A Daughter Remembers

MEMORIES OF DOYLE’S EARLY LIFE

  [DOYLE J. RUSSELL]

By Mary Russell Simms

Foreword: The information in Doyle's story came from several sources: 

1) As a little kid, I used to love to listen to Doyle tell his tales about his life in Arkansas. I was fascinated by all of his adventures. 

2) Also, I was very close to Doyle's mother. Even though I only visited at her home in Arkansas three times, Addie and I exchanged letters for over thirty years. She shared many stories with me about Doyle during his early years in Arkansas. 

 3) Perhaps my greatest source of information about Doyle's life came from being Doyle's daughter. I knew Doyle personally for over sixty years. Unfortunately, Doyle did not leave any written memoirs for us. Hopefully the following account will leave a permanent record of a most remarkable man.

                                      * * *

Doyle was truly a self-made man.  He was quite unlike his parents and siblings.  Doyle must have inherited his drive and determination from his favorite Grandmother, Mariah Tennessee Turner Russell. Grandma "Tennie" was far ahead of her times back then. In fact, back in the late 1800s, after birthing eleven children and being pregnant with number twelve, Doyle's Grandma "Tennie" had the courage to divorce her abusive husband! Divorce was totally unheard of back then in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. I always believed that Grandma "Tennie" was Doyle's role model.

Doyle’s early years in Arkansas were truly sad.  Born in 1907, the fourth child of twelve offspring, his mother was always overworked and had little time to give her many children individual attention that they needed.  When Doyle started to school his mother gave him a McGuffey’s Reader and a cold sweet potato for his lunch and sent him off to get his education.  At other times he carried a chunk of cold cornbread for his lunch. 

All of the siblings went barefoot to school back then.  They had to wade across a small creek on their way to and from the school house which was about two miles away.  In the winter months there were chunks of ice in the creek.  Wading barefoot across that creek and having nothing to dry off with must have been very painful for those young children.

In the early part of the twentieth century, teaching at the local school left much to be desired.  After completing eighth grade, a student could take a teaching test and become a licensed school teacher in Arkansas.  The school house was also very austere.  It was a one-room wooden building with a dirt floor.  Very little heat came from a fireplace set into one wall. 

During his first year of school Doyle, was never called on in class.  The teacher never spoke to him or gave him any instruction.  Doyle was a shy little kid and sat quietly chewing on the corners of his McGuffey’s reader and swinging his feet back and forth beneath his desk.  Since the one-room school house had dirt floor, Doyle’s toenails dug two trenches beneath his desk.  All Doyle had to show for his entire first year at school was a round-cornered reading book and two deep ruts beneath his desk.

From early on, Doyle was different from the rest of his family.  Doyle was determined to make his mark in the world. He was willing to work and plan and was determined to have property of his own and provide well for a family. Doyle wanted independence and security.  He was determined to rise above his own raising.   The good news was that Doyle was willing to work for what he wanted.  

He was very much like his Grandma “Tennie” in many ways.  He did his own thing.  In 1929 when the great depression hit America, many people seemed content to sit on the front porch and watch an old hound dog scratch its fleas while they  wished for better times.  Not Doyle. Doyle hitch-hiked to Kansas and followed the wheat harvest going west.  His family needed the money.

Doyle was 22 years old in 1929  when he left home to find work.  He was willing to work long, hard days and give an honest day’s work for his pay.  Doyle was able to cover his living expense and managed to send money home to his mother to help out with paying the tax bills and other outstanding bills.

Doyle continued to do this for several years.  His cousin Archie Turner accompanied him on one of these jaunts to Kansas.  At first Doyle hitch-hiked or “rode the rails” of the freight trains to get to Kansas to seek work in the wheat harvest.   In later years he was able to buy a bus ticket to travel safely back and forth from home to the harvest area.  He was still faithfully mailing money back home to his mother.  Otherwise the Russell family would most likely have lost their home and farm due to delinquent taxes.

Doyle encouraged his siblings to find work.  He sent some of the boys off to the CCC Camps to work.  He encouraged others to join the Army.  Every sibling he could put to work elsewhere made one less mouth for his mother to feed.

Doyle’s father was a delightful, lovable person whose greatest pleasure was doing volunteer work in the community.  He was an unpaid deputy sheriff and was always available to escort prisoners between Arkansas and Texas.  The deputy and prisoner always rode horseback and camped out several nights during these trips.  While this was truly a noble task, it did not put any food on the table at home or help pay the bills.  Also, when anyone in the community died, Doyle’s father would volunteer to build them a nice casket—no charge.  This was admirable but did nothing to pay the bills for a family of twelve offspring plus two parents.  Doyle’s dad was the poster boy for volunteer work. 

Doyle was determined to be nothing like his father when it came to providing for a family.  Hard work and responsibility ranked very high with Doyle. 

For several years Doyle followed the wheat harvest from Kansas through into Colorado  each summer. After a few years he decided to put down roots in northern Colorado.  He liked the land there.  Colorado farmers did not have the same problems that the farmers in Arkansas faced.  Grass did not grow wild in the fields of Colorado.  Rocks did not constantly work up into the plowed land in Colorado.  Unwanted vegetation did not consume the farm land in Colorado.  Becoming a farmer in Colorado sounded like a good idea to Doyle.

Doyle leased a small farm with an old barn, corral, a well, and a two-room shack from Mrs. Entwhistle.  He began farming with a horse and plow and worked long, hard hours.  His determination paid off and he made a success of dry-land farming. 

In 1934 when a night course in college level accounting was offered in the local town, he saw the opportunity to further his education.  Doyle would work a ten-hour day in the fields, come in, wash up, eat some supper, saddle his horse and ride five miles to town to attend accounting classes.

Doyle loved the learning experience but it was short-lived.  Doyle had an eighth-grade education and was doing well understanding accounting.  The problem occurred when the other students—all high school graduates and several college-educated students simply could not comprehend the basics of accounting.  The teacher told Doyle that only two people in the room understood what was going on—Doyle and the teacher.  Unfortunately for Doyle, the course was cancelled before they reached mid-term.

In 1935 Doyle got married to a local sixteen-year old school girl.  Doyle was eleven  years older than his new bride and faced quite a challenge.  The new bride knew absolutely nothing about cooking, sewing, raising children, or keeping a house!  Fortunately, Doyle was patient and a good teacher.   Eventually Frances learned to do routine housework and cook edible meals.  She even eventually learned how to sew.  With the birth of four children and much coaching from the neighbor across the road, Frances learned child care. 

Meanwhile back in Arkansas, Doyle had become a local legend in his own time.  Doyle was looked up to and admired by his friends and family remaining in Arkansas.  It became the goal of every young man in Cass to one day go visit Doyle in Colorado and see their hero in person. 

During the early years of their marriage, Doyle and Frances entertained many of the Arkansas bunch.  Some slept on the floor in the kitchen while others bunked out in the barn.  One couple even stayed at the local hotel.  Most of their visitors stayed for a few weeks.  Some stayed for a few months.  Others stayed for a year or more.  Most of the Arkansas friends and relatives could not tolerate the cold Colorado winters.  Doyle’s youngest brother Harold was the only friend or relative from Arkansas to choose Colorado as his permanent home.

