All My Ancestors

The current challenge to us genea-Bloggers is from Lori at Smoky Mountain Family Historian, to write about some of the stores where we used to shop that are no more.

I have lots of ammo for this one as I grew up in a small rural town before malls.  We had a true Main Street lined with home-owned stores.  My “city-slicker” husband always says it has to be the widest Main Street in the country–it is pretty wide–4 lanes with andled parking on both sides.  It’s Texas State Highway 83 and there are no curves. 

All the buildings are still there but they have morphed into other businesses.  I could write about Malone’s, the children’s store where we went for our shoes and my school dresses, or at least the ones my mom didn’t sew for me.  They had one of those x-ray machines to check your shoes–was it a Buster Brown product? Maybe that accounts for all my foot problems at this point in my life. 

Then there was McClellan’s–truly an old-fashioned dime store.  Everytime I see take-out boxes for Asian food, I remember that I first knew those boxes as the transport for goldfish purchased at the dime store.  (You could also buy baby turtles with decals on their backs and at Easter time, baby chicks or ducks.  PETA would not have approved!)  I remember wooden floors and fans from the ceiling–I remember thinking that ceiling fans were a really cool idea and wondered why people didn’t have them in their houses.  It was also the place to buy records–the vinyl kind–remember those? 

Bryan’s Food Store, on the north end of Main, was where we bought our groceries–there was a real butcher’s case there, a ledge in the front window where people sometimes sat to pass the time with Mr. or Mrs. Bryan or Edith who were checking–it also served as the place to store boxes waiting to be filled with our purchases.  The office was at the back, about 1/2 a floor above the main shopping area–I can still smell the baskets of Lava soap and the dusty potatoes. 

Next door to the grocery store was cousin Delbert’s barbershop.  This place was considered a little shady because my mom suspected he kept “girlie magazines” for his customers.  I’m surprised she actually sometimes let my brothers go next door unaccompanied for their haircuts while she and I did the grocery shopping.  I loved the smell of the butch wax when they came out with their fresh buzz-cuts.  And bubble gum.  Life wasn’t fair for girls in my small town!

But the store I want to write about for this post is Plainview Hardware.  I did a google search on this phrase just to see what would come up and I was pleased and shocked to find that it has some sort of historical landmark status in Texas, with this restored WW II sign mentioned in most of the write-ups.  I also learned that the same folks owned the adjoining Perryton Furniture store–you can see part of the letters for that store in this same picture.

Think of every part for every appliance and machine that existed in the 1960s as well as a full range of kitchen ware, including cooking and serving, and you have Plainview Hardware.  Whatever you needed, they had it.  I graduated college in 1973.  Sometime shortly after that one of my friends broke the basket in her Pyrex coffee maker. 

She was lamenting not being able to use her coffee pot–and she was really attached to it.  This was after electric percolators were available, but before Mr. Coffee was very popular.  But Lori took great pride in using her stove-top pot to brew coffee.  I knew I could save the day.  I went to Plainview Hardware on one of my trips home, and sure enough, they had the glass surround for the basket.  She couldn’t believe it when I brought it back to her.  I was so proud to shock this world-wise friend from southern California!  My dad brought me wire from there for my tomato plants, my mom bought shower gifts as well as her own snack sets she and the other church ladies would pool for wedding and baby showers.  It was like a general store without the groceries.

 I never tired of wandering the aisles and looking at all the different nuts and bolts and washers and nails and chain and pipes and dishes and pyrex coffee pots and parts.  There was, of course, some distant connections to the people who ran the store–the man was from the family one of my great aunts had married into and then divorced, and the woman was the aunt of one of my best friends–and they lived within sight of our house.  Home Depot just doesn’t hold the same charm. 

