Merry Christmas! You're Going to North Carolina

On Christmas Eve I surprised my brother with his semi-annual nostalgic gift. It was a framed photo of the farmhouse my Castle great-grandparents rented from Dr. Fred S. Clinton when they first moved to Red Fork sometime in the 1910's. Dr. Clinton was a physician and co-owner of the Sue Bland, the first well to strike oil in Tulsa County. Clinton Middle School, where my brother and I attended 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, still sits on the site of the original farmhouse. When we attended Clinton Junior High School, it was in the original school building, built in 1925.

Clinton Junior High School in 1925
From the Beryl Ford Collection/Tulsa Historical Society

I had never seen a photograph of the Clinton farmhouse, but I attended a meeting with my grandmother when a painting of the old house was presented to the school. I wasn't even sure that a photograph of the house existed. A little research uncovered the fact that a photograph of the house was available from the Tulsa Historical Society. Voila!

Clinton Farmhouse
From the Beryl Ford Collection/Tulsa Historical Society

Tim really liked the photo, and he had a surprise of his own. During the gift opening portion of the evening, he leaned over to me and said, "Your gift from us is that we are going to North Carolina this summer." On our previous trips to Kentucky and Tennessee we had talked about how so much of our family had come from North Carolina and how neither of us had ever been there. As usual, we'll try to combine the genealogical and the historical. So where are we planning to go?

1. I'm thinking that our first stop in North Carolina will be Asheville, right on I-40, which will be our route out of Oklahoma, straight through Tennessee, and on to North Carolina. We can't visit North Carolina without seeing Biltmore and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains.

2. Our Powell ancestors came predominantly from Wake Co., NC. The narrative written by our great-great-aunt Lydia from information given to her by her father Benjamin (See "The Powells") says that the Powell ancestors came from Virginia to Halifax Co., NC, then to Wake Co. before the Revolutionary War. Dempsey Powell was the patriarch of this family, and his name can be found on the 1790 and 1800 censuses in Wake Co. Fortunately, the county seat of Wake Co. is Raleigh, which is also the capital and location of the State Archives. It's also right on I-40.

I hope that some pre-trip research will help me determine if there are any Powell-related sites to see in Wake Co. The home of Dempsey Powell (or of his son Dempsey Jr.--sources vary) still was standing in Wake Co. in the 1960's. I found references to the home of Dempsey Powell's son Jesse that is on the National Register of Historic Places in Wake Forest. I'm hoping to convince my brother to let me have half a day at the Archives. According to the catalog of the Archive holdings, there is a box that contains information about Dempsey Powell's military service in the Revolution and a folder that contains the bounty land warrant awarding Dempsey Powell his land on the Duck River in Tennessee for his service. Surely Tim will want to see that.

3. It's only 3 hours from Raleigh to Roanoke Island. I can't be that close and not visit the site of the Lost Colony that has fascinated me since I first read about it 50 years ago. We can't see North Carolina without visiting the coast.

4. Doubling back to meet up again with I-40, we can follow it to its end in Wilmington. It's only a short drive from there to the border of Brunswick and Columbus counties where our Simmons, Soles, and Mansell relatives lived before they moved to Alabama. I think the best we can hope for there is to get a flavor of the area that our ancestors left in the 1830's.

My cousins and I speculate that the family's efforts to prove Cherokee membership were fruitless because we weren't Cherokee, but Waccamaw. According to the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe website, the Waccamaw tribal homeland lies partially in Columbus County, about 35 miles from Wilmington. Hopefully, we'll have time to visit the area, particularly Lake Waccamaw and the Green Swamp Nature Preserve.

5. Traveling north to meet back up with I-40 will take us to Charlotte. We have no family connection there, but I hear it's a fun city. Maybe we can stop for lunch or dinner on our way back home.

As usual, we'll push it to make the trip in a week, but I think we can do it. If you read this and have suggestions for our trip or more information about sites connected to our ancestors, especially the Powell and Simmons families, please let us know.

3319 West 38th Street

I can't talk about Big Mom without talking about her house. I have vivid memories of visiting her there when I was little, and then of course, I lived there myself for over 25 years. The house still sits right across the street from Park Elementary School, which was the original site of Red Fork High School, and I still visit it in my dreams.

House in the 1960's

The first census in which the Castles are living there is 1930. In addition to George T. and Florida Castle, the other residents of the home were son Goldman, son Warner, daughter Jessie, son Tommie, and widowed daughter Georgia with her daughter, Marilou. During the 1930's when Grandpa was on strike from the refinery, he and my grandmother and the twins lived in Big Mom's house. On the 1940 census Uncle Harry (Goldman), Aunt Betty, and their son John were living with Big Mom. 

