My parents, Daniel and Rosa Pickett were married in 1875 near Winchester, Indiana. He was the son of Benjamin and Nancy Smith Pickett. His mother died soon after he was born and her mother took him into her home where he grew up. My mother (Rosa) was the daughter of Job and Serena (Cox) Hinshaw. They and other relatives were Quakers and attended the Jericho meeting. Some of the younger people, including my parents, did not care for the old-fashioned ways of conducting services and built a brick church, across the road from where the old "white" church stood, and worshipped in a more progressive style. The older ones continued in the old church for many years. The Jericho Friends Church of today is where the new one was built and the cemetery is in the same area.
Mother was the third of 8 children born to Job and Serena Cox Hinshaw:
My father (Daniel) had three older brothers; James, Jesse and Caleb. His father (Benjamin) married again (to Martha Lawrence on 8/27/1857) and they had two daughters, Winnie, who married Painter, and Rena (Serena) , who married Hiram Pickett; and two sons, Cyrus L., and Albert. Cyrus and his wife Leta (Major) were both medical missionaries in the Philippines for 25 years. Albert never married.
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In 1876 a daughter, Effie was born to my parents and the next year twin girls, Flora Alta and Laura Alma, vere born. Then, as some of Father's relatives and Uncle John Smith had come to Kansas, my parents came to Halstead. Later they went west and took a claim in Hodgeman County, Kansas, living in a sod house. But as there were no crops that year, they gave up the claim and returned to Halstead. In 1887 they moved to Rose Hill, with the twins and two other children, Serena Estella and Nathan Charles. Effie was left behind in the Fairview cemetery, having died at the age of two. They ran a store in Rose Hill and Grace was born. Father bought 60 acres two miles east of Rose Hill. The Friends were holding meetings in the shed of some sort, till Father gave them two acres on the corner of the section and they built a meeting-house on that farm. I was born there in 1891.
In 1894 Father went to Macksville as pastor of the Friends meeting. That was after my brother Ernest was born. Times were hard, with no crops there, so in 1896 we moved back to Rose Hill. Meanwhile my sister Alta had married Josey Barker on Christmas, 1894, and they had been farming and living on our Place.
I remember my 4th birthday at Macksville as my parents took me to the store and bought me a new First Reader. The storekeeper also gave me a Bunny Rabbit book. Books were few, at least children's books, but I remember a story book Grace had that I almost knew by heart. I think Harold's still have that book. And Nate had a book of Bible stories (without pictures) that I read over and over. It was called Precept upon Precept. I think I got a book on my 5th birtliday. My folks bought us a few paperback books from Mooday Library. Mine was "Jessica's Mother". Grace's was "Whiter Than Snow" and "Little Dot". Later I got "Through the Looking Glass" and Grace got Hawthorn's "Wonder Book".
We
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also had a book of fairy tales. We did borrow some books from neighbor children and, of course, we had our readers.
I started to school in the spring after I was five. I only went a few weeks. I could read already, but the books were different. My first three teachers were men. The school district was large, by 1899 there were 75 pupils, so they divided the district and built a school-house near the town, one mile west of the old school and that part of the district went there. That was in 1900.
In the fall of 1901 Father accepted the call to pastor the church. in Argonia, about 60 miles from Rose Hill. Our furniture was put in a railroad car. Mama and we three younger ones went on the train. Papa had left earlier with our trusted horse and buggy, leading two Jersey cows. When our furniture arrived, we moved into the parsonage, a small four-room house.
Nate had married before we left and was left to run the farm. Rena had married New Year's Day, 1900, and was living east of us. Their son, Newell, was born Jan. 11, 1901,. Alta had died in childbirth, March, 1898, and Josey a year later. Alma died in December of the same year.
The school at Argonia was different from the country schools. I enrolled in the 5th grade, but was soon put in the 6th, which was plenty easy. I had learned to play the five-octave melodion, from an instruction book Rena had had, and she had shown me where the notes were found. There was an organ in the church there, which we didn't have at Rose Hill. They got one a year or two later. Also a paid pastor. Papa gave them another acre of land for a parsonage.