The only other store that evokes many memories due to the variety of things available there is what used to be known as Corner Drug.  After I went to college, my mother went to work there and as a result, we had all sorts of decorative items–my sisters-in-law still use the leaded glass pitchers and my sons have the Fitz and Floyd dishes.  I worked there during summer and Christmas holidays–usually wrapping packages at Christmas and floor duty in the summers.  I sold magazines and paperbacks and perfume and band-aids and candle-sticks.  This is the place I remember seeing my first Barbie doll.  It was, too, of course, the place we got our prescriptions filled–in later years, they delivered.  Clerks kept kept tablets under each cash register–if a person asked for something the store didn’t stock, the clerk wrote it down and by the next time the customer came in, it was on the shelf.  The store’s services included selling some sort of hair tonic with “Alligator” in the name that the old guys had to ask for from behind the counter–it was the town’s answer to being a dry county but having some customers who couldn’t make it to the state line 7 miles away for their alcohol fix.

My husband asked me the other day if I wanted to retire “back home.”  I told him I really wasn’t interested in living in that small town, but I am (mostly) glad I grew up there.

Read all the postings on this topic at Donna Pountkouski’s What’s Past is Prologue.

This week I was reading an Okahoma small town newspaper from about 1915, and in the “News About Town” column, the 2 local grocers seemed to be in competition for access to the local eggs and butter.  One of them used the term “cackleberries” for eggs and I’m pretty sure I laughed out loud.  My dad used that word for eggs, much to my mother’s chagrin.  He wasn’t born until 1929, so the term must have lasted longer than 1915, and gone beyond small town Oklahoma to small town Texas.  My dad also referred to getting around by walking as going via “Shank’s pony,” and using “Armstrong power steering” on our early cars and his farm equipment.  My favorite language use from my dad that I remember was when he used to sing “mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy….”  That was magical to me for some reason.

My maternal granddad was probably the most colorful user of language in the family, much of which isn’t appropriate for a family blog.  :-)  But one of his phrases was “Ned in the first reader.”  This phrase was used to convey simplicity and not always in a good way.  If someone was putting you down, they were trying to make you feel like “Ned,” for example.  The only other person I heard use this phrase was as far from my granddad as he could possibly be–one of my grad school professors.  In fact, this man was cause for another student and I recording his phrases in the backs of our notebooks–wish I’d kept them.  They were colorful!  Despite his advanced education, I’m pretty sure he and Granddad would have gotten along just fine, based on their language alone.

Other phrases I remember from my maternal grandfather:  He referred to eating ice cream, which he loved, as “cooling his belly,” as if this were one of the requirements for a healthy life.   He frequently asked us grandkids if we needed any “walking around money.”  We learned that one quick!  And he called their outdoor toilet “Ike.” 

I never quite got around to getting the explanation for that one.  He also referred to “cutting di-does”–I assume this came from the lathe cutting dadoes, but he used it to refer to someone slipping or driving recklessly or some such near out-of-control action.  He also talked about “tuning up” someone, or “dusting” them off as a way of talking about some sort of physical “corrective” action.

Last September I went to Ireland and I loved listening to the Irish talk, including one of our tour guides.  One of my favorites was the phrase used by our guide when she was discussing a strike of the airline workers.  They were protesting there not being enough flights going out of northern Ireland, as I recall.  Patricia had no sympathy for their protests, believing the issue had been settled and pronouncing it  “done and dusted.”

And then there’s the learning curve that occurs when two families unite by marriage.  I could not understand what my husband meant when he talked about putting his clothes onto racks (we called them hangers) or chewed a block of gum (they were sticks to my family).  And we were even from the same state!

Despite the difficulty of choosing just one photograph for the 4th edition of Smile for the Camera, I decided to choose this one of my grandfather, on the left,  and his as yet unidentified compadre.

What in the world were these guys doing? I was very surprised when my dad’s cousin gave me this picture of her “Uncle Thad.” I’d never seen anything remotely like it in all the family pics I’d perused.   I love the seam down the front of his left leg–looks like it was sewn with twine.  This makes me know for sure he wasn’t married at this time because my grandmother would have mended this cut? tear? rip? so that it would have been invisible. They married in December 1913 in Lubbock, Texas.

