WILLIAMSON COUNTY, ILLINOIS
Those memories, never shared, lost forever when a person passes on are often the key to family genealogy. These pages contain memoirs and memories which have been sent to me for addition to the Williamson County, IL website. I hope you enjoy reading them and you find something to help you in your family search
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INDEX
SARILDA MAUDE PARSONS DURALL
CHARLES J. SULLINS
OPAL HOLBROOK
PROF J. W. TURNER
SARILDA MAUDE PARSONS DURALL
Sarilda Parsons Durall was born in Southern Illinois, Williamson County near Stonefort at a small settlement called Palzo in 1894. Her parents were John Parsons and Nancy Ellen Lawless Parsons. The following oral history was taken by her granddaughter Patricia Durall Lynn. She married Clarence Agnew Durall and they had four children, Kathryn Durall (Bell), Margaret Hazel Durall (Hartwell), Lois Jean Durall (Burks) and Maurice Dean Durall. She was the last remaining charter member of the Second Baptist Church of Marion, Il. and was truly one of the most memorable women I have ever met.
Contributed by Patricia Durall Lynn ~9/20/2005
Age 91 years at 1711 W. Chestnut, Marion, IL
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The first house I remember was in East Prairie, MO. And we lived out in the boondocks. Dad worked in the saw mill. His name was John Parsons. My moms name was Nancy Ellen Parsons. I remember my mommy started me to school there when I was six. I went one day and I just cried and cried. And mommy wouldn't let me go back till I was 7. We lived in Missouri about 3 years. My little brother Audie was about 1 year old. Had that disease that killed him. Meningitis. My little sister Cathern died before we moved to Missouri. (Graves were located in the Holmes Cemetery near Stonefort, IL.) Then, Poppy was a sharecropper. Mommy got pneumonia and I had pneumonia and my Dad had pneumonia. We had an old fire place of stick with mud daub. Mommy had these babies. Mommy couldn't cut the wood. Anyway, pneumonia someway settled in Pop's ear, caused an abscess. He couldn't hear. Well he was sick from winter till the corn was up 3 feet high. A doctor from Burnside come out and he sharpened his knife and stuck it in back there in a seam. I bet that run a cupful. They just put that knife in there and he got relief. |
We lived there and we was hard up. My Grandpa (Archibald Lawless) and mommy's step mother lived right near there at Burnside. Well Mommy seen her stepmother coming over the hill on a horse with a shoulder of meat and a tote sack of meal and that was a lifesaver. My uncle Clevey (Lawless) had a horse that stalled. They was comin over and that horse stalled and Uncle Clevey couldn't MAKE that horse go. So, he got out and lit a paper under that horse and boy did she go.
We got to move away from there. I don't know where we went from there. Land, we've had houses that the kitchen didn't have no floor, just the dirt floor and we'd have to cover up of a night to keep the snow off. Now if I remember right we had straw beds. We never had no mattresses. We'd have slats and no springs. Big straw bed and every spring mommy'd put in new straw. We'd whitewash everything and think boy we'd cleaned house.
We'd live there while Pop would plant a crop and then move and go work for another man. Lord, I don't know how many houses, just cabins till we got to move up close to my Grandma (Margaret Holmes Parsons Deaton) in a very good decent house. And I remember that was where we made soap. Well, I'll tell you how my mom made it. You ever hear of a ash hopper? Every farm had a wooden building in back with a trough up so high. We burned wood in the fireplace. They'd put the ashes in that and come Spring that thing run full. That was lye water. Thats the kind of lye they used. You mix that with fat or grease. You go by the directions on the lye can. Mary W Lye. Course she went from scratch. Her folks learned her that way. You got to cook it out in a kettle. Then when it gets cooked, you just draw the fire out from under it and let it cool and cut it.
