Our first home was a log house. It was one and a half stories high with a bedroom upstairs, living room, bedroom and kitchen downstairs. We cleaned house and put new wallpaper on the living room and bedroom. I papered the kitchen with newspapers. I ordered our furniture from Montgomery Ward with money I had saved from teaching.
The bedroom set was a beautiful mahogany color wood with a large roll across the footboard. I was really happy. I tho’t it was the prettiest I had ever seen. It would cost a great deal now but just cost me $36.00. The other bed was white enamel with a gold rod across the head and foot. I had a rag carpet, but it was factory woven and very pretty. I bought beautiful lace curtains and a stove for my living room. There was a big clothes chest in the other bedroom which belonged to Aunt Liz.
For my kitchen I bought a new dining set (table and chairs, just ordinary), and a double safe, one with upper and lower shelves. Oh yes, I must not forget the stand table. It had glass marble in the feet or table legs. It was supposed to always stand in the center of the living room. They usually held a pretty lamp (coal oil) but with a pretty globe over the glass chimney. The only secondhand piece we had was an organ.
I had taken a few music lessons as a girl and was quite a lover of popular ballads which I learned to chord. Young people those days loved to gather in and sing—sometimes hymns, sometimes popular ballads or love songs. I loved my organ too much perhaps. It helped me to pass away lonely hours when my husband was away at work. I was reared in a large family and loneliness was unknown to me until after my marriage.
The one thing I was proudest of was my dinner set. I had a beautiful 100 piece dinner set, and my father and mother gave me a set of silverware. I bought linens, tablecloths, sheets etc. It all cost about $120.00. It cost me about $30.00 for my trouseau.
We started out with very little money, but my husband had a job hauling lumber and our expenses were very small. He bought a few hens, and we had a good garden that spring and raised some of the largest radishes I ever saw.
He [was hired at] a school that year up near Lodi called the Roland School, so in July he started teaching and left me home. I think I was almost frantic at the idea of being separated for we were terribly in love and there was a baby on the way too. My sister Ruth stayed with me for two months.
Then we decided to move up there and got a very poor little shack close to the school. The place was called “lizard Lick”. The pupils had to carry drinking water from our spring, and they would run in to see me for a few minutes at noon or recess. I was very happy.
On November the 14th our first baby arrived. It was a cold wintry day with some snow on the ground tho it was early for snow. Dr. Jones, then a young doctor, lived at Brunot and was about ten or twelve miles away, but was the closest doctor, so Leander had to ride a horse all the way to Brunot to tell him to come, as there were no telephones either.
The stork was kind enough to wait for the doctor, and all went well and a big boy arrived early in the morning, about 2:30 A.M., November 14, 1907. I knew very little about caring for a baby as I had had no experience since Fred was a baby, and I was only nine years old then. Again we called on sister Ruth, who had never married. She was staying with brother Will and his wife for they too had a new baby, born on Novemver 2nd.
Leander went to Patterson and got Ruth. She stayed with me two weeks and sort of got me started on how to care for my baby. (There were no baby books then). I nursed him on the breast and it was not as complicated as with bottles, etc. (Here is a good joke on your grandfather, children. He was very negligent about keeping a wood supply and so on the night of the baby’s birth he had to cut wood all night long. Ha!)
Leander wanted to name the baby Egbert after Bert Toney, but I didn’t like the Eg part, my brother-in-law, George Neely, had a brother named Bertice. I had never met the man, but I liked the name and we could still call him Bert. We named our boy Bertice Leander; Will and Ada named theirs Clyde William, and there’s just twelve days difference in their ages.
The school children loved to come in and see the new baby. There was one girl named Daisy Miller that I loved very much. I was only eighteen and she was sixteen. She visited us on Peach Tree after we moved back. She died very young, had only been married a short time. It really grieved me as I was very fond of her and we had kept up a correspondence.
The school was out in February and we moved back to Peach Tree when Bertice was three months old and getting very cute and sweet. Aunt Liz had moved in her house and left us no place to live so we had to move in with Grandpa and Grandma Henson. All summer we lived with them. Grandpa was very foolish over Bert and one time he said he wished he had six just like him. To the end of his life I think he was a little partial to Bert.
It was at this time we met Carol Montgomery again, whom I mentioned earlier, he was just a boy of seventeen and teaching his first term of school. He boarded with grandpa and grandma and of couse, we were there too. His school was out before very long tho as they didn’t last late in spring like they do now. Leander traded a team and wagon to his father for fifty-two acres of land. That sounds like a small amount, but it was cheap then and it was not very good soil. They couldn’t raise only hay or sorghum cane.