My grandad was a character, I think.  When I knew him in the 1950s and 1960s, he smoked unfiltered Old Gold cigarettes, drank black coffee, and walked across two rooms to kick the television if it wasn’t getting good reception.   And liked it just a little too much if my brothers and I, or even my parents and I, got into any sort of disagreement. 

I think part of the attraction of this photo for me is that this is a part of my granddad’s life I never knew about, but he looks like such a guy–posing with is cane knife (I think) with a rip in his overalls.  As I’ve blogged about previously, there are formal studio photos of all of his siblings, but not of him.  Clowning around with a knife was evidently what it took to get him into the studio.

What’s not to like?  A British police procedural, a cold case tied to current murders, and a genealogist who helps solve the case.  “We can’t escape our history.” 

Megan Smolenyak admitted to this book monopolizing her time for a while, and an interview with the author is also posted on her RootsTelevision.  As she notes, you certainly can’t tell that author Dan Waddell isn’t a genealogist–he did what he had to do to make this book sound authentic, exploring many of the many reasons we genies pursue our craft. 

I love reading mysteries and I’ve always related my love of genealogy to that enjoyment of mysteries.  This book is a very satisfying combination.

This is a photo of my great aunt and uncle, Inez Osborne and Noah Parker.  Noah died in 1946, before I was born, so I didn’t know him.  I always heard he was a big man and this picture certainly proves that.  Aunt Inez was probably only about 4′10″–they must have been quite a pair.

Aunt Inez lived to be over 100, dying in 1978.  This picture must have been taken around the time of their marriage in October 1913, in Lubbock, Texas, though I have no way of verifying that.  In 1916, they had a son named Raphael Winfield Osborne.  Raphael must have been named for Inez’ brother Raphael who had died as a 2 year old, in 1877, the same year Aunt Inez was born.  The older Raphael is referenced in their father’ Charles’ letter in an earlier post.  The Winfield is for Inez’ father’s middle name–he was Charles Winfield Osborne, author of the letter mentioned.  The Raphael named for his uncle also died young, in 1927 at age 11.

Part of the reason I blog is to write up what I know about my family.  Until I started working on this installment, I don’t think I ever realized that Aunt Inez was 35 before she married.  Interesting.  So now I go to investigate the rest of her siblings, and I find her next younger sister, Becky, married late as well–age 42.  Inez and Becky’s older sister never married.  The youngest sister married at age 23.  Most of the brothers married in their 30s–I knew the men in this family usually married “late.”  On the other hand, this may have been typical of the time.  Interesting to consider.

Noah and Inez’s daughter Mary is the person who helped me the most with this family’s research.  Mary grew up in Pampa, Gray County, Texas, where her grandparents, my great grandparents Charles and Gertrude, moved sometime between 1913 and 1920.  My dad, who was Mary’s cousin, grew up in Perryton, Ochiltree County, Texas, about 65 miles north of Pampa.  I’m still working on why my branch of the family didn’t seem to have much to do with the part of the family that was in Pampa–at least not in my lifetime.  It may be that everyone was just so busy making a living and rearing their families, there wasn’t time to socialize.   But I think there might be something more than that.  At any rate, I appreciate Mary’s giving me some pictures, some stories and some insight into the family.  I miss having Mary to ask.

Mary, her husband Ben, Noah, Inez, Raphael, Charles and Gertrude are all buried in Fairview Cemetery in Pampa.

Today my son forwarded a link to an article in the Washington Post documenting that John McCain’s grandfather was living in Muskogee, then Indian Territory, early in the 20th century.  I don’t know how long the link will work, but it’s published in the 22 July 2008 edition, page A04, and written by Jonathan Weisman.  