Papa's salary at Argonia was $300 per year, but he supplemented it by working in a store. Later he ran a feed store. The members gave us a "pounding" (people brought a pound of some staple foodstuff) to help with groceries, besides giving fruit and other things in season. We had a garden and there were several cherry trees
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and some grapes on our lot.
In spite of the small house, we had company. When there were visiting ministers, we entertained them, Grace and I giving up our bedroom and sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Our old melodeon gave out and papa went to Wichita and got an organ. I think he paid $12 for it. By that time Grace and I, too, could play for Sunday School and church. Many evenings we gathered around the melodeon or organ and sang. Grace or I playing and singing alto while the others sang soprano. Papa sang bass or tenor and a young man who was interested in Grace for a time was a good tenor singer. Mother didn't sing at all. In her girlhood home there was no singing, nor was there any in the church.
For other entertainment we had games; dominoes, checkers, lotto, Authors, tiddely winks, and later Flinch. We had "socials", Christian Endeavor and others.
Papa subscribed [to] the "Youth's Companion" for me when I was about nine and I always read all of that until I went away to school. It was good, wholesome reading and had many serials. The ones I remembered best were those of Grace S. Richmond; Red Pepper, Second Violin, Etc. We also had the Christian Endeavor World, which ran a lot of Grace Livingston Hill's serials.
We didn't buy many books, but a neighbor had quite a collection and I read E. P. Roe's novels, East Lynne, those of Mary J. Holmes, etc. We didn't have libraries in the schools, but there was a circulating library in the drug store and we could get from that by paying ten cents a month. I think that was where I met Lorna Doone, etc.
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The school at Argonia when we went there, had four rooms. The Primary was grades one through four; the intermediate, five, six, and seven; upstairs was the eighth with three years of high school and two teachers. The year I was in the 8th, a series of epidemics broke out; measles, mumps, scarlet fever and even small pox. So they closed the school in March. However, there was a new arrangement and they started a Township High School.
We who were in the 8th grade were entered in high school. The course included Latin and Algebra, which was like Greek to a 12 year old who had not even had the subjects supposed to have been had in the 8th, such as Civics, Kansas history and the last of the Arithmetic, as those had been 9th grade subjects there.
My health wasn't good and they took me to a doctor my second week of high school. He said to keep me out of school a year. But after a few weeks I was better and started back to school, but in the 8th grade. They had added two more rooms and a teacher for the 7th and 8th. The next year when I started to school, the work was easy. Will Poundstone was the teacher and I got along fine, with Latin, Algebra and English and Physical Geography.
Among the pleasures of childhood days at Argonia was the companionship of our horse, Lucy, who was my age and whom we had raised from babyhood. She was white and red, more white than red, and gentle as a kitten. Ernest and I would drive her anywhere we wished. We usually took a neighbor girl, Eva Gant, and in warm weather went to the creek, Chikaskia. It was a quiet place, with clear water with rock bottom or sand, not deep, and we played in the water many hours.
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Father bought a surrey with fringe on top. Lucy could pull it for short distances but if we wanted to drive to Rose Hill, as we did once a year, another horse was borrowed to go with her. We never tried to drive it in one day (60 miles), but stopped at homes of friends at Greencastle, a Friends community east of Conway Springs. One summer when Ernest and I had spent some time with Nate's and Rena's, Nate put a cover on his wagon and we drove back to Argonia, camping on the way, sleeping in the wagon.
After 5 years there, Father (Daniel) decided to move back to the farm. His aunt Rachel Smith [mother was Nancy Smith, so Rachel was her sister], who had never married and who helped care for him at his grandmother's, was getting too old to live alone in her home at Halstead and he wanted to take her into our home. He needed more room, and the house on the farm was old, so he built a new house except for two rooms of the old house. Nate had bought a house and farm of his own. Then Ernest was old enough to help on the farm.
