing OK. I bet J.E is sure big. By Don getting these letters I won’t have to write another. What kind of outfit is Boyd in?

They sure aren’t many left of the old school gang. I never have yet saw any one I knew.

This sure is a hot island. They sure are a lot of roomers here about going out of combat. But we had the same before. We all know we aren’t.

These people here are sure dumb. Boy are they dirty. And they aren’t a thing they have that is modern. Hope to hear from you soon. 

Kelly 

 

The next correspondence I have from Lloyd is a Christmas card from 1944: 

 

Dear Don: Sure hope this finds you OK this Christmas. Hope to hear from you soon. Will try to write you a letter as soon as I can. As ever. Lloyd 

 

Also among my dad’s keepsakes is a tiny clipping from the Enid newspaper. It is dated October 27, 1944:  

 

     Staff Sergeant Lloyd Kelly Zuck, grandson of Mrs. H. L. Zuck, former Enid resident, is a member of the First Infantry Division that with the Third Armored Division cracked the Seigfried line east of Aachen.

     Sergeant Zuck has fought with his division in Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy, and participated in the D-Day attack in France. He was wounded in France and awarded the Purple Heart, but is back in action in Germany.

 

The next letter my dad saved was written in March of 1945, shortly before Germany surrendered. The censors must have relaxed a little, either that or Lloyd had just learned better how to give a picture of what it was like for him without giving out tactical information.

 

Feb. 27, 45.

Dear Don and all:

          I received your letter and the picture. Sure was glad to get it. You sure do have a pretty boy (I was three). Tell your wife that I won’t say who he looks like ‘til I see her, and thank her for writing too. To get letters sure does mean a lot over here. Hope she keeps after you to write.

          We are still some place in Germany but where I am at I can see a river. You sure ought to see the towns. They sure aren’t much left, and when we do move in we take everything and toss it out the window. Some of them have good furniture. The place I am in now has new furniture all wrapped up with the tag on it. It went out the window. 3 of the rooms we could not use. The shells took care of that. We have to have a place to stay. So they are no room for the furniture. You can’t get a very good idea unless you are here. And you can’t tell too much either. We were in the woods before we came here.

          Will close for now. Sure hoping to hear from you all soon.

As ever, Lloyd  

 

With this letter Lloyd enclosed a Deutsch Mark, a French Frank and a Dutch Frank. He also enclosed some German propaganda:  

 

First there is a picture of a lonely wife with a list of U.S. servicemen killed in battle on the back of the picture, and a note claiming that the men would have survived if they had surrendered to the Germans.  

                                                 Nazi Propaganda

Next is a picture of an American soldier and his family with a message about how he probably won’t survive.

                                              Nazi Propaganda

 

Next there is a picture of a beautiful blonde, partly undressed, presumably the wife of a G. I., who is enjoying herself while her husband is risking his life overseas.

                                              Nazi Propaganda

 

So Don’s funny looking little friend Lloyd Zuck, who needed protection from bullies in grade school, became a hero during WWII. Not only was he involved in every major encounter of the Allied campaign in Europe, he accompanied his unit into Germany and participated in her final defeat. I expect Lloyd was especially valuable because of his knowledge of German, and he probably got a chance to use the insult he taught Don in grade school, “Du bis frich!” a few times.

 

Don got to see Lloyd after his return from Europe, but they lost touch after that. I hope Lloyd had a happy life. He was a remarkable person. His sense of humor and indomitable spirit certainly enriched my dad's life.

 

 

The Gunnings

My Grandfather was Robert Benjamin Gunning. He was born in Metcalf, Illinois, in 1888 to James E. and Linnie A. Cooper Gunning. James and Linnie brought their family to Oklahoma Territory in 1893 and made the land run into the Cherokee strip. Grandfather was five years old.  

My mother was right about the Gunnings. They were Yankees. My great grandfather James fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union. It is interesting that my other great grandfather who fought for the Confederacy was also named James. I don’t know anything about James Gunning’s service except that he thought a lot of his commanding officer, so much so that he named one of his sons after him – Captain - Captain Gunning . My dad knew him as Uncle Cap.  