House about 1928

Modifications were made to the house at different times to accommodate the family members living with Big Mom. She added a second front door and a side entrance. The two upstairs bedrooms were wallpapered with planes and cowboys for Daddy and Uncle Mack. All the family were welcome to live there when they had need, and someone always seemed to.

House showing added back bedroom

My family would move there in 1962 when our house at 2717 W. 42nd St. had to be demolished to make room for the Red Fork Expressway, but before that we were often at the house on 38th St. What I remember from that time was the front porch--almost always the place we sat to visit; Big Mom's scratchy horsehair sofa, tabletop radio, and red-letter Bible; the curtain that hung on a rod between the living and dining room; and the narrow, creepy, boxed-in stairs that led to two bedrooms with sloping walls because they were under the eaves of the house.

After one of our visits, when my brother was about 2, Big Mom called in a panic to say that she had found an empty container of aspirin in the bedroom where Tim had been playing. We were ready to rush him to the emergency room when somebody thought to unzip his snowsuit, and the pills came rolling out!

Big Mom died in 1962, and soon, by chance, my family was looking for a place to live. After looking at several houses, my grandmother decided that we would just move into the house on 38th St. We made our own modifications to the house, including the addition of a mantel and gas stove in the living room, shelving in the doorway between the living and dining room, closets and doors, opening and widening the stairs to the upper floor, and modernization of the kitchen and bathroom.

Mantel we brought from the house on 42nd St. and shelving in the doorway

According to the History of the State of Oklahoma, written by Luther B. Hill in 1909, John I. Yargee was a prominent Creek Indian whose land adjoined the community of Red Fork. He was married to Nannie Porter, who was the sister of Pleasant Porter. (See my post, "Pleasant Porter Elementary School.") He was particularly known for the quality of his land and his livestock, and the land was platted as a residential addition in 1907. The legal description of Big Mom's homestead was Lots 9, 10, 11, and 12 of Block 1 of the Yargee Addition to the Town of Red Fork.

The property backed up to Red Fork Hill, and a large area at the back of the lots was fenced for the Castles' livestock. Big Mom raised cattle and chickens there, and later my brother would raise bantam chickens, pigeons, and a particularly rambunctious goat named Sugar.

When I remember the house on 38th St., I am as apt to remember the yard as I am the house. Trumpet vines and honeysuckle grew over the chain-link fence and the stump of an old tree near the front porch. (I wrote an especially syrupy poem about the stump when I was in junior high.) We had room to play softball, designating various trees and bushes as the bases, and I remember knocking a pitch from Aunt Jessie right into one of the living room windows. We had a playhouse in the back yard that had originally been the office at one of Uncle George Beebe's parking lots in downtown Tulsa.

My grandmother and the stump

Me and the stump

But what made a bigger impression on me than the yard or the house was the hill. There was no fear in those days for kids playing outdoors, and I often climbed the hill by myself and enjoyed the woods. After I read Freckles by Gene Stratton Porter, I planted flowers on the hill in a not-very-successful attempt to recreate the sanctuary that Freckles built in the woods.

The hill was also the scene of the most terrifying experience in my life as a mother. When my son was about 4, we were living in a house in Carbondale and came over to visit my grandmother one Saturday. Jason mentioned the hill as we drove up to the house, but I told him to stay in the yard while I went in to tell my grandmother we were there. Four hours later we found Jason a mile up the hill, sleeping in a dry creek bed with my dad's dogs. In his interview with Channel 8 News, he explained, "I was jus' chasin' the dogs." And taking ten years off his mother's life.

After that brief excursion into independent living, I moved back home with my grandmother and dad, and Jason went through 5th grade at Park Elementary School--sent every morning and welcomed home in the afternoon by my grandmother. After she moved into a nursing home in 1990, it got harder and harder to maintain the old house. My brother and I finally sold it. I drive by now and then, but it's just not the same.

Keepsakes

I was "on the hunt" this weekend, as my grandmother used to call it. As a kid, my family was always looking for a piece of paper, a piece of clothing, somebody's car keys. This weekend it was something I knew I had had in my hand within the past couple of years, but there were several places I could have put it. The object was a small paperback book, almost a pamphlet, of responsive readings from the I AM meetings that my great-grandmother used to attend. (See my last post, "Big Mom.") I had planned to write a post about the I AM movement, and I really needed that little book. However, now I'm going to hold off on that for a bit, while I describe some of the other treasures I found this weekend.