We built a new house and moved in September, 1908. Our new house had two nice big rooms at first and a long front porch. I was able to put two beds in the bedroom and one in the living room. Later they built a large kitchen and dining room combined in what they called a T-shaped. There was a porch on one side of the kitchen. Leander applied for several schools that spring, but there would be as many as twelve or thirteen applications for the same school, so he failed to get one.
He worked for his brother Lander some in the sawmill. He hauled logs and lumber. The work was hard and pay very small–about one dollar and fifty cents a day was the price paid then for saw mill work. The next year Leander decided to give up teaching altogether, and we continued to live on Peach Tree.
He bought a team of horses, one a beautiful white horse we called Old Prince. Many times I rode him the three miles to Camp Creek and carried Bertice in front of me. He got so he wouldn’t let me have the reins at all and would shake the reins and cluck to the horse as big as could be.
Old Prince was a dearly loved horse, but Leander had the trading fever. One time on a trip to Fredericktown he was taken in by some “Phoney Trader”. They traded him a beautiful mare for Old Prince, but when he got her home she had the “Heaves’, a horse disease. He was crazy with grief, went back to Fredericktown and secured a lawyer, and managed to get Old Prince back. He lost a good watch in the deal, but we were all happy again.
Another time, along about this time, we had a misunderstanding about our only cow. She was one his parents gave him when we were married. She was a good cow, and one of our neighbors wanted her really bad and kept after Leander to let him buy her. So one day he came and said Leander told him he would sell him the cow if I would consent. Well, I said, “It’s his cow, so if he wants to sell her, I won’t keep him from it.” lf He paid me thirty dollars and drove off our beautiful cow. I think I cried a little, and when Leander came and found out what had happened, he almost fainted for he said he tho’t under no circumstance would I consent to sell and had said that to get rid of the buyer.
However, there was nothing to be done, so after a sleepless night he lit out to hunt another cow. He found a good one, but had to pay forty dollars for her. That taught “friend” husband a lesson, he never did that kind of trading again. Well, we made very little money but were very happy.
Peach Tree was a lively place then. My father preached once a month. There was Sunday school every Sunday and often, revival meetings which would go on for weeks. There was never any time to be lonesome.
I spent a great deal of time at Grandpa and Grandma Henson’s, when Leander would be working. So many people visited them and there was always company there, just callers mostly but lots of them would stay to eat. I never saw anyone as generous with food and hospitality as Grandma and Grandpa. In their home was a sister of Grandma’s, Aunt Jane Woodson an old maid who never married, and in 1911 another sister, Aunt Margaret Clark came to live with them. She was a victim of asthma and was never able to work. She lived until 1922 and was a great care for Grandmother.
Aunt Jane could ] help cook, tho she had asthma too. She died with a stroke in 1919. Aunt Jane loved babies and children better than anyone I ever saw. She just worshipped Bertice and helped me a lot. She would take care of him while I drove to town.
Grandpa had a buggy and sometimes they would hitch “Old Daisy” up and it was at this time we met Carol Montgomery again, whom I mentioned earlier, he was just a boy of seventeen and teaching his first term of school. He boarded with grandpa and grandma and of couse, we were there too. His school was out before very long tho as they didn’t last late in spring like they do now. Leander traded a team and wagon to his father for fifty-two acres of land. That sounds like a small amount, but it was cheap then and it was not very good soil. They could raise only hay or sorghum cane.
I would drive into Piedmont to trade, taking eggs and garden vegetables to exchange for sugar, coffee and maybe a new dress. The fall of 1909, I boarded a school teacher and that helped out the family budget. This teacher’s name was Sherman Mann. He was a very nice boy. He lived at Piedmont and always went home weekends. He paid us nine dollars a month to board.
Our second child was born December 7th, 1910. Of course we wanted a girl (Bertice was three years old) but when a fine nine pound boy came, no one was disappointed. He had the blackest hair and eyes I ever saw and was a much bigger baby than Bertice had been.
Again sister Ruth came to help care for us. This time we lived on Peach Tree and Dr. Bert Toney was the doctor. We named our new boy Isaac Willis. Isaac was after my father and Willis was for a good friend of Leander’s named Willis Daffron. He was the son of a blacksmith and worked with his father in a shop in Piedmont. He came near being born on my father’s birthday as his was December the tenth.
Everything went well for two or three weeks, but the baby didn’t seem to gain. He cried a great deal and was never satisfied, seemed to be hungry, and then after nursing would scream with pain. Finally after four weeks, we got Dr. Bert out to see him. He said he was not digesting his food and had lost one pound and at four weeks only weighed eight pounds.
He decided my milk was not agreeing with him, so we put him on Horlick’s Malted Milk. He didn’t do any better on the bottle, so I finally went back to breast feeding. At three months he had gained to ten pounds and from then on made rapid gains and at six or eight months old was a normal baby. Aunt Liz Shoemake (Grandpa Henson’s sister) would look at Willis and say, “Bert Tony just made that boy over.”