It’s a fascinating story–this was Archibald Wright, father of John McCain’s feisty mother Roberta who, at 96, still campaigns for her son.  Roberta and her twin Rowena were evidently born in Muskogee.  Fellow Genea-Blogger Sue Tolbert, executive director of the Three Rivers Museum in Muskogee,  is quoted in the article as is Nancy Callahan from the Muskogee Public Library.

Muskogee has its own interesting history and it looks like Grandpa Arch did his part.  I wonder if Sen. McCain would be interested in a membership in the First Families of the Twin Territories?

I’m writing this as a response to Bill West’s invitation to a Geneablogger’s Picnic.  Bill blogs at West in New England. 

He provided these questions as starters:

• *What food does your family serve at picnics?
• *Are there traditional foods or family recipes?
• *Is there one particular relative’s specialty you wish you could taste again or one perfect picnic day you wish you could go back and relive?

At the risk of being as welcome as a herd of ants at the picnic, I have to say there really weren’t any picnics in my family. 

I passed up writing on Miriam’s AnceStories2 prompt about summer because I didn’t want to be too negative.  Summer is my least favorite season because I don’t like being hot.  As my brother says, “We come from a family that doesn’t like to sweat.” 

I think the root of this “problem” derives from the part of the country we’re from and the fact that our livelihood came from working outdoors.  It is just too hot in the Texas panhandle to enjoy a meal out of doors.  Most years, it gets hot in April and stays hot through October.  Here’s picture I have of some of my family making the attempt–doesn’t it look like fun? 

NOT.

The woman in the white dress on the right is my grandmother Rachel Cooper Osborne.  I believe the man just behind her whose face is hidden may be my grandfather–I’m basing my guess on the way he’s wearing his hat.  It looks familiar.  The women are her sisters-in-law–married to my granddad’s brothers, some of whom are in the background nearer the cars. 

I just don’t think this looks like a good time.  I don’t know the circumstances of this gathering–my guess is that it’s near Pampa since that’s where these couples lived at this time in their marriages.  It looks like they’re maybe getting ready to roast some marshmallows–can’t believe this crew would roast weiners.  I don’t know, but you can see how the surroundings just aren’t conducive to picnicking.

My dad wasn’t really a grouch, and he didn’t insist on many things, but he was adamant about not eating out of doors.  His view was that he worked outside all day and when he came home for a meal, he did not want to go back outside.  And don’t get me started on what he thought about picnic fare such as wieners or bologna.  He was a farmer to the core–he didn’t mind being outside dawn to dusk to do that work, but he certainly didn’t want to have a meal out of doors.  And his view of meat definitely didn’t include anything other than the standard cuts of beef he’d learned from his stock-raising relatives and his own experience.  We always had beef in the freezer and that’s what we ate.  (Those were the days before we were aware of the health and social consequences of raising and eating so much beef.)  My mom, with her German roots, occasionally sneaked some bologna into the house but trust me, it never appeared on my dad’s plate.

So my theory is that this is an important piece of info to record about my family.  I think we didn’t picnic because we didn’t live in a part of the country where picnicking was a part of the culture–the outdoors were part of our work life but not a big part of our recreational life. 

We had long hot summers–the closest to a picnic we had was when my mom and I would take dinner to the field during wheat harvest.  That was usually early June and it was often 100 degrees–we had the hot meal we’d spent the morning cooking loaded into the trunk of the car, we parked into the wind so the car wouldn’t overheat, and the men came in on their combines and trucks and used the shade the vehicles cast to eat.  (My mom had on gloves and wore long sleeves because she was so fair-skinned.)  My Uncle Pete always requested my mom’s smothered steak and there was always a lot of iced tea.  We served it unsweetened though nearly everyone put in varyig degrees of sugar.  There was always dessert–usually a cake or a cobbler.  It was too hot for ice cream–it wouldn’t have lasted a minute under those circumstances.  The men were grateful for the break and the meal and they put their dirty dishes back into the trunk and we were off, back to the house to clean up.  No paper plates or plastic utensils for us.  :-)  And, in response to Bill’s prompts, I’d only like to repeat this experience if I could be with my family for the event. 