Keepsakes are like mitochondrial DNA, passed down from mother to daughter. In my grandmother's case, she inherited her mother's keepsakes, collected a mighty number of them herself, and kindly preserved a few of my mother's. When, in her last few years she began a project to create scrapbooks for her sisters, her remaining brother, nieces and nephews, and her grandchildren, I remember being confused about why I was angry with her over this magnanimous gesture. I still don't know if I was mad that she was giving our family history away or if I knew that she was disposing of an excess of memorabilia because she was nearing the end of her life. I shouldn't have worried about all the stuff she gave away. Lord knows there were plenty of photos, clippings, and keepsakes to go around, with plenty left over for me. In fact, they have been in two big storage bins that I have lugged around with me to the 7 or 8 houses I have lived in since my grandmother died in 1992.

I kept thinking I would go through them, but I just never got around to it. This weekend was it. It started out as a hunt for Big Mom's little I AM book, but it became a whole afternoon of laughter and tears. 

I found:

• The original clipping from the Tulsa World that declared my dad and his brother as the first twins born in Tulsa in 1928
• My grandmother's original application for teacher's retirement when it went into effect in 1942. It listed every teaching job she had had up until then, including how much she was paid. Her first teaching job in 1915-16 was in Owasso, and she was paid $250 for 5 months of work.
• A short sketch she had written, describing what she and grandpa wore at their wedding and what their first years together were like.
• Newspaper and magazine articles about her innovative teaching techniques, including having her class measure 1 acre on the school grounds and re-enact the Land Run
• A map she had drawn from memory of West Liberty, KY, and the surrounding area, including the names of residents that she remembered from her childhood. On a few sheets of old stationery she had listed all the residents of Red Fork that she could remember from the years when the Castle family first lived there.
• Postcards, letters, and greeting cards from as far back as the 1930s. Letters from her aunts Emma and Retta Lee in California backed up what I thought to be true--that they were the original I AM members and had encouraged their sister Florida to join the group.
• A list of my grandfather's kind gestures and funny sayings that my grandmother had written down after he passed away. I had forgotten that he was always looking for his "goood hat."
• The tag from my brother's hospital crib that read "Smith boy"
• A note that my mother wrote to her mother when she was still in the hospital after giving birth to me. I don't know why my dad's mother had this little note, but it meant a lot to me to get this glimpse of my early days with my mother. I was breast feeding just fine, thank you very much, and was gaining weight every day. Story of my life.

I could go on and on. It was amazing how much I found that would have enhanced the blog posts I've written this year, not to mention my vacation to West Liberty. I knew there was a clipping from the paper about the twins' birth but I hadn't seen it in years. When my brother worked at the Tulsa Public Schools' Service Center, I asked him to look up Mom's teaching records but they don't keep them. In my own garage I had the information I was looking for, and I didn't know it. Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote that I didn't know what my grandmother wore at her wedding, and I possessed a description of her dress in her own handwriting! It just goes to show that the suggestion from veteran genealogists about searching for records in your own home is true. I don't think I found any new genealogical information, but if I didn't know anything, these two bins of memorabilia would be a gold mine. 

The Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a keepsake as "something that you keep to help you remember a person, place, or event." My grandmother's keepsakes certainly were meant to do that.

Big Mom

Today is the birthday of my great-grandmother, Sarah "Florida" Day Castle, born in 1878 in White Oak, Magoffin County, Kentucky.  "Big Mom" was my paternal grandmother's mother and the center of my family's life when I was a child.  She lived in a 1-1/2 story house in Red Fork, a community that was annexed to Tulsa in 1927.  After her death in 1962, my grandparents, my dad, my brother and I moved into her house at 3319 W. 38th St.  

That house was as much a part of my life as Big Mom was, and it still shows up often in my dreams. Big Mom and her dad built the house themselves, modeling it on another house in Red Fork.  She was working on the roof when family members came by to tell her that her first grandchild, Aunt Georgia's Marilou, had been born.

She had come to Oklahoma from Kentucky in 1907 with her husband, George Turner Castle, and her six oldest children.  They settled first on a farm between Davenport and Chandler, where her youngest two, Jessie and Tommie, were born in 1909 and 1914. Their first home in Red Fork was a farmhouse rented from Dr. Fred S. Clinton on the site of the future Clinton Middle School.

