Judsonia, Arkansas

 My great-grandparents, Ulysses and Annie Hicks, lived in Judsonia, Arkansas most of the years they were raising their children. Here is what Annie wrote in her memoirs:

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. 

PHOTO: Crossroads school, teacher Ulys Hicks

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). 

Here are some pictures my parents took in Judsonia when they were researching their family histories. 

PHOTO: The bottom two pictures are Big Four schoolhouse near Judsonia. Here is what my grandmother (Cleffie) wrote --

[In 1921]   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.

This is one of the pictures my parents took of downtown Judsonia about 1991. My grandmother wrote on the copy of the picture above, indicating where Ulys' photography business and jewelry and watch repair shop was.

PHOTOS: I think this is the city park in Judsonia.

Here is more of what my grandmother wrote --

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.