The James Thomas Smith Family - Part 4

SARAH (SANDERS) SMITH

Jan 4, 1861 – Nov 20 1931

In this section Janice Brown refers to Mildred Bolton, who was a granddaughter of Sarah (Sanders) Smith and James Thomas Smith and daughter of Fannie Mae Smith & Everett Presley Taylor.  The July 22 tape is Mildred Bolton talking.

The reference to Ma & Pa is a reference to Janice Brown's great-grandparents, the parents of Eva Caroline (Smith) Cox.

The March 7 tape is G. O., Gilbert Own Cox, talking. He refers to "they" and that is a reference to Sarah (Sanders) Smith her husband, James Thomas Smith.  In this tape there is a reference to Della and Ma and this is a reference to Della Taylor and Janice's great-grandmother.

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Sarah Sanders was born January 4, 1861 at Evansville, Vanderburgh County, Indiana.  She was the daughter of Charles and Fidella (Porter) Sanders.  Her father was born in Stoke-Upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England.  Her mother born in Spencer County, Indiana.

Sarah, age 19, married James Thomas Smith, New Year's Day, January 1, 1880 at the home of her parents, Charles Sanders and Fidella (Porter) Sanders, who lived two miles from Select.  This couple had nine children:  Della Catherine, Charles Thomas, Mary Elizabeth, Ellis James, Eva Caroline, Ella Jennie, Ollie Perry, Harb X., and Fannie Mae Smith.

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Mildred Bolton:  “I remember what my dad said, when my grandmother Smith passed away.  He said to my mother:  “If ever God needed an angel, he took her.  I have been in this family all this time; I have never seen her angry…I have never heard her say one cross word to anyone…or one word about anyone.  If she couldn’t say good things, she just didn’t talk.”  Mildred said, “I thought that was pretty good from her son-in-law.”  

July 22, 1978 - Grandmother told about her mother taking the hairpins out of her hair when they were coming home from church in the wagon, jostling over the bumps and ruts in the dirt road, so her hairpins wouldn’t drop out and get lost. Hairpins were at a premium and she didn’t have enough hairpins and didn’t want to lose them.”

Grandmother told about her mother’s cooking.  “She baked different kinds of cakes.  Sometimes they were good, and sometimes they weren’t too good.  But I did think her vanilla cake…with vanilla flavoring was good.  I can’t remember all the cakes she baked.  And she baked a pink layered and had it stacked high.  And sometimes in different colored layers.  She loved to bake pies.  She made good pumpkin pies.”

“And she used to make a cherry cobbler in a big pan.  Cherries and dough, and then more cherries and dough.  She filled it up.  They were good cherries.  Right off the  tree.  And she made peach cobblers and apple cobblers.  Oh, I couldn’t name it.”

“Pa and Ma always thought a lot of your Daddy.  They loved your Daddy.  Because he helped them.  And he was always laughing and talking. They always loved for him to come.  Good natured.  They always liked for him to come and stay all night, and watch him eat.  They just enjoyed that.  And he always did carry on about her cherry cobbler.  He really did.  He was welcome at everybody’s.”

Daddy told this:  “You know what I remember?  She had a big cherry tree by the kitchen door – black cherries.  And the jay birds got in that cherry tree all the time.  And I would get up there and fight with them jaybirds and eat cherries.  And I would always pick enough before I come down, and she would make a great big old…I’m talking about a bread pan…full of cherry cobbler.  And that was the best cherry cobbler I ever ate in my life.”

March 7, 1977 tape:  (A later story about the cherry tree was told by G.O.):   “They had a big cherry tree.  I told you about that.  Had black cherries on it, growing right by the kitchen door.  And my grandmother made her own soap and it was lye soap, and she would throw the dishwater out on that old cherry tree.  Every time she finished washing the dishes, she would throw the dish water up on the body of that tree, and it would run down to the bottom of it, and that was the biggest, healthiest cherry tree I have ever seen in my life.  It got up so high that the limbs would grow out over the roof of the house, and the shingles.  And boy, those were the best cherries you have ever eat. She would make those cherry cobblers out of them.  And I would get up there and fill my stomach up with ripe cherries right off of that tree and then pick enough cherries to make a cobbler, and fight the jay birds.  Because they were all in there after them.

“When we were back in Kentucky, we always went to my grandfather Smith’s house.  Jim Smith.  His name was James, but everybody called him Jim.  And he kept everything up.  If it was raining, he still kept you busy.  You would go to the barn and shell corn, or you would work on the harness, or you would clean the stalls.  There was something to do all the time.  If nothing else, they had a big old keg or two of rusty nails.  I never have forgot…a lot of them were square nails.  And you would take a hammer and straighten those nails out.  There was never a minute that you was there that you didn’t get up of a morning and…except Sunday, that was a day of rest…you were going to work all day.  By the time you got through with one thing, he would have something else figured out.  He had that going all the time.  And there wasn’t much you could do about it…because he kept his eye on you and you didn’t hide out on him.  If you did, he would soon find you.  He would know right where you was.  He knew.”