Sarah Florida Day, known as Florida (or more commonly, Flordy) was the second oldest of seven daughters of James Thomas and Nancy Emily (Reed) Day.  The other sisters were Ida, Zedda, Emma, Margaret, Minta, and Retta Lee.  Their only brother, Cassa, died at the age of 4.  Florida married George Castle in January 1896 after the death of his first wife, Frances Nickell, in childbirth. She was 17 and he was 32.

George T. Castle had been a leader of the community in Kentucky--a postmaster and county court clerk--but became increasingly handicapped with arthritis. Florida worked hard to support the family, working as postmistress of the Red Fork post office and making salads at the Mayo Hotel kitchen.  She also started the first Methodist Sunday school in Red Fork and was president of the Park Elementary School PTA.

Her newly built house on 38th St. backed up to Red Fork Hill and the family kept livestock and chickens in the lot behind the house. Her older sons, who were in their teens and 20s, pretty much came and went as they pleased, which was a trial to Florida.  Sometimes she would wait until they were asleep and then switch them before they were awake enough to defend themselves.  One night as some of the boys stumbled in, they found their mother in the kitchen plucking and cooking a number of chickens.  She had discovered robbers stealing them and had run them off with a shotgun. Upon discovering that the chickens' necks had already been wrung, she proceeded to pluck and cook them in the middle of the night.

The Big Mom I remember was a big-boned woman with lots of wispy white hair twisted into a knot on the top of her head and held with tortoiseshell combs.  By the time I knew her she was blind with cataracts, practically deaf, and still an indomitable presence in the lives of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  I remember her sitting with quiet dignity on the front porch of the house on 38th St., head held high, looking into a distance she could not see. Blind and deaf, she lived all by herself in the house on 38th St.

Although she became a Methodist again at the end of her life, when I was a very young girl Big Mom was a member of the I AM Church. The I AM Church was very "New Age" for the time, using crystals for healing, and perhaps she felt the need to be healed from the disabilities of old age.  I remember going with the family in the car to take Big Mom to I AM meetings downtown and waiting for her in the car until the meeting was over. 

She developed what was probably cancer in her 80s, refused to go to the hospital, and announced her intention to die at home. Somebody from the family was always keeping vigil at her bedside, and I remember being there a lot, taking our turn. She is buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Tulsa, next to her husband and surrounded by many of her children and grandchildren, as she was in life.

Teachers and Postmen

It’s interesting to me that out of the wide range of occupations available to us in the modern world many of us choose the occupation of our parents or grandparents.  I guess it’s what you grow up knowing and what captures your imagination when you are young. 

I knew from about 3^rd grade that I wanted to be a teacher.  I suspect it had something to do with visiting my grandmother’s room at Pleasant Porter Elementary School or meeting her many former students who would stop us in the grocery store to say, “Your grandmother was the best teacher I ever had.”  My grandmother retired in 1960 but just the other day I saw a posting on Facebook reminiscing about Pleasant Porter Elementary to which one of her former students had replied, “Mrs. Smith was my favorite teacher at Porter.” 

Pleasant Porter Elementary School
from insite.com

My grandmother taught her twin sons and several of her brothers.  She transmitted her love of poetry to her students; my dad’s favorite when he was in her 6^th grade class was “Horatio at the Bridge.”  She had beautiful penmanship (which she called Spencerian script) that was admired by anyone who saw it.  She helped direct the annual operettas and once said, “Give me a package of Denison crepe paper and I can make anything!”  She taught the concept of an acre by having her students lay one out on the school grounds.  She was written up in the Tulsa Public Schools newsletter for re-creating the Oklahoma Land Run with her students. Every year her 6^th grade girls were chosen to wind the Maypole at the front of the school.  That was my biggest disappointment in moving from Porter to Park Elementary just before 5^th grade; I wanted to wind that Maypole as a Porter 6^th grader!

My grandmother monitoring the hall at Porter 

My grandmother became a teacher because her Aunt Emma was a teacher.  On the 1910 census in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, she is enumerated with her husband, Mr. Allen (William, but my grandmother always called him “Mr. Allen”) who was 31 years older than she, and her son Willie.  Her husband was listed as a farmer, and she was listed as a teacher at a “common school.”  She also taught at Paul Revere Elementary in Tulsa, which is no longer there but was located close to 51^st & Lewis.

Aunt Emma Allen--Teacher on 1910 census 

My grandmother started out teaching at a one-room school near Collinsville, Oklahoma.  She taught at Dawson and at Lynn Lane.  She taught at McBirney Elementary in Garden City, on the west side of Tulsa.  She got her first job in the Red Fork schools by walking out in a field to ask Mr. Brooks, the school board president, for a position. He said that any teacher that would walk out in a field for an interview could handle a classroom and gave her the job. She taught for 30 years at Porter, mostly 6^th grade, and ended up retiring with 43 years of teaching experience.