Every one of Doyle’s seven brothers visited Doyle at his various farms in Colorado.  Two of his four sisters came to see him.  Everyone who visited and returned to Arkansas had nothing by praise when telling of Doyle’s life in Colorado.  Doyle remained the village hero.

Doyle moved forward with his farming, increasing his plowed acreage from time to time.  He got a tractor and upgraded his source of farm power.  He bought 320 acres of farm land and in 1938 moved his wife and two children to a different  house.  The new home had four small rooms, a barn, pigpens, and workshop with attached chicken house.  From G P Brandner Doyle had leased 960 acres of farm/pasture land plus access to another 320 acres of pasture land.  He then leased another 160 acres of farm land from Fred Walker.  By 1946 Doyle was farming and/or grazing over 1400 acres of land in Weld County.   He was running about 100 head of whiteface Hereford cattle and owned about twenty head of horses.   He also had numerous hogs and chickens.

Just before World War II began, Doyle’s mother begged Doyle to send a bus ticket for Doyle’s youngest brother to come to Colorado and live with Doyle.  Harold was about fifteen at the time.  Seems Harold had been caught one time too many shooting game out of season.  The authorities gave Doyle’s mother three choices: 1) send Harold to jail, or 2) send Harold to the CCC Camp, or 3) get Harold out of Arkansas permanently. Addie did not want her baby to go to jail!  She also did not want her 15-year old son living in the CCC Camp with the rough workers.  Addie could not afford a bus ticket for Harold to Colorado, so she begged Doyle to send a ticket so Harold could leave Arkansas and avoid jail or the CCC Camp. 

Doyle ended up raising his younger brother.  In Colorado Harold continued to hunt game out of season without a license; however, Doyle had so many acres of private land that Harold was never bothered by the Game Warden.  Harold joined the Navy shortly after the War broke out.  At the end of the war, Harold returned to live with Doyle.  In 1949 Harold married a local girl and finally moved out on his own.  Harold remained in Colorado until his death many years later. 

 Everything went sour in 1946 when G P Brandner double-crossed Doyle and secretly sold the 960 acre farm.   The land owner then tried to cancel Doyle’s ten-year lease.  The lease had not yet expired.  This caused many hard feelings.  G P Brandner’s foul act cost Doyle 1,280 acres of farm/pasture land plus his home. 

Doyle still owned his 320 acres of farm land nearby but this property was without a house to live in so Doyle purchased a 160-acre farm with a large house on it.  Doyle moved his family into the larger house in March 1947.  His two farms were now separated by thirteen miles of dirt roads.  The new farm was located seven and one half miles from the nearest town, driving on dirt roads all the way.  

With the loss of over 1,000 acres of land, Doyle had to downsize his livestock situation.  He sold all of the horses but two and sold about eighty head of cattle leaving twenty cows.  He had limited water and pasture at the new farm. 

In 1952 Doyle sold the 320 acres of land he owned in Nunn Township.  In 1953 he bought a 600 acre farm in Larimer County.  He moved his family to the new property which was not as isolated as the house in Weld County.  The house was much smaller, and water was even scarcer.  For about twenty years Doyle tried to work both farms that were fourteen miles apart.  He eventually sold the 160 acre farm in Weld County and concentrated his farming and junk yard in Larimer County.

While trying to farm two places fourteen miles apart, Doyle was plagued with thieves. The thieves would strike in the middle of the night with a cutting torch and chop up his machinery left in the field, and sell the pieces for junk.  If Doyle left a tractor and plows in the field overnight and returned the next morning, he was likely to find the machinery stripped.  This problem caused a lot of trouble.  He finally solved the problem by selling the 160 acre Weld County farm. 

Doyle also had a huge junk yard.  He bought and sold junk cars, tractors, trucks, heavy machinery, and other things.  He was a very astute business man with his junk yard.   Many times people would give Doyle their ailing cars and trucks and even pay the title transfer fee!  Doyle would then keep the free vehicle a few years and someone would come along and pay him several hundred dollars for the vehicle that Doyle acquired for free.  Doyle was quite the wheeler dealer.

Doyle and Frances were married for fifty-five years when Frances died with a heart attack in 1990.  Then in 1996 Doyle suffered a near fatal farm accident when he and his tractor caught fire.  Doyle was severely burned and not expected to live, but he pulled through only to spend his final four years in a nursing home. 

In January 2000, at the age of 93, Doyle died quietly in his sleep.  A truly self made man who will forever remain a local legend in Cass, Arkansas.  

Rest in peace, Daddy. 

Note:  My story about Doyle covers his earlier years of life.  It does not cover his later years because an excellent account of this period was written by his daughter-in-law Pam Russell.  Hopefully she will include this story about Doyle in her blog. 

Doyle Russell

by his daughter-in-law Pam Russell

Doyle was sixty-four years old the first time I saw him, that spring day in 1971 when Bob took Patrick and me up to meet his folks. I was nervous about the meeting and remember getting that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as the Volkswagen bus made the final curve on the road leading up to their house. Bob hadn’t told me what to expect, didn’t try to tell me what his folks were like or whether they would approve of their younger son’s new girlfriend and her 2-1/2 year old son. Minutes later we were all seated in the living room looking at Doyle’s whittlings and homemade puzzles, relaxed and smiling, starting to get to know one another. Doyle and Frances accepted both me and Patrick, and from that day on treated us like family.

Doyle was born in 1907 in Cass, Arkansas, the fourth of twelve children born to Addie Jane and Elias Russell. Doyle learned blacksmithing and farming before he left home to travel west working with wheat threshing crews, following the harvests. He was an ambitious young man with big, strong hands and a good head on his shoulders. He realized that he his future was not in Arkansas where his less ambitious brothers took advantage of the gains he made, holding him back. After a few trips west to work the wheat harvest in eastern Colorado he decided to stay.

When Doyle first laid eyes on Frances Smith she was only thirteen years old but he liked her flashing eyes and shy smile, and he was smitten. For the next few years Doyle worked on farms near Purcell, Colorado, where Frances lived with her family, and in May of 1935 they were wed. Doyle gave Frances money to buy her wedding clothes and many years later she liked to recall exactly what she bought for her trousseau.

I’ve heard the stories of how Doyle worked and saved to buy his first tractor, and then his first piece of land, and then the next, but the details are fuzzy now. I know that he worked hard and was frugal, not one to splurge on a night on the town or a new car or any of those things that tempt young men. Doyle placed a high value on land ownership and step by step, year by year, he bought farm equipment then land, never running up debts for these purchases but paying cash whenever possible.

 I’ve often wondered what motivated Doyle, what forces shaped the man. He talked about his family a lot and there were two people in his past he seemed to truly admire, his paternal grandmother, Mariah Tennessee Turner, and Mariah’s youngest son, Doyle’s Uncle Sam Turner. I believe he not only admired them but learned from them and patterned his life after theirs.  Doyle was a very intelligent man but with only an eighth-grade education he would never become a lawyer or legislator, careers in which he may have excelled. He was a shrewd businessman, though, and rarely made mistakes which set him back.

