Family History Miscellaneous album, page 36

I'm not sure, but I think this is my grandmother Cleffie Hicks Burford. . Don't know who the kid is -- maybe one of Irene's? It was a family picnic of some kind -- I have another picture I think was taken on the same day

This one says "Picnic at Ruby's"

I don't know if Jack and Ruby lived in Missouri or Michigan at the time this was taken. Doc and Irene are in the photo, Sylvia and Delbert, Lester and Cleffie... the rest of the people in the picture are mostly children of those couples. I recognize Oma Dell, Wathada (maybe?) and her brothers, and Garland Dye. Not sure who all the rest are.

Ollie Carter (left) and Norman Smith

Here's a note I have from Glynda about Ollie Carter:

Ollie was shot and killed at a party on Christmas night at the home of Kenneth Martin. A man by the name of Martin shot him. The reason, because he would not remove his hands from his pockets. Ollie was 19 years old and about to be married.

George Arnold and his second wife Eula Mae, with their children (in order of birth) Clora Mae, Bud, Ruby, Delena, and Bertha Lee

Tom Williams

Tom was the son of Uncle Albert and Aunt Tot. Aunt Tot (Charlotte) was the sister of my great-grandfather Ulysses Hicks.

Marlie Arnold

youngest brother of my great-grandmother Annie Arnold Hicks

George and Nannie (Nancy) Hicks Sandefur. Not sure who the children are. I believe the girl is their granddaughter Nora. She didn't have any siblings, so I'm not sure who the boy would be. Nancy Hicks was the sister of Ulysses Hicks.

Annie Arnold Hicks

my great-grandmother

Wilma Arnold and Agnes Carter

Agnes was Wilma's aunt, but they were near the same age. Wilma was one of "Uncle George's girls" (George Ned Arnold, brother of Annie Arnold Hicks)

Velda and Carl Ray Leatherwood

children of Vernell Hicks 

Family history miscellaneous album, page 35

 

Hicks brothers: Ulysses, Felix, Pinkney, David

Mary Norris 

(no idea who she is)

William Medaris, preacher

(not sure of the spelling of his last name)

I don't know who these men are. It looks like they have cut up some huge trees.

William Medaris

a preacher (I don't know anything else about him)

Albert and Tot Williams' house. They had a store in the front part of the house. I don't know who the child is standing next to Uncle Albert. Tot and Albert had two sons and three daughters. All three daughters died in childhood. ("Aunt Tot" was Charlotte Hicks, sister of my great-grandfather Ulysses Hicks.)

John Norris Rhoades, husband of Margaret Carter Rhoades. Margaret was a sister to my great-great-grandmother Adaline Carter Arnold.

Sylvia Arnold and "Herschel"

Sylvia was the daughter of Marlie Arnold (brother to Annie Arnold Hicks)

I have no idea who Herschel is.

Back of photo says "Abner Rhoades' boys"

Abner Rhoades and his wife Juliana had six sons. I don't know which two these are.

Abner was the husband of Margaret Carter.

Family history miscellaneous album, page 34

M. B. Mackey

He was a preacher, and I don't know anything else about him.

Preachers McNutt and Burgess.

Bob Burford writes: "Brother Burgess" (on the right) was the preacher at the Benton Harbor Church of Christ circa 1950. He accompanied his sermons with colored chalk illustrations on white bed sheets. He was always interesting, engaging, and a gifted artist. He had the only wire recorder I ever saw which he loaned to Morris and me to take home and mess around with.

Oneida Hicks

Daughter of Herbert and Pearl Hicks, granddaughter of Pinkney ("Uncle Pink") Hicks. Pink was a brother to my great-grandfather Ulysses Hicks.

Wathada Burford (my mother) and her aunt Vernell Hicks

This photo is labeled "Abner Rhoades"

I don't know which one is Abner.

Abner Rhoades would have been a son of Margaret Carter Rhoades - a sister to my great-great-grandmother Adaline Carter Arnold.

Aunt Birdie and Uncle Marlie Arnold

Marlie was the youngest brother of my great-grandmother Annie Arnold Hicks

Martha Rhoades with her husband Albert Sandridge

Martha was the daughter of Margaret Carter Rhoades

Margaret Carter Rhoades and her daughter Martha Rhoades Sandridge

My great-great-grandfather John Henry Arnold - father of Annie Arnold Hicks.