Now, my ambition of becoming a teacher never wavered, but as I traveled through the grades, sometimes the specific goal changed.  For example, in 4^th grade I wanted to be a 4^th grade teacher, in 5^th grade I wanted to be a 5^th grade teacher, in junior high I flirted with being a librarian, in high school I decided on speech and drama (with a side order of English.)  After 5 years teaching speech, drama, and English, I went back to school and got a librarian’s certificate, and that is where I have been ever since—36 years total.

Teachers from the Castle family include: my grandmother, me, and my cousin Cathy, granddaughter of Jessie Castle.  Cathy’s mother Ann is a retired librarian, and her sister Jayne is a school librarian.  My grandmother’s brother Warner was married to Ona Brooks, an elementary teacher and daughter of that school board president that gave my grandmother a job. Their daughter Linda retired from a career as an elementary and middle school teacher.

Postal jobs also run in our family.  Goldman Davidson Castle was the postmaster of Castle, Kentucky.  My grandmother remembered seeing the post office at the end of the long porch outside her grandparents’ home in Kentucky.  Later, G.D. Castle turned the postmaster position over to his son, George Turner Castle. 

When the family moved to Red Fork, my grandmother took the Civil Service exam and was named Postmistress.  At the time she was teaching near Collinsville and turned the post office over to her mother.  Florida Castle is listed in the 1919 Tulsa city directory as the clerk of the Red Fork post office; Fannie Castle is listed as postmistress.

Appointment of Fannie Castle as Red Fork Postmistress

1919 Tulsa City Directory showing
Fannie Castle as Red Fork postmistress and
Florida Castle as postal clerk 

My brother retired from 25 years as a postal carrier.  While working for the post office, he received his bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma.  He now works for the Tulsa Public Schools!  His daughter is doing her student teaching in the fall.

Grandparent #2: Frances (Fannie) Lou Castle

On this date in 1897 my grandmother was born to George T. and Florida (Day) Castle in Morgan County, Kentucky.  She was named for her father’s first wife, Frances Nickell, who had died in childbirth in 1893.  George married Florida, 15 years his junior, in 1896.  Fannie was the oldest of their 8 children.

When she was just a toddler, an incident happened that affected my grandmother all of her life.  Her young mother needed to leave their cabin and go to the spring for fresh water. She tied my grandmother into her high chair, but on her way back to the cabin she saw an awful sight:  Fannie standing on the front porch of the cabin with burning embers in her hair.  She had managed to get free from the chair and fall headfirst into the fireplace.  The burning left scars that she would hide for the rest of her life with bangs and hairpieces.  This disfigurement was much more obvious to Fannie than it was to anyone else, and she hid it well.  I never even realized she had scars until she was in her 90s.

Stacy Fork School--about 1902
Fannie is in the front row, 7th from left
Her brother Forrest is next to her, 4th from right
Half-sister Cora is standing next to the teacher on the left

She clearly remembered her early school days in Kentucky.  The one-room schoolhouse had two exit doors in the back, one for the boys and one for the girls.  If a book was placed in the door on the girls’ side, it meant that a girl was occupying the outhouse; if the book was in the boys’ side, it meant a boy was in the privy.  

This photo of the old schoolhouse taken
by Aunt Georgia Beebe on a trip back to Kentucky

After the family moved to Oklahoma in 1907, Fannie continued her education and graduated from Chandler High School.  After taking the teacher’s exam at age 17, she began teaching in a one-room schoolhouse near Collinsville.  She later completed college at Northeastern State Teachers’ College (now Northeastern State University) in Tahlequah.

She married in 1919 and gave birth to twin boys in 1928.  She taught at Park Elementary and for 30 years at Pleasant Porter Elementary, both in Red Fork.  At age 62 she wasn’t ready to retire, but she did so that she could stay home with me and my brother after our mother died. 

Until I got close to age 60 myself, I hadn’t quite imagined what it would have been like to take on a 3-year-old and a 4-month old at that stage of my life.  It would have been easy for me to miss having a mother, but she filled that role so well that I never really did. She supported everything I wanted to do—including hemming up my miniskirts and attending all my school events.  She was a Cub Scout den mother and climbed up in the bleachers in her 70s to watch my brother play basketball. I remember a couple of summers when she decided I needed to learn how things were done in the old days, so we strung peppers and made grape jam and soap from scratch.     