Doyle started out in eastern Colorado farming rented land and using decrepit farm equipment. Dryland farming is a risky business relying on the whims of Mother Nature for rain needed to germinate the wheat seed then praying she doesn’t drop the late summer hail that can turn a thirty-bushel an acre crop into a worthless field of stems and mud in minutes. Rain is scarce in Colorado and hail all too predictable. He was hailed out so many times in Weld County that in 1953 Doyle moved his family a few miles west to Larimer County to a 340 acre farm, not all of which was tillable. Here he pulled more profit out of the land than any other man I know could have accomplished. He not only raised seed wheat and cattle, he dug for gravel and established his own gravel pit. And when Interstate 25 came through separating his grazing land from his water holes and making raising livestock a difficult proposition Doyle started a junk yard, buying and selling (mostly selling) used automobiles, tractors, machinery, scrap wood, and much, much more.

When someone wanted to dispose of an old car, Doyle didn’t buy it from them, he charged them to leave it at his place and then he sold parts off of it. He frequented farm auctions and had a knack for buying low and selling high. Doyle was a born salesman. He charmed his prospective buyers with stories about “down there in Arkansas”, and his no-pressure approach gained him a pocketful of cash most every day of the week. Doyle’s customers became life-long friends.

His proximity to I-25 brought a steady stream of customers from all across the county, vacationers with their families, tractor buffs with their empty trailers hoping to find a rare jewel to take home to the Midwest, and a lot of “looky-loos”, those who were intrigued by the mounds of junk but who didn’t spend a dime. Colorado’s dry air means a tractor which has set out in the sun for thirty years has very little rust. Had it been in Illinois it would have crumbled into the earth leaving a pile of worthless junk. Doyle’s place became a junk lover’s paradise.

Frances and Doyle found a ready market in the sale of Siamese cats, a commodity rare in their part of Larimer County. Each kitten was worth $20, so a litter of six was very valuable and they often had several litters living in the house at the same time. Doyle was patient in training the little kittens to perform endearing tricks so that prospective buyers couldn’t resist taking one or two of those little kittens home with them.  See what I mean about Doyle pulling money out of his farm that others wouldn’t consider? He had a good reputation in the community for castrating hogs, dehorning cattle, witching for water, and butchering animals, all useful and sometimes profitable skills.

Frances and Doyle brought four children into this world, two boys and two girls. I know those four children well enough to know that they each had a very different childhood from the others. Perhaps that’s the case with every family. Education was a priority. Although all were expected to participate in chores and farm work the kids were never kept out of school to help Doyle with the farm. I have my own opinions about Doyle’s parenting skills based on my husband’s recollections of his youth, but I will not judge him too harshly. As a parent myself I know that most of us “shoot from the hip” with our parenting, combining what we learned from our parents with a few ideas of our own to form the basis of our own parenting style. Doyle could be strict and heavy handed but Frances handled most of the day to day disciplining of the children. Competition between the kids was greatly encouraged and not tempered with kindness and concern for one another so that the relationships which formed between the kids were never warm and supportive of one another.

Although Doyle never returned to Arkansas to live and only visited there on rare occasions his family ties remained strong. At different times all of his brothers came through Colorado to visit and some stayed for weeks and months especially before WWII. In later years many of them returned with their wives and children to visit Frances and Doyle and the kids on the farm. Doyle’s sister Bertie came many times and Nan just once. The other two sisters, Nellie and Bonnie never made it out to Colorado, to the best of my knowledge. Doyle cared very much for his mother and father and all his siblings and tried to help them out in many ways.

I didn’t know Doyle to be a religious man but his hard-shell (Primitive) Baptist upbringing had its effect. Doyle didn’t drink or smoke and rarely cursed. He hated gambling and felt that card playing could lead to trouble. There wasn’t much of the poet in Doyle either. I doubt he lay awake nights contemplating the meaning of life. Neither did he enjoy music or have any musical talents. He did like to square dance and he and Frances were members of a square dance club in Wellington for many years.  No, Doyle was not a mystic. He was a practical man who looked at life from the perspective of a farmer, a man of the soil. Man (and woman) were higher forms of animals but responded to the same training and discipline and were just as predictable.

But that’s not to say that Doyle wasn’t talented because he was. Like many of his Arkansas friends and neighbors he learned early how to use a knife with the skill of a surgeon, whittling toys and puzzles with patience and finesse. He was also quite a magician and used sleight of hand and other techniques not understood by me to create illusions and more concrete tricks like carved wooden arrows in bottles that no one could figure out how they got in there. He liked to tell stories and jokes but Frances outshined him in this category. He liked her jokes, too, and laughed along with the rest of us. Doyle could fix all sorts of farm machinery and equipment with a minimum of tools and techniques – baling wire being one of his favorites. There was not a lazy bone in the man. He worked in all kinds of weather from morning until night.

There were two areas of business that Doyle dealt in that fascinated me. He bought and sold land for other people and wrote his own contracts keeping meticulous ledgers of all the transactions. He also loaned money to people – lots of people – and kept the same careful records. Most of those ventures were profitable for Doyle and on those rare occasions when someone tried to abscond with Doyle’s money or refuse to pay what was owed he consulted a lawyer. There were several relatives who took advantage of Doyle’s personal loans and never paid him back. He didn’t sue them or pursue them much but he also never forgave or trusted them again.

I got to know Doyle best after Frances died in 1990 and Bob and I took meals to his dad each day at noontime. It was not easy on him, losing is wife of fifty-five years. He continued to work outside each day and sell to those who came for car parts or other items in the yard but it was many months before he regained his vigor and laughter. I asked him to tell me about his family back there in Arkansas and I took a lot of notes but mostly I listened to an old man reflect back on a life I could only imagine. I came to respect him for his fine memory, his fair treatment of his relatives, and his work ethic. I learned about the jobs he took in the lean times, climbing oil derricks and taking any odd job he could find. We had some fine conversations, not always agreeing, especially about politics, but he treated me with respect and I believe I reciprocated.

On that fateful January day in 1996, Martin Luther King Day, when Doyle’s tractor caught on fire and he was burned over much of his body I rushed to his house and was there in the kitchen when the firefighters took him out to the helicopter that would whisk him away to the burn unit at the Greeley hospital. He handed me his wallet and gave me a look I’d never seen in his eyes before – Doyle was scared. I drove to the hospital and went into the room where they were removing his shirt from his back and arms and when the doctor ask, “Mr. Russell, if your heart should stop during this ordeal do you want us to restart it,” he said, “Well shore (sure),” as if to ask, “What kind of a stupid question is that?” Of course the doctor knew something that Doyle didn’t know and that was the next few months would be full of pain and agony for Doyle. He survived, slowing coming out of a medically-induced coma to find that his hands were severely scarred and had lost much of their strength and agility. Those hands that could wrap around an anvil and lift it high, could whittle a delicate wooden scissor connected to another scissor and another, could handle a meat cleaver with precision and cut perfectly sized pork chops one after another, those hands that were a work of art, blackened with grease and dirt from working with oily machinery. Those hands could barely hold a fork even months into his recovery. It was because of the damage to those hands that Doyle couldn’t live on his own again without assistance, a reality that broke his heart.

I find my eyes filling with tears as I remember those last four years of Doyle’s life. We tried, we all tried to treat him with respect and kindness but the only thing Doyle wanted was to go back home, something we, his family, didn’t think was wise. I really don’t want to rehash the decisions that were made; it was painful enough going through it the first time. It took many long months but I believe Doyle finally came to accept the nursing home in Windsor as his home, or maybe his home away from home.