“One time when we were back there, we stayed about four months on a visit.  I guess you could call it a visit.  Papa was out at Burkburnett working in the oil field, because when we left Louisiana, he lost his job with the Gulf Oil Company when they struck.  They ran the soldiers in there because World War I was going on, and it broke the strike.  After they broke the strike, they brought a lot of scabs in and none of the men that struck ever got their jobs back.  So we went to Kentucky.  And he went with us, but then he left and went to Burkburnett and went to work out there.  So we stayed with Grandpa and Grandma for about four months, until Papa sent for us to come to Burkburnett.

“Grandpa Smith had a big two-story barn, and all the hay had to be put up in the loft of that barn.  It had a hole cut at each manger in the stalls where you put the hay down through that hole into the hayrack down in the stall.  It was my job to go up there every night and feed them horses hay.  I had to fill that manger up, down through that hole.  Well, one night, I was fishing in a little pond.  Aunt Josie had three poles set out.  And she had helped me get some fishing worms.  We fished till dark and then went to the house and I didn’t put the hay out. 

“When we got through eating supper, my grandpa asked me if I had fed the horses their hay because we always give them some corn before we give them some hay.  And he knew how many ears to tell you to put in where they eat…built like a box, but the hay manger was over to the side.  And just the minute he said it, well, I remembered that I hadn’t put any hay out.  It was already dark.  So I didn’t say a word…I just got up and took off to the barn.  And when I got up there in that loft, it was dark, and a lot of that hay had slipped and fell down in there and had those holes hid and I thought I was on the floor and the next thing I knew, I had fell through one of those holes and fell into the hay manger.

“It hurt and knocked the breath out of me, but I got back up there and finished putting out the rest of the hay.  So when I come to the house, of course, they all seen that something was wrong with me, and they wanted to know what had happened, and I told them I had fell out of the loft.  And what they thought of …the ladder went up beside the runways that went through the barn.  They had a driveway all the way through that barn, with stables on both sides.  And they thought I had fell out…off that ladder that went up there where you crawled into the loft.  Because it had two big doors up there that stayed open nearly all the time…swinging doors that you could throw back and put the hay up there, and then in the wintertime you closed it up…to keep the rain out.

“But there was something to do all the time.  Feed the chickens, gather up the eggs.  Build the hen nests.  I could just sit here and tell you…there was something all the time.  For everybody.  Or work in the garden.  Hoeing weeds.  Everybody had a hoe.  Suckering tobacco that was the money crop.  Boy, you really worked in that tobacco.  When he sold that tobacco in the fall, he carried it down to Cromwell, and put it on the boat and carried it to Owensboro and sold it, and when he came back, we met the boat that he came back on, and he brought everything with him that he was going to use the next year…two barrels of brown sugar.  I never will forget that.  The stuff we were going to get for Christmas.  Coffee, pepper, salt, stuff like that.  Flour.  Bought flour by the barrel, because they didn’t grow much wheat there.  Bought it by the barrel. Knocked the lid out of it, and it set over in the corner.  Had a cloth over the top of it, and a sifter in it, and you went over there and got what flour you wanted, and sifted it right there on the side of that…and about that much of that flour would still be left in there.

“Had a coffee mill, and you roasted the coffee beans in the oven on the stove.  Then take it out and grind it.  Had a big old coffee mill on the wall.  And you roasted the coffee beans, and stirred them all the time they were roasting.  And a wood stove to do it on.  And you can imagine how hot it got.  And the stove had a warmer on top that went up, and you kept that full of food up there.  Stuff that was left from dinner, and you warmed it for supper.  You couldn’t believe what it was like.  You had to live it to really know.

“But we had good times, too.  Sometimes we would go squirrel hunting and sometimes we would go rabbit hunting.  And I did love to squirrel hunt.  And we would get on a horse and ride down through the woods and there were so many squirrels that you could hunt off your horse.  Grandpa even had one horse that he could shoot a squirrel off of…and the horse wouldn’t jump. 

“Most of the time we would just ride down through a big strip of woods to the Chancellor place and when we seen a squirrel, he got down and rolled him out.

“But that tobacco was something.  You had to worm it.  Pick the worms off.  With your hands.  Little old speckled worms, and you stepped on them.  And they had a big old horn.  When I was a little bitty baby, my mother gimme a tobacco worm to play with…put it in a pasteboard box and I would sit and look at it in that box, crawling around, and it would keep it from getting away, too.

“And you had to go pick them peaches.  And boy, I ate enough of them.  They had one tree that I just loved.  It was a little bitty one, and when they were ripe you could just break them open with one hand and eating a half would just make a good bite.  It was an Indian Cling peach and it didn’t get very ripe until way up in the fall.  And they had pear trees, too.

