Grandma Barnett's Story

He, my Uncle Charley and Aunt Bell (where I got my middle name) had come from Virginia on the east coast to Nebraska after the Civil War. He was a boy when the big march from Atlanta to the sea and destroyed everything the south had, so they would give up and the war was over quicker. The Union soldiers even took flour from people’s houses and fed it to their horses. The people nearly starved until they gave up. That march produced the song ”Hurrah, Hurrah, we sang the Jubilee Lee. Hurrah, Hurrah, the flag that sets us free.” We sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea while we go marching through Georgia. And there were Union men who wept with joyous tears when they saw the honored flag they had not seen for years. The south lost their slaves (Negro) when the war was over. My Granddad never had any slaves but their neighbor did. When he told his slaves they were free, the slaves said, “Why Massi, where would I go. What would I do, How could I support my family? No, I will never leave you. If you will let me stay, I will work for you without pay, just as I always have and be happy here.”
But the country was growing and papa and Uncle Charley went west as many others did and landed in Nebraska. I can barely remember the hotel. It was a big building. It had a big upstairs where the family lived. Hotels fed the people that rented rooms so they hired a cook and a maid to keep things clean. I wanted to stay downstairs but they made me stay upstairs. If they had ‘special’ company my mother would dress with her finest church clothes and sit at the head of the table. It was a long way to any school, so my Dad hired a teacher to teach my older sister, Maude, and my 3 brothers. Nothing was modern then so we all had to go to ‘little peaked house’ out in the corner.
A real good doctor stayed at the hotel but he got to taking some of his medicine he carried in his ‘little black bag’ and became a dope head. One day several of the people at the hotel told Papa they could not get into the privy because it was locked inside. So Papa went out, took the door off the hinges and the doctor was inside sitting on the stool sound asleep. He had taken too much of his medicine. He was a wonderful man and doctor when he was not on dope, a pot or slop jar.
All the rooms had a chamber pot and they had to hire a chamber maid to empty them. I can’t remember how many rooms the hotel had. My younger sister Pearl (whom was named Pearl because of Cousin Pearl) was born at the hotel and maybe my sister, Ruby. Ruby died and was buried at Litchfield, Nebraska.
My mother’s mother lived in Litchfield. She was a widow woman. Her husband fought in the Civil War, so she drew a pension of $13.oo a month, but she owned her own home and lived in it. My mother’s folks were all Methodists. There were a lot of Methodists preachers in our ancestors. My Aunt Nettie said when she married Marion Hughes she thought she was marrying a preacher. She said he could preach a good sermon but couldn’t find what to do with his hands when standing in front of a church. They were the first to leave Nebraska and go to Oklahoma and settled in Stillwater, a college town. He was the one who said he had 7 kids, all girls, except 6. One day they (his son and his girlfriend) were visiting in the spring of the year. It was a real warm sunshiny day. Aunt Net, as we called her, got up, started outside and said, “I am going to have a little son.” Uncle Marion jumped up to and said, “Guess I had better go too. I was with you when our other sons came.” The oldest son signed his name J. Otto Hughes and he wrote several songs. His girlfriend was named Nellie and he wrote a song about them. “Wait until the sun shines, Nellie and clouds go drifting by. We shall be happy, Nellie, Don’t you cry. Walking down the lane together, with a baby mine, we shall be happy, Nellie, by and by.” When they were married Aunt Net gave them her big living room to live in.
I was staying with Aunt Net then (I was about 4 or 5). She wouldn’t let me go into their room. Anyway, Papa came and took me and Pearl to Ralston, Oklahoma where he had moved. One day we received a letter ‘edged in black’, a sigh of death in the family. Nellie had died having her baby, so they let Nellie’s sister raise the baby. When the baby grew up she married a Negro man and of course Otto threw a fit.
When Marion quit trying to preach he started writing books. I read a few of them, they were humorous. One of Uncle Marion’s books he wrote was, “Three years in Arkansas”. I read it when I was a teenager. He had taken a spring wagon, covered it, got a horse named Old Beck and started on his journey. When night came, he always stopped at a farm house to stay the night. He made sure there was someone there to help him put the cropper under Old Beck’s tail. A cropper is part of a harness and Beck wouldn’t stand still to have it put on. One place he stayed a pregnant lady started to have her baby. He had told them he was a doctor. So, they called in all the neighbor ladies and, of course, expected him to deliver it. This scared him, so he sized up the ladies, one was older; one was older and had more experience, so he always asked her what to do and if the ladies had a fuss, he would side with her. The baby finally came without any help. Another place he stopped was with an Indian woman. Her husband had planted a crop then left her to attend it. He went with others to go on a hunting trip. He stayed with her and helped her keep the home fires burning. After crops were harvested, we got word that her husband was coming back to her. She told him he would have to leave. So he loaded up his spring wagon, got her to help him put the cropper under Old Beck’s tail and left. She said she would write to him and tell him if it was a girl or boy, but she never did. Another place he stopped was a town and he rented a room for the night. There were so many bedbugs in the bed, he couldn’t sleep so he shook the blankets and made him a bed on the floor. He slept good until daylight, then he could see the bedbugs had found him and were coming for him marching 2 x 2. Other books of his were “Fun and Trouble”, The Damm Family” and I forget the rest (about 7 or 8). After Uncle Marion passed away, his boys moved to Texas, took his books and lost them. Nobody cold find them. My cousin in California said they guessed some publisher got hold of them and sold them for a big price. One of his 7 boys got in trouble and not wanting their mother to know it just disappeared for 10 years. Otto said he was sure he was in jail.