Doyle had a strong will to live; a lesser man would not have survived those awful months right after the fire. I remember the day he could no longer remember his brothers and sisters’ birthdates. He became very sad. Watching someone you love die is a painful process. And yes, I loved Doyle. I didn’t realize it until those last few years. He and I hadn’t always seen eye to eye. There were times when I was very angry with him, and I know he thought I betrayed him when I agreed that he couldn’t return to the farm to live after his accident, but in the end ….. we were family.

Elias Russell, Shot in the Leg!

Elias Russell of Cass, Arkansas, was shot in the leg in December of 1933 and recovered fully except for a lifelong limp, that much I know to be truth. He was fifty-nine years old that year. Because his son, Doyle J. Russell, our father and primary source of information, had left his Arkansas home by 1933 and was working in Colorado where he would soon put down roots, the story and its details was slow to filter in. Only after Elias had recovered from his wound would Doyle receive a letter about his father’s serious injury and recovery.

Many years later, after Doyle married and became father to four children he probably told his kids what he had learned from letters back home about his father’s being shot, piquing their interest in this grandfather they only met once or twice, but Doyle was not one to tell all. He chose his stories about his Arkansas family carefully, not wanting to put them in a bad light to his Colorado family. So it wasn’t until the early 1960’s when two of Doyle’s children, young adults by now, Mary, and Bob, separately visited their recently widowed Grannie Russell in Cass and heard her stories about their Grandpa Elias, including the shooting incident.

This is what then 25-year-old Mary remembers her Grannie telling her:

“The story from Granny Russell was that Elias went off with some

deputies to help the sheriff arrest some law-breakers.  They had a fearful shootout.  The only bullet that hit anyone hit Elias.  He was shot in the hip. Broke the bone.  Compound fracture.

The lawman in charge sent a deputy to tell Addie that Elias had been shot and to come pick him up.  The deputy got his wires crossed and the message that got to Addie that night was that Elias had been shot dead and to come pick up his body.

It was too late that night to harness up the team and wagon and get her

dozen kids together and mule team, as it was quite a distance to the site of the shooting.  She got the kids up early the next morning and harnessed up the mules and drove over to pick up Elias's body. 

When she got there she was quite surprised to learn that she was not a widow after all.  They had left him lying where he got shot and had done nothing for him.  No doctor--no sleeping accommodations--nothing.  So she loaded him up and brought him home.

When she got him home she decided that it would do no good to get a doctor as it had been 24 hours since the shooting and was too late to set or treat the leg.  So Granny bandaged Elias up and nursed him back to ambulatory condition.  He always walked with a limp afterwards.

Why Addie got the notion that a broken leg could not be treated after 24 hours is anyone's guess.  Of course with medicine the way it was in that area at that time--she was probably right!  I would guess that Tennessee came over and helped nurse her son. She was a midwife and considered the local medicine woman in that township. Addie did not mention Tennessee---that is just my guess.  

Addie was quite furious that no one had done the first thing to help Elias--just let him lie there in his own blood where he fell until she came after him the following day.

Elias was working as a volunteer deputy--free--so that was really quite a show of gratitude on the sheriff's part!  Strangely enough Elias continued to volunteer his services when his leg healed enough to ride again. 

My story is just a repeat of what Addie told me in 1962.”

We have three more bits of information to add to Mary’s story. First, the Spectator Newspaper in nearby Ozark mentioned Elias’s recovery in January of 1934 with two brief comments:

“Mrs. Tennessee Russell returned to her home at Cass Friday after a visit with her son, Elias Russell, who is recovering from gun-shot wounds at the home of his sister, Mrs. Alex Nichols of Ozark. Mrs. Elias Russell who has been with her husband several days returned to her home at Cass.”

And “Mr. Elias Russell, one of the victims of the shooting which occurred at this place some six weeks ago, was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. W.B. Walden last Saturday."

When Bob Russell visited his Grannie Russell in early 1962 she made this comment about her husband being shot, “Elias poked his nose in where he ought not have.”

As to what the shooting was all about, who did the shooting with what sort of gun, who else was there, was anyone else shot, and did anyone have to answer for shooting Elias, we do not know. Bob remembers thinking all those years it was about moonshining, about Elias trying to crack down on the local moonshiners and shut down their stills, but Bob doesn’t know how he came to that belief. Doyle did tell Bob that he didn’t help his father in his crusade to shut down the moonshiners, didn’t tell him of the stills and moonshiners he knew about when he lived at home. One of Doyle’s reasons for keeping that sort of information close to his chest may have been because his mother’s father, his Grandpa Jess Mahaffey, was a well-known moonshiner in the area. I have to wonder if Elias was successful in shutting down his own father-in-law’s stills.

Howard McCracken, a Russell Cousin

A Russell cousin, Howard McCracken, gr-grandson of George W. Russell, third cousin to Robert Doyle Russell, has found us on the internet and shared some wonderful family photographs. We’ve not had time to exchange detailed genealogy dates and places, but the photographs are begging to be shared with all the Russell clan.

Howard’s mother, Marie, is now 95 years old and having some memory problems but exhibiting those Russell longevity genetics. Her father was William H. Russell, born about 1895 in Ozark, and William H’s father was George W. Russell, born February 1861 in Franklin County, Arkansas, the youngest of five children born to Civil War veteran (for the Confederacy) James Marion Russell (1829-1862) and his wife Nancy Simms Russell (1832-1863). That's a mouthful! Orphaned at the age of two George lived with several different relatives in and around Franklin County until he reached adulthood. He became a successful man in Ozark, married and reared a family, owned his own mercantile, and built a fine home. He passed away in 1917 at the age of 56, still a young man. I do not know the cause of death.

George’s wife, Nannie Cary Russell, was born in June 1869 and lived to the age of ninety-three. She gave birth to five children, three of whom reached adulthood, William H., Harold Wallace, and Frederick. She and George adopted a girl named Jewell to round out their family.

The first photograph was taken in November 2015, showing Howard McCracken in front of the site of his gr-grandfather’s store located at 2^nd and Commercial in Ozark. Only the wrought iron column remains from the original building. 

The next photograph shows the interior of the store with George on the left in the foreground.

These photographs include a wedding photo for George and Nannie in 1890 along with the wedding announcement card, or program.

In 1908 Nannie won first place in the Ozark 4^th of July parade for her decorated carriage.

The next photograph is a wonderful family treasure, Nannie with Marie, and then the  George and Nannie Russell home in Ozark.

The last two photographs are of  Nannie and George’s tombstones, Highland Cemetery in Ozark.

UNFORGIVNG GRANDMA JONES

The year was 1918. A dreadful outbreak of influenza was sweeping our nation, indeed the entire world. World War I was coming to an end and by November when the peace treaty was signed with Germany our troops overseas would be looking homeward, only to arrive to the deadly threat of the “Spanish Flu”. 

Eliza Jane Holcroft of Choctaw, Oklahoma, was fifty-one years old and worn out. 