“Didn’t you hear Uncle Ellis asking me about getting out there in those trees when he had those…I can’t remember what kind of tree it was.  Not apricots.  Anyway, I asked him if he remembered me getting out there and eating all those.  And he said, “Yes, and did I get on to you?”  And boy he did.  He got all over me.

“Oh yes, I will tell you something else we had to do.  Those horses had to be curried and brushed, and their collars cleaned off…because the sweat would build up on leather collars, and when you brought a horse in of a night, and put him up and feed him, when you got through, you brushed his shoulders and curried him and rubbed him down with a big old stiff brush.  And fed him, and then you went and got that collar and cleaned all that caked dirt and sweat off of it.  And he had a collar pad that went on the horse, and you had to clean that, too.”

“Well, you did everything the hard way.  You had to.  There wasn’t any machinery or anything like there is now.  Lord, they dragged the roads with an old scraper…just a big old triangle of logs, and the front one was hewed out and had a steel blade bolted to it.  And that was the way they smoothed the roads.  And instead of paying the road tax, you could go and work on the road two days…and that would take care of your tax.  So nearly everybody did that.  Some didn’t.  Some paid their tax, but it was hard work.  Pulled that scraper with horses.  Go up one side of the road and down the other, and drag that dirt up into the ruts where the wagons cut ruts, and smoothed them out.”

~.~

 Mildred:  “I have never eaten after anyone who could make biscuits…Grandma could make the best biscuits…they were that big around, and she never had…used…any milk.  I guess they were sour dough, I don’t know.  But when I was a little kid and I would go to grandma’s she would always cook what I liked. And it was those biscuits. And she would get this sugar-cured bacon and she would cook some of that…and I loved her fried corn.”

Tape March 7, 1977:  Grandmother, when asked if they had ice back in that day... answered:   “No, but we could go and get ice.  We kept ice when mother was sick with typhoid fever.  We didn’t have any electricity…we didn’t have anything like that.  We couldn’t keep ice.   The only way you could keep ice was to dig a hole and put it in sawdust and wrap it and bury it.  It seems to me they went to Beaver Dam after it.  Beaver Dam or Cromwell, I don’t know which.  It might have kept a week, I guess, or maybe longer.”

About making soap:  GM:  “Of course she made her own soap.  She made soap out of lye and ashes and I don’t know what else.  And it was a pretty, white soap.  Laundry soap.  Well, we had an ash hopper and you poured ashes in there and poured water over it and had lye, and boiled it in an iron pot.  And take it and put it on and…grease in it.  Poured it in a scaffold and poured it in and fixed it, and some of it was pretty, and cut in blocks to wash clothes with.  And she had some to be real white, and that was good, and we washed our hair in it.  It had to make in a kettle, Jerri, and then cut it out in squares.  Just cakes of soap."

“Della always done the ironing, and Ma did the sewing.” 

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Thanks to Janice Brown.

The James Thomas Smith Family - Part 3

In this section Janice Brown continues to talk about G.O. Cox, her grandfather, and his memory of his grandfather, James Thomas Smith.  The reference to Jeri was a family nickname for Janice Brown and J. B. is Janice Brown.  Jen and Jennifer is the same person. Amy is Janice's daughter.

My father, G.O. Cox tells about his grandfather, James Thomas Smith, taking a wagon load of apples to sell at the coal miner’s company store:

“Well, we took a wagon load of apples down to the Broadway Mines and was going to peddle them out.  Got ‘em all loaded up, and got up before daylight and eat breakfast, got the horses harnessed up, and took that load of apples down there and was going to go…they had company houses in big long rows, and we were going to go from house to house and sell those apples.  But…when we got down there, well somebody told them about it at the company store, which was a great big store where all the miners had to trade. 

“And, so a man come down there and told us we couldn’t sell those apples…at those houses.  That if we wanted to sell those apples, to bring them down to the store and they would buy them.  We drove down to the store…and the porch was way up high…had a great big old porch on the side of a hill.  Higher than a wagon bed.  And that old storekeeper come out there…I never have forgot it…because he had on an apron.  And he stood there and looked down at those apples, and told Grandpa what he would give him for ‘em…I’ve forgot what it was, it wasn’t but just a little…bit.  And there was five or six men all settin’ on benches around there and…Grandpa looked back at all of them and says, “I’m going to dump these apples out at a certain creek.  I have forgotten the name of it.  And if anybody wants any apples, tell them to come out there and they can get all the apples they want.”  And he gave them horses a click, and said, “Giddap.”  And hit the horses, and we drove off. 

“And, we went about two miles out of the town to a creek there with a big steep bank, and he drove the wagon down there, and pulled it back up where the backend of it would be down real low, and he got out and went back there and pulled the end gate out of that wagon and let all the apples roll out.”

JENNIFER asked:  “Couldn’t he sell them somewhere else?”