Here is what Annie has written about her father:

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

    My Father married at the age of 19 or 18 years, to Adeline Carter (my mother).  She was seven months older than him.  I am not sure how old they were - they probably were not more than 18 years old.  I know they were young when they married in Missouri around Thayer.  Dad was born around McCrory, Arkansas, but the family moved to Missouri while he was a baby.  My Dad was raised in Illinois.  My parents had five children, three boys and 2 girls.  George was the oldest child.  I was next, John was the third, then we moved from Missouri to Arkansas.  Then Marlie was born, then Ettie was the last one - born in 1900. 

    When my parents came to Arkansas they homesteaded a piece of land and built a log house on it and lived on it for five or six years, and sold it and bought another farm.  Then our house burned.  We lost everything we had almost.  Then we had to get another place so we bought 40 acres for $100.  A fair price for land in those days.  My Father was a sorghum maker so he paid for the farm with sorghum molasses.  A fifty-gallon barrel or two of them every year at about 20 cents a gallon, a fair price for sorghum in those days.  That was in about 1906.  We lived on that place a few years and then we traded that place and a wagon and team of mules for 160 acres of land with a good house on it.  That was about the best place anywhere around there.  After living there three or four years, my Father died at the age of 39 years.  The doctor said he had pleurisy.  That is water around the lungs.  In a few years, Ma divided the place among the children, forty acres apiece for all the children except me.  She gave me a cow.  I preferred the cow instead of splitting four forties into five blocks. We kids were already married.  

Mother's Day

For mother's day, I thought I'd make a composite of all the grandmothers in my direct line of descent -- all the ones I have pictures of, anyway. My 'pedigree' chart has grandparents going back 15 generations to the 1500s in England. The oldest picture I have of one of my grandmothers is Lydia Sink Gibson, 1773-1857. The Gibsons are are related to the Burfords, on my mother's side of the family.

I don't have a picture of my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Susannah Harmarson Walls (grandmother of Martha Walls Treat, on my dad's side of the family), but I do have a copy of an interesting article from the Pike County (Ohio) Republican, printed in 1874:

 From Pike County Republican, February 26, 1874:

OLD FOLKS INTERVIEWED: SUSAN HARMARSON WALLS

      "I was born in Delaware.  The exact year I do not know, but suppose I will be 86 years of age on the 16th of July next.  My father's name was Levin Harmarson, he died when I was three years old.  My mother's name was Mary Woodard.  They had only two children, myself and Sabra.  She married Elias Walls, brother to my husband. About 4 years after my father's death, my mother married Levi Walls and they moved to West Virginia, near Morgantown in Mongonhalia Co. There we lived till I was about 18 years of age when they came to Pike Co., and settled in the wilderness of Leath Creek, in Pebble Twp., and I have lived on Leath Creek ever since. My mother had 6 children by Levi Walls, and when we came to Ohio besides Sabra and myself there were Samuel, Elizabeth, Sarah and Thomas and they had born to them in Pike Co., Fanny and Lemuel. When my mother married Levi Walls, he was a widower with 6 children.  But none of them came to Ohio with us except my husband. When we arrived on Leeth Creek there were but two inhabited cabins on it, and they belonged to Elias Walls, brother to my husband who came here several years before our family did, and the other was occupied by Elizabeth Coberley (Lane is crossed out) on the place known as the (Levi is crossed out) John Russell Farm which adjoins the farm owned by my husband, and which I have lived nearly all the time since I came from Virginia. I married Levi Wall in Virginia and had been married upwards a year when we moved to Ohio.  My husband bought land on Leeth Creek which now adjoins the infirmary farm near Idaho. He went to work and erected a cabin, besides the two cabins spoken of above.  There was one old uninhabited one in Idaho near where the old saw mill was.  My stepfather chinked and repaired that old cabin and moved into it where he lived several years. When he bought and moved farther up on Leeth Creek, where he built and lived some years, when he moved to Bear Creek in Scioto Co. where he died 46 or 47 years ago. I have eleven children viz. Bashiba, Levin, Elias, Levi, Joshua, Samuel, Mary, Matilda, Elizabeth, Nancy and James. I raised them all to adulthood, and all married except Levin, Elizabeth and Samuel.  They are dead and so is Mary.  Bashiba married James Leeth by whom she had ten children. Elias married Matilda Wall and had eight children, when she died and he married Margaret Shattuck by whom he had six children. Levi married Mary Ann Wallace who have had nine children.  Joshua married Amy Wall and had seven children when she died and Joshua married for his second wife Margaret Haines by whom he had three children. Mary married James Leeth and had by him 10 children. Matilda married Cornelius Leeth by whom she had had seven children. Nancy married John Leeth by whom she had had eleven children.  James the youngest married Mary Shattuck by whom they have had 10 children, of whom nine are living. I have had eleven children, eighty-one grandchildren, ninety-six great grandchildren, and five great great grandchildren, much the greater part of whom are living. My husband answered to the famous general call in 1814 left home. But when examined by the surgeon was pronounced unable to bear the fatigues of soldier life. So he returned home. He lived to be 85 years of age and died 10 years ago last June.  His remains were deposited in Leeth Creek burying ground only a short distance from where he lived since we came together to Ohio, and where a number of his children, grandchildren, and other kinfolks lay buried.  I am living with James, my youngest son. My experience in life has been that of people generally in agricultural districts who have lived from young womanhood in one locality. But while I have lived on in the even tenor of life, great changes have been wrought in the World's History, which I leave others to Chronicle.  The knowledge of which is to be perpetuated by future generations through the instrumentality of the art of printing." 

