On This Day in Family History - February 15

 Albert Earl Williams was born 15 February 1907

Photo: This is not Albert. This is his brother Tom. I don't have a picture of Albert.

Albert Earl Williams was a son of Albert and Charlotte ('Tot') Hicks Williams

'Aunt Tot' was a sister to my great-grandfather Ulysses Hicks

Photo: Ulysses and Annie Hicks, Tot and Albert Williams

Uncle Albert's middle name was Franklin. Their son Albert's middle name was Earl, and he was called Earl. He was the oldest of five children. After him came Tom, Dorothy, Dona, and Charlene. All three of the girls died in childhood. I don't know how Dona and Charlene died. Dorothy was struck by lightning. Here is the story about that, as written by my grandmother Cleffie Hicks Burford:

    My father was teaching school at “Big 4”, a little two room school about five miles out of Judsonia in the country.  He taught there for two years and this was his first year.  We lived about a mile from the school house.  I was four years old in August and the storm I’m going to tell about came on the 24th day of November.  The year was 1921. Papa, as we called our father, and both my sisters, Ruby and Irene, were at school.  Mama and my little brother, Elvin, and I were at home. I don’t remember exactly what time of day it happened but I think it was early afternoon.  Anyway, this big storm came up and before we knew what was happening it was raging something terrible.  I remember that Mama got Elvin and me on the bed and then she got on there with us.  We lay on the bed and watched out the window as the wind whipped the trees in fury, sometimes bending the trees almost to the ground and then suddenly flinging them back the other direction. The rain was coming down like it would never stop, and the thunder and lightning was so close it was frightening.  Such a vicious storm I had never seen before. Mama tried not to let on that she was scared but I knew she was.  She told us not to touch the metal bedstead because metal can draw lightning, but she felt that being on the bed made us safer from the lightning as long as we didn’t touch the metal. So there we lay for what seemed like an eternity before the storm began to let up.  And then all of a sudden it was over.  What a relief!  But Mama was still worried about Papa and the girls.  There was no way to get in touch with them; no telephones or anything.  Even if there had been telephones they would all be out of order now. The storm would have all the lines down. Mama was getting more anxious all the time, in fact, she was walking back and forth by this time, looking in the direction of the school house.  Pretty soon the neighbor boy came running by on his way home from school and yelled out that there had been “a bad storm today and a lot of people were killed.”  Well, that just about finished Mama off.  But just about that time here came Papa and the girls. Talk about relief!  Mama was so relieved even I could feel it. However, there was a sad note in their arrival.  Papa said that someone had come to the school house after the storm and told him that his niece Dorothy Williams had been struck with lightning and killed.  She was Aunt Tot’s and Uncle Albert’s daughter and was something like 6½  months older than me.  Anyway, Papa turned out school early and came home. Mama was so upset with the neighbor boy for telling such a big “fib” and scaring her almost to death she just wanted to shake him real hard.  Of course, she never did say anything to him about it that I know of.  I don’t know what possessed him to say that a “lot” of people got killed. 

   Dorothy had been standing by her daddy, who was sitting in a rocking chair in front of the fireplace, with her hand on his knee when the lightning struck the corner of the house right by the fireplace and, of course, struck her at the same time. It almost killed her daddy, but they worked with him and he got alright. The doctor pronounced Dorothy dead.  But Aunt Tot told us years later that her body never did get cold.  She was still warm when they buried her.  Aunt Tot thought it was odd but didn’t say anything because she didn’t know but what that was normal.  Later she said if it was to do over she would say something.  The doctor probably didn’t know she stayed warm.  He most likely didn’t see her again after he pronounced her dead.

That story has haunted me my whole life! Dorothy was 4 years old when she died.