Jewel Moore Gresham, ABT 1932
Sometime before she died in 1994, my mother-in-law, Jewel Moore Gresham, either wrote down or dictated some memories. Here are the earliest ones, from the years the family lived near Silver Creek northwest of Fort Worth, Texas, south of Azle and north of White Settlement:
I was born October 4, 1914 in a log cabin that was located on a creek by the name of "Live Oak" [actually Silver Creek1]. This was part of a farm owned by Rufus B. Hagood.2 Mr. Hagood, with his wife,3 his two sons, Orval4 and ?,5 and a daughter, Annie B.,6 lived across the creek in the "big house."
I think that Mabel,7 Audie,8 and I were the only ones born in the log cabin. Papa9 and the Hagoods worked the land together. I don't know what kind of arrangement they had.10 Mr. Hagood liked Papa. He said he was the most honest man he had ever known. (Years later, when he came to see us in Oklahoma, he told me this). He gave him the nickname "Square." The Hagood boys were older than any of the children in our family. Annie B. was about the same age as Mabel.
The log cabin had one big room with a fireplace which served as Mama11 and Papa's bedroom. A shed room on the side was the kitchen. It had a huge wood cookstove, table, chairs and a long bench. (The table was still with us when I left home in 1939.) There was a "safe" where the dishes and the leftover food was stored (this piece was still with us when I left home.) Out the front door of the cabin was a deck, on the other side of the deck was a big bedroom where we slept.
I don't have many vivid memories of our life at that point in time. I do have memory of a Christmas morning. I must have been small enough that I was still sleeping with Mama and Papa. I remember waking up and Papa had built a fire in the fireplace and lit the lamp, and that is when I saw all the stockings filled with goodies and presents. I guess we were poor, but when Christmas came around, Papa and Mama made it special, and we were happy.
Another memory was about the mirror in that old oak dresser we had. It was low, and I could see myself in it. I couldn't figure it out, and I wanted Ivis12 to take me to that other place. Somehow, it looked like a better place. The dresser was placed "catty-cornered" in the room. So Ivis put a blindfold over my eyes, and after a few maneuvers, she told me I could take off the blindfold. I guess that was my very first disappointment. She had put me in the corner behind the dresser.
I don't know exactly how long we lived here, but judging from the events that were happening at the time, it must have been in 1917. Orval Hagood had been drafted in the army.13 ... I remember going with Mama to see Mrs. Hagood. We found her sitting at the kitchen table, and she was crying.
The Hagoods moved into Fort Worth, and we moved into the big house. This house had two huge rooms. The fireplaces, one in each room, were joined into one chimney. A small shed room on the side was where I slept. Also, a kitchen, pantry, and back porch. There was a huge front porch that stretched across the entire house. The house was evidently built on a slope, because there were a lot of steps leading up to the porch.
That is where I first saw and smelled a geranium. Even now when I smell a geranium, I think of that porch. Everyone was going to school14 except me.
At some time, I had diphtheria.15 By that time, they had the vaccine, and I remember the doctor coming, and Papa gave me a nickel if I wouldn't cry when the doctor gave me the shot. I just remember the one shot, so I guess it was pretty powerful stuff. I had a lot of croup, and I guess a lot of "snotty noses." Mama would make cough syrup out of mullein and horehound. ... At four, I knew what mullein looked like. Now, I don't think I could recognize mullein growing in the wild. I remember going down a path and I was singing, "horehound and mullein, horehound and mullein." All of a sudden a huge dog rose out of the weeds and started barking at me. I threw my bucket away, and went screaming towards the house. Of course, Mama came running to see what was the matter.
