Shake Those Branches

      "Willow Creek ran through our farm and it was close to the road.  The "gypsies" (Roma) came through every fall.  In the spring they would come through and go north and they would travel south for the winter.  Dad always had a few extra rows of corn down by the creek because he said the gypsies needed a little corn for their horses.  He had planted them down by the creek.  Dad didn't like the gypsies to come up to the house.  The gypsy woman and children went everywhere.  They were into the barns, chicken coops and everywhere.   Dad said the reason the women wore such big skirts with lots of pockets so they could fill them up with eggs and things like that to feed their families later in the day." Carrie   Linda Ruth then says:  "I have a willow magazine rack that you gave me.  It was an item that the gypsies had made and traded with your mother for maybe a chicken."  Carrie says, "I forgot. They traded pape...

Carrie painted this "Wooden Wall Phone" on her next block.   She said that the family's first phone on the farm was very much like this one.    "Our ring was three shorts and a long."  "I remember you would know to pick it up and answer when you heard your ring."  "We had neighbors by the name of Kemps, who were waiting to see whether our telephone set the house on fire and if it didn't they were going to get them one."  Linda Ruth asks Carrie, "So did they get one?"  "I think they did, but didn't right at first until they saw what ours was going to do."   From some of my interviews this past summer, I had several people that remembered this phone.  I believe it made an impression on people.  When you came in the front door of the house would be the parlor and in the little entry way the telephone box hung on the right hand side.  The Olson's always left their front door open in case a neighbor needed to use th...

 Linda Ruth asked Carrie in the video if this was a cabin on the quilt and Carrie replied "yes, it was on the farm that the Olson family had."  "A.T. Olson and his wife and children came to Oklahoma and used this cabin as a kitchen and cook room.  There was another two room house that they slept in."  "This was a cook room."   I am not sure if there was a second house there when they arrived in Lexington or they built if afterward.  If anyone knows about that, please let me know.    The other picture is Carrie as a young girl standing by the cabin.  Does anyone know when the cabin was torn down? 

 The following newspaper articles come from the Lexington Leader or You All Doins between 1895 and about 1915 regarding the Lexington Broom Factory.     

In the video, Linda Ruth asks Carrie if Lexington had a "Broom Factory".   Carrie says, "yes, it was on the north side of the street on top of the hill across from the stand pipe."   Since there wasn't anymore information on this Broom Factory, I did a google search and found out that the first broom factory appeared in Oklahoma after the Cherokee Outlet Land Run.   Broom corn grew well in Oklahoma and the state was the leader in the production of it from 1915-1946.  The broom brush was baled and then shipped to the various factories in Oklahoma and around the country.  Lindsey, Ok became the broom "capitol of the world", so it looks like the broom factory in Lexington had a close source for its product.  Unless farmers around Lexington provided the broom corn it needed.  Check out this website for more history on broom corn in Oklahoma and several pictures.    https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=BR024&l=

 This block is a picture of a stand pipe.  If you are like me and have never heard of a stand pipe, it is a water tower.   Carrie says that the stand pipe was almost at the top of the hill in Lexington.  She says the two story, red brick house was just a little NW of the stand pipe.    She didn't go into anymore detail about this particular block of the quilt.

This block shows an old time camp meeting.  They would put up their tents east of the cotton gin in Lexington.  They would have Baptists first and then Methodist and once in awhile the Church of Christ.  People would come in from out in the country in their wagons.  They would camp down by the creek for two weeks.  On the left side of the picture is the town pump on Main Street.  You would pump the water into the trough to water your horses.  She drew a cowboy pumping water for his horse.   Sometimes they would bring their cook stoves with them in their covered wagons, so they could serve meals there.  They would gather the firewood close to the creek.  Linda Ruth asked her "how long were the meetings?"  About two weeks was the rule she said.  "What time of year would they have the camp meetings?"  "After they had laid their crops by, so they would have time to come to the meetings."  "I have seen th...