She wasn’t through raising children.  When I went to work as a teacher in 1977, she took care of my son.  Later, she sent him across the street to school at Park Elementary and took care of him after school until I got home.

She wasn’t always easy because she had high standards and would criticize me if I couldn’t do something with the “Castle lick,” the perfect way in which something should be done—from sweeping the floor to ironing a shirt.  When I rolled out of bed in the morning, she had a list ready of all the things she had done while I was sleeping: breakfast dishes, two loads of laundry, ironing ten of Daddy’s shirts, etc.  She often criticized what I wanted to wear, which she called my “garb.”  She was terribly hard of hearing and drove us all crazy trying to make her understand what we were saying. Once she misunderstood something one of us had said and questioned, “Snow’s on the roof?” (It was summer.)  After that, it was our favorite saying when she didn’t understand something.  After several attempts at making her understand, we’d all yell, “Snow’s on the roof!”  She had absolutely no sense of humor, so we all thought it was pretty funny when she bought a plaque that said “I’m not deaf; I’m just ignoring you” and hung it on the living room wall.

She was still going strong when she turned 90, and we had a big surprise birthday party for her.  As the oldest of George and Florida’s children, she was everybody’s Aunt Fannie, and I even called her Aunty for years before I finally figured out she was the only mother I was ever going to have and started calling her Mom.  I always knew she was a big influence on me, but I don’t think I had realized that so much of what I’m interested in is because of her. Being a teacher, of course. But I also share her love of poetry* (in her 80s she could recite long narrative poems she had learned in 4^th grade!), genealogy (she’s the one who wrote down all the brothers and sisters of my ex-husband’s great-grandmother), history and culture (my fascination with Indian mounds, cemeteries, pioneer times, and the settling of Oklahoma.)  Family was always the most important thing in the world to her, and she would love knowing that I’m making connections with the descendants of her kinfolks in Kentucky.

My grandmother holding a sign painted for her by
John Castle, signed by all the Castles, and
presented at a Castle family reunion at John's

*On any occasion when we were all together (birthdays, Christmas), we would beg her to recite her poems.  I have searched in vain to find copies of them.  My favorite was about a father chopping wood when his little boy falls underneath the axe.  (It begins, “What are ye askin’, stranger, about a lock of hair?” and ends with an affirmation of the Biblical saying, “’the hairs of your head are numbered,’ and sir, I believe it’s so.”) Another was about a little girl and her mother traveling on an immigrant train at Christmas time. The little girl worries that Santa won’t be able to find them, and a man (was he Santa?) gets off the train at one of the stops and buys her presents. Another was about a little boy who steals a watermelon and gets in trouble from his mother because the one he stole wasn’t ripe! I also liked the one about an older sister who "is flustered the whole of the day/And gives the silliest answers to what we may say" because "her beau is coming to see her on Saturday night." All of these poems gave us a glimpse into what life was like when my grandmother was growing up.

Fannie Castle Smith (or Fannie C. Smith, as she signed herself) was a beloved teacher, mother, aunt, and grandmother.  She died on 12 December 1992 and is buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  

The Castles in Oklahoma

Castle children about 1915
L to R: Jessie, Fannie, Forrest, Goldman, Georgia, Warner, Wardy
Tommie in carriage, mother Florida Day Castle behind Georgia

In the summer of 1907 George Turner Castle brought his wife, Sarah Florida (Day) Castle, and their children, Fannie, Forrest, Georgia, Warner, Wardy and Goldman (Harry) to Oklahoma.  They were following his in-laws, James Thomas Day and his wife Nancy Emily (Reed) Day, who had settled on a farm near Davenport, Oklahoma, in Lincoln County.  There is a difference of family opinion on how the Castles came to Oklahoma; one group says by wagon, another says by train.  I think that probably both groups are right and that the family may have come in two separate groups.  All I know is that my grandmother said that when the train pulled into the station in Red Fork that she thought, Those hills look just like the hills in Kentucky. Maybe I will like living here.  The oldest of the children, she was 10. 

When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, the family was living on a farm between Chandler and Davenport.  My grandmother remembered the bells ringing on Statehood Day, November 16.  In 1909 a sister Jessie was added to the family.  In 1910 the census shows the family living in South Fox Township, Lincoln County.  