G.O.:  “There wasn’t anywhere else to go.  That was a town.  That was all of it.  The mines run it and owned it all.  (Broadway Mines).

J.B.:  “Did you all pick those apples yourself the day before?”

G.O.:  “Well, of course, we did.  We got out in the orchard and went from tree to tree, and picked out good apples, and polished them, and put them on a wagon bed piled with straw.  Why heck.  We had put a lot of work into ‘em.  Everybody picked.  Everybody in the family.  Yes.  Trying to make a little money.”

JEN:  “That was you and your granddaddy.  G.O. “Yes, my grandfather Smith.”

J.B.:    “Grandmother’s daddy…James Thomas Smith.”

AMY:  “That sounds like fun!”  (at that time, my little daughter Amy was nine years old.)

G.O.:  (He remembered something else about the wagon story and selling apples):

“But I was always saying something.  On that same porch that I told you about when we drove up there to sell those apples.  Well, there was always a bunch of loungers sitting around there that wasn’t working.  And mama sent me to the store one day for something.  But when I walked up them big high steps and got up on that porch, well, one old man turned around to me and said, “Hello, Stoebuck.”  And I said, “Hello, Homemade.”  And just went right on in the store. 

JEN:  “What does Stoebuck mean? 

G.O.:  (chuckling) “ It was just a name he had for me.  But I have never forgotten it.”

JEN:  “Because you called him, Homemade?”

G.O.:  “Because I called him “Homemade” and all of them guys just like to have fell off the benches.  And then I heard my Daddy tell my Mother a few days later, that everybody in that mine went to calling that guy, “Homemade.”  And that liked to have tickled them to death, you know.  And I guess it embarrassed him.”

~.~

J.B.:  “Well, listen, Daddy, tell Jennifer about your first train ride…from Broadway Mines to Beaver Dam…how cold the depot was.”

G.O.: “Well, honey, we got up way before daylight…had to do down there to catch the train.”

JEN:  “How old were you?”

G.O.: “I don’t recall.  But I wasn’t very old.  Because I had never started to school.  I would say I was about five years old, probably.  Maybe not that old.  But we had to bundle up.  And we got down to the depot, and there wasn’t any fire or anything.  And we’d go outside and look…and see if we could see the headlight coming on the train…there was a big cut through the side of that hill…and they would stand and listen to see if they could hear the whistle. (Laughing).  And you had to start a fire in the (wood) stove.  But it was cold, and only a few little sticks of kindling, and it was real slow to burn, and take off.  And we would warm our hands, and then put our gloves back on.  I had on a pair of mittens.  Didn’t have any fingers.  Just a thumb, and a string around my neck to keep from losing them.  Finally the train come.  And the headlights was shining.  Boy, and it pulled in with all that noise, and steam and everything.  Boy, I thought that was something.  Got on that train, and we didn’t get started until we was stopping and getting off in Beaver Dam.  (Laughing). About six or seven miles.”

JEN:  “Well, how come you took the train ride?  Just for sport?”

G.O.: “(tape is illegible for a few seconds)…and then when we got to Beaver Dam, we rented a horse and buggy and went out to Pa’s farm.  My Grandpa Smith.”

 (JB – I imagine at that time they were living in one of the company houses at the Broadway Mines where Granddaddy worked – and they were going to visit Grandmother’s parents where they lived near Select.)  Shortly after this period of time, they moved to Edgerly, Louisiana and Granddaddy went to work in the oil fields.  They lived with her sister, Mary Elizabeth “Lizzie” - (“Auntie” and “Uncle”) to us.  Uncle worked in a store in town.  My daddy started kindergarten or first grade there, I’ve forgotten which, but somewhere Grandmother tells about this, and about dressing Daddy up for the Mardi Gras party at school.  He didn’t have a costume, so she put some soot on his face, and some old clothes, and he went back to school dressed as a tramp.)

~.~

Mary Elizabeth (Smith) Sandefur, whom I have always called “Auntie,” told me that their childhood home was a big two-story house, painted white, with pretty wall paper.  The bedrooms were all upstairs and they had one bedroom downstairs.  They had a lot of flowers and the prettiest garden walk with peonies that looked like wax – red and white.  At the end of the garden walk the landscape stair-stepped and they had a grape arbor with a slatted roof top.  Near the grape arbor, there was a limbertwig tree with limbs that dropped down like a willow tree, and hid the privy from the house. (The limbertwig is an apple tree.)

They had a smoke house out behind the house.  She could remember that her father killed sixteen hogs one cold winter day, and there were lots of people there.  They let her walk to Grandma Sander’s house to get a knife to use in the hog-killing.

Auntie said that Grandma Sanders had a summer kitchen where they cooked and canned.

She also said that they had a dog named Old Sport that bit Grandmother once.  He slept in the shade by the chimney and guarded the yard and front gate.  The minute someone neared their property, he began barking and barking.

