More about John and Mittie Rose

I’m on a mission to scan “all” the pictures my mom has in our family stash. When going through the last batch we came across the original photo of the John Henry Rose family I posted recently.

John Henry Rose, his wife Mittie (Bryant) Rose, Ora and Will.

Turns out there’s a wealth of information on the photo mat. First off it’s easy to see the photo was taken while the family lived in Ardmore after moving up from Texas. And it looks like it was taken about 1894.

It also provides additional information about Ora Pearl. I’ve been looking for details about her and was finding all manner of confusion. I found Ora Barnes, Ora Northcutt, Ora Williams… which one was she? Or was she any of them? Turns out she was all three, and thanks to the note on the bottom of the photo I was able to figure it out.

Ora Pearl married Almer Asbury Barnes in 1901 in Ardmore, Indian Territory. They had a son, Almer Asbury Jr., in 1902. Then sometime before 1910 Almer Asbury Barnes Sr. died. In the 1910 US Census Ora was listed as widowed and living with her 7-year-old son Almer, in Cleveland County with her parents.

Ora Pearl Rose Barnes and her son Almer Asbury Barnes prior to 1910.

Have you ever seen such a cute little towhead? His mom isn’t too shabby either and in 1912 she married Columbus Northcutt in Lexington, Oklahoma. In 1913 they had a son, Marcus Northcutt, and in 1914 Columbus Northcutt died. Now she has two kids and in 1916 she marries for a third time. In 1918 she and Guss Williams have a daughter, Marguarite Williams.

In 1910 John Henry and Mittie Rose had a houseful. In addition to the minor children who were still at home, Ora and Almer were there and Will, who was also widowed, was there with his baby son, Thomas Edwin, my grandpa. Grandpa was just over a year old and his big brother, 2-year-old John Wesley, was living nearby with the other grandparents, John Wesley and Mary Louisa Belew. Will’s wife, Bessie Jane Belew died a year earlier when my grandpa was two months old.

Sons of Will and Bessie Rose: John Wesley (Wes) and Thomas Edwin (Ed) about 1910.

A few months later, in November of 1910, Grandpa Will married Lizzie Black—I recently discovered her given name is Tilda Elizabeth. Before long Will and Lizzie added three more kids to the Rose family: James Earldon, who we called Uncle Earl, Aunt Dorothy, and Aunt Wanda.

Any questions?

Upcoming stories will include:

• Wes Rose in WWII, letters home to his brother Ed
• Scott family migration from North Carolina to Alabama to Oklahoma
• We’re so Scots-Irish we should talk with a brogue
• Grandma always said we were related to Davey Crockett
• The Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, the Blue brothers, and cannibalism on the Smokey Hill Trail
• If you’re related to a president that branch of your family tree is already filled in
• We fought for the Blue and the Gray
• Our Revolutionary War Patriots
• Twelve of thirteen original colonies

Be sure and follow American Saga so you won’t miss a bit of it.

Jan

 

My Grandpa Was a Doughboy

We never knew our Grandpa Miller. He died in 1935 when Dad was just five years old.

We don’t have a lot of pictures either, but there are a few from 1918. He was in the army stationed at Camp Greene in North Carolina.

This James White Miller—my grandpa—was born in Kissimmee, Florida, June 30, 1895. He was 21 when he enlisted and very shortly turned 22.

The United States entered World War I in April 1917, and my grandpa enlisted in June. I think he served all his time as part of the Quartermaster Corps at Camp Greene in Charlotte, North Carolina. He may have been assigned to the base hospital there since that’s what’s stamped on the back of one of the photos we have.

While my dad isn’t the spittin’ image of him, I see a lot of similarities. I don’t know how tall he was, but his lanky hands remind me of dad. My dad was 6′ 3″. Wish I could tell how tall his dad was.

This photo also reminds me of dad. A good lookin’ guy just hangin’ out. Leanin’ against a tree.

While he didn’t have to fight in the trenches in Europe, as far as I can tell, he was at the camp when soldiers returning from the battlefield brought the Spanish Flu home with them in the fall of 1918. The pandemic killed over twenty million people worldwide and over half-a-million died in the United States.