My parents left the farm on Camp Creek in the fall of 1909, and I didn’t get to see them as often. My father bought another blacksmith shop at Brunot and went back to the work he loved. Father was a good farmer too, but his farm was rocky and poor and unproductive! He had sold the Patterson shop to Brother Will and his partner Dick Croy. Dick also bought the home at Patterson, as he had married a few years before.
Leander worked for his brother, Lander, and I kept boarders, raised chickens, sold eggs and garden vegetables. We got along fairly well. His brother-in-law wanted him to move us to Black River where he and Cora (Leander’s sister) and family had a sawmill. They had several children. So on March the 6th, 1913, we moved to the Carter Farm on Black River. I was five months pregnant at the time really didn’t want to go. We moved at one end of a long field and Cora and Bill Hutchens lived on the other end of the farm. We could see each other’s house but it was a half mile away.
Leander hired brother Charlie to drive one of his teams, and they hauled logs and lumber to Piedmont. They also put in a crop of corn in the big field, and we had a nice garden. After April it became hot and dry all through May and June there was no rain. The corn withered and the garden burned up.
On Thursday, June 26th, I began to have pains and Leander rode a horse to Piedmont, about six miles to get a doctor. Doctor Toney got there about 2 P.M. and at 4 P.M. a baby girl arrived. Hazel was the name I had liked so much as a little girl. I always had a doll, even a paper doll named Hazel, so we named her Hazel Lenore. Lenore was after my sister’s girl, Lenore Neely.
We couldn’t find a girl to stay with us, so the next day after she was born, Cora stayed and the next, Essie, her ten year old little girl stayed while Leander looked for someone to stay. Finally he sent for sister Ruth. She had stayed with me with both the boys. She had to come to Des Arc and catch the train, which arrived in Piedmont at 4 P.M. It was getting late in the evening on Saturday when she arrived. Sunday morning she washed and dressed the baby, put clean things on my bed and gave me a bath and clean gown.
Leander, Charlie, and Bertice had gone to Hutchins’ and Ruth started a fire to get dinner. She went to the spring to get water and as she turned to come back she noticed fire on top of the house and began to scream. I got out of bed and went to the window scared for fear Charlie was being killed, as we had one mule that couldn’t be ridden by anyone. I asked her what was the matter and she said, “The house is on fire!” Well I almost felt relieved as Charlie was safe. I told Ruth to give up yelling for help since the nearest house was the Hutchins and the men were down there playing their violins. I knew they couldn’t hear her, and she began to carry out what she could.
It was a very hot day, June 29, 1913, but the air was not stirring and the house burned very slowly at first. Ruth fixed a feather bed for us to sit on away from the house. I carried the baby and she carried Willis, two and a half years old, who had been asleep when the fire started. Sister Ruth carried out two trunks with our clothes and Brother Charlie’s trunk. She also brought our trunk with our good clothes which we had put away since there was no place to go in that back-woodsy country.
She carried out our bed clothes and emptied the dresser drawers. She brought out my new sewing machine and set it over the fence. Soon the fire got going strong, and I begged and pleaded with her not to go in anymore. She kept on, but finally saw that the roof would fall soon. She had been out only minutes when the roof caved in, and I saw the flames come down on my lovely organ. (I had moved the organ from Peach Tree. Often young people there had gathered in our home and asked me to play. I knew several songs that were popular at that time—” The Steamship Titanic”, “The Blinj’C’1ild”, “Georgia Rose”, “Kitty Well”, and several others).
About this time, my sister-in-law was getting ready to fix dinner and looked out the kitchen window and saw our house on fire. They all came running through the field. When Leander saw we were all safe, he fell down beside us trembling and crying. There was a chair in the yard that Ruth failed to get far enough away. It caught on fire, and little Willis, his eyes big with wonder, said, “Mommy, we won’t have any chairs.”
We never grieved over what we had lost, altho many things were precious to me. We just praised God that He had spared us all. Perhaps I could call this a burning experience, but I’d rather call it “Our Most, Most Thankful Moment”. They took us in a wagon to Hutchins’s house where we stayed until I was able to go back to our home on Peach Tree. We had left a few things there, and people gave us enough to begin again.
The fall of 1913, Frank Duncan taught the Peach Tree school and boarded with us for eight dollars a month. I remember how he would rock and sing to baby Hazel who was six months old. The song he sang most often was “Babe in the Woods”. She really loved it and would go right to sleep.