The mother of thirteen children, she buried her husband of thirty-one years, James Archibald Jones, in 1917. She buried her oldest daughter, Nellie Grace, mother of two small boys, when Nellie was only twenty-three years old. Eliza knew hard times. Now her second-oldest daughter, Nora Olive, was pregnant with her fourth child and living in far off Moffat County, Colorado, with her husband Tom Smith and their three other children.

Tom, Nora, and family were homesteading in Bear Valley, north and west of Craig, out in the boonies, but Tom brought Nora into Craig for the impending birth of the child. I’m sure she would have benefited from her mother’s presence and from the letter that Eliza wrote to Nora, I know that her mother wanted to be there. I’ll let the letter speak for itself.

“Choctaw, Oklahoma August 4, 1918

My Dear Daughter and family;

I will try to answer your always gladly received letter that come to hand some time ago. We are all well at present. I have a very sore finger so I can hardly write. We have had a houseful of company today so I didn’t get to go to S.S. (Sunday School?) They come after peaches, we let go three bushels today. Have sold 30 dollars worth so far. We are getting 2 dollars a bushel here at the place. We could get 2.50 in the city but we have such a few I guess we will sell them all here at the place.

Well, Nora, I have made my settlement with the court and I am so short of money that I do not feel like it would be right for me to take all the money we have to come out there and I would not have enough to make the round trip so I guess I will have to wait awhile. I know it looks like if I come at all I ought to come now but we are needing rain awful bad and don’t know if we will make a crop to speak of and I have the children to think of besides myself, but in spite of all of this I would sure like to come first on your account, as I do not think I am interested in the land proposition out there as much as I was. It would take at least three hundred dollars to take us out there and it would take me a long time to earn that much money and I think if we do not farm next year that the money I would spend out there would start me in a little business of my own. Surely you will come home sometime this fall or winter. Well Nora if I knew we would make a good crop I would run the risk and come out there but I don’t know and we haven’t hardly any fruit like we had last year. I sure do wish you could have come out here. I would have been able to get by. Bertha (Nora’s younger sister) would stay while you were down. I have not been as stout this summer as usual and it seemed like the work just piled up and I couldn’t get it done. No, we don’t have any vegetables except spuds and corn and cowpeas. Our tomatoes are late so they are not ripening very fast. We had a few for dinner sliced. Well Nora I am glad you have company. Maybe you won’t be so lonesome. Try to get all of the enjoyment out of your company that you can.

Monday morn the 5^th . I will finish my letter. I am heartily ashamed of not writing sooner but it seems like there never was quite as much to do but the peaches will soon be out of the way. Labe (Nora’s younger brother) came back yesterday. He had been gone ever since before the 4^th of July. Tell Ola (Nora’s oldest child) Goldie (Nora’s youngest sister) has taken her first music lesson. She will take half a lesson at a time and twice a week. My finger is no better. I am a little afraid of a felon. I must close. Be sure to write soon and I will do better next time. I am as ever your loving mother. E J Jones”

Nora gave birth to her last child whom she named Jennie Frances Smith on September 12, 1918. In a weakened state from childbirth Nora succumed to the flu and died on October 23, 1918; she was buried in Craig. I’ve been told that it was Bertha, Nora’s sister four years younger, who came out to Colorado when Nora died, not E. J. Bertha may have expected to take little Frances back to “civilized” Oklahoma with her but Tom entrusted Frances’ care to his parents, Frank and Fannie Smith. They lived within shouting distance of Tom and his older children out in Bear Valley.

Eliza Jane Jones never forgave Tom Smith for the death of her daughter, Nora. Perhaps she believed that if Nora had traveled to Oklahoma for the birth of her child she would not have died. Perhaps grief and loss overwhelmed her. Her anger and unforgiving attitude resulted in a break with all of Nora’s children that lasted until she died in 1950. After that, one of E. J.'s children, Nova, I believe, reached out to Frances and a friendship developed between several of Nora’s children and their aunts and uncles. It didn’t make up for all the years lost, thirty-two years of no contact, but it brought comfort and closure to some.

SARAH FRANCES BUCKHANAN SMITH (1864-1937)

Sarah Frances Buckhanan, my husband’s great-grandmother on his mother’s side, was born on January 1, 1864 in Bentonville, Benton County, Arkansas. What a frightening world surrounded her. The Civil War was waning but in northwestern Arkansas the Confederates, bushwackers, and Native Americans fought off Union troops who regularly ventured into Benton and Washington counties, engaging in bloody skirmishes, leaving behind bodies of locals and burnt remains of their homes. Arkansas, much like Missouri, was divided in its allegiance to either the Union or Confederate armies and fought the war internally for four long years, sacrificing thousands of men, more than a few women and children, and many buildings that housed county records, stores of food, and homes.

Sarah’s parents were John Littleton Trout Buckhanan and Elender Jane Keeling Buckhanan. Sarah was the fourth of five children born to Elender before her death at a young age, approximately thirty. Those records that were lost in the Civil War have made tracing Elender’s life a bit difficult but we believe she was born in Roane County, Tennessee between 1837 and 1838 and died between 1866 and 1870. Her burial place is unknown. She left behind five children, Mary Jane born in 1857, Margaret in 1859, John Montgomery (named after his paternal grandfather) in 1860, Sarah Frances in 1864, and George Thomas in 1866. It may well have been the birth of her last son, George, in Missouri that took the life of Elender, and perhaps her body rests there, but that is only a guess.

John Littleton Trout Buckhanan’s beginnings are not easily traced with at least one record showing him as having been born in Missouri, another Sadler, Texas, and most likely Madison County, Arkansas. His parents were John Montgomery Buckhanan and Catherine Airhart Buckhanan, both of Tennessee. Not long after his wife Elender died John L. T. married Margaret A. Copinger McGowan in St. Paul, Madison County, Arkansas. She became mother to his five children, brought to the family five children of her own from a previous marriage, and birthed three more, Harvey Henry in 1870, Hannah Tennessee in 1873, and Sherman in 1880.

In 1894, having lived in Texas for years, John was back in Madison County, Arkansas where he married his third wife, all Tennessee born. Her name was Mary Elizabeth Ferrell. On August 22, 1907, John died in Whitesboro, Grayson County, Texas at the age of seventy-three. Mary lived until May 9, 1934, and died in Gibtown, Jack County, Texas.

Back to little Sarah, known to her family as both Frances and Fannie, only a toddler when her mother died, life continued to be full of turmoil and upheaval.  At the time of the 1870 Federal Census her father’s occupation is farmer in Madison Co., Arkansas, with ten children in the household. Ten years later he is listed as a farmer in Grayson Co., Texas, with five children in the household. The Federal Census for 1890 was destroyed in a fire so we don’t know where the family was then. In 1900, John and his wife of six years, Mary Elizabeth, are living in Grayson Co, Texas with only their eighteen-year-old grandson Selmer, son of Margaret Buckhanan.