September 28, 1918 the first case was reported in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina and the disease spread like wildfire. Entire families were wiped out. On October 4, the city of Charlotte was quarantined for two weeks. Schools, churches and public meetings were all canceled. There were 230 cases reported by 3 pm on a single day. Volunteers who survived the flu were asked to help and extra beds were set up in hospitals.

Camp Greene was also quarantined for two weeks and while the war was already winding down, the pandemic hastened the closing of the camp. Many soldiers died of flu in camp, and many others were shipped overseas to get them out of harm’s way. Ironically they were shipped off to war to avoid dying of the flu.

I’ll keep looking and see if I can turn up some more details about his military service. I have a few more pictures and I’ll save them for the update.

 

 

John and Mittie Rose

My grandpa Thomas Ed Rose had blue eyes. His dad, Thomas Will Rose also had blue eyes. And based on this picture it looks like his dad, John Henry Rose also had blue eyes.

This is the John Henry Rose family, circa 1892. John was born in 1860 and Mittie was born in 1863. The kids are Ora Pearl, born in 1883, and Thomas William born in 1885. Their third child, John Wesley, was born in 1887. He died when he was four, about 1891. This was taken after he died and based on the apparent ages of his siblings it looks like this was taken not long after he died.

I love that little smile on Will’s face. He was my great grandpa and I remember he always had a twinkle in his eye and that little boy smile seems just right.

John and Mittie are buried in the Lexington Cemetery and I’ve seen their slate gray granite headstone many times. Just recently I came across a little story written by their youngest child, Melva, who was born in 1907. Suddenly they became real people to me, not just names etched in stone.

So here it is. A family biography about John and Mittie Rose written by their daughter Melva Rose Duffield who died in 1999.

ROSE-BRYANT

John Henry Rose, the third child of David and Mary Lucinda Wright Rose, was born April 4, 1860 in Shelby County, Texas, where Lucinda’s parents, Harden and Hepsebeth* Wright, lived. They moved immediately to Van Zandt County where David’s parents, William and Elizabeth, lived. John’s older sister was Mary Etta and his brother was William Thomas. Sometime about 1863, they moved to Johnson County where two more daughters were born, Margaret J. and Sarah A.E.

Mary Lucinda died about 1868 leaving David with five small children. He married Martha Anne Conley, a girl of sixteen. Coping with five children and soon having another was very hard for her and an active eight year old was too difficult to handle. John often went with his father, who was a teaming contractor. They hauled some of the logs which were used to pave the first streets in Ft. Worth. When John was fourteen, he left home to be on his own, working for other people on farms and ranches. He worked in Van Zandt, Bosque and other counties, but by 1890 he was back in Johnson County working for Mrs. Martha Russell, a widow.

Sallie Bryant was the third child of William Jefferson and Margaret Josephine Cochran Bryant. She was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on January 18, 1864, while her father was in a prison hospital in the North**. She had an older sister named Leni L. and a brother, William E.

When the war was over and Jeff returned home, he wanted to add the name Ida to Sallie because a nurse named Ida Lake had been very kind to him in the hospital.

Times were very hard after the war and Jeff was not well. He bought a mill from his father-in-law, Levi T. Cochran in Marshall County, Tennessee, and operated it for several years. It was both a grist and lumber mill. During this time, five more children were born: Robert Wesley 1866, Mary Francis 1867, Bootie 1869, Samuel Davis 1871 and Maxey B. 1874.

By this time, many friends and relatives were moving to Texas and Jeff and Maggie decided to go along. They found fertile land at Blossom Prairie about nine miles east of Paris, Texas in Lamar County. Clearing the land for cultivation was very hard and Jeff was not strong. The boys were not large enough for much help. Another child was born July 17, 1878 and died August 3, 1878. Jeff died September 10, 1878. Both were buried at Blossom Prairie. Maggie could not manage the farm with all the children so she moved to Johnson County to be near her sister, Eliza E. Cummings (Mrs. J.C.) and family who had come to Johnson County earlier.