Castle girls about 1909

Fannie graduated from Chandler High School about 1914.  Tommie, the last of George and Florida’s children, was born in September 1914.  Within a couple of years the family had moved to Red Fork, a small community west of Tulsa, where Fannie took the civil service exam and was appointed postmistress on 23 August 1917.  She hired her mother Florida as the post office clerk and went off to her teaching position in a one-room school between Owasso and Collinsville.  On weekends she visited her family in its rented home on W. 41^st St., former home of Dr. and Mrs. Fred S. Clinton, which later became the site of Clinton Junior High School.

Postmistress Appointment

The 1920 census shows the Castles are living in Red Fork.  By then, the arthritis that had plagued George T. Castle for years finally incapacitated him.  On the census his occupation is listed as “invalid.”  His legs were so bad that he had to wear braces, and my grandmother recalled that his favorite pastime was sitting on the front porch at the Clinton house counting the automobiles that would go by in a day’s time.

George Turner Castle

Castle boys in early 1920s
L to R:  Goldman (Harry), Warner, Wardy, Forrest
Tommie in front

Around the time of her first grandchild’s birth in 1921, Florida and her father, J.T. Day, built a home for the Castle family at 3319 W. 38^th St.  Living there on the 1930 census are George and Florida; the unmarried children: Warner, Goldman, Jessie, and Tommie; and Georgia, a widow, with her daughter Marilou, age 9.  George Turner Castle died 24 January 1932. 

Castles and Days at house on 38th St. about 1928

The house on 38^th St. was the family home for decades, site of Sunday dinners and football games in the front yard.  All the adult children and their families were welcome to come home, and at one time or another, almost all of them lived there.  At one point Florida had a child living on W. 39^th St. (Wardy), W. 40^th St., (Forrest), W. 41^st St. (Warner), and W. 42^nd St. (Fannie.)  Florida, known as Big Mom, became deaf and almost completely blind, but continued to live by herself at the house on 38^th St. until she died in May 1962 at age 83.  

Grandparent #1: Weaver Harris Smith

Weaver Harris Smith was born 18 December 1895 in Catoosa, Indian Territory.  He was the youngest son of Stephen A. and Fannie Smith and the only child born in Indian Territory.  His mother died when he was almost 10.  While his sister Lou was kind to him, his older brothers did things like filling his Christmas stocking with coal and switches.  One of them recommended he try "toilet water," but didn't explain exactly what that was, leading to an incident that was comical, but probably not to Weaver.  He spent his younger years in Oologah, using the town pump as home base for games of Go Sheepie Go.  We once took him back to Oologah to see his old home, and he remarked that he remembered it as much bigger.  

Smith home in Oologah, Oklahoma

My son at the Oologah water pump, about 1980

He was living in Collinsville in 1917 when he registered for World War I.  He met my grandmother there, courted her for several years, and married her on 30 June 1918.  On their honeymoon the newlyweds visited Waterloo, Alabama, the Smiths’ old home. 

Fannie and Weaver, 1919

Weaver and Fannie at the Beckham home in Waterloo, AL

They rented a house on the corner of W. 41^st St. and S. 26^th W. Ave. in Red Fork and started “housekeeping.”  Grandpa joined the union as a pipefitter and worked at the Sun (DX) Refinery in West Tulsa.  He helped build the gasworks on the Arkansas River.  They had really hard times because he was often on strike, but maybe they did a little better than the other families because Fannie was working as a teacher.  The other men would give him a hard time about it, and he would say, “Well, at least my wife is smart enough to get a job!”  By 1934 Weaver and Fannie had bought a house at 2717 W. 42nd St., just a few blocks from their old rent house.

My grandparents, me and my brother on porch
at 2717 W. 42nd St., Christmas 1960 

Grandpa began to have health problems when he was in his 40's.  He survived a cerebral hemorrhage because the doctor in Red Fork performed an experimental operation, drilling holes in his head to relieve the pressure.  He had several heart attacks and had a leg amputated at about age 70 because of circulation problems.  

Grandpa was a nice-looking man now that I look back on it.  He was wiry and strong and had a shock of heavy hair that I think was just beginning to go gray in his 70’s (although he always wore a hat.)  I think it must be telling that I remember him as tough and strong, because he had health problems from the time I can remember him.  I never thought of him as weak.  In his late 60’s he could still do a trick that he had done all his life.  Holding a matchstick between the fingers of his right hand, he would hold his left hand behind his back, doing a one-handed pushup and grabbing the matchstick with his teeth! My recollection of his toughness might have something to do with the fact that he cussed like a sailor, and though he often seemed to be in a bad mood, I always knew he loved me.  He and my grandmother seemed like the mismatch of the century, but they were completely devoted to each other.