Meanwhile, Fannie married William Franklin Smith on December 24, 1887 in Grayson County, Texas when she was twenty-three. The fact Fannie didn’t marry at fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen like so many girls of the times was probably because she was needed at home to help with the younger children. Fannie’s granddaughter Rosa Ellen Fairchild Farrell wrote in her memoir this about her grandmother, “Frances Buchanan’s mother was taken from her small family while Frances was quite young. But, like the trooper she was, Frances took her mother’s place the best she could. She was a tall, slender girl with black hair, brown eyes, and high cheek bones like those of an Indian. Her mouth was set in a firm line. Because she was a cousin of Frank Smith, her ancestors were also Irish, English, and Indian. Her father was a soldier in the Civil War, later he was a cattle owner and rancher in Texas. As children, Frank and Frances were playmates; as older children, they were pals; as adults they were sweethearts. When the Buchanan children were old enough to get along without Frances, she and Frank were married.”

As Rosa Ellen mentioned, Fannie and Frank were cousins, but not quite first cousins. Frank Smith’s maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Buckhanan, was a sister to Fannie’s father, John Littleton Trout Buckhanan. I think that makes Fannie and Frank first cousins once removed. We’ve all heard the admonition “don’t marry your cousin.” In this case that advice should have been heeded for it seems the Buckhanans carry a gene for hearing loss, an unusual nerve deafness known as DFNA/DFNA1 hereditary hearing loss, which has continued to manifest itself in at least six subsequent generations of descendants.

Married in Grayson County Texas on Christmas Eve, 1887, Fannie and Frank moved on to Oklahoma where in 1893 they staked a homestead claim near Noble. By 1908 they sold out and followed the urging of a relative, R. E. Morris, to try their luck in the rugged mountains and valleys of Moffat County, Colorado. They packed up their meager belongings and with their family of five children moved to Bear Valley, north and west of Craig, Colorado where the railroad ended and some of their lives ended too.

I wish I could say Fannie’s life got better after her marriage and maybe for a little while it did. But when I look at the photos of the family with beautiful children who died soon after the photo was taken I see pain and hardship there. 

Their first born child, Thomas Alvin Smith, born in 1889, did live a good, long life, to age seventy-one, and he is my husband’s grandfather, my husband being Robert Doyle Russell.

The second born, William Lee, born in 1890 died within a year.(He in not in the photo to the left as he had already passed away.)

James Wesley Smith, born in 1894, was murdered at the young age of twenty-eight, the same day his father was also murdered, both over a dispute with a neighbor about a potato crop. More about that tragedy later in this story.

Their fourth son, Bennie H. was born in 1895 and died when he was eight.

Their fifth child was a daughter, Lillian Vernatta, born in 1897, lived to be seventy-four.

Ernest Franklin was born in 1902 and lived to be seventy-eight.

Rosa Jeanetta was born in 1905 and lived to be seventy-seven.

Ola Mae was born in 1906 and died three years later.

Julia Ellen was born in 1908 and lived to be seventy-five.

Of the nine babies she birthed, Fannie lost four of them, and she had a stroke at age forty-four, upon the birth of her last child, Julia. No wonder that final horrific blow to her well-being that came on October 5, 1921 when both her husband, William Franklin “Frank” Smith, and her son James Wesley “Jim” Smith were shot and killed not far from their home, sent Fannie into a tailspin, brought on another stroke and took the zest for living right out of her. She stayed in Bear Valley two more years after their deaths before she had enough money saved to retreat to the more civilized city of Oklahoma City where she lived with her daughter Lillie until the end of her life in April of 1937.

There was another tragedy in Bear Valley that affected Fannie and that was the death of her daughter-in-law, Nora Olive Jones Smith, the wife of Fannie and Frank’s oldest son, Tom.

Nora died in Craig, Colorado where she had gone to await the birth of her fourth child. Their daughter Jennie Frances Smith was born September 12, 1918 and six weeks later Nora succumbed to the virulent Flu Epidemic of 1918 that was sweeping the nation, indeed the world. Fannie and Frank took

newborn Jennie Frances, always called Frances by her family, into their home where she lived until at the age of three when her Grandpa Smith and Uncle Jim were killed. By that time Tom had remarried and Frances joined their household, not far from the home of her grandparents. Her grandmother, Fannie Smith, not only suffered the loss of her husband and son, but had to give up parenting her granddaughter and namesake, Frances Smith.

As for Fannie’s health at the time of her husband’s and son’s deaths, her granddaughter Rosa Ellen had this to say, “(Rosa Ellen has been describing the events of the day when her grandfather Frank and his son, Jim, were shot to death, from the perspective of her mother, Rosa Smith)……From her bed, Frank’s wife jumped! For days she had lain there recovering from a stroke. Her daughters tried to hold her back, but it was useless. The instinct of a wife and mother told her that Death had struck. Half way to the pasture she collapsed, from fatigue and another stroke. The girls ran to their mother and carried her to the house and put her to bed once more. Neighbor women came to help in every possible way, as soon as they heard of the tragedy. Hearts that are broken never completely heal. Mrs. Smith lay in bed for weeks, unable to move. Her thoughts were of the days she had known as Frank’s wife and Jim’s mother.”

Fannie and Frank’s older daughter Lillian Vernetta “Lillie” Smith Williams traveled from Oklahoma to Colorado to attend the funeral of her father and brother, and stayed awhile longer to care for her mother before returning to Oklahoma and her husband Floyd Williams. Nearly two years later Fannie told her family she could not spend another winter in Colorado so her newly married daughter Rosa and husband, Art Fairchild, drove Fannie and daughter Julie out of Bear Valley and down to Oklahoma City to live with Lillie. (One account says she took a train to Oklahoma.) The following year Tom Smith left the valley for good, ending the era of the Smith family in Moffat County (see http://www.viewoftherockies.com/CraigtoPurcell1.html for photos of that infamous trip across the Continental Divide)

Apparently Fannie’s health improved in Oklahoma for she traveled north in the summertime on several occasions to visit her family in Colorado. Frances Smith Russell wrote in her autobiography “From There to Here” about her grandmother “Grandma Smith would visit us during the summer.  She said she just couldn't take the summer heat in Oklahoma.  She divided her time between our house, and Daddy's sister Rosie, and brother Earnest.

Her visits were truly the happiest times of my life.  She still had a soft spot for me and could find a lot of little things to delight me.  She insisted on helping me with the dishes.  That was a real treat.  Since the older kids were kept busy in the fields, the washing and drying dishes was my job.  One summer while she was visiting, she and Ma pieced me a quilt top out of Mother's clothing.”

And later in her book Frances wrote this about her Grandmother Smith, “We went to Oklahoma to visit Grandma in August of 1936 (paraphrased). Grandma lived with Aunt Lillie and Uncle Floyd (Lillie’s second husband).  She had made her home with them ever since Grandpa and Uncle Jim were killed, and she moved back to Oklahoma.  She had two strokes and was partially paralyzed.  She was quite feeble and spent most of her time in her easy chair.”

And this, “In April 1937 Grandma Smith died.  I was so glad I had gone to see her the summer before.  She still lived with Aunt Lillie.”

Rosa Ellen wrote this of her Grandma Smith’s passing, “Mother went to Oklahoma at Thanksgiving (1936) to visit her sisters and brother, and her mother, who was ill. A few days after arriving at my aunt’s home in Oklahoma City, Jackie (Rosa Ellen’s half brother) became ill with diphtheria. Only because of the fine surgical care was he saved. When Mother returned to Pierce (Colorado) during the Christmas holidays, she was nearly sick because of the continuous care she had giving Jackie. In the spring a telegram came during dinnertime. Grandma had gone to join Grandpa and her three children in Heaven. This news was extremely hard for Mother to bear.”