One winter, one of the sows had a litter of pigs. She wasn't a very good mother, so Papa took the little piglets into the house. He made a nest on the hearth of the fireplace. He left me with instructions to watch the piglets, and not let them run into the fire. So I sat and watched and watched and watched, and then I decide things were not going so good, so I went to the porch and started screaming and jumping up and down. Papa, in the meantime, had gone back to the barn. When he heard me screaming, he jumped over all the fences and when he came into the room, he found all the piglets fast asleep. "What was the trouble?" he said. I said, "One of them wiggled his ear."
Behind the house was a hill. I'm sure it wasn't too high, but to me, it seemed awful tall. One summer day, for some reason, we all climbed to the top of the hill. It was the first time I had ever seen the horizon. It had a tremendous effect on me. I did not know the world was so big. It left an indelible imprint on my mind. Even now, when I am on a mountain top, I still get a diminished feeling, but fascinated by the vastness.
We had neighbors. One family, a German family (Hallman), had many children. We used to visit each other on Sunday. Another family named Pierce had kids our age. The Hagoods would come to visit with little Annie B. Annie B. had a very lively imagination. She was always seeing monsters in the weeds. One day, I remember she had us in the outhouse, and she wouldn't let us out because she could see a monster's foot in the weeds. I never did see that monster's foot, and I felt cheated.
It was at this time that Papa bought Mama a new Singer sewing machine -- the very machine sitting in the bedroom (that Ivis now has). Mama made all our clothes. She never had a pattern. I don't know how she did it.
I guess it was in 1918 that the boll weevil ate up the cotton crop in Texas, and families began to migrate. The Hallmans went to Nebraska, and the Pierces went to Oklahoma - Marlow. He wrote back how great the crops were there. I can't remember exactly when we moved. Papa went ahead and took the horses, cows, pigs and plows in a boxcar. I think he stayed in the boxcar with the animals. Of course, it was only 150 miles from Fort Worth to Marlow, so the trip wasn't too long. I remember being on a train. I couldn't breathe, and Mama got some passenger to open the window so I could get some fresh air. It must have been in late winter, because when we got to Marlow, there was snow on the ground.
The war was over November 11, 1918, so I am guessing that when we got to Marlow, it was in the early months of 1919.
A few months ago, I decided I wanted to try to locate the land the Moore family lived on from about 1909 to 1919. My next post will be about where it is located and how I determined that.
NOTES
1. Live Oak was the name of their school, and the creek it was near. The creek the cabin was on was Silver Creek. This was in an area on the northwest side of Fort Worth in the area north of White Settlement and south of Azle - now about where Loop 820 circles the city.
2. Rufus B[unyon] Hagood, 1854-1944. Hagood is pronounced Hay-good, and was spelled Haygood in the transcription of Jewel's memories.
7. Mabel is Jewel's older sister, Beulah Mabel "Mabel" Moore, 1910-1932
8. Audie is Jewel's older sister, Audie Ruth Moore Cook, 1911-1969
9. Papa is Jewel's father, Tandy Clayton "Clayton" Moore, 1878-1964
10. According to page 84 of Heroic Lives of Ordinary People, by Tom Moore, his grandson, Clayton rented an 80-acre plot with a cabin, supposedly former slave quarters, from Hagood.
11. Mama is Jewel's mother, Nancy "Nannie" Flora Jones Moore, 1882-1969
12. Ivis is Jewel's oldest sister, Ivis Moore Mew, 1905-2004
13. Orval Hagood served in the Army from July 3, 1918, to April 11, 1919. His older brother Bun was not eligible to serve because by June 5, 1917, he was missing an eye.
14. Jewel's older sisters, Ivis, Ruby (Clayton Moore Albillar, 1908-1967), Mabel, and Audie, and her big brother Thomas Gurth Moore (1902-1935) attended the Live Oak School, about two miles away.
15. Jewel's oldest sister, Velma E. Moore (1903-1908), had died of diphtheria. However, a diphtheria vaccine was not developed until 1926, so this is either a much later memory for Jewel, or she might have received the pertussis (whooping cough, vaccine developed in 1914) or smallpox vaccine.
© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!