In South Dakota, my grandmother usually fixed lunch at home for Granddad to come in for–which he didn’t need much of because Gran had fixed eggs, fried potatoes and pork chops for breakfast.  His fields were closer to the house than my dad’s were back in Texas.  The one thing I remember, too, about my South Dakota grandmother is that she had sewed some layers of fabric around some quart jars that she used for a “thermos” when she took tea or water out to Granddad in the field.  I don’t remember any of us ever having any official ice chests or picnic baskets. 

It really was a different world. 

I thought I’d take this “53rd Carnival of Genealogy, Carousel Edition” to invite interested folks to participate in this great project–

Do you have a World War I vet in your family who served from Oklahoma?  The Oklahoma Genealogical Society is working on an index to honor these persons.  Some records already exist, many of which were gathered for the Veteran’s Memorial at the state capital.  A list of those killed in action exists, but not a list of all those who served.

However, in my position as research coordinator at the OHS Research Library, I’ve received at least 3 requests for information about young men who served whose names I did not find in those files.  So I have 3 names I’ll be contributing.  Do you have any info to add?

If so, you can send it to: June Stone, 3601 NW 19th Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73107-2815, by e-mail to JuneCStone@aol.com or fax 942-0546. 

OR you can send it to me and I’ll pass it along to June.  I see her each week.

Requested information includes full name of veteran, date and place of birth, date and place of death, date and place of marriage, name of spouse, names of parents, rank, branch of service, medals earned, obituary, pictures and anything that would contribute to the veteran’s file.  Like Dick Eastman, I’d also recommend that you include the place of burial if you know it. 

I’m excited about this project–I’ve been through those files many times and lamented the shape they were in and wanted to work on making them more accessible.  Now it’s being done! 

My job requires me to do research in old newspapers on occasion.  And I am constantly amazed at what I find printed. 

This week found me researching a murder that took place here in Oklahoma City in the early part of the 20th century.  I found the story in a regular column in the newspaper that reported the court news.  The columnist referred briefly to a couple of men who’d been sentenced to life and 20 years in the state penitentiary for murder.  But the focus of the article was the “Patterson case,” predicted to be the “center of interest for a week or more.“ This convoluted story may be the subject of a later post, involving a young female school teacher named Vernon, Wade, a young man with whom she had been “keeping company,” Wade’s father, with whom Vernon was also evidently simultaneously “keeping company,” and the school teacher’s father, whom Wade had shot and killed the previous year.  The current story told of the young woman’s suicide, and her brother Orban, a local attorney, shooting and killing Wade’s father, probably as retribution for his own father’s murder as well as his sister’s suicide.

That sensational story required that I follow it up for a few weeks, of course, to find the outcome.  I thought it was interesting, though, that the column ended with

Outside of the Patterson murder trial, only a few minor state cases are set to come up for trial this week.  The courts will be closed on Friday.  Saturday is divorce day in in the district court, and twenty-seven divorce suits are set for hearing.

It was almost too big a gap for me to process–going from the murder case to informing the reader that, by the way, court was closed Friday but since Saturday was the day appointed to deal with divorce, and there were 27 cases, court would be held. 

Life, and the search for justice, goes on.

Here’s my response to Miriam’s AnceStories2 prompt for this session, “The Doctor”  

*Who was your doctor or health practitioner when you were growing up?

When I was a child, my doctor was “Dr. Roy.” At that time, there were only 2 doctors in town, I think.  Dr. Kengle had his own hospital and had delivered me, but I found in the county history that he started practicing in 1929, so I think he was probably retired shortly after my birth.  I rdo emember being in that hospital as a child–one of my aunt’s worked there.  I don’t remember why I was there, I don’t think it was for an appointment.  But I remember that it was built more like house.  It had wooden floors.  The building was later the local USDA office–pretty appropriate for the small rural town I grew up in.