~.~

When we asked about burying their apples, Grandmother said:

“Well, Jerri, they just dug a hole, not too deep, but level almost with the ground, but they went around it, and they put these apples in the center, and they would put straw in there, I think, and then they would build it up high, and throw all that dirt over the apples so they wouldn’t freeze…a lot higher than this table.  And then they put apples in there, and they would put turnips, seems to me like.  I can remember the apples better than anything else.  And you would have to take a hoe and dig a hole right at the bottom of this pit, and reach back in there and get the apples out.  Anytime you wanted them.  And later on, they built a big long box, and put all the straw in there, and put apples in that big long box, and then they covered it with dirt.  It was covered up high.  It was kind of cone-shaped.  It was all the way around, and rain never did get to them.  Yes, Charlie made a long box-maybe as long as this table, and then put straw in it, and then put apples in there.  And then made a big mound of dirt over the top.  And you could open that hole and reach in and dig out.  We would go in there and get apples anytime we wanted them.”  (this is combined from 2 places).

GM June 1982 - telling about the new house (this is also told in another place or two):

GM:  “Oh, Jerri, I don’t think I was but about five or six years old.  But I can remember when they was building that house.  And I can remember helping carry little things from the old house up to the new house.  Just about as far from this house to your daddy’s house.  Maybe not that far.  It wasn’t very far.  And that’s about all I can remember about that.  John Henry Stewart, Roy Stewart’s father (grandmother’s brother in-law, husband of Aunt Ella), helped build it.  He was a carpenter. And my daddy. And I don’t know who else. But they were the main two.” 

~.~

“Once when we were all visiting around grandmother’s table, Eula Mae asked:  “Why did you call them “Ma” and “Pa?”   Grandmother told her: “Well, people did back in that day and time.  They called their parents Ma and Pa.  Then after a while, they got to calling them Papa and Mama, and then it was Mother and Daddy.  And then we called our grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa, which I really think is a sweet name.  I really do.  I love the name of Grandma.  And Grandpa.”

“Grandpa had a nickname for Ma.  He always called her, “Duck.”  (chuckling). I don’t know why. “  Darrell said that she read something once that said you called someone that you loved…in England.  It was an endearment…just like someone here would say “Dear.”  Or, “Honey.”   But in England, they would say “Duck.”  Grandmother said they were just used to hearing him call her that.  “I never heard him call her “dear’ …I don’t believe I ever did hear him call her anything but “Duck.”  And I never did ask, I don’t reckon.  I never did know why he called her that.” 

                                                                     ~.~         

A copy of a Bill of Sale recorded at the Ohio County Courthouse indicates that J. T. Smith, Beaver Dam, of Rural Route 3, sold “27 marked hickory trees standing on his home farm, joining J. W. Taylor and Fletcher Taylor, said trees to be cut within two years from date of this sale.”  The trees were sold for $90 to J. V. Stinson & Company of Owensboro, Kentucky, to be paid by check in twenty days from date, which was signed October 26, 1922.  The witness to this timber contract was E. J. Rhodes.

~.~

June 1982 tape:  JB: “ Grandmother, tell me something else.  The obit said your daddy was sick for a long time.  20 years.  What did he have?”

GM:  “Well, he had arthritis for one thing.  And I really don’t know.  He was just in bad health for a long time.  His health just give away.  He had arthritis and it had drawed him over until he couldn’t hardly raise his head up.” 

JB:  “So all the boys had to do the work?”

GM:  “Boys and girls both.  Us girls worked too, Jerri.  We had to!”

~.~

Thanks to Janice Brown.

The James Thomas Smith Family - Part 2

Index for below: 
1. H. J. is Harry Joseph Elmore, Evelyn's husband. Evelyn was the daughter of Della Catherine Smith and granddaughter of James Thomas Smith.
2. G. O. is Gilbert Owen Cox, Sr., son of Eva Caroline Smith and Jasper Newton Cox.
3. Mildred Bolton is the daughter of Fannie Mae Smith and Everett Presley Taylor and granddaughter of James Thomas Smith.

Excerpt from Evelyn Elmore’s letter to me – July 25, 2010:

“Yes, I remember all us grandchildren would sit in the little hall and whisper (on the floor around the wall).  He (James Thomas Smith, their grandfather) couldn’t stand noise – we would hug him gentle.  He didn’t live too long.  I too remember Grandma telling him “OK.  Just a minute.”  She would go to the cabinet and get a tiny glass & pour something in it and give it to him.  We asked Mother what it was and she said it was to give him strength.  The Dr. said he couldn’t do anything more to help him.  He had a short time.

“The family was all by his bedside, and us children lined up along the wall in the kitchen.  Could hear him struggle to get his breath.  I was about nine or ten years old.  Remember them opening the casket by the gate to view him, and Aunt Mae (his youngest daughter) crying so hard they had to close the casket.  Now, I know how Grandma felt.  They were together 46 years.  H.J. and I were together 62 years when he left suddenly.”