There was no high school at Rose Hill then. After finishing the rural schools, pupils had to go to Wichita or Douglas. I had had one year of high school and Grace two. But I didn't like the idea of going away among strangers, so I begged them to let me stay at Argonia. So they rented a room from Charley Haworth's and fixed it up for "light housekeeping". I was happy there--but Grace wasn't, so she went home and went to the rural school part of the winter, reviewing the common branches preparatory to teaching. She taught the next winter, after attending the State Normal at Emporia.
The folks planned to send me to Friends University the next year, as two of my girl friends were ready to go, too. Hulda Cox was persuaded to go and "mother" us, as she had gone there and was older than we 15-year-olds, Bessie Stanly, Ada Hodgin and I. We rented two rooms
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in Professor Trudbood's home and furnished them ourselves. One, the bedroom, had two double beds and our trunks. The other had a Topsy stove for heating and cooking, though a small gasoline stove was for cooking when we didn't need heat. We had a small table, and chairs. We had no modern conveniences, no running water.
By that time consolidated schools were being introduced, so at Rose Fill they united five districts and had school in Rose Hill. A building could not be finished for the first year, so they rented an old Hall and made three rooms downstairs for the grades. The upper room was divided by a thin curtain so two classes could be heard at the same time. There were four who had been going to Wichita and were ready for their senior year, but only two of us, Merle Moone and myself, who wanted to graduate at such a small school. There were three juniors, six sophomores, and four freshmen that year. Commencement exercises were held in the Methodist Church. President Stanley of Friends University gave the commencement address, after Merle and I had given our "orations". His subject was "Problems of Democracy" and mine was "It is More Blessed to Give than to Receive".
After graduation, I spent the month of June attending a Normal Institute at El Dorado, the county seat. I boarded with a lovely old couple whom my father had known and had written to see if they would take me in. At the close of the institute, I took the required examination and was given a third grade county certificate. That summer, also, as Grace, who had been teaching had bought a new piano, I took my first piano lessons, from Mrs. Orley Hull--driving the three miles to her house and stopping on the way to give an organ lesson to Cora Chance.
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That fall I started teaching at a country school, Pleasant Center, almost three miles north of our home. I had about 20 pupils. I drove one of the horses, taking my lunch and feed for the horse. When it rained and the roads were muddy, or when it was cold and they were frozen hard and rough, it was a long drive. At the close of school, the parents brought their dinners for a surprise, having invited Grace's school, Star, which was about four miles northeast, to join us. It was not quite a surprise as I had guessed it from some of the pupil's actions.
Nate's son, Caryl, was born that day and I spent the next week or more, keeping house for them.
The next fall, 1910, I entered Friends University, as a Freshman. I had saved enough from my $45 a month, for seven months, to pay for my way for a year. I rented a small room for $3 a month, bought a little necessary furniture, and lived frugally, but comfortably, that year alone. To get to Wichita we had to be taken eleven miles to Derby to get a train, on Sunday afternoon. If it was too bad for that drive, we could get a train from Rose Hill to Augusta o Monday, (it didn't run on Sunday.), and, get a train from there to Wichita in the afternoon, missing that day's school.
I studied English, German and Bible history my freshman year, was a member of the Prohibition League and Y.W.C.A. I took a few piano lessons that winter, but gave it up because of lack of opportunity to practice.
Since I didn't have money for another year in college, I remained in Wichita through June, attending the Sedgwick county Normal Institute. This gave me a second grade certificate good for two years, but I didn't get a school to teach. But I had a big brother who said he would loan me the money for another year of college. I gave several music lessons during the summer and went back to F.U. This time taking the required subjects for a state teacher's certificate. Graduated from the School of Pedagogy, I then obtained a position in the Augusta Public schools.
During that second year in college I roomed with Bessie Stanly at her aunt's home south of the main building. That year we had running water and a bath across the hall.
At Augusta I taught the 5th grade, the largest grade in school and no doubt the hardest. I boarded in a home four or five blocks from, the school. The couple with whom I lived had a girl about my age who also taught there. She had graduated in music at southwestern college in Winfield and I took piano lessons from her. I also suffered some with inflammatory rheumatism, which caused me to miss a few days. But since I was getting $55 a month and only had to pay $16 for Board, I was able to repay Nate by the first of March.
