All My Ancestors

Here’s a response I got from my first cousin once removed, Kitty, about the “My Granny’s Sisters” post with the photo of my great-aunts on the horse at Knott’s Berry Farm. Kitty had the good fortune to grow up in California around the majority of my Gran’s sisters, and, of course, her mom Katie was one of them. Kitty has great stories from her life on the west coast and I’ve decided, with her permission, to just transfer some of her emails to the blog since one of the goals is to record the stories. Thanks so much for sharing your part of the family story, Kitty.

1 Comment »

I’ve been thinking about my 4th great-grandfather–Merriman Landrum.

I’ve blogged about him before–he’s the one with the 3 sentence will. The engraving on his tombstone is longer.

Maybe more telling is the inventory of his estate. My genealogical studies tell me that you can tell a lot by what a person leaves as well as how that estate gets inventoried. I haven’t fully decided what the listing of Merriman’s property tells me, but I know that he’s my only relative whose inventory includes a bookcase and a list of books by title.
I have found no official direct record of this, but he was supposedly a teacher and a minister. Well, I guess if you count his tombstone and the biography of his son, and the listing of the titles in his book case, you could count those as records. A preponderence of evidence, as they say, does indeed point to his being a minister and a teacher.

Tradition is that he was a Presbyterian minister. I don’t think so because I’m fairly certain that he didn’t go to seminary or attend college. And the Presbyterians, even at that time, had rigid requirements about their ministers having certain degrees–see Princeton. He was born in up country South Carolina and lived most of his short life in Tennessee–on the frontier. He may have been affiliated in some way with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which came into being about 1810. As I understand it, the name of the church came from a Kentucky Synod that decided to ordain some young men who did not strictly meet the educational requirements.

More likely he was some sort of lay minister. I don’t know if I’ll every know for sure–I do know that his descendants were Presbyterians, not Cumberlands. His son-in-law Job Cooper and granddaughters are in the records of the Presbyterian Church in San Augustine, Texas, before statehood. And in the 1950s, his great great granddaughter, my Grandmother Osborne, was ordained an elder in a Presbyterian Church in Texas that she’d helped establish.

Back to Merriman. Below are the 3 versions of the books enumerated in his estate–there may be others inventories, but these are the ones I found, conducted for the January 1827, the January 1829, and the January 1831 Court Sessions in Williamson County, Tennessee. The spelling is creative in some cases, but when I looked up these titles in World-Cat, a sort of uber electronic card-catalog, it was clear that several of these titles were written specifically for teachers.

1 book case

1 book case

1 book case

3 volumes Gill’s

3 volumes of Gill’s explanation of the NT

3 volumes of Gill’s explanation on the NT

2 Wood’s Dictionary

2 of Wood’s Dictionary

2 volumes of Wood’s Dictionary

1 Walkers Dictionary

1 Walker’s Dictionary

1 of Walker’s Dixtionary

2 bibles

1 Bible

1 bible

1 testament 1 testament

2 hymn books

1 hymn book

1 hymn book

1 concordance

1 rithmatic

1 grammar

Murry’s Grammer exercise and key

Mury’s Grammar exercise & key

1 exercises

1 geography and atlas

1 geography and atlas

Geography & atlas

1 Introduction to English Reader

Life of Merriam

The Life of Marion

Life of Washington

2 spelling books

1 spelling book

3 books

It looks like some of the titles disappeared between the first and the second inventory. I’ve read that the oldest son, John Gill Landrum, was sent, or at least went, back to South Carolina to study with some of his Ray family who were ministers. He would have been about 16 or 17 when his father died in 1826, so maybe he took some of them for his own study. And he taught school himself for a while, so perhaps he dipped into his father’s library for his start. And it can’t escape notice that the son was undoubtedly named for the author of the commentaries–John Gill.

I haven’t been able to ferret out the subject of the Life of Merriam or Marian or however it’s spelled. My own family was a bit schizophrenic on the spelling of this name–I think my great Uncle George Cooper’s middle name was spelled Merimon. And I understand that The Life of George Washington was standard fare for early pupils. It was written just 8 years after his death and would have been one of the best sellers of the day. I wonder where Merriman got his copy?

Sometime I’ll post more about the other items in the inventories. He obviously wasn’t a wealthy man, but neither was he poor by the day’s standards. But I still think it’s telling that the book titles are listed in each year’s inventory.

No Comments »

I love this picture.

I can remember seeing it at my grandmother’s house in South Dakota and not really “getting it.” What were 4 grown women doing dressed in cowboy hats on a bucking horse? (I led a fairly sheltered life, what can I say? –not to mention being a tad judgmental about what I didn’t understand.)

It’s a picture of her 4 sisters. Gran was the oldest of her family and she lived in South Dakota, moving there about 1951 from the Oklahoma panhandle. Three of her sisters lived in California, and many of her brothers. I can now see that their “migration” to the west coast was part of the many many folks who went from this part of the country to California–not exactly Okies in the John Steinbeck sense, but definitely heading west from the Depression-ridden Great Plains.

