JANELLE MORROW WALKER @ SULPHUR SPRINGS SCHOOL
jmwwardn! Let us begin at the beginning a very good place to start. September 1944, Janelle was just turning 6 years of age. My family of Dad, Herbert, Mom Lucille, and my sister Jackie were living in the country grocery store in the heart of Sulphur Springs. Growing up at the store where people were constantly coming and going you would have thought I would not be a shy little girl but quite the contrary I was very shy! Everyone thought I would cry when I started to school....not a tear out of Janelle; instead it was her cousin Ann Garst who cried. Me? I was ready to go out into the world and see what I could learn. I took to reading like a duck to water. I read to customers as they came into the store, I read to the cows upon the farm; I was a reading girl and little did I know at that time that I would become a librarian. I grew up with Dick and Jane such great reading. Mrs. Addie Bayless was my first grade teacher. At age six we are not interested in family heritage but I certainly wish I had been because Mrs Bayless married Jesse Bayless who was the grandson of Susannah Walker sister to Henry Martin Walker, grandfather of Herbert Walker making me a fourth cousin to Jesse C. Bayless
Now third grade brought a change. We were living upon the farm part of the time. Mrs. Pearl Keebler was my third grade teacher and multiplication tables was the priority learning. Spelling was a snap for me too. I distinctly remember seated near Kaye and Faye Squibb and we were having a spelling test of class mates names. I spelled correctly, "Kaye, Faye, and next was my name "Jaye" ; being shy I must have been humiliated and I have no idea what I did or maybe I didn't notice it at first but I remember well spelling the three names as such.....Another time we drew pictures of something we had read and they were hung up front underneath the blackboard. Yes, they were blackboards then and not green boards. Anyway we each took turns going up front and choosing the picture we liked best. I chose my own picture, again I am not sure I realized it was mine and I just thought it looked good. I do remember going home and going out to the milk barn and telling mother and daddy who were milking the cows, about the picture. As a grown up I found out that Mrs. Keebler was the wife of Jacob [Jake] Keebler who is a descendant of the Jacob Armay Keebler Clan who came to Washington County from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania WOW up to my favorite grade and teacher, Mrs. Mabel Campbell! 4th grade teacher. Now she was the one who let us march around outside the school building when we got "100's" on our spelling test. I got to march around lots of times. In junior high I was to have her daughter, Joanne for physical education and geography. Her oldest daughter Janey was to later marry Richard Diehl. Mrs Campbell was Mabel Haire and became the wife of Sidney Campbell all from Washington County, Tennessee Another favorite grade was Sixth grade and my teacher was Marie Fleenor Squibb. She had been a friend of my Aunt Selma Morrow Bolton. I enjoyed helping other students who were having problems with schoolwork. Shy Janelle was a caring person. It made me feel good to help others 7th grade we graduated to upstairs....my weren't we growing up! That was the year most of my classmates came down with the mumps. Janelle did not get the mumps and to this day I have never had them. Lucile Keys Walker was seventh grade teacher. She too I found out much later was a WALKER relative from John and William Walker sons of William and Susannah Graham Walker. Lucile was a granddaughter of Sarah Matilda Walker Keys and she married Lloyd Walker a grandson of Susannah Walker Bayless. Sarah Matilda and Susannah were first cousins and the daughters of William and John Walker. Zachariah Walker another first cousin and son of Andrew Walker, the younger brother of John and William Walker, had a son Jacob Winton Walker who married Mary Matilda Bayless daughter of Susannah Walker Bayless. What connections we find there! Frances Morelock Dyer was my 8th grade teacher. And another teacher who knew all about my family. She too had tie-ins with my mother Lucille Morrow...they were raised in the Telford community attending Washington College School and living in the Carson-Morrow neighborhood. Janelle still the shy girl getting ready to graduate from elementary school. Why oh why wasn't I asking questions about my teachers and their connections to my families Awwwwwwwwwwh High School a new horizon. Lots of clubs to join and guess what Janelle did join the library club. In middle school I read the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys detective series as well as the Bobbsey Twins collection. Now I was graduating to frontier and pioneer stories. I remember distinctly starting with the Fiction "A" authors and going down the alphabet reading pioneer stories. I absorbed Bessie Aldrich delightful pioneer stories as well as Willa Cather books. Laura Ingalls Wilder was read at some point in my life and today I find that Laura Ingalls and I have a same ancestor. I suppose you could say my interest in frontier and pioneer stories was a beginning for genealogy. Guess I was just a green freshman Silly Sophomores and that we were. Even Mrs. Clyde Haws, Home Economics teacher and History teacher couldn't make charm school girls of Tennessee Southern gals. We did enjoy having mother and daughter teas and luncheons for our moms. Since we were not old enough to drive but were learning to drive, we would practice on the farm tractors. Kaye, Faye, Mary Beth and Janelle would get together on Sundays after church and drive the tractors on the back roads. One favorite place was to drive to Eastern Star by way of Hog Hollow. Now today I still take this route to I-81 and wish I had been more interested in this area when growing up. So much genealogy to be filled in with this area where our Bacon's, Barron's, Jobe's, McKay's, Kincheloe's, Kitzmiller's, Douglass's and other families had settled in the 1700s Jolly Juniors of Sulphur Springs. The junior class play was one of my happiest times. I played "Mammy" dressing the part and talking the dialect. After the play was over some people were not aware the character of Mammy was Janelle. Guess I surprised a lot of folks with my acting. Drama can bring out the best in shy folks. Band was something I got into from grade eight through twelveth grade. This was lots of fun going to band practices ; I was the designated driver for the younger band members since I now had my driver's licenses. Fred Humphreys was the band director ; later I was to know his sister and brother from college and attending church at First Methodist in Johnson City. Younger brother, Sam would be working with me at Sulphur Springs. I never thought I would be teaching with his parents at Barnes School. A dear couple I will always remember, Jess and Wilma Humphreys and to think today they too have roots deep in Washington County Sophisticated Seniors.....we had definitely come a long way. After graduation we would all go our separate ways. Some went to Steed Business College, some to East Tennessee State College, Emory & Henry College, others tried working on real jobs of farming and industry and some became homemakers and settling down to become mothers and fathers expanding our genealogy lineages. I went to East Tennessee State College to continue my education which was to become a double major of education and library. I was still that shy girl enjoying college dorm living; clarinet in the college band and marching at halftime at football games; going to the Wesley Foundation on Wednesday evenings and joining Delta Zeta Sorority Reunion time and don't we look great! The way Sulphur Springs School looked when Janelle was attending. The older picture was in the days of our ancestors when they attended. Not sure of the date, about 1910? To the extreme left is Miss Mabel Sylvester librarian and Janelle Walker is to the extreme right. Miss Sylvester being a Walker kin through John and Lucretia Martin Walker and their daughter Chloe Walker Sylvester. It may have been this year that Janelle, Ann, and Mary Beth got to go home with Miss Sylvester and spend the night. What a great time this would have been to ask questions pertaining to our ancestors. Oh if only I had known...... Here we see Janelle the librarian at Sulphur Springs enjoying story time Across the road from the baseball field at the school was this store. Once known as Pitts Store later run by Maynard Walker, uncle to Janelle Mrs. Burbage music teacher and her students
Fifth grade was one of my favorite grades. I enjoyed playing teacher when not in school. What use to be an icehouse for storing ice at the country store was now my school room with the neighborhood kids. My teacher was a young teacher probably just out of college, Mrs. Broyles