The next year I got a school close to home, Diamond, about two miles south and east of the church. I think I had about 35 pupils that year and drew $55 per month.
The previous summer I had met a young man from Oklahoma who was working in the neighborhood. We started dating in June and kept it up until the next June, when we were married at home by my father, June 17th, 1914.
As there was no one living in the church parsonage, we rented that and lived there a few months, then moved to an old rock house near the Walnut river, where we spent the winter. In the spring we rented a farm west of Augusta. It was there that Doris was born. The next fall we moved in to Augusta and Jim drove a team for an oil company.
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The next fall, as Jim's parents had moved to the Coyle Ranch west of Marietta, Oklahoma, at Pike, they wanted us to come down there, and we did, in October, 1916. We stayed with them in the ranch house for awhile, but there was a log cabin on the part of the farm Jim was to have, and we were to have that. At first sight, I thought I could not possibly live in such a place, but after the cracks in the logs were chinked with cement, some new doors and windows, including screens were added, we made it quite cozy. I had brought some carpet, my piano, bookcase with books, and other things till it was better than many had.
In February the primary teacher of the local school, a young girl, resigned, and the school board, having heard I was teacher, sent and asked if I would take the job. I did, leaving Doris with her grandmother. They paid me $50 a month, but at the close of the first month the schoolhouse burned down, so there was no more school that year.
The county superintendent had granted me a temporary certificate. Later I went to Marietta and took the regular county examination, after studying Oklahoma history and elementary home economics, which I had never had, nor taught.
Later I went to Simon and was engaged as Principal of the two room school there. School was in an old hall building, and I taught upstairs, grades 4 through 8. However, the local girl the board had hired for the primary was young, and the county superintendent would not grant her a certificate. So a young lady was sent out, and since the two room teacherage was for the teachers, I was supposed to take her in. I let her have our bed in the living room and we slept on a couch in the kitchen. We had no conveniences, and after two weeks she did not come back. So they said I would just have to teach them all. There
were more than a hundred enrolled, but I never had more than 75 at one time. They had to walk so far, and when the weather was bad, stayed at home. One bad day I had only one pupil, Jo King, and I took her to the teacherage instead of heating the schoolhouse.
The following year they hired a teacher for the lower grades, so I had it easier. That fall, 1918, all teachers were required to go to Marietta for a week to learn the rudiments of "soldiering" so we could teach it to our pupils. We had only four days of training, as the "flu" was getting rampant. Then, as the war ended, so did the drilling of future soldiers.
They had built a new school house that winter, but we did not move into it, except for the closing exercises. The men brought a wagon and moved my piano up there for the event. A piano was a novelty there, as was anyone who could play one.
They wanted me to stay the next year, but as Eloise had announced her intention of joining us, we moved to Wilson, where she was born Sept. 4, 1919. Jim got a job driving a truck, and we rented a two-room house with a hydrant at the back door. As houses were so scarce, we let Gene Holder, Mary and Francis stay with us till they could build one. They slept on a couch in the kitchen. Later Gorris and Ella King and Arcy stayed with us till they got a house.
After two years at Wilson, we moved to Healdton, and Lillian was born that fall, Sept. 17, 1921. Jim's work there came to an end and we stayed at Pawnee for awhile before going on to Kansas.
They wanted me to teach a rural school near where we lived, so I went to the county seat, Oswego, and got a certificate and taught that year, all the grades, about 40 pupils. I kept a woman to care for the little girls.
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My mother had died in June, 1915. They were living in Stark, Kansas, where my father was pastor. He stayed there another year, then went to Vera, Oklahoma. He was still pastor there when he married Sadie Nichols, in 1919. Grace had married in 1915 and she and Oscar were preaching in Kansas. They had both graduated from Cleveland Bible Institute. They lost their first boy in 1916. While we were living near Parsons, we visited Papa and Sadie in Independence, and also at Miami, Oklahoma, where they were pastors.
They had made a trip to Friendswood, Texas, one summer, and he thought it an ideal place to live. As Doris was having a severe case of rhinitis and the doctor had recommended a coastal climate, we decided to go down there when school was out.