~.~

Tape of July 22, 1978: G.O. told a story he remembered on the tape with Mildred Bolton, his first cousin, about how they had to work when it was raining and they couldn’t get out to the fields.  They would shuck corn, or fix the harness, or grind corn at the barn, and make repairs.  Grandpa Smith always kept them working.  “Pa was a great one for working.”

Tape March 7, 1977:  G.O. said, “Like I said, there was something to do from the time you got up in the morning until the time you went to bed at night.  And when night come, you was ready to go to bed.  You were give out because you had done worked.  You can’t believe how primitive they lived, compared to the way we live now.  If we want some beans, we run to the store and buy a little sack of beans.  But you raised your own beans then.  Planted them in the corn when you were planting the corn.  And then you had to take meal sacks, and flour sacks, and go down there and gather them beans off of those corn stalks when they got dry.  And then you took a stick and beat that sack and knocked all the beans out of the hulls.  And then you held them up and let the wind blow the trash out of them, and let them fall on a sheet.  Sometimes they stood on the barn, and let the wind blow the trash away.  And then you took those beans and sacked them up, and I forgot what…they had something to put in them to keep the weevils from getting in them, but I forget what it was.”

“But there was something to do all the time.  Just like when the peaches and apples was getting ripe.  You were either canning them or you was cutting them up to dry.  And Grandma had a lot of oil cloth, and you would get up on that smokehouse, and that was my job because I was a little boy and could get up on top real easy, spread that oil cloth out, and they would hand me up those peaches and apples, and I would spread them out on top of that oil cloth and have the whole top of that smokehouse covered with apples and peaches, drying.  Drying in the sun for food that winter.”

~.~

“The first freezing spell, Grandpa (called Jim Smith) would start killing hogs.  He killed eight or ten hogs at one time, killed hogs all day long and hung them up, so they would stay out in the cold that night and after he got them killed and hung up and they got the animal heat out of them and cooled out, well, the next morning you started cutting them up.  And that was a job…cutting up that many hogs. 

“And he had a great big old box that it took two, nearly, to lift the lid on because it was made out of rough lumber and it was full of salt.  And you put that meat down in there and you covered it with salt…and let the salt strike through it…left it in there.  It was right out by the well…in the back yard.  And it would just nearly freeze your hands off when you had to wash that salt off that meat when you got ready to smoke it.

“And I’ve been out there and you would draw that water and the more salt that you washed off, your hands would get so cold that you would just have to stop and rub them.  Then you carried it to the smokehouse.  My grandmother had a big old dish pan.  She took flour and sorghum syrup and red pepper for seasoning and mixed all that up in that syrup and made a paste out of it…a real thick paste…it would be about a quarter of an inch thick on those hams and side of bacon…just rubbed it, and then sprinkled it with flour.  Sometimes if it was a little bit thin, she put some more flour on there and rubbed it in with her hands.  That was to keep a little old bug out of there that they called the “miller” that would get in the meat.

“Then they had pieces of wire and a hole cut through the meat and they hung it up on the rafters in that smokehouse.  The smokehouse was dug out about four feet deep.    It had a bench that went all the way around the wall about four feet wide.  The dirt wasn’t dug out there.  It was just laid up there and that was to walk on.

“But they built a fire right in the center down in the pit in that smokehouse and had a good-sized fire, I’m talking about, out of green wood.  The old house had a…the smokehouse was made out of logs and all of it chinked on the sides with handmade shingles on the top of it, and that is the only place the smoke got out was up there through those shingles. When you went in there you could see the fire good, and tell how to tend to it and all, but up there in the top of that smokehouse, it would just be a fog of smoke and it would be coming out all day long under those wooden shingles.  And you kept the fire going day and night until that meat was smoked.  It seems to me like it took about a week or so.  It would be just as black as could be.  The outside of it with that syrup and all that smoke, it would look plumb black when you took it down.  But boy, my grandmother would take a knife and trim that stuff off.  Just trimmed it off to that fat.  And you talk about some ham with striped gravy… and that sorghum kind of sweetened that meat or something.  It was good eating.”

“Those hams and bacon didn’t spoil in the summer.  Shoot, they hung right out there in that smokehouse all summer long.  From one fall to the next…and that was your meat.  The way they done it, they had so much smoke on them and so much spices, it was so hot on the outside of that meat that bugs didn’t get in it.

“And that smokehouse I was telling you about.  He had great big five and ten gallon crocks filled with kraut, with big old wooden lids.  And it would be foaming and you could smell it when you went down in that smokehouse.  But there would be seven or eight or ten of those big old crocks all across the backside of it there…setting on boards, filled with that kraut.  Made their own pickles, too.”