Dr. Roy’s hospital was on Main Street and was a 3-story building.  I can still smell what it was like.  One of my brothers now has an office in the basement of that building–a few weeks ago we went up to the first floor.  It really still looked the same–the pharmacy, the waiting room, the two halls that the receptionist sat in front of.  It was all office space now but I could still see the hospital there.  We rode up to the first floor on the elevator–probably the first one I’d ever seen as a child.  I remember going to visit my dad in that hospital–he’d had to have an appendectomy.  Hospital rules prevented me from visiting him, but for some reason, they brought him down on the elevator and I got to see him.  He was in a hospital bed and I don’t remember getting to be very close, but somehow just getting to see him and have him speak to me made me feel better.  It was amazing being in that space again–somewhere in the late 1960s the county built a new hospital on the outskirts of town–probably about the time Dr. Roy retired.

So with that move to a new hospital, we could no longer tell by driving down Main Street whether someone was having a baby.  On the top floor on the north end of the building was the labor and delivery room, according to my mom, who ought to have known.  If the lights were on, we knew there would soon be another citizen of our area.  It was one of those rituals we always went through when we drove down Main Street.

*How often did you go to the doctor? Every year for a check-up, or just when you were ill?

I remember going only when I was sick, which wasn’t very often, and when I had to get vaccinations for school.

*Did you have a lot of illnesses as a child? Or were you fairly healthy?

I must have been fairly healthy.  The only childhood illness I can remember having is the mumps in the second grade–I still have the “get well” cards my class made, drawn on that thick now-crumbling paper we used for art in our classrooms in those days.  Earlier, I know I also had the chickenpox and have the scars to prove it, but I don’t remember having them.  The family story is that I got them from my brother who’d been hospitalized with the croup–he came home with chickenpox.

*Did you have any injuries (broken bones) or surgeries? Have you ever had to be hospitalized?

Not as a child, and it’s a miracle, really.  My brother built tree houses and I would help him and then sort of take them over for my own purposes–usually reading.  And we would walk the top of the corrall fence, which was essentially a 2″ x 4″ several feet in the air.  Grandad’s barn was always fun, too–despite dire warnings, we climbed to the top of the hay bales stacked to the top of the barn.  And if he was in the field for the day, we ventured onto the roof of the barn.  I only had brothers and there were only boys in my neighborhood so playing rough was part of my growing up.  My brothers ended up with stitches but I managed to escape with neither stitches nor broken bones.

*What specialists did you have to see?

I never saw a specialist of any type and I don’t remember anyone else having to see one.  Except maybe my cousins might have seen one because they had to wear special shoes.  I’m not sure that as a child I was aware of specialists.

*Did you have to see an optometrist and/or wear glasses?

We always had health screenings at school.  I remember the year I couldn’t read the eye chart–I was in the fifth grade.  So off to Dr. Nowlin’s.  His son was in my class and the last time I checked, he was the town optometrist, following in his father’s footsteps.  My first glasses were pink cat frames.  So cool.

*Was going to the doctor a pleasant or unpleasant experience? Share both your most unpleasant and your favorite medical memories.

I was always scared when I had to go to the doctor.  Probably because it wasn’t any sort of regular event.  My most unpleasant childhood medical memory is getting my diphtheria vaccination.  Those were the years when they stuck your arm repeatedly and then an awful scab almost the size of a dime appeared.  I still remember thinking the nurse wasn’t ever going to stop sticking me and I find myself checking the upper arms of people about my age for a similar scar.

