Monday, February 03, 2025

Arnold Ancestors - Generation 3 - George Arnold's second family


PHOTO: George Arnold and his second wife Eula Mae Burnett

George and Eula were married in 1928, five years after George's first wife Jessie died. 
George and Eula Mae had five children - Clora Mae, Raymond ('Bud'), Ruby, Delena, and Bertha Lee.

PHOTO: Some of George's children and some of his sister Annie's children.

So, George had 13 children in all, 11 of them were girls -- collectively known as "Uncle George's girls".
The following pictures were taken at the annual Arnold/Carter family reunion.

1986 Obie, Opie, Bertha Lee, Verlie, Joan

1990 Verlie, Bertha Lee, Obie, Opie, Joan, Ruby, Arbie

1994 Ruby, Bertha Lee, Joan, Opie, Verlie, Obie

I do have one picture of George's surviving son 'Bud', although it's not a very good one:
L-R: Bertha Lee, Arbie, Obie, Verlie, Ruby, Joan, Bud, Opie
(Poor Bud -- imagine growing up in a household with 11 sisters!)

Here is what Annie's daughter Cleffie (my grandmother) told about her uncle George (transcribed from an audiotape):

 My Uncle George Arnold -- he was a good man, and a likeable person.  But you know, he had a lot of bad luck in his life.  He married Jessie Tamsett and that was good.  They raised a family.  They had, I believe it was eight kids.  The last one though, left Aunt Jessie with, I don’t know if it was childbed fever or something else -- I just don’t know what it was, kind of an infection or poison of some kind in her body, and caused her to be sick and just, well she was in bad shape and lingered along for a few weeks -- maybe a month or more -- and then died, and that was awful.  And then he made out though for -- well, Ma went to live with him and help him raise them kids, so he made out just fine that way, but he didn’t have any wife.  I know that was bad for him.  But anyway, finally, after about five years why, he married another woman.  He married Eula Burnett, and then they set in and raised another family.  Just about the same size family as his first one was.  So he had pretty good luck with that.  Everything went alright.  But then in a few years, he got something wrong with him.  He didn’t know what it was. So he worried with that for a long time, just having trouble like if he had kidney trouble or something, and he didn’t know what to do about it.  Course, there wasn’t no doctors hardly up here in these hills then, and if there was they didn’t know much.  So he decided, well I think my dad talked to him some about it, and told him if he’d come down to Judsonia, he’d go with him over to Searcy and help him get a doctor.  I guess he made an appointment first, I don’t know.  Anyway, he did that.  He came down there and Papa took him over to a doctor in Searcy and after he examined him good why, he told him he had Bright’s disease and couldn’t do anything about it. I don’t know if there’s anything to do for it, might be now, I don’t know, but at that time they didn’t seem to think there was.  So he just came home and just suffered with that for I don’t know how long -- long time.  Finally, it got him -- it just killed him -- he died with it.  He’d lay in that room by himself, just he’d be the only one in there, in that back bedroom and on Sundays a lot of different people would come and see him and just come talk to him a little bit, sit there with him and then go.  That’s the way the last part of his life was for quite a while.  And he finally died.  That was the hardest part -- was just being in that shape, he was bedfast and just wasn’t nothing to be done.

Annie (George's sister) wrote:

  George died at the age of 50 years with Bright’s disease.  The doctors made x-rays and said he had at some time in his life hurt his back, which caused his trouble.  The hurt could have been in his early childhood or could have been later.  The only thing he could remember about hurting his back was that he was thrown by a mule after he was grown and slightly hurt his back right low in the backbone.

George Ned Arnold died 11 August 1939 in Banner, Cleburne County, Arkansas. He is buried with his first wife Jessie in Pine Grove Cemetery, Floral, Arkansas.


I also have this picture, which seems to indicate George and Jessie got new gravestones at some point.

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