When we killed hogs, we all had smoke houses. We commenced to butcherin about Thanksgiving. Seems to me like back then, seems like it snowed about then and the snow laid on all winter. Was you ever at a hog killing? No? Well, they'd have a thing to hang the hog on. And water to boil and they'd boil it and scrape it good and then they'd cut right down the middle and take the insides out. Then take it down and lay it on the boards and cut it up like they wanted. They'd let all the animal heat go out of it and they'd hang it in the smokehouse. With hickory wood in the smokehouse. My Dad always had 2 big hogs. We'd have two big vats of all that fat rendered down. We'd have ribs and back bones and liver and EVERYTHING. 2 hogs would see us through the winter. The middlins, the sides as we called side pork, they wouldn't cut, they'd trim all around the sides. They'd say to make a crop on they called it. The meat, the hams and the shoulders we'd have for dinner, but people had to have meat. Men to plow all day long. When that give out, we didn't have none till the next hog killing. We raised everything we had. My dad would have big fields of corn. He'd plant pole beans so they'd grow up the corn stalk. We had white beans and colored beans. He had big patches of peas and all of them when they got dry we'd have bean hullins and pea hullins and people would come in the evening after the work was done. Poppy would hill up potatoes, turnips, beets, and late cabbages. He'd pull them up by the roots and just shake the dirt off the roots and then put them there in that hill of dirt and cover them up. Next spring, or whenever we wanted to get them out, the outside was just white and brittle, but inside was good. We'd have a big sack of colored beans and a big sack of white beans and peas and stock peas. We didn't love them, but if we run out.. They were the beans that grow on hay. And he'd raise his own sweet potatoes. There was always somewhere in the settlement what they called a potato house. Because, well, you'd take your sweet potatoes there to keep them from freezing and whenever we needed them, he'd just go get what we needed. And he had a big kettle of hominy. I've made hominy. You just soak the corn overnight in lye water and the next morning the hulls would come off. Then you wash that corn. You wash it and wash it till there's no lye in it. Then you just put it on and cook it till its done. We didn't have oats. Oats was for the cows and horses. Raised our own chickens. Had our own eggs. Had chicken when we wanted to go wring a head off and fry it. Made dumplings. Poppy raised everything we had. He even had his own tobacco patch. Had his own cane patch. There was always a molasses mill close by. They'd take it, it looked like corn when it was growing. Did you ever taste of a sugar cane? We'd chew on that. Boy, that was good. They boil that syrup down and make sorghum molasses. That was our sugar mostly. What sugar we had was brown. We'd buy salt. Thats about all we bought. That and baking powder. Sody and things like that. Honey, I never seen a banana till we come to Marion when I was about 12 years old. (1906ish)
I'd hate to tell you some of the medicine my mommy give us. We had home remedies. A baby born they thought wouldn't live without catnip. They'd go miles to get catnip to make tea.
Now my Grandmother (Margaret Holmes Parsons Deaton), Poppy's mother was a midwife. Well, she wasn't EXACTLY a midwife, but no woman would have a baby unless "Aunt Marg" was there. Her maiden name was Margaret Holmes. She married a Parsons first. That was Poppy's dad. She had a little girl (Sarah), and she was pregnant with my dad. Anyway, her husband's parents, his mother and father moved away and he went on with them. LEFT HER! Then she married a Deaton. She got a divorce from Elihu and the kids never did see him again. Course Poppy wasn't born. After she got the kids up a good little size, well Poppy was about 6, she married his step dad. Crad Deaton. And he was crazy about his stepdad. And one time Grandma and Crad got into it. And he said, I'll just leave. So, he got the wagon loaded up with his part of the furniture on it, and then Poppy crawled up there by him on the seat. And that fixed it. That just tickled him. So, he got down from the wagon and said "I can't leave this boy." So they got along just fine after that and when his stepdad died, he left her, my grandma, a little 20 acre farm and that's how she made a livin. She plowed with a mule. And of course, they had adopted Poppy's stepdads sisters baby when it was born because its mother died. That was Orrie. Orrie Davis. Aunt Sarah Parsons and my Dad never knew but like she was their real sister. Orrie. You've heard us talk about her. Well, Orrie helped my grandmother make a livin on that 20 acres. She had a peach orchard, and apple trees and grape vines. There was a way, I used to go possum hunting with Orrie. There was a big cliff back there and it was an Indian burial ground. They found lots of things. Flints, and different things. We'd go possum hunting. They had a little dog, named Watch. He go way back in those cliffs and he'd tree a possum. Oh, he'd bark, but of course he couldn't do anything, but Orrie would get a big long sapplin. She'd take her hatchet and cut the sapplin down. She would run that pole way back in there and hit the possum with it and she'd twist it around and around and it would get in its wool and out she'd bring it.
