Cousin Elmer from New York

 

"This is our new Dodge car, wish you was here to take a ride with us. Elmer"

My note -- "Elmer McMurtry, son of Wm Ford's sister Cecelia"

William Ford was the father of my great-grandmother, Nancy Ford Thomas. His sister, Cecelia McMurtry, lived in New York. Elmer and Wilsie are two of her sons, from whom I have several photo postcards in our Thomas family archives.

* * *

Author's note: I invoke a curse on whoever invented photo albums with black construction paper pages, and whoever invented glue with which to affix photographs to those photo albums. You can see the evidence of such tomfoolery on quite a few of the pictures I'll be posting in this series.

On a Haystack

 I have more than one copy of this picture. There are three different lists of the people in the photo.

"L to R Bill Thomas, Charles ", Nancy ", ?, ?William Ford, Renue Thomas"

"Renew, Thomas, Father Ford, Rosa's [?] little girl, Elmer W, Nancy, Charlie Thomas, Bill Thomas"

"On a Haystack (Bangor, Mich.) Bill Thomas, Charlie Thomas, Nancy Thomas, Elmer W., Father Ford and Renew Thomas with little girl"

After much study and deliberation (and comparing it with other photos taken the same day), here is my official list of the people, left to right -- Bill Thomas, Charles and Nancy Thomas, Wilsie McMurtry, William Ford, Renue, and Georganna Thomas.

Bill Thomas is my grandfather.

Charles and Nancy Thomas are my great-grandparents (Bill's parents)

Wilsie is a cousin visiting from New York (the Elmer mentioned in the first list was Wilsie's brother -- but it wasn't Elmer in the photo, it was Wilsie)

William Ford is Nancy's father (so my great-great-grandfather)

Renue is Bill's sister (my great-aunt)

Georganna is the daughter of Bill's older brother Roy Thomas. 

I don't know if Roy was there that day or not -- maybe he was the one taking the pictures. 

I don't know whose handwriting is on the backs of the photos. The pictures were taken in 1914.

Here are some more pictures taken that same day

PHOTO: Back - Nancy Thomas, Wilsie McMurtry, William Ford, Renue Thomas, Charles Thomas. Front - Mel Thomas, Georganna, Bill Thomas

Chlorine Miller

 

"Chlorine Miller. Rom & Violet's daughter. Violet was Pinkney Hicks' daughter. Cleffie's second cousin"

PHOTO: Pinkney Hicks 

(I always heard him referred to as "Uncle Pink")

He was a brother of my great-grandfather Ulysses Hicks

PHOTO: Hicks brothers

Winfolee Miller, sister of Chlorine Miller

Donnie Miller, brother of Chlorine Miller

They also had a brother named Hansley. I don't have a picture of him.

I don't have any pictures of their parents, Rom and Violet Hicks Miller.

Aunt Madge

"Don't show this to any one. I thought maybe some one might have the hiccoughs and if you show this to them it would stop them."

I'm assuming it was Aunt Madge who wrote this on the back of this photograph

PHOTO: Madge Till, Massie Treat, Christie Thomas

(Madge and Christie are Massie's daughters; Christie is my grandmother.)

Aunt Peggy, Part Two

This is a photo of the Arnold family with "Aunt Peggy" Bullard.

PHOTO L-R: Margaret "Aunt Peggy" Bullard, George, Adaline holding Ettie, Annie, John (in front of Annie), Henry holding Marlie. (Annie was my great-grandmother.)

Here is what my grandmother 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.

* * *

The little boy in the story is Henry Arnold in the photo above.

Here is a picture of George Bullard

Aunt Peggy

 This is one of the unidentified photos in our Arnold/Hicks family archives.

Here is what my grandmother wrote on the back of it.

"I think this is the woman that Mama called Aunt Peggy Bullard. If it is, she and her brother, George Bullard, are the ones who raised the man that "Adeline Carter" married. John Henry Arnold was his name. Adeline is our grandma whom everybody called "Ma", especially us grandkids.A few old friends called her "Ad". Anyway, John Henry and Ma were my mother's parents so that makes them my grandparents. This woman in the picture would be like my great-grandma, but not legally. --Cleffie Hicks Burford Reed"

The note written in red at the bottom is my handwriting. We figured out later that the woman in this picture was not Aunt Peggy. After much speculation, I believe it is the 2nd wife of George Bullard. Her name was Mary Alice Robinson. Here are pictures of Mary Alice and Aunt Peggy, for comparison.

 

Aunt Peggy (left) and Mary Alice (right) 

She would have been much younger in the photo above. It's possible that the picture above is not either one of these women, but someone else altogether. I don't have any other photos of any woman who looks like her. The reason I think it's Mary Alice is mostly because of the hairdo.

Here is a picture of George Bullard with Mary Alice and her two sons, Herbert and Levi Robinson, and George and Mary's daughter Tessie Bullard.

* * *

[AUTHOR'S NOTE -- I know the comma is supposed to go inside the quotation marks. But it doesn't make any sense to me, and that rule just drives me crazy. So at some point I decided to ignore the rule and do it the way that makes sense. Commas or periods should only be inside the quotation marks if they are part of the content enclosed by the quotation marks.]

Let's try something a little different

 Several years ago I bought a book by Ransom Riggs (who later went on to write the Miss Peregrine series of books) called Talking Pictures. It was a book of random photos he had collected through the years -- from flea markets, estate sales, etc. The focus of the book was not so much on the pictures as on what was written on the backs of the pictures. 

So I got to thinking... (don't be scared)... With all the millions of photographs that I have, a lot of them do have some interesting writing on the back -- and sometimes the front -- that might be interesting to someone else besides myself. So I'm going to try to start scanning some of them and posting them here. What do you think?

Here's one for starters --

Four generations - Me, my dad, Grandma Thomas, and great-grandmother Massie Treat.

Here is a scan of what Grandma Thomas wrote on the back of the photo.

Happy Mother's Day to All My Mothers

Happy Mother's Day to All My Mothers

Mother Wathada Burford Thomas 

Grandmother Cleffie Hicks Burford

Grandmother Christie Treat Thomas

Great grandmother Massie Parker Treat

Great grandmother Nancy Ford Thomas

Great grandmother Lora Gibson Burford

Great grandmother Annie Arnold Hicks

Great great grandmother Harriet Walker Thomas

Great great grandmother Martha Walls Treat

Great great grandmother Celia Campbell Parker

Great great grandmother Lucretia Gard Gibson

Great great grandmother Malisa Burns Hicks

Great great grandmother Adaline Carter Arnold

Great great great grandmother Sarah Davis Parker

Great great great grandmother Jane Evans Carter

Great great great great grandmother Sarah Bishop Evans

Great great great great great grandmother Lydia Sink Gibson

Cleffie and Elmer at home

Cleffie and Elmer at home

Cleffie and Elmer's House

 These are pictures of Cleffie and Elmer's house in Ida, Arkansas.