I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know much about my grandfather’s family. They all lived close to Enid, Oklahoma, where the family settled after the Run of 1893. The family was close - there were five sons and a daughter. They used to get together, but I was never a part of that, because we spent most of our time with my mother’s side of the family.  

I’m not sure how my grandfather spent his early life. Uncle Jay says he has a picture of him with six guns strapped to his waist, so he must have needed to be ready to defend himself. The first thing I know about him after his parents' migration to Oklahoma Territory is that at the age of 22 he was working for the Frisco Railroad operating a pile driver, placing pilings for a railroad bridge near Fay, Oklahoma, where my grandmother’s family lived. I do have a picture of a pile driver that was taken close to Fay about that time.

                          Pile Driver near Fay, Oklahoma, early 1900's

 

Grandfather’s career as a bridge builder ended when his pile driver fell on him, crushing his leg in the process. When he recovered, he could no longer do construction work, so he served an apprenticeship as a barber in Hitchcock, Oklahoma, about 15 miles from Fay. That's when he met Grandmother, Jessie Boyd. They were married in 1912. My uncle Boyd was born in 1913 and my dad in 1915. My other two uncles, Everett and Jay were born in 1921 and 1928. There were no daughters. 

Footnote: NP GF 1968: The Enid Daily Eagle, Sept. 23, 1968. Robert Gunning Has
Been Clipping People 58 Years.

My grandparents moved to Enid in 1916, where Grandfather’s family lived, and where he opened a barber shop on the town square, but Grandmother still made frequent trips back home to Fay, and it was on one of those trips that my dad lost his thumb.  

You would never have known that my dad didn’t have a thumb unless you just happened to look down at his right hand. He was strong; he played football, baseball, basketbalI, and tennis. He was also a good bowler, and he threw the ball hard too. I was always fascinated by how he could pass a football. He could throw it a lot better than I could, although he couldn’t grip it. He just balanced it somehow on the palm of his hand. 

Anyway, my dad lost his thumb when he was three. My grandmother was visiting her parents, Grant and Laura Boyd, at the time. Don had wandered out to the windmill and he was watching the pump rod go up and down as it operated the piston to pump water. The pump rod had a hole in it for a bolt to lock it in place when the water tank was full, and little Don noticed that the hole was just about the size of his thumb. During a lull in the wind when pump rod had paused, Don poked his thumb through the hole. Just then the wind came up again, bringing the pump rod down, severing the end of Don’s thumb.

Don ran back to the house crying, and his mother and grandmother bandaged his thumb. Then they called the doctor. The old country doctor came out to the house, and after looking at Don’s thumb, decided to try and reattach its severed end. As the story goes, he borrowed a needle and thread from Don’s grandmother, Laura, and after putting some cobwebs on the wound the stop the bleeding, sewed the end of Don’s thumb back on. The doctor’s attempts at repair failed, so Don was left with an inch long stub instead of a thumb.  

                                                  Don, at Age Three

 

If you look closely, you can see that Don's right thumb is just a stub.

Back in those days it was normal for parents to live with their children as they got older, so just like Jim’s grandfather James Rosser, Don’s grandfather James Gunning also lived with his family. Don’s grandmother Linnie had died before he was born. James helped Don's  mother with her chores. Don told me how his grandfather always turned the crank of the washing machine when his mother did her washing.  

Like my mother’s grandfather, James Gunning told his grandchildren stories, and he entertained them in other ways too. Don was especially impressed by his grandfather’s marksmanship. He used to tell me how James used to sit out in the yard in a chair and shoot flies off the side of the garage with a B-B gun.

Good news! The Blogger picture brouser is fixed so I have uploaded the pictures for my previous two blogs.

 

The Boyds

My grandmother was a Boyd. I didn’t realize the importance of the Boyd family until I went to one of their family reunions. There were 900 people there. Actually I don’t think everyone there was a Boyd. The family had invited anyone who wanted to come. I think most of Dewey County was there.   

My grandmother’s father, Grant Alexander Boyd, came to Indian Territory from St. Joseph, Mo., with his parents, three brothers and a sister. Some of the family made the run of 1893 into the Cherokee Strip. Others came later and settled in the same area, along the banks of the South Canadian River. My great grandparents, Grant Alexander and Laura Cavey Boyd, came in the early 1890’s and bought a homestead from a man whose crops had failed the year before. All he wanted for his land was $35, the price of a train ticket home.  