My family came from Nebraska by train to Oklahoma about 1906. Oklahoma became a state in 1907. I had never seen plumbing before and was afraid to sit on the stools between the cars. There was no bottom in the. Everything went out on the railroad tracks below. We had to wait a long time in some big town and they took us into a sort of restroom in depot where they had sinks and running water to clean us up. Papa bought a farm 2 ½ miles north of Stillwater. It had a big house and barn. Cousin Elsie and her younger brother would come to the farm and play. We had a big peach orchard and sold the peaches in town. We had a phone put in. It was a big box on the wall. We could call our cousins in Stillwater. Dad bought cows for the farm and a cream separator. We would take a 5 gallon can of cream when we went to town and take home buttermilk.. Sometimes we would to to Aunt Nets and eat dinner while in town. One day she had rhubarb pie and my brother Carl (just older than me) ate to much pie and it gave him diarrhea or scours as they called it them.
My mother passed away giving birth to a baby girl named Elsie Luella. My Aunt Net took the baby but she passed away when she was 2 years old and was buried in Stillwater Cemetery by our mother. Papa would go to cemetery and take me and sister Pearl and talk to her in the grave for a long time. My job was to keep Pearl from stepping on the graves.
There was an epidemic of small pox after mother died. We were quarantined but no one was very sick. My 2 older brothers had some scars on their face but the smaller ones only had a few spots on our arms. Nobody could leave the house and nobody could come in. We had a neighbor lady who would bring us food and leave it in the road. The house had to be disinfected by burning sulfur candles. Papa was afraid of them and we sleep in the barn one night on top of a bin of grain.
I was of school age and we were 2 ½ miles from school. Sometimes, by older brothers would carry me. There was an old fashioned well close to the road with a bucket on ropes to get the water up. There was a tin cup on a nail and we would stop there and get a drink when the weather was hot. My Dad bought me a new dress to wear to school.
Mother was still with us on our train ride from Nebraska. Me and Pearl stayed with Aunt Net after Papa sold the farm and moved to Ralston, Oklahoma. I went to school there and walked about 3 blocks. When we were at Aunt Nets, she took us to church every Sunday morning and at night. I liked Sunday School but didn’t like night church. I would always go to sleep in the seat. They would wake me up, put on my coat, and walk home. Aunt net carried Pearl. She went to the South Methodist and Uncle Marion went to the North Methodist. He probably preached there at times. They fussed about their churches. Once or twice, Aunt Net had prayer meeting at her house. They would kneel to pray and she let me kneel, too. It made me feel big.
Papa came and got us when school was out and took us to Ralston. We stayed with a neighbor lady while Papa and my brothers were in the field. We loved to stay with our neighbor because there were children across the street to play with. He farmed a place across the Arkansas River in Osage nation. After we moved to Ralston I went to Sunday School off and on until we moved into the country about ½ mile from the Arkansas River. We walked 2 ½ miles to school. We went to a Christian Church sometimes but not often. We caught a lot of fish from the river. We would set trout lines (a lot of lines tired to a long cord and stretched across the river). Sometimes the neighbors would get together and find big ones in a brush pile along the bank and catch them by hand. A neighbor would catch big terrapins (turtles) and cook them and make Turtle Soup. They had a soft shell on their back and the heads would poke out. They cut the head off and the turtles ran around and round on their feet for an hour or so then die. They cut the soft shell off, dressed and cooked it. I never cooked any.
We moved into a 3 room house and Papa and brothers farmed the school lease. Oklahoma had set aside a lot of places to get money to keep schools going, but was cheaper to rent. We raised hogs and sold them. We would butcher one each fall for our pork. No deer back then. My brothers would go rabbit and squirrel hunting. We raised lots of watermelons and cantaloupes. Sure Good. The ground was very rich because the water from the river would overflow in spring. They tried taking a wagon load across the river to sell them to Indians in Osage Nation, but not much luck.
Later we bought a place 1 mile west on Second Bottom, as they called it. I had only 2 miles to walk to school. I graduated high school in Ralston, Oklahoma. Saturday nights would often be a party or dance where all neighbors would go. I became housekeeper for my father and brothers until my sister, Pearl, graduated. She helped boys milk cows. She would put on overalls while milking. Women never wore pants then. I would help separate milk and we sold the cream in 5 gallon cans. Pawnee (a town) made a big freezing house where farmers could take their meat and vegetables to freeze them. You had to pay so much a month. People soon began to get their own refrigerators.