We arrived there in May, 1925, and stayed in a house near Wade McGinnis', and Jim worked for him. But they had no teacher for the upper grades, so hired me, on condition that I get a Texas certificate, which I did, by passing the necessary exams in 20 subjects. We moved into a five room teacherage across from the fig factory. I only had about 12 pupils. Eloise and Lillian were not old enough for school that year, so I left them with a neighbor, or had someone stay with them.
During the summer I worked in the factory, leaving Doris to care for the younger girls. They still had school in the Academy, above the church for those of high school age.
The third year we were there, Leslie was to arrive in June, 1928, so I resigned in March. Jim had bought a house and acreage out of town, so we moved out there, where Leslie was born.
That summer, since I couldn't teach, they elected me as a school trustee. The Academy was discontinued, and we hired a girl to teach
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home economics, etc, in the Academy building. Doris graduated that year from the 7th grade.
Since we had no income while the fig trees that had been set out were maturing, we had to give up that place and we decided to move back to Oklahoma. We came to the Niblack neighborhood in 1929. While we were in Texas, [Rena's husband] John Wells died and Rena and Nina came down and spent some weeks with us. That was in 1927.
We lived in the Niblack district till 1931, when we moved to Rocky Point, where I taught a year, after passing a county exam, which was the last one given, I believe. After that we moved to Lone Grove. While there, my father died, in 1933. Jim's father had died a year or more before that. Doris graduated from high school in Lone Grove in 1934. That fall she went to Kansas to stay with my stepmother [Sadie], and we moved to Ardmore. Jim was working in the Civilian Conservation Corp (C.C.C.) camp. Sylvia was born in 1935 in Ardmore. We moved to the country the next spring and back to the Niblack community in 1937. Eloise and Lillian went to Dickson high school. Both graduated in 1939. Doris had gone to Cameron College one semester, then worked at various places. In 1939 the girls went to Galveston to work for Mr. McReynold's daughter in the photo business. We went down after them in the fall. Then on Sept. 9, Eloise and Bill came in and told me they were married. They had kept company for 3 years. A year later Carol was born. Then Doris and Brownie were married that year and in 1941 their boy vas born. Jim's health was bad and that fall they took him to the Sanitarium at Talihina. James Calvin died in December and was buried the day Pearl Harbor was fired on.
Jim was in the hospital 6 months. Bill and Eloise had gone to Kansas to work for my brother, Nate, and lived in a little house there.
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After Jim came home, we decided to go to Kansas, too. Our household goods were piled in a truck. We rented an apartment in Ross Hill, and Leslie and I worked. Doris and Brownie got work there, too, and we were all there all summer. Lillian worked in Wichita. Jim was enough better that he went back to Ardmore and found I could get a job teaching on a war- emergency certificate so we went back and I taught the 7th grade and 8th grade in Orr. Leslie finished the 8th grade that year. That winter Bill and Eloise went to California to work. Ronnie was a baby. Then Doris and Brownie went out there, too. Lillian was married before Brownie's left.
We moved to the Niblack teacherage in the summer of 1943 as they wanted me to teach there. I went for a two-week workshop at Durant, then found I could not teach again on my emergency certificate, but had to take 8 hours each year. So I did that, four hours by extensi-on and enrolled for two more, which with my two hours of workshop made the eight. Then I had to have 8 hours each year until I got my B.S. degree in 1949.
I taught all the grades at Niblack and started the hot lunch program which the government was sponsoring. I only charged them 5 cents each, and the government gave 7 cents and several commodities. For the first two years I did the cooking, which mostly consisted of a big kettle of beans or stew which I kept on the stove in the school room. For dessert we might have cocoa and graham crackers or jello, or cake. After two years we decided to hire a cook, and I charged the children 10 cents each, paying Mrs. Parker a dollar a day to take that work.
The teacherage burned down in January, 1945, so we moved into the vacant room of the schoolhouse, where we were comfortable. They partitioned and made two rooms, and we curtained the back part for the bed rooms.