Question: Now your parents were John and Nancy Parsons. And his Dad was?
Answer: Elihu, like in the Bible. That's what they called him.
Question: And your brothers and sisters are?
Answer: Minnie and Charlie and Cathern and Audi. Cathern was the oldest. She was about 2 years older than me.
Question: What were you mom's parents names?
Answer: Arch Lollis and Docia Dooms(Mendoza Dooms). He was the one in the civil war.
Question: That wasn't his first wife was it. You know the old family story, he went to the civil war leaving one child and came back with three?
(She laughs and agrees.) That's how Mommys got her 2 sisters named James. Mommy's mother was pregnant. She was married to another man (Wesley Gilley). And he went off to war. (Civil war). They was just boys. And he got killed and never come back. But Grandpa Arch come back. He didn't get killed. I don't remember his first wife's, that woman's name, but Mommy's mother was called Docia Dooms. And Grandpa married her because she didn't have a husband and he had divorced that woman, so he didn't have a wife. And they had, Grandpa and Docia, had Clevie and Tommy and then Mommy, Nancy. When mommy's mother died she was 12 years old. When Docie died. She had measles and took pneumonia. She was 42 years old when she died. Then Grandpa married another woman and they had Elmer and Almus and Bertha and Evie. Mommy had that many 1/2's.
My step Grandpa Crad Deaton's sister was named Canzada Lurinda Martha Margaret Mathilda Jane Deaton. That was all one person! And his mother had a baby every year till I can't name them all. They had one called Lise, Crad, Barry, Joe and I don't know how many boys and how many girls. And that poor old thing was blind for 20 years. Laid in the bed, lived with Barry, her son.
Question: Back to medicine. Grandma, what would they do if you had a cold?
Answer: Well, they'd give you goose grease. Grease yo all over with coal oil and camphor and turpentine and they'd mix that all up with the goose grease. One time when I was a little bitty thing, I had the bad sore throat, somebody told her to get a pig's (you know what) and fry it up and put it in a cloth and wrap it around my neck. Well, she did. (Laugh) Well, I got well. The heat of it, I guess. And another thing, did you ever smell asafetida? It's a gum of some kind and you wear it on a string. Every baby had a necklace of asafetida to ward off diseases. Now one time when my brother Charlie was a baby, I was 11 years old, my mommy sent me out to the hen house. He had the hives and couldn't get it broke out. She told me to get some of that white hen hocky. To MAKE TEA. Well, I didn't come back and I didn't come back. She come out to see where I was, and there I was following that white hen around. (Laugh) She meant the white part of the hen hocky! Well she made the tea and he took it. Oh, its many the time he flapped about that. It's a wonder it didn't killed him. Well, we all survived, at least me and Minnie and Charlie did. Now, if you broke a leg, they'd try to get a doctor. We had a doctor at Stonefort named St. John. Doc St. John and they was one at Burnside named Blackburn and they was another at Creal, but I forgot what his name was. You'd have to ride a horse maybe 10 miles and get one. Now, when Charlie was 3 months old, he had double pneumonia. We had a doctor then. From Burnside. I don't know how we all survived. Well, at least me and Minnie and Charlie did.
Question: Now, about history. . .
Lord, they never even though of such a thing as a car. And if they didn't have mules or horses, they'd drive steers. Now, I can remember when McKinley got shot. I was at my Grandmother's and a man came through riding a horse through the village, through the country cause there wasn't no telephones to let people know that our president had been shot, been killed and that is the first one I can remember. I wasn't very big. I don't know how long that's been.
Question: Grandma, you have been through WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
Yes, I've been through all of them. My mom's dad was Civil war. Elmer, her brother, was in the World War. He got pneumonia, you know, that was the year of that awful flu and Almus got plum thru the war and got to come home but he was gassed and never was well anymore. Couldn't hardly get his breath. Minnie's boys was in the Second World War. Albert was a medic man. He dispensed the medicine and picked up the dead and the wounded. Charles Ed Parson, Charlie's son was the back up plane to drop that big bomb on Japan. If they hadn't stopped, his next mission was to drop more of them bombs. Don Parsons was lost in Vietnam. MIA
Question: Here at home, what was it like?