One day, in early 1882, while he was looking for a stray animal, John went to the home of Mrs. Margaret J. Bryant. Her daughter, Sallie (nicknamed Mittie), answered his call at the door. After a brief conversation, he asked if she were married. She wasn’t and he asked to call on her. Love blossomed and they were married Easter Sunday April 4, 1882.***

John had a horse and saddle, but no buggy. He borrowed a buggy and they went to get married. The horse was frightened by some­thing beside the road and ran away under a fallen tree. The buggy was broken but they were miraculously spared.

They farmed in Johnson County until about 1892. Three children were born there: Ora Pearl 1883, William Thomas 1885, John Wesley 1887. John Wesley died in 1891 with spinal meningitis.

The family moved soon to Ardmore, Indian Territory. Two more children were born there. Dollie 1896 and Ollie Bessie 1899. Outlaws were very active and they were far from schools so they decided to move to Lexington, Cleveland County, where Melva Lucille was born in 1907. In 1910, they moved to Comanche County, Oklahoma, but were nearly wiped out by a drought. They moved back to Lexington where they lived until John retired. They moved to Norman so Melva could finish high school and college. Mittie died in 1931 and John died in 1936. Both are buried in Lexington Cemetery.

Melva married John B. Duffield in 1931 and moved to Texas, first to Longview, Gregg County, then to Three Rivers, Live Oak County and last to Houston, Harris County.

Wesley Bryant married Rhettie Franks November 19, 1893 and lived in Johnson County near Alvarado until he died in July 1931. Rhettie died in 1942. Both are buried in Buel Cemetery.

Some of the Bryants and Cummings lines are still living in Johnson County.

 by Melva Rose Duffield

*Hepsebeth was Lucinda’s step-mother. Her mother, Mary Nail, died when Mary Lucinda was 5.
**During the Civil War, William Jefferson Bryant was a Confederate. ***Easter Sunday was April 9 in 1882 and online records indicate they married on April 9.

Thanks to Don Rose for putting this story online so I could find it. He descends from James Rose, a younger brother of my 3x great-grandfather David Rose. I found it on his Rose family tree on Ancestry.com.

I am all about context when exploring my family tree and I couldn’t help researching the details of the story. I learned a lot about Mittie’s father’s Civil War experience and imprisonment. I also followed the Rose family back to Buncombe County, NC at the same time my Scott family was there during and following the Revolutionary War. The families took different routes to Oklahoma, but connected for good when my grandparents Ed Rose and Lela Scott met and married.

More about all that in future posts.

Any cousins out there who have stories or memories to share? I’d love to hear from you.

Jan

 

Finding the James White Miller Family Roots

There are still more family threads to untangle, but I have tracked down all of the James Whyte/White Millers.

Yay!

Check it out.

 

On this page the Millers started in Lancaster County, South Carolina before the Civil War. They moved to Osceola County, Florida, and my dad made his way to Oklahoma. The spouses moved to Florida from Illinois and Georgia as children, and one moved from South Carolina with her husband.

All of the folks on this page are buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Kissimmee. That is, all except dad. James White Miller, born in 1930, died in 1989, is buried at Resthaven in Oklahoma City.

I’ll post the next page in a few days. In the meantime, if you have questions, anecdotes, or stories to share about any of these folks, I’m all ears. I’d love to add them to the family story.

Jan Miller Stratton

 

Have a Glorious Fourth of July, Oklahoma!

When I was a kid, long distance calls were a big deal. My Grandma Hamilton lived in Key West, Florida and when we spoke on the phone it was a family affair. After my dad and mom talked to her, each of us kids got a turn before dad got the phone again to say goodbye. Her standard sign-off was “meet you at the pump,” unless it was Christmas when she also added, “Have a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and a Glorious Fourth of July!” 

I couldn’t help but think of her when I snapped this last week.

Old Glory and the Spirit of Oklahoma

 

And Now a Little Something About Grandpa

My Grandpa was a farmer, a rancher and a highway construction worker. He lived on a farm, raised some cattle and worked full-time bulldozing and operating a crane on highway construction all across the state of Oklahoma.