Frank taught at Peach Tree for two years, and in 1915 my brother Fred taught there and boarded with us for eleven dollars a month. He was only sixteen but was a large boy for his age. The next year he was elected teacher again and taught until February. Then he decided to go to Greenville to finish his high schooling. Brother Millard, who was about twenty, was also teaching, but his school was out so he finished the term for Fred.
Another baby was born March 30, 1916. We named her Helen May. I tho’t the name Helen matched Hazel, and the May part is my middle name. In 1919 our mail carrier Mr. Gibbs talked to Leander about trying to get a rural carrier’s job. There were three routes out of Piedmont. Mr. Rhodes had route 1, Bill Farr had route 2, and Mr. Gibbs had route 3. It happened that Bill Farr died and there was a need for a carrier.
Leander and Charlie Richter went to Poplar Bluff to take the examination for rural mail carrier. Both men passed the examination, but Charlie made the highest grade, so he took over Bill Farr’s route 2. Some time later Mr. Rhodes passed away and route 1 was given to Charlie Richter and Leander got route 2. It was the spring of 1919. We already had our garden planted, and it was coming up, but we left the farm and moved to Piedmont.
Leander began carrying the mail immediately, starting in a mail buggy he bought. There were only a few cars in Piedmont at that time. We lived on Water Street, now called First Street. My youngest child, Mary Viola, was born there on May 15th.
After we moved we only lived there three or four weeks as wehad cows and chickens, and Leander wanted to get more room for his horses. We found an empty house in Beckville, and moved there. Mrs. Farr was our neighbor, and she had children near the ages of my children except for the baby. She and the Gibbs family were our neighbors.
Beckville was almost a little town. It had quite a number of homes there and still does. We lived there only one year. The house was cold, so on January I, 1920, we moved to another house about a mile away. We rented from Flat Melton, but in a short time he sold it to Grover Bowles. We paid $10.00 a month. Then Grover sold the place, and we had to move again. I hunted allover, but not a place could be found. The owners kept bugging us to get out, so we finally went back to Peach Tree and stored our furniture until we could find a house in town.
On March 21st we moved into what we called the Kelly place. It was a nice house of six rooms (now Eva Seals’s house). We lived there until the fall of 1922 when Leander made a trade with Mr. Bartch. I think he paid some extra to Mr. Bartch. We now had a small house, but it was ours. It wasn’t long until Leander had a dining room and kitchen built on. Then we had a six-room house; large living room, dining room kitchen, three bedrooms,’ and back porch. A long front porch was done the years of 1923 and 1924.
We moved out there on October 22, 1922 Leander carried the mail for thirty years and then retired. Everyone on his route loved him. He would do shopping for them until the government wouldn’t allow it any more. He continued to carry the mail after he had pneumonia and developed a heart condition.
On August 29, 1959, he passed away in his sleep. I lived with Hazel a while, and then Mary Short, a widow and good friend, offered to stay with me. She stayed six months or more, and then I hired girls to stay with me. Later my brother Will came and stayed with me almost nine years. Then I had a heart attack and was in the Poplar Bluff Hospital for a week or two. My daughters found a small house in south town for him and he lived there several years. I had to keep a hired girl most of the time as I wasn’t strong after so much sickness.
Will had to go to the nursing home and died there at the age of ninety-two. In 1973 I sold my home and lived in a small house near my son-in-law and daughter, Ralph and Hazel. The house was small but very nice. I still kept a girl or woman with me and paid them wages. We got along fine until I became ill and had to live in my daughter’s home and sometimes with others. I sold part of my furniture and part is still at Hazel’s. My bedroom set, stand table, and rocker are still in her home. I lived around with all the children but finally became ill and was in ST. Luke’s Hospital when I was ninety-three years old.
From there I was put in a beautiful nursing home called “Clayton on the Green”. It was named for Clayton Road. One day after living here three weeks, I was asked by a photographer and tv outfit to be interviewed by this woman, and she put it on TV. I have been called the “Star of Clayton on the Green”. Many people saw me on TV. I know it was an honor, but today I feel I am the same person I always was. I have had many sad days in my life. Losing my husband and my precious granddaughter Nancy the same year was the hardest part of my life, although the Blessed Lord helped me through it all.
Now in my oId age of ninety-three, I am still trusting in the Blessed Lord to take me Home.
This autobiography was compiled from several different accounts written at different times. The last part was dated October 8th, 1982. Estella moved to the Clark’s Nursing Home in Piedmont, Missou in September, 1983. She was well satisfied and happy close to home and was dearly loved by the staff at the home as well as her friends and family. She died peacefully on July 4, 1985, at the age of ninety-six years and fourteen days. She was laid to rest between her husband and grarldaughter in the Masonic Cemetery in Piedmont, Missouri.
Compiled and edited by granddaughters Anita Church Stodieck Margaret Henson King