In 1944 we went to California and spent some weeks with Bill's and Brownie's. They were working on a fruit ranch, and Leslie and Jim worked some, too. We went back in the summer of 1945 and Bill's came home with us and stayed. Brownie's came the next summer.
By 1947 Springdale wanted me to come there as their teacher. They were sending the 7th and 8th grades to Dickson, so I had only the 6 grades. There were 3 rooms in the building, so we converted one into a dining room and kitchen, for school lunch. Doris did the cooking. The next year we kept the 7th grade there, as they didn't want to go to Dickson. That enabled us to hire another teacher for the following year, and Ethel White taught the primary grades. Sylvia was ready for the 8th grade when we moved to Springdale, so went to Dickson for that grade and her four years of high school.
Carol had gone to school at Niblack her first year, then they transferred her to Springdale. In the fall of 1948, Bill and Eloise had gone to Ft. Supply, but the children stayed with us awhile and Ron started to school.
In the summer of 1950, Jim's health was failing. He went to bed in November, and was never able to be up again. As Doris was cooking for the school, they fixed a buzzer from his bed to the school house so he could call when he needed anything. He had bought 20 acres off the road to the old Niblack schoolhouse, and fenced it in and dug a well, then built a small building of concrete blocks, which was to be used later as a garage. Doris and Brownie lived in it, then had started building a house. Before school was out in 1951, I found I could not continue teaching there with Jim sick. I could have sent him to a sanitarium, but as the doctor didn't give him but a few months to live, we decided to keep him at home, and Brownie, with help, finished the house so we could move into it by July.
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Later, as he needed quiet, we moved him into the little house. He died there the last of November, 1951.
Lillian and Bill were living in Visalia, California, and as they were needing substitute teachers there, I went out there, got a California certificate after some delay, but was not needed, so came back home, and got a position as primary teacher at a little school South of Madill, called Lark. Paul Michael and his wife were living in the teacherage but there was a small room at the school house that had served as a kitchen, and I moved enough down there to live in it. Just the last week of summer school I fell, going down the school steps and broke my ankle. They took me to the hospital in Madill, and then to a bone specialist in Ardmore where they operated and put my leg in a cast. I went home to Doris's, in a week, then learned to walk with crutches. I went back a month later for the change of cast, and the doctor said I could go back to teaching. I only had 12 to 14 pupils and they came to my desk to recite most of the time.
Sylvia was going to college at Durant, and Doris would take her and me both to our schools, and sometimes come after us when we wanted to go home or Sylvia would take me as she went to school and keep the car.
They did not have enough pupils for two teachers the next year, so I went to Campo, Colorado, where Mr. and Mrs. Baird were, and taught the 7th and 8th grades, except when Baird taught them two hours a day--then I went to the other rooms for music. There was a piano in the gym, but we only went there when we were practicing for a special program. I also had some piano pupils. I taught there two years, and might have gone back, but one of the other teachers wanted to teach in Oklahoma and I went back with her to a small school in the Panhandle, Felt, and taught
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the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades there. We got better salaries, and had a teacherage to live in, so didn't have so much rent. They wanted me to stay there but Oscar was needing someone, as his sister Leona, who had kept house for him since Grace's death, wanted to go home. So we were married in July, 1956, at Carter Ave. Methodist Church, by Harold, assisted by Rev. Honnold. We went to Timber Creek Church, near Atlanta, Kansas, where he was poster. Two or three weeks later, Harolds came by and took us to North Carolina, Oscar's old home, and we left Leona there. We visited his relatives and they had a family reunion with dinner on a long table in the yard. On our way back to Kansas we went through Washington, D.C., visiting several places of interest and seeing Thaine and his family. We went out to Bethesda to see Eleanor who was ill there. Then we crossed Indiana, stopping to see Uncle Charlie, and Edith and Alice Hinshaw. From there we went to East St. Louis where Everett's lived, and spent the weekend, attending his church. Then back home.
A few weeks later Oscar's health began to fail. We attended Kansas Yearly Meeting in October, but soon after that we went to Harold's and Oscar had to go to the hospital, where he died two weeks later, about the last of November. The boys were there for the funeral, then I got my things and came back to Oklahoma.