No men, and everything was rationed. Couldn't get meat. Only what you could get with your little ration book. I had one of them. I was trying to save it. I don't know where it got to. And you couldn't get soap. Had to go back to making it. In World War I, you couldn't get salt. The soldiers got it all. There wasn't plentiful like today. There was some woman down there was pregnant, and she craved salt so much that somebody got her a thimbleful. And brought it to her. Some people hoarded stuff. But you raised what you ate, and if you didn't, well, you just made out.
My grandma raised her own corn, she put in a tow sack and put it across the back of that old mule and take it to Stonefort and have it ground for meal. And if you had flour in the winter time you were lucky. My grandpa Lawless, he got to be pretty well off. He had a pretty big farm. Big wheel of wheat and they would thrash that wheat. They'd have threshin days, the thrasher would come around through the country and one day he'd thrash maybe for Grandpa, and then he would go on to somebody else. They'd have big straw piles. Great big. Big as this house nearly. We lived on cornbread nearly about.
Question: What was it like during the depression? Was it awfully bad?
Yes it was.
Comment:You were in your late 20s or thirty's. You were born, 1893.
We was raising our kids during the depression. Had to make their clothes out of flour sacks. Hand me downs.
Question: Did you lose any money in the bank?
No, but my Dad did. He had sold his house over there where we was raised after we come from the country. He had started to work up at Sparta. Put the money in the bank and the bank went down.
Question: Tell me about when you had your four kids.
I had two of them here. Now, Kathlyn was born over on West Main St. And we lived there till she was about 3 years old. I had Doctor Hartwell with Kathlyn. I had been married a year and three days. Then we waited 7 years until we had Marg.
Question: Was that by choice?
By choice? Not altogether.
But Elmer, Mommy's brother owned that house over there where Jacki lived. And this lot. He was engaged to be married to Frankey Chaney's half sister. He wanted that place over there. (On West Main). He wanted to build a pretty bungalow for her. So he traded that house there (where Jacki lived) and this lot for that lot. (On Main) And he assumed that debt and we assumed this debt. I don't know how it was. That is how we got this. There wasn't no hospital here then. Everyone had there babies in their home. Marg was born at that house where Jacki lived. Dr. Hudson delivered Lossie here. Mac was born here. And Kathlyn's two kids was born here, right in there. And Dr. Felts was my doctor then.
Question: Did you have any pain killer?
Yes, they would put chloroform. Didn't go to sleep, just eased the pain. We had to stay in bed 10 days. When you first got up you wasn't supposed to do ANYTHING. And on the ninth day, you had to lay there just as still. They said that is when everything went back in place. And then you could get up the tenth. And my grandma came in over there one night. Now there was certain things you couldn't eat when you had a baby. She said. So Mommy had fixed supper and she had made sweet potatoes. And my grandma said NO. Bad for the baby. And you had to eat butter and milk to make your milk rich. Well, they knew pretty well back then, but that pig dumplin and chicken hockey tea, well. But everybody done it. Catnip. We wanted to get catnip for Kathlyn, and Ms. Tibles, said, NO. She was kindof tongue tied.. This baby don't need no catnip. She come in of a morning and say, Has her had her breaksfee? She said this is the prettiest baby I have ever seen in my life. And about everybody in Marion had her. Cause there wasn't no hospital.
Question: What did you do if you got an infection? They didn't have penicillin?
Well, I had TB when Kathlyn was about a year old. Mommy had to keep Kathlyn at night and I had a woman, Lois Bell's mother stayed with us some. And I took treatment from Dr. Hartwell. They called it Serium treatment. They put it in your arm. For about a year, I guess. Shots every week. And we took creasote. Oh, I had to take that. It was in a bottle. And you put so many drops in a liquid. Everything stunk. Well, I got well of it and that's been nearly about 70 years. And I was cured.
Question: How did they know you had it?
Oh Lordy, I nearly about coughed my head off and I got so thin. I just couldn't hardly stand up. And I have one picture here with Kathlyn sitting on my lap, Kathlyn is about a year, just about like Katie here. And David says, that is the prettiest picture you ever had. Skinny as a rail! Well, I guess that is the style now, but I was not skinny by choice. I was lucky to live through that back then. But, I'm still around. If I still had TB, it would have shown up on me know. But you know when we take a TB test, I still come up positive. So does Sandy, and David. They tell me that everybody has a TB germ in their body. But I survived the severest weather, the severest hard times, the severest everything and Patty, the good Lord has brought me through.