He was helpful around the house in a day when most men weren't.  Before my grandmother retired, he stayed home with my brother and me after our mother died.  He was the family dishwasher.  He used to complain that all he did was "wa' dish, wa' dish."  He and my grandmother hardly ever fussed, but I remember them getting into an argument once in the kitchen when he was washing dishes.  He threw a wet rag at my grandmother and knocked her wig askew, and they ended up laughing, the argument forgotten.

My grandparents washing dishes at the house
on 42nd St.

Grandpa had a lot of colorful expressions.  On 42^nd St., he had his own bedroom at the back of the house that he called the “north 40.”   My favorite was “shoe mouth deep,” indicating the depth of water you were stepping in.  He also talked about being so “poor that you couldn’t buy a mosquito a wrassling jacket,” although I can’t imagine what that means.  Grandpa loved “wrassling”--professional wrestling. He would get so excited watching it on TV that we were afraid he’d have another heart attack.  Although he certainly couldn’t help it, I think that the fragility of his health made a big impression on me as a kid.  Between that and the Smith motto “If anything can go wrong, it will,” I grew up pretty fearful, but also pretty appreciative of all the small things that you can lose at any time. 

Christmas at the house on 38th St., 1965 

It was always hard for me to go away from home to spend the night with somebody, because I was afraid that something would happen to him while I was gone (although what I thought I could do about it, I don’t know.) And then something did.  My dad and brother and I had gone out to eat on a Saturday afternoon.  When we came home, my grandmother had had to call an ambulance to come and get Grandpa.  He had had another heart attack, and this time he didn’t recover.  He died on May 17, 1970. 

Beginnings and Endings

I live about 7 miles from the cemetery where I caught the genealogy bug--closer as the crow flies. How I ended up just miles from the resting place of my paternal great-grandfather is a story in itself. But first, what was it about Ridgelawn Cemetery in Collinsville, Oklahoma, that sparked an interest that hasn't burned out in 50 years?





















I remember the day we were walking around the cemetery, looking for the graves of my great-uncle Owen and his wife Fern, when I noticed a number of graves with close to the same death dates.  I asked my grandmother, who usually had the answers, "Why did so many people die around the same time? Was there a fire or an explosion?"  "No," she replied, "it was the flu." The fact that most of them were young people, not much older than I was at the time, made it all the more poignant. Compound that with the sad story of Aunt Fern and the romantic tale of my grandparents' meeting, and you had a genealogy fanatic for life.

Fern Walker Smith

Uncle Owen Smith and my grandfather owned the Candy Kitchen in Collinsville. Grandpa was the soda jerk. Uncle Owen was married to Fern, daughter of Elizabeth Whitmore Walker. My grandmother was a first-year schoolteacher, teaching in a one-room school outside of town and boarding with Mrs. Walker. Owen introduced his mother-in-law's boarder to his brother Weaver. My grandmother kept Grandpa on a string for a couple of years; he dropped her off at the train station in Collinsville so that she could spend weekends at her parents' house in Red Fork, a small community outside of Tulsa. Her other boyfriend Gilbert dropped her off on Sunday afternoons at the train station in Red Fork. Eventually, however, Grandpa won out--partly because Gilbert told her she was number 2 in his heart after his church, and she wouldn't be number 2 at anything. Owen and Fern's story didn't have as happy an ending. Fern died young of typhoid fever and their daughter Billie was raised by her maternal relatives.

Billie and my grandmother

We visited Collinsville often when I was a young girl, but after Uncle Owen and Grandpa and Grandpa's sister Aunt Lou were gone, we only visited the cemetery once in a while. Flash forward 30 years and my son marries a girl whose grandparents live outside of Collinsville. They buy a little house on Broadway, not far from where my grandpa's father, Stephen Albert Smith, ran his boarding house. Then I become a widow and move 10 minutes away so that I can see them more often. I drive by the cemetery when I leave their house and think about Grandpa Smith, Uncle Owen and Fern, Aunt Lou, Mrs. Walker, and all those young people whose lives were taken by the flu.

(L to R) Uncle Turner, ?, Uncle Albert, Grandpa (Weaver),
Uncle John holding the horse in front of
Grandpa Smith's boarding house in Collinsville

So today I begin this blog about genealogy and my family.  I want to write about events that happened long ago that might still have some relevance for today.  I’ve noticed that some things seem to cross the generations—spirituality and bravery and lost love—and I want to write about those things.  I’ll be thinking about what pushes me to keep searching—to find connections between the past and the present, to be the bridge between my ancestors and my descendants, even those yet to come.