While at Timber Creek I had gotten a Kansas Teacher's Certificate, thinking I might do some substitute teaching. So the next year I got a position in the school at Atlanta, teaching the 5th and 6th grades. I rented a furnished house near the school. Sylvia had finished college that spring and she and Bob were married in August, 1957 and went to Velma where Bob was teaching. Lillian and Mel were married earlier that summer.
I went to the Methodist church on Sunday morning, but at night I went to Timber Creek with Albert Whiteman's.
The next spring, 1958, I went to Argonia to stay with my stepmother, Sadie Pickett, who could not stay alone. She was 83 years old. I spent three weeks at summer camp in the Rockies, above Green Mt. Falls. Friends University offered some courses and I enrolled in a course in geology. It was very interesting and gave me three hours college credit, which I did not need, as I had gotten my degree at Durant in 1949.
I substituted at Argonia in the grade school across the street. We attended church and other activities and I renewed friendships with people I had known more than 50 years before. I also made many new friends. Grace Handy, who was teaching there, came over for Scrabble games almost every week.
In January, 1961, after preaching that Sunday morning, Sadie fell, in stepping off the curb and broke her hip. They took her to Wellington Hospital, then sent her to Wichita. She was there for three weeks. I stayed at a rooming house across the street. Then they decided she could be in a nursing home so took her to the county home near Wellington where she died a few months later. I disposed of her things and then came back to Ardmore.
Brownie had bought a house in town and I found a small cottage for sale cheap, and had it moved to a part of their lot, which they deeded to me for my lifetime. Brownie laid the foundation and added a small room at the back, building a porch in front and making other repairs and additions.
The next spring, or early in the year, Mrs. Hodson, at Argonia, begged me to come and stay with her, so I decided to go and was there over a year.
I had spent some weeks at Velma with Sylvia in the fall of 1961, before the twins were born and after, then in 1963 after leaving Mrs. Hodson's, I went to Sylvia's and was there before and after their girl's death.
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Bob's moved to Verden that summer and I stayed with them during that summer and the next while Sylvia was doing work at O.U. to complete her Master's degree, and also while she was doing her practice teaching at Verden school. But in the fall of 1964, I went to Piney Woods to teach in Lawrence Jones' School in Mississippi. I taught various groups especially in remedial reading and in math, besides helping Science teachers in their classes. In February Nate was seriously ill, and Brownie was not well, so I came home, went to Kansas and stayed until after Nate's funeral, then went back to Piney Woods and stayed until school was out in 1965.
That fall Sylvia started teaching in the Verden school and I stayed all winter with the boys. The next summer Bob's moved to Chickasha and Bob was to be County Superintendent. Sylvia went back to Verden each day and taught, and I stayed with the boys. Steve was in the 1st grade and the twins in kindergarten.
The next year Sylvia taught in Chickasha and I stayed with them, but in the spring I had an operation, then was sent to Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City for cobalt treatments. I was in the hospital there for five weeks, then stayed with Ivon for two weeks and she took me each day to the hospital for my treatment. Then as Sylvia's school was out, I went there and she and Lillian took me in for my last two weeks of treatment. Brownie had died while I was in the hospital. I stayed with Sylvia the next year also. That next summer, 1969, Doris, Lillian, Rhonda and I went to California to visit Carol and I also visited Ernest Thompson's in Midway City. Earlier that summer, in May, I had gone to Kansas, expecting to attend the alumni banquet, it being my 60th, but they had to postpone it, so I didn't attend.
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In December I attended a reunion of former residents of Simon community, at Wilson. There I saw 15 of my one-time pupils, most of whom I had not seen for over 50 years. I have attended the reunion each year since then. Since 1969 I have lived in my little home here. I have been able to make some garden and work out-of-doors. Then I have quilted a dozen quilts, besides making cushions, comfort tops, skirts, and blouses of various remnants and pieces given me, and crocheting, embroidering, etc. I have taught Sunday school classes and been active in W.S.C.S., etc. My health has been good, remarkably so, according to my doctor who checks me each six months.