He worked on the original Shield’s overpass to I-35 that survived the May 3 tornado. And for ages he worked on the Little River, first excavating for the lake and then building the Little River Dam, which resulted in Lake Thunderbird here in Norman. He never missed a day of work. On the iciest, coldest snowiest days he got up extra early in order to be at the job site on time—no matter where it was. More than once I got up to find him in the kitchen having coffee with mom after going to the job site to find out work was called off for the day.

Grandpa, Thomas Ed Rose, age 45, and me, age 3, Easter Sunday 1956. The dump truck in the background was what Grandpa was driving to his job at the time.

Grandma and Grandpa moved from Oklahoma City to a farm east of Lexington, Oklahoma when I was nine years old. I just recently learned the move was prompted by the Cuban Missile Crisis. They immediately planted a large garden and started putting up food in order to be self-sustaining. If things went bad they wanted to have food enough to feed us all.

Shortly after the move I spent a week with them. It was the first of many such weeks on the farm. After a tiny bout of homesickness, that first week on the farm with just me, Grandma and Grandpa was fairly eventful.

I got my finger pulled into the rollers of the wringer washing machine while helping Grandma do the wash on the back porch. As she put it, “Purt near broke it.” Grandma’s padded bra saved me. That’s what I was feeding into the wringer when I got caught, with my index finger sandwiched inside.

I asked Grandpa to wake me up in time to see the sunrise on Saturday… in the days before Daylight Savings Time, sunrise came at about 4 am in the summer. Grandpa and I sat on the tailgate of his red Ford pick up and watched the sun come up over the horizon while Grandma made breakfast. A hearty farm breakfast of bacon, eggs over easy cooked in the bacon grease, gravy and toast or biscuits filled us for a good start to the day.

After breakfast I helped wash the dishes and clean the kitchen while Grandpa started on the porch we were going to build that day. The house was about 3–4 feet off the ground and we had to climb a set of steps made of concrete blocks to get to the front door. At the time it was the only door into the house.

I’m sure I wasn’t a lot of help, but Grandpa made me feel like I was. I do recall him asking “How come you say ‘How come’ so much?” Evidently I talked a lot and was full of questions. He built an old-fashioned deck-type porch on a base of concrete blocks. The decking was 1 x 4 slats and I hammered all day long with my swollen and bruised index finger still wrapped and bandaged from the wringer incident. The porch was a temporary fix since the house would soon be moved to another location. As I recall, we were nearly finished by the time mom and dad and my brothers arrived later in the morning. The porch was finished by the end of the day and coated with barn red paint.

Grandpa only had part of his right hand. He lost most of his thumb, index and middle fingers in a crane accident. My brother knows more about how that happened than I do. It happened when my mom was a girl, so by the time I came around Grandpa was totally at ease with the parts he had left. There were very few things he hadn’t figured out how to do with the 8 whole fingers he had left.

That first summer on the farm we found out Grandma was severely allergic to wasp stings. Each sting put her in the hospital a few days, and living so far from town and alone all day it’s really a wonder one of those stings didn’t kill her. Grandpa was her knight in dusty overalls. As soon he heard that familiar bzz he would grab the offender and kill it with his bare hands. He received a few stings, and as painful as wasp stings are, I’m sure it didn’t hold a candle to having half his hand ripped off. Everything is relative.

If he hadn’t smoked, there’s a chance my Grandpa would have celebrated his 102nd birthday yesterday. I heard he started that nasty habit when he was 14. He smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes (LSMFT for those old enough to remember cigarette ads on TV).  He developed emphysema and had a stroke which he recovered from fairly quickly. Another stroke just before Memorial Day 1985 put him in the hospital in Purcell. Memorial Day the whole family gathered together to visit him. He couldn’t talk very clearly, but he knew all of us and had a bit of a conversation and even cracked a few jokes. We thought we were there to say goodbye, but it didn’t seem like he was ready to go yet.

Soon after, he was moved to a nursing home in Norman. Grandma drove up from Lexington every day to visit him. Mom visited almost every day. The rest of us visited every week or so. He’d finally quit smoking, although not by choice. If he could have managed on his own, he would have smoked until the last day. As it was, he continued the gesture of bringing the nub of his thumb and forefinger to his lips in the repetitive movement he’d made hundreds of times a day for over 60 years.