Before I was married, we moved to a place with a two story barn. It burned down one night. We had a big thunder storm. The barn was full of hay in the top hayloft, and lightning struck. It set the hay on fire. The neighbors gathered to help but nothing anyone could do. They had always kept the riding horse in the barn at night but the night before the fire brother Jim felt sorry for him and turned him into the pasture. “Praise the Lord,” he said. George drove some cows out of cow barn but it didn’t burn. Some chickens were roosting in barn where they fed on grain. George ran them out, too, but they wouldn’t stay out. They ran back and a few burned up.
(This would have been after she and Grandpa married.)Brother Jim went to Colorado. A family that had several boys that we grew up with had come out and he came back to Oklahoma on a visit and talked us into coming out to see the country. When Emma was 3 or 4 months old we went through edge of Kansa and stayed all night at a motel. Robert (my dad) was 3 years old. When we (got ready to leave) left next morning I laid a pillow (one Grandma Barnett had given me) in front of Emma so she wouldn’t roll off the bed. When John (my Grandpa) told me he was loaded and ready to go, I grabbed up baby and forgot the pillow. We didn’t stay long in Colorado so we so we tried to find it (pillow) as we came back through Wichita, Kansas, but couldn’t. Grandma was really mad. She had made the pillow by hand.
The next year we rented a place by the river again and farmed. Grandpa Barnett had passed away. John’s oldest brother, Jim, helped us farm it. One day Robert, about 4 years old, decided to go to the field where Jim was plowing and disappeared. We looked everywhere but couldn’t find him so John went to see if Jim had seen him. The wind had come up cold and Jim had put him on his lap and wrapped his coat around him so we couldn’t see him.
We came to (Cortez was where they settled) Colorado again after we ‘dried out’ in Oklahoma, failed some crops and after we had kids. Jeannette was born there. I went to the hospital (to have her. It was a tiny 4 bedroom hospital. We drove in from Cahone Mesa. I got to the hospital about 12:00 and at 12:30 she was born. I stayed in the hospital for 3 days. Mary Jean was sick while I was there with a stomach ailment. Doctor didn’t know what to call it. She couldn’t keep food on her stomach. The neighbors were real good. They brought her to my bed but she didn’t know me. She passed away late that evening. I went home and went to bed. Ertell brought her in our home in her casket. A neighbor made a beautiful dress and bonnet to bury her in. I was too weak to go to the funeral. (she is buried at cemetery in Cortez, CO) Gilbert was about 6 or 7 years old He was so happy to have me home. He would hop across the room and say, “Mama, where is Jeanie now? Is she in Heaven? What is heaven like? Will we see her again?” He did this until his dad made him shut up. A neighbor washed for Doris Jeannette and Emma and her Dad did it rest of time. Neighbors brought in food. We moved down into McElmo Canyon that spring after Mary Jean passed away.
We lived on Cahone Mesa one summer before she (Mary Jean) died across a field from Jim’s (John’s brother) place. We all enjoyed it, in a way, but got homesick for families in Oklahoma. Sheep men drove their herds down the road by our house and the kids would get up in the back end of our truck and watch them go by. They took them south in the fall and to mountains in the spring for pasture. One family with 6 kids had a bunch of sheep and lived close to Hovenweep year round. Their kids herded the sheep. They finally moved just south of us so their kids could go to Dripping Springs School where our kids went part of one winter. (this sounds as if it might have been either Paiute or Navajo Indians as Hovenweep and Dripping Springs are on a Indian reservation I think).
When I got pregnant with Jeannette we moved to Cortez for one winter so we would be close to a doctor.
John had built a privy down on the mesa with 4 poles. He ripped up gunny sacks for sides and doors and made a real low stool for LoraElla and Mary Jean. I would send Lora to toilet when Jeanie had to go but Jeanie wouldn’t come back and I would have to go get her.
Neighbors were very friendly as they wanted to get people settled there. The government made a big pond across the fence from our house so cattle and sheep men could water their animals. We never moved back down there after Jeannette was born.
The summer we were in McElmo, Pearl came out to see us. I had 5 kids and she had 6 and we were living in a 2 room house. We had 2 beds. The girls all slept on the floor in the kitchen and boys slept in truck bed. We carried water from McElmo Creek to use. There was a big rock close to the house. It had paths on it that the old Anasazi people had made. The kids played on it and Robert killed a big rattle snake there. He saved the rattlers and I kept them in my trunk for years. (I wish I had them, wonder what happened to them.) Dad wouldn’t let the kids play there anymore. They would take the cow to the creek where grass was real big and give her a drink and play in the water. It was real warm down there. Robert, Emma, Bill and Gilbert went to school at Battle Rock. Robert got in a fuss with the teacher and she sent him home. (The story from my dad, Robert, was the teacher would whip him for stuttering so he didn’t go back to school anymore. He was 12 or 13 then.) John said we had better move to Cortez for them to go to school. Robert stayed with Uncle Jim (John’s brother) that winter on Cahone Mesa but didn’t go to school. (He told us they trapped and hunted like old mountain men that winter while living in a small one room cabin in the mountains. My dad grew up and left home in a hurry being the oldest child of this family. I remember him saying they didn’t need his extra mouth to feed when he could make his own way.) He milked a cow they had and gave the milk to the neighbors.