The Boyd brothers were all tall, one almost seven feet from what I was told. I don’t know my great grandfather’s height, but you can get some idea from a picture of him standing next to his house with my great grandmother, Laura Cavey Boyd. You can see in the picture that the house was made of bricks. Grant and one of his neighbors, Cadie Jones, fired the bricks using sand from the nearby Canadian River. The old house was still standing in the early 1990’s, 100 years later.   

                                        Grant and Laura Boyd

Grant and Laura Boyd's farm was successful, and they also built and operated a hotel in the nearby town of Fay, Oklahoma. I don’t know much about my grandmother’s childhood, except that she attended school with some Indian children who camped across the river from her parents’ farm. She apparently had a low opinion of these Indians, which of course didn’t go over well with my mother, but one of her classmates, a Cheyenne Indian named David Oakeater, turned out pretty well. He got an education, was converted to Christianity and became an Episcopal minister, a bishop, and was later canonized by the Episcopal Church for his work among his people.  

Grant and Laura Boyd had five girls: Ruth, Jesse – my grandmother, Eva, Alta, Imogene, and two boys: Gene and Chester. Chester, known as Check, was just a little older than my dad, and they were childhood companions.  

                  Check (upper left), Don (center), Gene Boyd (right)
                                    

My great grandfather, Grant Boyd, must have been quite a guy. My dad told me a couple of stories about him. Dewey County, where the little town of Fay is located, is right in the heart of “tornado alley,” the portions of Kansas and Oklahoma where tornadoes are common. Don said that one day the sky clouded up, and the air got that typical warm moist feel to it that means a tornado is coming. Laura started rounding up the children to take them down into the storm shelter, but when beckoned for her husband to come inside, he told her he had decided to stay outside and watch.  

Laura listened to the noise of the wind and debris outside as the tornado passed over, ready to open the door if her husband called for help, but the tornado came and left without her hearing his call. When Laura and the children emerged from the shelter, Grant was sitting in his rocker on the porch, seemingly unperturbed, even though only a hundred feet away the  windmill had been turned into a pretzel. The tornado had been heading straight for the house, but  at the last moment it turned aside, sparing the house and Grandpa Boyd.  

The other story I know about Grandpa Boyd is his first experience with a motor car. It was about 1910 when his oldest son Gene bought the town’s first automobile. It was a Model T Ford, and it created quite a stir around Fay. When Gene brought it home Grandpa wanted to drive it himself, so Gene instructed him on how to steer and how to put it into gear. Then he got out and cranked the engine. When Grandpa heard the engine start, he put the car into gear and away he went.

Gene didn’t have a chance to get back into the car before Grandpa took off, and then it was too late. Grandpa didn’t know how to stop, so the car sped around the yard at 10 or 15 miles per hour once, then twice. Gene tried to yell instructions to Grandpa about how to stop, but Grandpa was a little hard of hearing. Finally as the car made a third pass by the house Gene made a flying leap onto the running board, then reached over and pulled back the
throttle to stop the car.    

 

 

                                          Model T Ford, 1910

 

 

Don

 

I haven’t written much about my father’s family. He died before I retired, and I didn't get to spend as much time with him as I did my mother. But even if he had lived I don’t think we would have spent our time talking about his life or his family like my mother and I did. We would probably have worked in the garden or watched a football game. My dad used to tell me stories abut his life, but it wasn't to preserve his legacy. He just did it to entertain me.

In order to avoid confusion, I need to tell you that I always called my parents by their first names, Don and Jim. It wasn’t from any lack of respect. I just called them what they called each other, and they never corrected me. My mother’s first name was James so everyone called her Jim - my dad actually called her Jimmy. It was only after I had grown up and left home that she started going by her more feminine middle name of Wenonah.  

Jim was a talker; she was outgoing; she was emotional and opinionated, but Don was just the opposite. He was always calm and reasonable. I never saw him angry, and I never heard him say anything that he would have wanted to take back later. Not many people can say that. Jim never apologized for anything she said either, although she probably should have. 
 