Comment: I was talking to Sandy the other day and we don't do anything even on our hardest day compared to what you all had to do.
We had to iron everything we had. Wrap a rag around that old handle to keep from burning your hand. Had a plank. I didn't have too many things to iron. I ironed it all, but we didn't have very many clothes. Mommy and Minnie did my washing till Kathlyn was two years old. They rubbed it on the board. She was a good Mom. Kathlyn when she got grown, worked for a woman that lived in that big old brick house on West Main. Kathlyn worked for 15 dollars a week there, doing the washing and the ironing and the cleaning. And what we couldn't get, Kathlyn, well, Kathlyn would. Little doodads.
Your grandpa was so backward. When Kathlyn was born, he walked to town. For a go car. And he didn't want anyone to see him roll it home, they didn't deliver. So he folded it up and carried it on his back. Plumb from the square to our house.
Question: What was it?
A go buggy. He didn't want no one to see him rolling one. Then she wouldn't even ride in it. Aren't men strange? YES, THEY ARE. And women are, too. You know I wouldn't go nowhere where anybody could see me after I got to showing. Back then, women stayed at home for most of it. Now, you go until you drop it. My land, you see it on the TV.
Comment: I think it is a nice thing.
Sure. Why lands sake, they wondered, they thought the doctor left them, or we found them under a cabbage leaf. It's better that they know. But law, we would have been scandalized.
Let's see. Pat got to making pretty good money. When Kathlyn was about 4 or 5 years old. And she had about everything she needed. A high chair. He went and bought her a high chair. You could fix it someway so it was a rocking chair and you fix it another way and it was a sled. He bought that and Charlie would come over from Mommy's in the snow and we would bundle her up and he would put her on that sled and pull her over to Mommy's. Sometimes he would dump her. It wasn't very wide. Charlie always said that he raised Kathlyn.
Patty: I remember Paw Paw taking me everywhere in a wheel barrow. He was a neat guy.
Sarilda: Yes, he was.
Patty: He brought me a bracelet one time, of little colored stones, I still have a piece of it. A couple inches. It's in my bank box.
Sarilda: Well, he would put you in that wheel barrow and take you to Cooksey's and get Bear Food. That's what you called that sugar smacks cereal.
Well, Grandma, it is about time for your church service to start. I m going to turn on the radio. Thank you for doing this for us. Cause if we don't ask you, then no one will every know.
Oh honey, thank you.
Charles J. Sullins
This picture was taken in Creal Springs, Williamson County,Illinois where my great grandfather, Charles J.
Sullins was born on September-22, 1877. He was the son of Michael Robert and Delilia Ellen (Simmons) Sullins.
I only know one person in the picture and that is my great-grandfather Charles J. Sullins who is in the back row on the left.
Does anyone know who these other people were?
Contributed by Gaylene (Sullins) Gindy ~9/20/2005
Opal Holbrook
One of these girls is my great grandmother Opal Holbrook. I believe it is the girl standing but I could be wrong. The photograph was taken in Herrin, IL. She ended up wedding Irvin Harney in Marion, IL then moving to Detroit. She had 3 children that I am aware off: George E. Hurley, Barbara (Santino), and Oneita (Pryor). She died of TB at the young age of 26.
Contributed by Jill Moyer ~3/14/2006
PROF. J. W. TURNER This picture is originally about 4 feet long. I have had to section it because I just didn't know how to get the whole thing on here. Across the bottom of the picture is written "Prof. J. W. Turners 50th Annivesary as school teacher, Stonefort, Ill. June 1st, 1916." I also have a book written by Prof. Turner, Personal Memoirs of Jas. W. Turner , published in 1920 by Turner Publishing Company, Carrier Mills, Illinois. I plan to transcribe this book next summer. I believe Prof. Turner is in the third row of pictures, the right one, seated, the second from the left.
This page was last updated Sunday, 09-Oct-2005 12:35:38 MDT.
Copyright © 2005 by Ann Marshall.