I don’t remember any particularly pleasant experiences, except I do have this vivid image of sitting in the waiting room at Dr. Roy’s hospital, reading magazines.  I think the floor was those green tiles of linoleum and the chairs were red vinyl–it was the 1950s after all.  In my mind, I think I remember reading an article about Twiggy, but she was hot in 1966 and that was kind of late for me to have been at that hospital.  I don’t know–I just remember there were always lots of interesting reads in the waiting room.  We always had the newspaper at home and we went to the library, but there weren’t the glossy magazines that were in the waiting room.  It was a peek into a world I didn’t have much access to.

*As an adult, how do your current medical experiences compare with those of your childhood?

Probably the biggest difference is that I try to do “preventative maintenance” with fairly regular visits to the doctor.  I’ve had surgeries, including knee replacements and a couple of C-sections, with two healthy sons to show for it.  I use health insurance which is not something my parents dealt with until I insisted.

*Do you still see the same doctor?

Dr. Roy is long deceased and I am long gone from my home town.  About 8 years ago, my physician of 30 years retired–much to my distress.  :-)  He certainly deserved some time with his family without the stress of his practice, but I felt pretty abandoned.  I shopped around until I found a good replacement–I was careful to look for one younger than me (easier and easier to do these days) so I don’t have to go through the retirement trauma again.  

*What kinds of health problems are prevalent in your family? Are there any genetic diseases of which your relatives should be made aware? How have you attempted to avoid these risks or diseases?

The two diseases I know of that may be genetic are arthritis and heart disease.  I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis at a fairly young age (35) when I weighed what I should.  I had to have my first knee replacement 20 years later–again, a bit young for such an intervention.  My weight is more than it should be, but I also know that my dad and many of his cousins had knee and/or hip replacements.  Both of their grandmothers were in wheel chairs because of arthritis.  When I first visited him for my knees, the osteopath asked me if there was some sort of cartilege disease in my family–there very well could be but as far as I know, it has never been diagnosed.

My paternal grandmother’s family has strokes and my paternal grandfather’s family has heart disease.  That said, my grandmother lived to be 83 (she did have a stroke a few years before her death) and my grandfather lived to be 93.  And my grandfather smoked unfiltered Old Gold cigarettes until his late 80s. 

And then there’s my mother who had breast cancer despite there being none in the family.  Her mother lived to be 92!

So I eat healthy and attempt to be active.  I’m not as active as I should be but I’m doing better since my knees no longer hurt.  My weight is more than it should be, but my “numbers” are good–no high blood pressure and decent cholesterol.  I cannot discount fate’s role in my health.

*Are there any doctors, surgeons, specialists, nurses or other health practitioners in your family, or in your ancestry?

I have a sister-in-law and a niece who are nurses–they do not currently practice, but it’s nice to have them available as “resources.”

My fourth great-grandfather was evidently a country doctor.  William Greene Ball was born about 1808 in New York City, trained for his medical career in Clark County, Indiana, and practiced for many years in Warren County, Iowa until his death in 1881.  He’s referred to in the family as “Dr. Ball.”  :-)  I have a couple of his “recipes” for various ailments.

*Are there any stories about certain medical problems or injuries, or about interactions with medical practitioners that have been handed down through the generations?

My dad was always proud to have had Dr. Denton Cooley (whom his staff called “LJ” for “Little Jesus”) do a valve replacement on his heart.  My mother’s family didn’t have much use for “doctoring.”  My grandad on that side had a pacemaker implanted and never went back to the doctor–until about 25 years later when the battery was apparently run down.  And the other family story is of “Ol Doc Smith” who came to the family home in Beaver County, Oklahoma, in the early 1930s when my great-grandmother drank carbolic acid.  He left a signed death certificate there because he didn’t think she’d live until morning but left instructions to try feeding her raw eggs to cause her to throw up the acid.  She lived through that episode but was untimately successful in taking her life.  I don’t know where Doc Smith was based, but I do know my grandparents lived several miles out in the middle of nowhere, so he must have truly been a country doctor who made house calls on those dusty roads.

Thank you again to Miriam Midkiff for her prompt down another memory lane.