My Grandparents

In the last page titled crossroads I mentioned several families These families went on to connect and intermarry with each other resulting in my arriving on this planet. I now would like to chronicle the people I knew personally. I would like to tell what stories that I know personally to be true and perhaps a few that are rumor but I will make you well aware of the fact if it occurs.
I must have been around 3 years of age when I became aware of my grandparents. My favorite was Christopher Columbus Murley. He was born December 25, 1884 in Tippah Co., Mississippi. I know very little of his life before my life with him, so I will stick to facts at this time. Because of this wonderful technology called The Internet, I can publish this story today and if new facts come to surface tomorrow they can be typed in and uploaded instantly. He was the 10th of 10 children if all my records are correct. His father was Jefferson Kasey Murley and his mother Miranda Kitchens. In 1914, on the 12th of June he married Miss Minnie Myrtle Bartlett. He was 29 years old, she was 33, her birthday being November 26,1881. She was the daughter of James K. Bartlett and Liddia Amanda Wells. Thirteen months later their first son Hermon was born, and 20 months after that on her birthday, my father Clavis Wilson arrived. I know they worked and raised their two sons farming cotton and corn and of course food crops for their own needs. In 1935 thereabouts they moved to Arkansas where my mother and father met.
I was born in my grandparents house east of Piggott, Ark. The memories of that time are vague, but I remember trips to Piggott in a farm wagon pulled by horses. I remember being bundled and hearing the steel bands of the wagon wheels crunching on the gravel. I also remember lots of other wagons and teams tied up waiting for their owners to return from shopping. Sometimes we would visit someone near the court square that lived in a two story house and I would be allowed down to crawl around. I have vague pictures of that time of the stores but the grey veil of time and an infants lack of understanding won't allow them to come into focus.
About the time of the outbreak of World War II one event stands out in my memory. My mothers brother Berlon left for the war. I can remember being at the railway station in Piggott the night he left. There was a lot of crying, and noise and confusion. We moved near this time to another farm north of Pollard, Ark. and south of Qulin, Missouri. My dad and grandad sharecropped for a man I remember as Jerry Taylor. I had some of my earliest memories while living on this place. I remember lying on the old hide-a-bed davenport with my grandfather whom I refered to as grampa and he would play Superman games with me. Grampa could and did make everything he needed. I will list what I remember - harness for the animals, wagon parts, wheel spokes, tongues, doubletrees, singletrees, etc. He had a forge and could forge about any steel part that he needed. I don't remember him ever having a power tool. It would have been useless anyway, because we never had electricity until 1949. We used augers and handsaws, box planes, and draw knives, and most of the wrenchs were cast iron for square nuts and bolts. Until sometime in the real early 40's all the farming was done with horses and mules, then dad aquired a late 30's vintage "H" model John Deere tractor. We lived in a wet rather swampy part of Arkansas that had been drained by a series of "lateral ditches". One day my dad came home at lunch time white as a ghost, my mother asked him why? The road in front of house that connected with the county road was built on the bank of one of these aforementioned ditches. Dad had beem driving the tractor home when he met a car. He moved over to pass and the bank gave way. The tractor started to roll over, he jumped over the tall rear wheel and when he hit the ground he looked back and the tractor was rolling over right behind him! He jumped again, and again - it was after him. He finally got away from it. But it scared him real bad. My Grampa was a beekeper he always had from 10 to 50 hives of bees in the backyard, and beeing a curious and sometimes careless young boy, I got several reminders from the bees about trespassing. I remember family excursions to the woods where we would cut down trees and capture hives of wild bees and bring them home add to the hives we had. I remember medicines made of smelly things mixed in jars for both man and beast. I loved to go to Grampa and Gramma's house. Grandma would make oatmeal cookies and cinnamon turnovers, and mostly they would just talk to me and tell me stories. Oh, If I could just remember half those stories today this narrative, would take on a color that would be much more interesting to the reader. I am sad to think that my children and grandchildren never got to meet and experience them. They and others like them represented a people with an internal fortitude and an ability to not only survive, but to grow under what today would be called impossible circumstances. My grandfather would have died before he would have taken welfare. I will continue to interject anecdotes about him in my story, because he influenced my life greatly. He was my hero, and still is. He is in my memories, and in bad times thoughts of him give strength. I remember the beautiful spring morning in June 1953, I awoke in his house, he had been ill during the night with his heart. My dad and I had gone to get the doctor in the night for him. As I awoke I heard my mother say "Here, Mr. Murley, I fixed you some breakfast". I believe I heard him say "alright", then I heard a gasping sound. My mom said "Mr. Murley, are you alright?". Grampa was gone. I can remember thinking "Not on a beautiful day like this! We could have gone fishing like so many times before, or just for a walk through the woods to the fields."

To be continued...

Chapter 6: Dad and Mom
A Genealogy | Chapter 4: A Crossroads Mid 1840's | Surname Index