One more firsthand source of information about Fannie’s later years comes from a letter written by Betty Jo Barton Gaston, the daughter of Fannie’s youngest child, Julia. The letter was addressed to Rosa Ellen Fairchild Farrell, Betty’s cousin…date of letter unknown. These are excerpts from that letter: “But let's back up a bit. Frank and Fannie had got land in Oklahoma, (the land run), up by Noble, OK. (April 2, 1889) While there they lost 3 children---they are buried there and that's where both Granny and Aunty are buried. (Granny is Fannie. Aunty is Frank and Sarah's daughter, Lillian). Those 3 children were Bennie, Lee, and an Ola. One of the boys was crippled somehow and in Granny's trunk of keepsakes was little shoe with a brace on it that he had worn.

“We loved for Granny to look through her trunk and tell us the stories of each thing in the trunk. She usually cried---and I could never figure out if seeing the things made her cry or if she had just got the blues real bad and then got out the stuff.

“One thing was a rock---not too big---and she said one of those boys who had died had been sitting in the yard crying, and when Pa came close he told Pa that he was mad at Ma. Then Frank told him: "Well, if I was you, then, I'd just kill her." So the little guy picked up this rock and went in and threw it at Granny. When she would tell that she would laugh and blow snuff all over us---if we didn't watch out!

I guess Mother (Julia) was born at Noble, and at that time, Aunty (Lillian) would have been 10 or 11. That's when Mother told me that Granny had the stroke (at the time of Julia’s birth). Aunty said after Granny had the stroke she had to start doing all the cooking, washing, and etc.

“Then they told me the family moved on to the Weatherford area, and that is where Aunty (Lillian) met and married Floyd Williams. Then from there they went to a ranch on White River. We visited the ranch site and the schoolhouse that was up then. From there they moved on to Moffat County where the guys were shot.

“Mother (Julia) told me that Granny explained to her that they couldn't stay another winter out there with no men---so they each packed a trunk and they rode the train back to Butler, Oklahoma, where Aunty and Uncle (Lillian & Floyd) lived. She never mentioned who paid for the rail tickets. She didn't mention Rosa coming with them. She did say that Granny told her that maybe they could go back when it was spring.

“When I was about 9 or 10 I had the mumps and Granny was at our house. She said "I'll sleep with Betty and take care of her. I've nursed mumps all my life and never had them, so guess I'm immune." But she sure WASN'T! In due time she did have the mumps and from then on her health went down and down. The strokes started coming back on her---

and she died the same spring that Tilford was born in 1937.

“Granny always lived with Aunty (Lillian) from the time they came from Colorado. She'd visit us once in a while, and I think she traveled to Colorado to see her other children a few times---but not very many times.

Sarah Frances Buckhanan Smith died in April 11, 1937 at the age of 73, and was buried in the Maguire-Fairview Cemetery near Noble, Oklahoma. She left many descendants, a proud family of Smiths who have thrived and multiplied - Fannie would be proud.

NOTES: 

1) The name Buckhanan has been spelled various ways and today is usually spelled Buchanan.

Robert Sidney Russell - Uncle Sid

I asked my sister-in-law, Mary Simms, to tell me what she remembers about her Uncle Sid, thinking I would incorporate her memories into a story of my own, but when I read what she wrote I realized I could not improve on it. Therefore, this is Mary's story.

A NIECE REMEMBERS SIDNEY RUSSELL

[This memoir will be divided up into segments showing the origin of the information.]

MARY RUSSELL SIMMS:

I first met Uncle Sid when he came to Colorado to spend time with Frances and Doyle at the end of World War II.  He had recently been discharged from the US Army after seeing combat duty in the Pacific Theatre.  Sid had been wounded quite seriously and was still in a state of post traumatic shock from war injuries.  Later I felt it was rather unusual that upon being discharged that Sid came straight to Doyle in Colorado rather than returning to Arkansas to be with his parents first.

Uncle Sid was a very quiet and polite person and showed great respect to everyone he met.  Sid had a personality that people just automatically gravitated toward.  A truly magnetic personality.  Especially attracted to Sid’s charisma were the ladies—both married and single.

Sid had very little money and most of the time did not have wheels of his own, so he mostly dated women who had access to a car and could provide their transportation.  He did eventually purchase an old c1928 beet truck that ran at times and did not at other times.  One night while en route to see one of his harem of lady friends his truck lights gave out all of a sudden.  Since all roads around Nunn, CO were built on the straight surveyed section lines, Sid assumed he could simply continue in a straight course until he came to a stop.  Not so.  Seems now and then the intersections of the county roads had a jog in them, and when passing through the intersection one came out about 50 feet to the left or right when entering the next mile of road.  [The reason for this jog was said to be because the earth is round.]  Unfortunately, it was at this point when Sid’s lights gave out—just before the jog.  He and his old truck ended up in the ditch just to the left of the continuing county road—with the front of the truck nosed down into the road ditch and the radiator slammed up against the ditch bank on the far side.

One lady that he courted for quite a while was a local school teacher named Miss Marita Plunkett.  She was especially nice but did not have access to a car of her own.  Hence Uncle Sid did not spend too much quality time with her.  When he would return from a date with Miss Plunkett he would drop his used condoms at the yard gate.  Frances would go out the next morning and dig a hole and bury the offending items so her kids would not find them.

One time Miss Plunkett and Sid came by the house and came in to visit for  a while before going off on their date.  Our family had spent the day shopping in Greeley.  Unfortunately when Kenneth was sent back to close the kitchen door that he had left wide open an old hen had already wandered into the kitchen.  Kenneth did not notice the chicken and slammed the door shut.  Several hours later when Doyle and family returned from Greeley, the hen had spent her time roosting on the cot in the living room and doing as all good hens do—pooping on the bed.  Frances chased the hen out but failed to check for damages. 

Bobby and I were already in bed on the cot when Sid and Miss Plunkett arrived so Miss Plunkett, being a very mannerly person, came into the living room to say hello to Bobby and me.  She sat down on the foot of the bed and leaned over with her hand resting on the covers.  It was rather dark in the room and Miss Plunkett kept sniffing at the air and trying to hold a straight face.  The next morning was when Frances found that the bed covers were covered with chicken poop!   We never did find out if Miss Plunkett got any on her skirt or hand—but judging from her continuous sniffing the air she had to have smelled the chicken poop.  Frances was mortified!

When a lady would tell Sid that she was married and hands off, Sid would inform the lady that she was much too pretty to be married, and the lady would usually have an affair with Sid.  Flattery will get you everywhere. 

One morning Sid was still asleep in the “north” bedroom when Frances told Kenneth and me to come see something.  Sid was facing toward the wall and the covers had come down to his waist and his entire bare back was exposed.  I could not believe what Sid’s back looked like.  His entire back was one huge scar from burning.  Seems he had been scalded by a boiling teakettle when he was a kid and then again by a mortar shell during the war.  He must have suffered terribly from those injuries.

