January 24

Margaret 'Peggy' Bullard was born 24 January 1852

Here is the story of "Aunt Peggy" Bullard:

Annie Arnold Hicks (my great-grandmother) wrote:

Grandmother’s name before marriage was Emma Bullard. She married a man by the name of Arnold.  They had one child, Henry (my father).  

PHOTO: John Henry Arnold (I don't have a picture of his mother, Emma Bullard)

They didn’t live together but three or four years.  They had trouble because he wanted to move from Missouri to Texas (or at least that’s what set off the separation), with his folks and she wouldn’t move, but he went ahead and moved without her and in a little while he came back and wanted her to take him back but she wouldn’t.  Then in a year or two she married a man by the name of Alex McReynolds.  They had one boy and twin girls and they had trouble and he took the girls and left, and they never heard from him any more.  But about the time she married the second time, her brother and sister (neither one married) took my Dad - just a small boy about maybe 2 years old, and set up housekeeping and raised him.  Their names were George Bullard and Margaret Bullard (Peggy).  Uncle George and Aunt Peggy was always exactly like my Grandpa and Grandma.  

After they got my Dad about raised, Uncle George married Josie Tamsett, an aunt of Amy Tamsett that John Carter married. Then a little later, Aunt Peggy married Alex Williams, a very strange character.  Aunt Peggy said she never could get acquainted with him or understand his actions.  Lots of nights he would get up in the night and sit in the door with his gun just like he was expecting a murderer, but in just a few years he was walking home across an old field where there was some dead trees and one of them fell on him and killed him.  Just the day before that, he had a snuff box packed full of $20 gold pieces and that would be a lot of money for them times.  He evidently had hid that money for not a penny could be found (about 1897).  In those days gold pieces were in common circulation.  They got the idea that he bored a hole in a tree and put the box of money in the hole and put a peg in on it, but they had no idea which tree nor for sure that he did that, so there wasn’t any chance to find the money.  This all took place in Missouri around Thayer. My Father was grown and married before Aunt Peggy married.  

PHOTOS: George Bullard with his first wife Josie Tamsett and their daughter Leona. George Bullard with his second wife Mary Robinson, with their daughter Tessie and Mary's two sons from a previous marriage.

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Here is what my grandmother Cleffie Hicks Burford wrote:

I want to tell a little story about my Grandpa Arnold, that I have heard my mother tell several times during my life.  My grandpa was born in McCrory, Arkansas in White County, and apparently the woman who gave birth to him was married to a man named Arnold.  But we don’t know what his first name was, and don’t know anything else about him.  That was way back before my time.  But the woman who gave birth to my grandpa was Emma Bullard, and I don’t know if she stayed married to her husband, or if they separated or what.  She had family up in the hills around Cleburne County, and she sent word to her brother George Bullard that she wanted him to come and get her little boy and take him home with him and raise him for her. I don’t know what had happened to her marriage, if anything.  But it seems strange that she’d do that if everything was alright.  Anyway, he went down there on horseback, and brought that little boy back here in the hills, and one of his sisters helped him raise him.  Her name was Margaret Bullard.  They had set up housekeeping just especially to raise that boy.  But of course, later on then there was another boy or two that they raised, but this one was the only one that was anything to our family. I have wondered, I’ve just pictured him in my mind a lot of times bringing that child back up here on horseback.  And it must be about 50 miles, one way.  He’d have to spend a night or two on the road, just riding horseback.  I just wonder how he managed that.  And to just picture that little child, and him trying to get along with it that far, on horseback.  And feeding it too.  That’s another difficult thing. Back then there weren’t as many places to eat -- restaurants and things to stop in, as there are now.  I don’t know, but anyway they made it and he lived to a long enough life -- a normal lifetime and raised a big family.  I don’t know if anybody hardly knows about that or not, but my mother has told that.  Several times, I’ve heard her tell that story about that and so, I know that it’s true or she wouldn’t have told it.