Grandmother described their smokehouse, too – maybe in two places – but I accidentally erased over one taped story:

GM:  “Oh honey, it was just a building, with a platform as you walk in the door.  Out so far.  And the platform went clear around.  And then, the ground was left, you know, where they smoked all the meat up here.  They built a fire, and all the stuff was put in there.  And they dug a pit and built a fire to smoke everything hanging up.  And Charlie went out there one morning to get molasses where they had made syrup, and it was cold, and he turned the barrel over (with the spigot turned on, JB) to fill up his bucket.  It was sitting on a bench-like platform, and he come in the house and forgot about it, and it just poured out all over down in there (the pit), (laughing), and they had to get in there and dig all that stuff out and clean it up.”         

                                                                                                                                                                

~.~

G.O.:  “And I rode old Barney, an old horse that was gentle, and my grandfather would pick me up and put a sack of corn in front of me and one behind me, and I rode it about six miles down to my Uncle Letcher’s grist mill and saw mill, and he ground it up into meal and I brought it back.”

“Grandpa Smith was a fox hunter.  My grandmother would make a great big pan of bread…that big a square (measuring) for them dogs.  Every evening.  And if he told her not to feed the dogs, I knew we were going to go hunting that night.  So they would run real good.  And he would put me up in front of him in the saddle and away we would go.  And we would meet four or five other fellows and they would have all their dogs, and boy, I’m telling you, the fox chase took place.  And we would stop and listen to them dogs, and they could tell which dog was in the lead…and where the fox was going to cross.  And we would get on those horses, and race to get there in the moonlight and watch the dogs cross with that fox.  It was thrilling…to a little boy. 

“It was a pastime to them.  He had the best dog there was in the country…my grandfather.  His name was Pullman.  I don’t know where he got that name for him, but I never will forget it.  Pullman, just like the Pullman car on the back of a passenger train.  And he had the best nose, and was one of the fastest dogs.  I know one night, we had started across a bridge over there at Chancellor Creek over a foot log when he was just a puppy, when my grandfather was training him, and it was a coon he was after instead of a fox, and when we got up there, that coon had a hold on that puppy on that log and pulled him off in that water.  And it was icy, mind you.  And Grandpa went right in that icy water and grabbed that pup by the leg and that coon was still holding on to him, setting right on top of his head.  And would have drowned him, too, if Grandpa hadn’t of got him out.  They will do that, a coon will.”

~.~

Thanks to Janice Brown.

The James Thomas Smith Family - Part 1

            James Thomas Smith was born December 13, 1856 in Meade County, Kentucky, the son of Thomas Smith (Jr.) and Catherine Ann "Kitty" Jenkins, and grandson of Thomas Franklin Smith and Eliza S. B. "Louisa" Grant, and of Benjamin Shacklett Jenkins and Elizabeth Tichenor Humphrey of Meade County.

            He married Sarah Sanders on New Year's Day, January 1, 1880, in Ohio County, Kentucky.  Sarah was the daughter of Charles Sanders and Fidella Porter, and granddaughter of John and Sarah Sanders of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England; and of Felix Walker Porter and Nancy McKim of Spencer County, Indiana.  Sarah Sanders was born on January 4, 1861 at Evansville, Vanderburgh Co. Indiana.

            James Thomas Smith and Sarah Sanders had nine children: Della Catherine; Charles Thomas; Mary Elizabeth; Ellis James; Eva Caroline; Ella Jennie; Ollie Perry; and Harb X. "Hobby" Smith.  The family lived on their farm about two miles from Select, Ohio County, and about eight miles from Beaver Dam.

            In Ohio County, Kentucky the James Thomas Smith families lived in a cluster of relatives, neighbors, friends and in-laws – within “hollering distance” as my grandmother once put it.  They bought land from each other, witnessed each other’s deeds and legal documents, attended the same church congregations where they worshiped, and were ultimately buried near their relatives and friends in the same cemeteries.

            Grandmother Cox said that Thomas Smith was of Welsh descent.  Tracing his roots back to Wales, particularly in view of the commonality of a Welsh surname like Smith, would prove very difficult, probably impossible.  That is especially so because of the Welsh naming patterns and practices.  But it would surely be fun to learn about the Smith social, cultural, religious and economic background of the country in which our Welsh Smith ancestors lived.  As of this date in 2014, however, we have no evidence of when or where our first Welsh emigrant came from.

~.~

            1988 Tape made by Janice Brown (JB) talking with her Grandmother Eva Caroline (Smith) Cox (GM):  

           GM:  “We had about one acre of orchard.  The first barn was great big, and was pretty old.  When it fell in, they built a new barn with a driveway through it for the wagons.  The shed was big and had a drive way through it for the wagons, and it had stalls on both sides and troughs fixed for each stall, and a gate to go in and out and around the barn, and you open it and throw the corn in, and it was fixed that way so the horses couldn’t kick you with their heels when you went around to feed them.