So I didn’t get to know her family very well. I can remember going to visit and being visited by some of her brothers who stayed in Texas–Uncle Rusty lived in Amarillo, Uncle Bill lived in Stinnett, and Uncle Jerry lived in Sunray (I think that was the name of the little company town). And, of course, I knew Uncle Velcie fairly well because he also lived in South Dakota.

My Gran would tell me stories about her siblings, and I think being the letter writer she was, she probably kept in pretty close touch with her sisters in California. She would tell me about them and about their kids–I got to meet some of them through the years when they went to visit “Aunt Lida.”

I knew that Auntie Lois lived in Buena Park. Truthfully, that didn’t mean much to me because I had never been anywhere west of the Texas Panhandle. I also knew she was what we then called a “beauty operator,” and that she had worked baking pies at some place called Knott’s Berry Farm. And that she “did” Mrs. Knott’s hair.

I don’t know the occasion of this picture, but it sure looks like they were having fun. And from what I’ve learned about the Anderton sibs, I think they probably were. In the history of Knott’s Berry Farm, there’s mention of this “Ghost Town” being developed so folks would have something to do while waiting to eat Mrs. Knott’s fried chicken dinner.

The only one still living is Katie, who is the one furtherest right. Auntie Lois is at the front, then Vi, known as Dude, Inez, and then Katie. Aunt Dude lived in Denver most of the time I knew her–I don’t know if she was visiting at this time or if she was then also living in California.

And then there’s the part of me that doesn’t want to think about the poor horse. It brings to mind other slightly bizarre stories about real stuffed animals–Roy Rogers’ horse Trigger and Sorrow the dog in Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire.

Or am I still just a tad judgmental?

No Comments »

I think most families had picnics or barbeques for July 4. My dad always said he worked outside all day and he wasn’t interested in eating out there, too. He had a point–it was usually 110 degrees and not many shade trees in the Texas panhandle.

But I was lucky enough to be in South Dakota staying with my grandparents on July 4 most summers. We still didn’t have a picnic, but we did get to go to the rodeo in Ft. Pierre. Ft. Pierre was just across the really big old metal bridge over the Missouri River from Pierre, but it seemed further away than that because it was such a different place. It was a fairly rough town–lots of bars and cowboys and such. Sometimes my cousin Willie rode the bulls in the rodeo, and then eventually he was one of the clowns. I don’t think they call them clowns any more, but that’s how far removed from rodeos my life is these days. Do they call them bull fighters?

The rodeo was the highlight of the summer, though. Usually we got to go to town and buy some new cowboy duds. My fave was the summer I got to buy red jeans and a red checked, ruffled shirt. I tried every year to wear the boots that were in the upstairs closet at my grandmother’s, but they were just too big. And while my brother got boots, I couldn’t talk my grandad into buying me some. I don’t think I actually tried too hard as it wasn’t all that cool for girls in the early and mid 1960s to wear cowboy boots.

That rodeo has been held every year since 1832, according to this website. I wouldn’t doubt it. Ft. Pierre has been there for a very long time–early fur traders were there by the late 1700s and by 1830, there was a trading post there. Of course, before that, the Sioux were there–one of the confrontations that Lewis and Clark had in 1804 with the American Indians on their journey west happened here.

But much of that history I’ve learned since then. At that time, I knew that Casey Tibbs was from Ft. Pierre and that he was the ultimate rodeo cowboy. I assume we saw him ride in the early 50s, thought I don’t specifically remember. What I do remember is that some guy flicked his cigarette ashes in the cuff of my little brother’s jeans and they caught on fire.

And I have this picture from Casey Tibbs’ funeral in 1990. It’s from an article in the Rapid City newspaper. The man standing beside the casket is my great Uncle Velcie, a cowboy in his own right (his last name ought to be AnderTon–a common mistake). Uncle Velcie broke horses for a living, but he also worked on the Oahe Dam when they were damming up the wide Missouri. Then there was the time he broke and trained 20 mules to a hitch, driving them from the Black Hills to Death Valley. That was in 1966 when he was about 57–not much older than I am now and I’m pretty sure I’m not up to it. He was still working cattle in his 80s.

I loved going to the rodeo. I’ve heard lots of people say they’ve never been or only been to 1 or two. My husband had never been until I took him to the National Finals here in Oklahoma City before they left town. He cheered for the animals–and I’d never really looked at it from that perspective before. But I loved the grand entry at the beginning, and at the Ft. Pierre event, there was what I remember as a really great fireworks show at the end. We must have been really dusty and smelly at the end of that long evening and probably slept the 17 miles home to my grandparents’ home, but I just remember what fun it was and how much I looked forward to it every year. And I’m glad to say I’ve known some real cowboys.

No Comments »