Family History Miscellaneous album, page 33

 

Oma Dell and Annie

Oma Dell was Annie's first grandchild

(Okay, I won't mention the old joke about them being outstanding in their field.)

Ruby and Oma Dell

Ruby was Annie's oldest child, mother of Oma Dell

(Annie had two more children after her first grandchild was born, so Oma Dell was actually older than her aunt Bernice and uncle Lowell.)

Boots

Evalee and Charles' dog

(I don't know how many years this dog lived, but he is in some of the pictures from several years before I was born, and I remember them still having him when I was a child.)

Ruby Dorcas Hicks

born 22 May 1912

This picture was taken when she was 11 days old.

Elvin Revalee Hicks

Vernell Hicks

Olan Hicks

He had a broken arm. I don't know the story of how he got his arm broken.

Shelby Jay Bridges

son of Bernice Hicks and Jay Bridges

Wathada Burford and Velma Lee Barnett

Wathada is the daughter of Cleffie Hicks Burford, Velma Lee is the daughter of Irene Hicks Barnett.

Family History Miscellaneous album, page 32

Jeannie Hicks

daughter of Elvin Hicks

Lorene Lanham, Annie Hicks

(see anecdote below)

Bernice, Vernell, Lowell, Olan Hicks

Vernell Hicks

Irene Hicks

Dewayne Selvidge

nephew of Bill Selvidge, mentioned in the anecdote below

Ulysses Hicks, my great-grandfather

see anecdote below

Bernice Hicks, youngest daughter of Ulysses Hicks

who wrote the anecdote below

*   *   *

A little history of the Benton harbor, Michigan church, as I remember ... 

Written by Bernice Rogers in May 1998 

    In 1942 Ulysses Hicks (called Ulys) and his wife, Annie hicks moved to Bridgman, Michigan from Judsonia, Arkansas. They looked for a Church of Christ and didn’t find one. Then they saw an ad in the paper by Wayne Lanham, saying they wanted to start a Church of Christ, so Ulys and Annie answered it. They got a church started in the YMCA building on Wall street in Benton Harbor, Michigan. 

    Ulys and Annie took their four teenagers, Vernell, Olan, Bernice and Lowell and went. The congregation was very small in number. The other families were: Albert Bradshaw and wife, Millie; Sular Elkins and wife, Lola; Wayne Lanham and wife Lorene; Mr. And Mrs. Selvidge and son, Billie; Harley and Retha story, and I believe Lawrence and Alma Shannon. Harley and Retha Story had two teenage sons, Hillard and Gene. Hillard later became our preacher in St. Joe. 

    We had enough teenagers to have a class. We would go into a small room adjacent to the room the church was in, to have our class. The room was barely big enough for us to get into. 

    Besides Hillard and Gene story, the other teenagers were, Bill Selvidge, and I think the Story’s had two girls, Glenice and Ann. The Hicks kids were Vernell, Olan, Bernice and Lowell. Mrs. Selvidge was our teacher. 

    In Arkansas we had always gone to a church that didn’t have Sunday school, but Ulys Hicks had no objection to it so we kept going, and he helped out wherever he could. He had always preached in Arkansas, so he would preach, wait on the table, lead the singing - whatever was needed, and so the Benton Harbor church was born.

Church of Christ (present day), Benton Harbor, Michigan