It was on my dad’s birthday, July 10, that we got the phone call he was gone. He was only 76 years old. I think of him every time I slide a pan of raw peanuts in the oven to roast them. He always had a bag of roasted peanuts and a trash can close to his chair in the living room. If he was sitting in front of the TV he was smoking a cigarette or shelling and eating peanuts.

Wish he’d eaten more peanuts and left the cigarettes alone.

 

Happy Birthday Grandma and Grandpa!

February 16 was my grandparents’ birthday.  Just two days after Valentine’s Day, how romantic is that!

Thomas Edwin Rose was born, in Lexington, Oklahoma, Feb. 16, 1909, and Lela Mae Scott was born two years later on Feb. 16, 1911 near Wanette, Oklahoma. Today* would have been her 100th birthday.

Here's my grandmother, Lela Mae Scott (Rose) at age 10. She's second from the right. From left: Mommy, Caldona Crouch Scott (she refused to be called grandma), Uncle Mac, Aunt Bill (Dorine), Aunt Syble, Grandma, and Uncle Luke (Luther). They lived in far southeast Cleveland County, Oklahoma, very near the Pottawatomie County line.

Grandma went to school through the eighth grade then she took care of the house while Mommy and her brothers and sisters worked the farm. Poppy was not always at home, but that’s another story.

When grandma fixed fried chicken and chicken and dumplins for Sunday dinner her preparations usually started out back in the chicken pen. I never saw her do it, but I hear she could wring a chicken’s neck with one sharp snap of her wrist. And as much as I couldn’t do that I know the chicken she fed us was healthy, stress free and never crated. Talk about farm fresh.

Grandma worked hard all her life but once the dishes were done and the leftovers put away she was always ready for a game of Hop Ching… also known as Chinese Checkers. She also liked a good game of dominoes. And when we were all in front of a football game… specifically the Oklahoma Sooners or the Dallas Cowboys, she had a crochet hook and ball of yarn in hand making slippers, pot holders, or some other project.

One Thanksgiving the whole family was at the farm and the weather was nice so all the cousins were playing outside. A dozen or more round hay bales had been delivered to the farm recently and they were lined up in the near pasture. The bales were about 5 feet in diameter rolled up side by side so of course we had to climb on them.

We were having a blast scambling from bale to bale, playing tag and if you stepped just wrong, you’d fall in the crack between the bales and someone would have to dig you out. That’s what made it so much fun.

There was so much laughing!

Before we knew it grandpa and the moms and dads were out there too, and then here comes grandma.  I can still see her laughing as she ran toward us. She was wearing a house dress drying her hands on a tea towel. It may have been tied around her waist as a makeshift apron. In no time at all we pulled her into our game and on top of the hay.

I’m sure we were all terribly itchy from rolling around in that dry hay all afternoon, but I don’t remember that part. I just remember the fun and realizing my grandma was a whole lot of fun. She played hard when the work was done.

Grandma died May 22, 1993 in Oklahoma City. Even though she was 82 years old, she certainly didn’t die of old age. She was going strong until shortly before she died. It was stomach cancer that got her.

I wish I’d paid more attention when I was in the kitchen with her, but I cherish the memories and lessons I got from her. She taught me how to cut up a chicken. (I’m OK after the bird is dead, but she knew better than to take me to the chicken coop except to gather eggs.)

I got her recipe for bread pudding when I took her to the hospital for one of her visits. (I was driving, so I had her tell me how she made it and I memorized it.)

My first two quilts were assembled under her supervision and quilted in her living room. I think half of Lexington came by her house to work on my quilts. They were quilted in no time.

I learned a pot of beans on the stove before we go to the garden will be ready when we get back to the house with an apron full of fresh green onions and tomatoes.

She would ladle a serving of beans into a wide shallow bowl. A slice of fresh hot cornbread went on the side or on top of the beans, add green onions, sliced tomatoes, still warm from the summer sun, a spoonful of homemade chow chow (pickle relish) and you’ve got the best summertime lunch ever!  Larrupin!

So happy birthday grandma and grandpa! I can’t wait to hear favorite memories from my brothers and cousins.

*Their birthday is Feb. 16, but technical difficulties with my scanner delayed my  posting until after midnight.