Family History Miscellaneous album, page 76

 

Abner Samuel Rhoades

(photo enhanced)

Abner was the son of Margaret Carter Rhoades - a sister to my great-great-grandmother Adaline Carter Arnold. The postmark on this postcard says 14 Jan 1910.

Ruby, Irene, Cleffie

The three oldest daughters of my great-grandparents Ulysses and Annie Arnold Hicks

L-R: Alvis Jackson, Calvin Jackson, Elvin Hicks

Alvis and Calvin were sons of Etta Arnold Jackson, sister of Annie Hicks (Elvin's mother)

My great-grandfather Ulysses Fillmore Hicks

(He is the photographer whom we have to thank for MOST of the old family history pictures. He ran a photography studio in Judsonia, Arkansas. That was only one of the several vocations of his lifetime, including schoolteacher, preacher, teacher of shaped-note singing, jeweler/watchmaker, mailman, newspaper delivery, farmer, factory worker...) 

Here is an excerpt from a memoir that my great-grandmother Annie Arnold Hicks wrote:

We were married February 22, 1910.  I would have been 17 years old February 25.  Ulys was 23 years old.  We spent the first year after we were married at Macon, Tennessee making a share crop, mostly cotton.  Then we came back to the hills in Arkansas and stayed one year, then moved to Judsonia, Arkansas where Ruby was born in 1912, and Ulys worked all winter in Judsonia, some at the cotton gin, and some for the dray man.  Then we moved to Bliss, Arkansas and Ulys went to teaching school again.  He taught one school before we were married.  He didn’t like school teaching very well, but he taught about 15 years at one place and another.  He taught in one room school houses with all eight grades.  In the fall of 1919, we moved back to Judsonia.  In February, 1920 Elvin was born.  Irene and Cleffie was born in the hills of Arkansas, close to Banner P.O.  We lived around Judsonia and Bald Knob till 1941 and we came to Michigan.  For several years before we came to Michigan, we had a photo studio and jewelry shop.  We made our living that way through the 1930’s (depression).  All through the depression there was a family of 10 of us.  Sometimes we hit it pretty hard, but we always had three meals a day somehow.  Quite a few people were in a poorer condition than we were.  We worked hard and managed, and got by O.K. When we came to Michigan, we worked on a farm in 1941 and 1942.  In the fall of ’42 we got jobs in the shops and the children went to school at Bridgman, and we drove to Benton Harbor to work.  

Here is some of what my grandmother, Cleffie, remembered about her father (transcribed from a tape-recording she made when she was 80 years old):

I was between 12 and 13 years old when the stock market broke in 1929, and of course that’s what started the great depression... We lived in a little town in Arkansas, Judsonia was the name of it and there wasn’t any jobs to be had there, there just really wasn’t any work  There was one factory, the box factory and it was just a small place and they had all the workers that they needed and so that was it, nobody else had a chance of getting on.  There just wasn’t any place else to get a job, the farmers didn’t need any help to speak of and if they had, you couldn’t have made any money - enough to live on.  So if anybody got a job anywhere, it had to be somewhere else just go off and work until the job was over and come back home.  My father was a photographer and he was a watch maker, they called it.  He fixed watches and clocks and all that kind of stuff.  And jewelry, just stuff in that category.  And course, times was so hard then that he didn’t charge much for his work cause nobody had money to pay much.  But everything was cheap too, that you had to buy.  Groceries was cheap and it’s a good thing cause even at that, there’s lots of people I know who didn’t have enough to eat.  My father moved his place of business into our home instead of having it in town, because he got to where he didn’t have money to pay the rent because business was slow.  Nobody had any money to have watches fixed or pictures made or anything.  And then finally -- he was buying a house, the one we lived in -- and it got so he couldn’t make enough money to pay payments on it, so they had to move to a rental house and just hope he could get enough money up each month to pay the rent on that.  And he managed to.  I’ll tell you, sometimes it looked almost like it was going to be impossible but he always made it.  So we were lucky in that way.  But my folks always, they worked at whatever they could get to do besides his little business, which had already almost gone to nothing because nobody had money.  Besides that, he got a job carrying the mail from the Post Office to the depot and back to the Post Office and so forth.  Then after that ended -- that was put up for bid every year and he was bid out of it -- well then he got a job carrying the paper, he had a paper route -- just went all over the country, way out in the country, all over the place.  And then he got a job later carrying the mail from Judsonia to way out in the country -- about 15 or 20 miles out in the country to a place called Step Rock and back.  And everything he could get to do that way, he did it.  He had been a school teacher for 15 years before he put in his place of business, but he didn’t like to teach school. If he could get by without it, he didn’t want to do that any more.  He was a good teacher, but it just wasn’t the line of work that he liked.  So anyway, we always had plenty to eat.  We couldn’t buy lots of fresh meat like my dad would have liked - more fresh meat.  He loved fresh pork and once in a while we’d get a mess of it, but the rest of us didn’t care that much whether we had meat or not.  And we had plenty of everything else.  Between our mother making a garden and planting stuff that she raised in it, and the things that she’d get other places -- sometimes people would come and get work done and they would pay him in garden stuff or chickens or whatever... Our family was so big -- there was eight of us home at one time.  There was nine of us in all... And then we had a friend, my dad had a friend that lived out in the country that always grew a lot of potatoes.  And he’d screen them and the little ones that wouldn’t pass for the market so he could sell them, he’d give them to my dad - all of them he could use.  He said just come and get all you can use of them, and every time you run out, come back again.  So we did that and we just had plenty of food to eat... My mother worked all the time with my dad in the work that they had to do there -- making pictures and everything -- that took a lot of time.  They’d make them together of a morning, and then they’d have to be washed through -- changed through water baths.  Just every little bit she’d have to put them in another water bath and let them soak a while, and do that until half the afternoon was gone and he’d go up in the shop during that time, and so then she’d start drying them on some squeegee boards they called it, that they had to dry pictures on, purposely for that.  And then the ones that had been mailed in, she’d have to sort them out and put them in envelopes and mail them back to them.  So they just worked -- and at night is when they developed the film to make those pictures from.  So they were busy in that!  It didn’t bring in a whole lot of money, but it sure did help.  I think it was twenty-five cents for each roll of films that they developed and printed pictures from and mailed them back.  Course, postage then wasn’t but three cents.  Two cents part of the time. And just any little thing that they could do to help make a living, that’s what they did.