I drove my mother nuts because I wouldn’t confide in her. When I was a teenager she used to say, “When you were little you used to tell me everything, and now you won’t tell me anything.” Of course the reason that I didn’t confide in her was because I didn’t dare. If I told her what I was thinking, she would start to imagine the trouble my thoughts might get me into, and pretty soon she would talk herself into a frenzy. It didn’t take many frenzies to cure me of confiding in my mother. Jim considered it her duty to mold my character, and my normal teenage questioning of conventional wisdom scared her to death. 

On the other hand, I could tell Don anything, and I did. I used to tell him my problems, my hopes, my feelings. He once even warned me that maybe I shouldn’t tell him so much, because he wasn’t going to lie to my mother if she asked him what I said. That was a big disappointment to me because I liked talking to my dad. He wasn’t critical, even if he disagreed with me. He’d listen to what I had to say, and sometimes he’d tell me what he thought. I don’t ever remember him arguing with me though. He was willing to let me work things out for myself.  

I think Jim said it best. After Don died she said, “he was always on my side,” and that’s exactly the way I felt. He always made me feel like he was on my side too.  

Don came from a nice family. By that I mean that they were nice to each other. They didn’t fight like my mother’s family. I used to stay for a week or two with my dad’s parents in the summers. They were quiet and practical and easy going. My grandmother showed me how to make dill pickles, how to grow strawberries, and she showed me how to mend an electrical cord after I accidentally cut hers in two with the lawn mower.  

                                              Jesse Boyd Gunning 

Don told me a story once about his mother. He said she was riding with someone in a car – they didn’t have a car of their own at the time – and the car broke down. The men got out, looked under the hood, and decided that they could fix it, but they couldn’t find a pair of pliers. They looked under the seat and they looked in the trunk, but no pliers. Then my grandmother asked them what was the matter. When they told her they they were looking for some pliers she said: “ Well, why didn’t you say so before,” and she reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of pliers.  

I think what impressed me most about Grandmother was seeing her kill a chicken. One day she told me she was going to fix chicken for supper. I followed her as she went out to the chicken coop and grabbed a chicken. I watcherd her as she pinned the chicken to the ground by laying a board across its neck, and then, while she stood on both ends of the board, she grabbed the chicken’s feet and yanked it’s head off. That’s when I learned the meaning of the old saying, to “run around like a chicken with its head cut off.” The chicken’s body really did run around in circles, and its beak kept opening and closing like it was trying to crow. Then Grandmother boiled some water, scalded the chicken and pulled out its feathers. My uncle Jay told me that she used make extra money by killing and plucking chickens for the grocery store.   

My grandparents had a car when I visited them, and Grandmother did drive, but it made her nervous. Before we went anywhere she would tell me not to talk to her while she was driving, so she could concentrate. I was a jabberbox. 

                                          Robert Benjamin Gunning 

Grandfather was a barber, and he had a shop down town, just off the square. Enid, where my grandparents lived, had a town square, and on it was a little band stand. My grandfather played the trumpet in the Masonic band, and they performed there from time to time, but I never got to hear him. Some days I’d go down town and spend the day with my grandfather. I’d sit in his shop and read funny books. If the barbers weren’t busy they’d talk to me. I can remember them trying to explain to me how their razor strops worked. Grandfather’s partner made me a rocking chair out of a tin can. I still have it. It’s amazing.  

                                                Tin Can Rocker

Grandfather had fought in WWI, and he still had his helmet, you know the kind that looked kind of like an upside down cereal bowl, and he also had brought home an artillery shell. It was about a foot long and I’m sure it was live. I guess back in his day they weren’t particular about what soldiers brought home with them. Grandfather had been shot in the leg and you could still feel the buckshot under his skin. He was shot in a hunting accident, not in the War, but it was still impressive to me.  

My grandparents took me fishing once when I was little, and Grandmother told me to go to sleep early the night before because we would have to get up real early the next morning. I was so excited that I woke up before daylight. I went into my grandparents’ bedroom, woke up Grandmother and asked her if it was time to go yet. She told me not to worry, that we had time to sleep another couple of hours.

To be continued:

 PS: Sorry there are no pictures in this post, but Blogger won't allow me to upload pictures from my computer at this time. I'll fill in the pictures when they fix the problem.

 

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.