Uncle Sid related this incident about the war injury to our family himself.   For a long time after he was wounded in battle, Sid was totally helpless.  They kept him strapped down to the bed to keep him still while he healed.  For some reason Sid was kept totally naked during this time.  Perhaps to expedite healing.  Anyway, he said that one day a new nurse came in and whisked back the covers in preparing to change the sheets.  When the covers came off there lay a totally naked man bound hand and foot to the hospital bed.  For some reason this amused the nurse and she burst out laughing and ran out and brought in several other nurses who stood around and laughed and giggled about Sid’s condition.  This really upset Sid. 

Our house was very small and there were six in the family.  We had only two bedrooms so it rather crowded us to have Sid taking up one entire bedroom.  Doyle kept finding Sid a place to live with neighbors to free up our living space a little.  One place Doyle found was with a rather dishonest bachelor fellow named Mr. Quaif.  He and Sid seemed to get along OK and Sid stayed there for quite a while.  Mr. Quaif had a car and I would imagine he let Sid use it to court the ladies.

Uncle Sid was always very nice to Doyle’s kids.  He would bring us candy and other treats from town.  He once gave me a small cedar box that he had won on the local punch board.  It had originally been filled with Hershey Bars which he very generously shared with the entire family.  I was so thrilled when he gave me that beautiful carved cedar box.  It was about the 6” by 10” and 3” deep. 

Another local family that Sid lived with was Hattie and Everett Wilson.  Everett worked for Murray Giffin and when Sid went to work for Murray, it just seemed logical for Sid to get board and room from Hattie and Everett.  They thought the world of Sid as did about everyone he encountered.  One time Sid’s shoe string broke and he bent over and tied the two broken ends back together.  This act shocked the Wilsons no end.  They always threw broken things away and replaced them with new things.

Uncle Sid eventually returned to Arkansas to live with his parents for several years before he finally go married and moved in with his new wife.  Sid was given a partial disability pension from the war injuries.  Not enough to live on as a normal person but enough to live like a bum.  I saw Sidney in 1950 and again in 1958 when I visited Addie and Elias’s home.  He was very quiet, and stood on the front porch most of the time smoking a cigarette.  He was a kind and gentle person.  

FRANCES RUSSELL

Bobby always looked more like his Uncle Sid than he did his Papa Doyle.  This eventually gave rise to a questioning of Bobby’s paternity.  One person came right out and told Frances that it was quite obvious that Frances had had an affair with Sid and Bobby was Sid’s son.  Fortunately, for Frances’s reputation, Frances and Sid had never met until after Gladys was born so that squashed the rumor quite quickly.  The accuser was Uncle Harold’s wife, Shirley.  This really ticked Frances off.

SID’S MOTHER

Sid was in active combat in New Guinea during World War II and got wounded very seriously.  Seems the natives would steal the dead soldier’s dog tags and sell them to the Army to account for mortalities.  Sid got a bit too close to a mortar shell and was assumed dead by the Natives who removed his dog tag and turned it in.  The Army forthwith informed Addie and Elias that their son had been killed during a battle in New Guinea.  They also sent all of Sid’s personal effects back to his parents.  When the medics checked the battlefield for survivors they found Sid nearly dead.  He was transported back to the Army hospital and was unconscious for a long period of time.  It was touch and go during this time.  When Sid finally came out of his coma he had no idea who he was or where he was.  His memory was blanked out from the trauma. 

When the day came that Uncle Sidney finally remembered who he was and told his doctor, they wrote to his parents and told them that their reported dead son was actually alive but in serious condition at an Army hospital in the South Pacific. This must have been quite a shock to his parents.

It took a long time after this before Sid could leave the hospital and be discharged and return to the US.  

When Sid was just a little kid, he and his siblings were running through the house like a bunch of wild Indians when Sid got too close to the fireplace and caught his toe in the teakettle filled with boiling water.  He flung it all over himself and  scarred quite a bit of his body.  The burns were quite serious but Addie doctored him through this.

One day Hazel came running up the path between Seldon’s house and Addie’s house all excited.  She yelled to Addie that Sid and Minnie had just got married!  Hazel was quite thrilled.  Addie was furious.  She did not like Hazel and disliked Minnie even more.  It was at this point that Sid finally moved out of his parent’s house and moved into Ozark to live with his new wife.

Robert Sidney Russell (1916-1977).

UNCLE SELDON

Theron Seldon Russell was born October 27, 1921, in Cass, Franklin County, Arkansas, the eleventh child of Elias L. and Addie Jane Russell. I don’t imagine that Seldon, as he was called, got a lot of individual attention from either of his parents with that many children in the house but he had plenty of older brothers and sisters to look after him. He was born at home, birthed with the help of his father’s mother, Mariah Tennessee Turner Russell, who was midwife for all of Addie Jane’s children, and named them too! His older brother Doyle J. Russell, my husband’s father, told me that his baby brother was named after a local school teacher named Theron. I don’t know where the Seldon came from. There would be one more child born to Elias and Addie Jane, another boy they named Harold who came along three years later in July of 1924.

I know very little about Seldon’s childhood but assume it was much like that of that of his seven brothers with hard work, few toys, and lots of wooded areas to explore along the Mulberry River and the tree covered, rocky hills surrounding Cass.

From one of Seldon’s cousins, Herbert Reid, we learned that Seldon loved theater and performed in several plays when he was a school boy in Cass. All his life he liked to make things with his hands using simple tools like the pocket knives his older brothers whittled with. Late in life he was still making wooden chairs and re-caning the seats. On one of his visits out to Colorado to visit Doyle, Seldon brought his nephew Bobby a door knocker made from a horseshoe. It still hangs on our front door and is used often, reminding us always of Uncle Seldon....it is cherished.

But I’m getting ahead of myself….On October 20, 1942, Seldon enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Little Rock, Arkansas. He was a single, twenty-one year old with two years of high school education and some experience driving a bus or truck. He was 5’7” and weighed 134 pounds, and enlisted for “the duration of the war plus six months at the discretion of the President.” Seldon served his country honorably and came home to Ozark after the war along with six of his brothers who also served in the military in WWII, a proud family tradition of service to our country.

On April 6, 1948, Seldon married Mary Hazel Wisdom in Paris, Arkansas. Ten months later they welcomed their first child, and only boy, into the world, Theron Jimmy Russell. Seldon and Hazel lived in a little white house within shouting distance of his parents and proceeded to raise a family, Seldon working for the Forest Service, a very good job for that time and place. Six lovely daughters were born to them from 1951 to 1965,  Mary Sue, Patricia Joyce, Nancy June, Brenda Kay, Judy Ann, and Teresa Diane. Hazel’s health was not good and she passed away in April of 1982, just a couple of weeks before their youngest daughter was married.

Two years later Seldon remarried, a local woman named Mary Emily Wright Primm, formerly of Claremore, Oklahoma. They had twenty-three years of life together, happy years, from all outward appearances, before Mary passed in 2007 with Seldon following a year later. Several times during those twenty-three years Mary and Seldon drove out to Colorado to visit Doyle and his family, including the celebration of Doyle and Frances' golden wedding anniversary in 1985. 

Bob and I remember Seldon as a friendly, kind, thoughtful Uncle and only wish we had known him better, had visited him on his own turf, learned what made him most happy in life. He’s left a legacy in his children and grandchildren and in the handcrafted items he made with his own hands.