            “The barn had a loft without a banister, and Ellis walked off it one time.  He and our cousin, George Taylor, had gone to church and had come back by the barn.  The loft just had a ladder, and Ellis thought he was stepping down where the ladder was, but in place of that, he just stepped off into air.  It knocked him unconscious, but George didn’t bring him to the house until he revived.  And it left a gray spot on his head where his hair turned grey.  They were young men at the time, old enough to be going with the girls.”

            “The barn was close to the hen house which was down below the house.  There was an apple tree called a “limbertwig” tree and its branches drooped down to the ground, and it hid the privy.

            “The grape arbor was near the orchard, and it had flowers growing on each side of the walk.  We kept that walk swept clean all the time.  The dirt was packed down hard on the path from so many using it all the time.  There were four maple trees in the front by the yard gate.  Yes, we dug up those maple trees and brought them up to the house and set them out in the front yard.  And they grew, and they were so pretty.  They grew tall and were just beautiful.  And each one had a tree that we claimed and watered and took care of.  Planted clear across the front yard.”

            “The orchard had ever kind of tree that you could name…apples, peaches, pears.  Made all kinds of jellies and puhserves (sic).  Oh just everything.  If we wanted sugar, we bought it.   But when they were making syrup, after it was all made…and the last go around, we had apples.  And mother always made the syrup.  And you know, I can’t explain how that…pan that they made it in.  It would be longer than this table.  And on the very last she would put all those apples in there and puhserve em.  And they was really good…with that syrup…and then put it in a stone jar.  But mother always had lots of preserves made with sugar.  But us kids always liked those others.”

            JB:  “Grandmother, did you all ever sell anything that you raised?”

            GM:  “I can’t remember them selling anything.  Except Elberta peaches.  We had a beautiful Elberta peach orchard.  But now that was later on.  The peaches come in about the time I married.  Because the orchard, I think it was three years old.  And we got $3.00 a bushel.  And we thought that was great!  And then my daddy always give everyone of ‘em peaches out of the orchard to put up…all the married kids.”

            We had our own meal, our own flour…we raised wheat, taken it to the grist mill at Beaver Dam.  And we would take our corn to have it ground.  Made all kinds.”

~.~

Thanks to Janice Brown.

Deeds and Documents from 1785-1799

The formation of Ohio County was in three steps:

1. Nelson County was originally formed from Jefferson County in 1785.  

2. Hardin County was formed from Nelson County in 1793.

3. Ohio County was formed from Hardin County in 1799.

Thus, there are some marriage licenses, deeds to property, and other records that were recorded in Nelson County during 1785-1793 and the same type of records were recorded in Hardin County in 1793-1799 – both contain records that relate to Ohio County. These records can be found in the Courthouses of Nelson and Hardin Counties. Also, you can access records for Hardin County at www.hccoky.org; near the bottom click on Recordings, then near the bottom click on Genealogy Information & Archival Records, then near the bottom click on Archival Records Search. I found two books to search under “Select the Index Book” and I used the Select Letter – Go to Index.  If you find something in the Index then you can go to the Book/Page Number to see the actual deed or document.  I used “P” and found several references to our Ignatius Pigman.  Once you get into the index you can go to the next page, or go backwards, by using the selections in the upper right or upper left corners.  Sadly, Nelson County does not have their old documents online.

However, I found a booklet prepared by the Nelson County Historical Society that shows abstracts of deeds recorded during 1785 – 1808 and I can see that some of these mention property located on Rough Creek, Green River, or other names obviously in Ohio County.  It appears this is Book Two and I have been unable to find Book One but I will keep looking. If one of you has Book One please consider scanning it and send it to me so I can post it. This booklet is only 8 pages long so I’ll post the entire book.  I marked some obvious references to Rough Creek and Green River but it might be better if you searched the names for your ancestors.

Claron Calvin Davis

       Claron Calvin Davis was born in Ohio County 7 March 1903, the son of Oscar and Anna Davis. He died 6 April 1998 in Ohio County and is buried in Sunnyside Cemetery.  He married Fay Davis (1907-1994) and they had one daughter, Wilma Louise (17 March 1932 - 17 Nov 2017).

Della C. Smith

       Della C. Smith was born 5 Nov 1880 in Ohio County and died 17 Oct 1975 in Ohio County.  When Della was born her father, James Thomas Smith, was 23 and her mother, Sarah Sanders, was 19.  Della married Flemon Letcher Taylor and they had five children, including Jewell D. Taylor (1914-1965); Eldred Smith Taylor (1916-1974); and Evelyn Sanders (Taylor) Elmore (1916-2016). 

     Della died at the age of 94 and her obituary can be found in the Ownersboro Messenger 18 Oct 1975.  Her husband's obituary can be found in the Messenger 7 Mar 1960.  Flemon, who was usually called Letcher, was born 8 Apr 1876 and died 6 Mar 1960. His parents were Lorenzo Dow Taylor (1837-1916)and Gabrella A. Ford (1837-1904).

     Here is a photo of Della and Letcher, with one of their children, followed by a photo of Della. These photos were probably made in the early 1900's: