My Cumber Land

My Cumberland Trails Judith Lavonia Hugg Grimes, Yorba Linda, CA. Jan.2007 The time has come in the documentation of genealogical truths to recognize the fact that all early transplants and native peoples of the new world are in blood and history bound to each other in the American family. The day has ended that a granny can exclaim, “We aren’t kin to that family.” The DNA testing is separating the families by male lineage, however, the associated lineages and the relationships forged by living together, building a country and defending it against its enemies, dying together, birthing together and worshiping together have melded men and women into family histories that continue to branch out and move into new frontiers, together. The dust of the man, regardless of his color and DNA, lies in the dirt of this land and the dirt is all connected without end, we are all kin as we walk this earth and all become one as we return to the earth. The stories of the Cumberland women are as many as the ancestors and their descendants. Our bones in the earth are wrapped around the living roots; growing still deeper in the lands in and around Virginia, of this lands’ earth, I am one. Searching for ancestors using method genealogy teaches a person to start with their own birth and work backward in time. That’s where the stories start and many times the boredom sneaks into the charts because the stories aren’t told and we are just left with endless begats’ and numbers. The ancestor life and history just become mathematical notes, with lots of blank spaces. My Cumberland trail and my personal paper trail started in the wartime shipyards of Long Beach, California. My mother was a working ‘Rosie the Riveter’ and my father was avoiding the draft and working as an auto mechanic. My 1943 birth happened in a taxicab front seat with my father passed out drunk in the back seat and on the steps of Long Beach Memorial Maternity Hospital. Mom started divorce proceedings from the hospital room and within a few months moved us back to our Texas family so I would have a trustworthy babysitter and she could work in the gasoline refinery for our support. The panhandle plains of Texas became my home. I was reared, educated, married and birthed my babies under the big Texas sky. On the way to adulthood I acquired a stepfather, a brother, a thirst for reading and hunger for art and the burning desire to know anything about my father’s HUGG, people, the secret stuff that made me feel like somehow I had been the one that was the trouble. Many times I have wondered if I had a grandmother and grandfather somewhere that knew I was alive? When I married I was thrilled to find out that I had become 1

one of a huge family GULLETT/GRIMES clan and my genealogy bug really took a bite. The paper trail to document the following stories took me over 45 years. Here, dear Cousins, is where I have to decide to write the truth as I found it in documents. In the pursuit of happiness we become a created individual all inward warts and fair faces. What would history say of my life or your life? Would it be a soap opera; a tale of dedication to God and husband; a search for my heart in its creative best; an abused and dysfunctional individual seeking a Cinderella life; a life lived in poverty and ignorance; a woman who tried all her life to be better to survive, and be part of a family; a woman exiled by law and her husband murdered; or was she a woman sold; or a child abandoned or given away? Was her family killed on their farm? Were her ancestors, census takers, teachers, farmers, midwives or a war widow? This is my truth: EVERY WOMAN in my ancestral lineage lived at least one of these histories with the telling becoming bone, flesh and heart, part of who we are. The way and manner that the living and dying was done is what this account will cover. Dedicated to Belle Forrest Sumpter Gullett, child of God, family historian, wife, Mother and Grandmother, heir of the Cumberland Trail, Louisiana Purchase and Indian Territory, Oklahoma. Wagon Born. TABLE OF CONTENTS-first two stories 1.Judy’sFleece 2.American-Great-Depression --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Judith Lavonia Hugg Grimes,b.1943 Ca., wed Mel Grimes March 31, 1961, TX. Daughter of Dovie Lavonia KITE (1914,OK.-2000TX) and Earnest O’Neal Hugg (1915 Ark,-1948 CA.), Grand daughter of Ollie Mae Turner Hugg & Lisa Elizabeth Dodd Kite, This is my story: #1 Judy’s Fleece I screamed at God! Gut wrenching screams and a full out temper fit! I cried hot projectile tears, pleaded, begged, bargained, repented and prayed earnestly until I was absolutely exhausted, for crying out loud!. ( Don’t know what shape God was in-but I was whipped!) Who was that guy that wrestled with an angel? Basically, my prayers were all in the realm of, “How can I get out of this situation?” Really, I didn’t want to know Gods will-being fearful HIS will was not the same as MY will.

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Just at a time when my young family was comfortably settled and we had bought a home, my husband comes and joyfully announces that he is going into the ministry and wants to preach or sing the gospel! So, do I go along with and join in, this new dedication or divorce God and man? Being called, “Sister Grimes or Sister Judy took some getting used too.” Also, having a new push up bra, sheer shirt, mini-skirt and pearl ivory stretch knee boots with high heels and wearing them to a meeting of the Women’s Missionary Union-was a motivational life experience; new lesson, new rules and not the best idea. Well, I decided to follow with a whole heart, anyway. There was some thought behind the pastors who called the WMU-“women messing with unity”, but mostly it was just female bashing and fear. Seeing the wrong made it harder to work for the right in the beginning. Well, we sold our little home and gave away everything that encumbered us and I was informed ‘after the fact’ that our first little church had not gotten us a promised parsonage and my worldly goods were sitting in a moving van on the church parking lot and no house to move into. Okay, folks, lesson number one: “You may think negative-but you only speak positive! “ Now, that one is hard to swallow. Lesson number two, “People will always disappoint”. Lesson Number three? What is FAITH? “ This is my fleece, IF GOD wants us here? Somewhere in this town there will be a house with my name on it.” You might think? “Mighty close to famous last words before the ‘noose’ drops”. Pretty near to “open mouth, insert foot.” We found an old farmhouse for $60.00 a month, and went to work to make it liveable for ourselves and four kids. The Texas wind and dirt storms are stuff of living legend. The blowing red dirt combined with rain produces a swift moving, airborne, wet, mortar that lodges into every nook and cranny of the houses and anything else sitting still. I was using a screwdriver and a hammer to loosen the dried mud in the windows, knocking it out in chunks, so that the windows could be opened. Then, I hit something hard, dislodging a mud covered, small metal plate, the type children use to tie their name on their bikes. This little license plate said, “JUDY.” And then I realized, I had, “A HOUSE WITH MY NAME ON IT”. My reluctance wilted like greens in a hot skillet. We moved 27 times in 25 years and I have doubted other decisions but this move I knew was right, God had answered my fleece. Now, the game was in my court, what was I going to do with it? -end 3

Explanation: Judy wrote the below story after a phone conversation with Ollie's only surviving daughter, Ethyl Hugg Poole. It is written in the first person and meant to honor each grandmother of Judy Hugg Grimes. This is the 2nd story in a collection showing something of each grandmother's life, personality or time. Ollie Mae TURNER Hugg, b.1892 Strawberry, Ark.-d.1969 McLean, Texas), wed 18 Dec. 1912 Lawrence Co. Ark:to: Grandon Tobias Hugg (G.T.), b.1888 Strawberry, Ark.-d.1973 Amarillo,Tx. (birthed 11 children) "This is my story: The American Depression, I am Ollie Mae(Turner) Hugg. Humming and singing softly....."Oh. Lord, I wish I was a single girl again.." (from the movie: SONGCATCHER, songs of the Appalachia) My heart aches for my old home and family in Arkansas with carefree days on the Black River ferry and trips into Memphis. The growing earth, with its color, green, is just a different color there than here in the Texas, high plains with its flat, dry, parched, grasses of the ‘panhandle’. Today, the wind is fierce, “in like a lion, in March” and it has twisted my laundry around the clothesline and popped the pins loose. G.T. sold my inheritance, the Arkansas bottomland, left as my share when my Mother & Father passed and then he moved us all to this lonely place. It seemed to us a good idea. Not one of the family, guessing that soon, we would be knee deep into an American Great Depression. Personal depression is bad enough and when the whole country flat out lives depressed, hungry and out of work, its more than a woman can easily understand. Sharecropping on dry land is brutal work and even my youngest have to wear the overalls, wear the responsibility and wear the blisters. Sitting here, with my loneliness, on the old porch letting the wind dry the laundry day, sweat, off my dress, I've put down the laundry basket and am thinking, " What to feed my brood and the TEDDAR family for dinner?" They've stayed with us nearly two years and maybe soon they will be able to move out and take care of themselves? This depression has put people into strange circumstances. Washing and ironing and cooking and worry has kept me awake many a night, and only prayers allow sleep. Often, I am always taking care of other people and bearing more than my share of reproach. "Why does it come to me, to find the food and stand up under more than my portion of the work?" Well, this woman won't waste tears today.

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Lefors is a shanty of a town and Allenreed not much better. Grandon's Uncle Harold told me that Allenreed was called, "Gouge Eye" in its early days, an appropriate comment. Smile. What a dry and dirty little spot in the road this place has grown into being. Momma died when I was 11 and Poppa went to be with her in 1905 when at only 13, my school days ended. There was an elderly doctor that hired me to take care of his wife who was dying of cancer and that's what I did until she passed away and then, Grandon came into my life. It causes me to examine my willingness to do more than my due. Love, allowed marriage and that allowed abuse. Momma said to me, that it was good to do for others and we owed those who had less, some remedy if it was within our ability. I can live with that idea. People remembered my grandfather Tavenor Andrew Jackson RUNYAN of Tennessee and Arkansas, who was a medical doctor and his daughter, My “Momma” taught us medical things that her Poppa taught her. I don't read much, but I can sign my name and I can learn and haven't hidden myself from hard work. It was a blessing when my brother, Amos Ed TURNER and his family moved out our way, close to the town, McLean, bringing Arkansas family, again, to Texas. Two of my children, daughter, Katherine and son, Brooks, both are sick with TB and my husband, G.T. said, “ keep it quiet or no one would want to marry them”. The disease does seem to be ‘catching’. Katherine will have to go to the hospital and when she gets better we hope she will marry that tall good-looking, rascal, KITE boy, Elvin. O'Neal is courting the beauty, Dovie KITE, the one they call, “Ducky”. Paul seems to lean toward Opal NELMS, the girl with the shy smile that lights up when he comes around. The boys go their own way, not at the end of my apron strings. Looks like we might have some money to move into McLean when the cotton makes. That is IF we can hold on? There are some little cabins on the route 66 that we are going to buy and try to make a ‘money go’ of that. So things are looking up, for us, financially? I will be trading farming for cleaning up messes and feeding travelers. If they are in the "skids", Well, we feed them, anyway, I reckon! "For crying out loud!", I'd better shake a leg. Food doesn't cook itself and this wind is blowing up a dirt storm from the north. Texas has more than its fair share of dirt and it changes counties, constantly with most of it stopping on its way to lodge in my windows and coat the inside of the house with grit. Has dirt become my legacy? Will my children have to deal with this choking,

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clogging, moving, real estate, their entire lives? GOD, help the woman who has to put up with this kind of mess! My lips are chapped and my hands ache and are cracked, from wringing the water from the laundry. Washed again this week, with my own homemade lye soap and a rub board. The boiling pot and rinsing pot have smoked me, cooked me and blistered me. Soon there will be diapers again and again, a bigger wash day. The girls do help, alot. I haven't told G.T., yet of the new baby, on the way. I wish he and the boys would not try to drown this depression in a bottle. " end.

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