 Sorry this picture is not very clear.  I didn't have a close up of it to use.  Carrie explains in the video that this was from the "old time buggy days".  She painted her mom and dad and one of the little ones in the Olson family (younger sister).   Linda Ruth asks her what the horses name was and she said it was Daisy.  She goes on to say they had another horse named Bobby, but she didn't have a painting of him.  Bobby's ears got frozen off when he was a colt.  She knew this wasn't Bobby because this horse had both his ears.  Linda Ruth then asked her if there was a horse named Bird also.  Yes she says.  That one is in one of my paintings.    Carrie said she could take Bird riding down the road that went through Lexington, between DFW and Oklahoma City.  It wasn't paved at that time, just a dirt road.  The model T's drove down the road.  Her horse Bird was really fast and she would ride her in the dit...

                                                                 Victor and Mabel's class     Lexington Public School       Elsie and Christine Olson were two of three in the first graduating class of Lexington High School       John Olson's class  Lexington Public School used to be all in one building.  It was a red brick two story building holding grade school up to high school.  Mr. Rice, one of the most famous superintendents of Lexington, he was on the original faculty at Oklahoma University.  When they first started the University they had to have the children begin at the High School level because most of the yo...

 Linda Ruth, who interviewed Carrie asked her whose house this was.  Carrie explained that this was the Olson's house which set 1 mile north and 1 mile east of Lexington. (  I thought it was 2 miles north...let me know if that is correct)   It was a nice big house and it was rather interesting.  (She got distracted in the video and we don't find out what was interesting about the house)  She then goes and tells more about the windmill than the house.   She said the windmill sat in the back of the house and I guess they had a well house there and they stored their butter and milk to keep it cool.  She mentioned they had a ice box and they had to drive to Lexington to get ice to keep it cold.  They didn't go everyday to get ice.  I wish she had went in to more detail about the house.  I would have loved to know more.  

 "One of the most interesting old ladies of early Lexington was Mrs. McKay.  She had two daughters that went to college and who became really good teachers.   She married again and had several more children.  I admired her so much because she washed clothes for everybody who needed it.  She worked terribly hard and I am sure she put those two daughters through college with her rub board.  You can see the banker's drawers swinging on the line.  She had a big heart and didn't mind feeding kids a lunch of hot tomato soup and cornbread, who had none."  Carrie Henderson 

 This painted block is of a cotton wagon.  Carrie didn't say much about this painting.  She said the cotton wagon was the bane of her life.  She didn't like to pick cotton or go to the scales and weigh her bag because everyone else always had more than she did.  The interviewer ask her what she did with her cotton bag and she replied, "well I couldn't afford to do much with it because dad would always undo it."  Then she was asked if she put any bows in her sack at which she replied  "I might have put a pie melon in there".  I have a feeling there was more to this story, but unfortunately they didn't elaborate. 

 This block represents a typical 4th of July picnic held each year in Lexington.  The picnic would be held in the park on Main Street or the campgrounds, which was a block away from the park.  They had a merry-go-round that cost a nickle to ride.  Balloons were also a nickle a piece.  Hamburgers and pink lemonade both cost a dime.   A man by the name of Atwoods grew watermelons to bring each year.  He always tried to plant them in time for the 4th.  If he had any leftover he would sell them at the market.  There were always someone that would try to steal one of the watermelons while he wasn't looking.  The lady with the black umbrella always carried it around with her.  It didn't matter if she was going to the grocery store or to the post office.  The lady in the picture pushing the carriage was named Mrs. Holloway and she always had a slew of children with her.   I wish Carrie would have told more about the people i...

This block shows the stagecoach that used to travel between Lexington and Purcell, Oklahoma.  They delivered the mail back and forth between the post office and the Purcell Train Station.  Not only did they deliver the mail they also took passengers.  If you needed to catch the train,  you could ride the stage coach over to Purcell.   Carrie was asked by the interviewer how much the ride cost and she responded that is was .50 cents, but she wasn't for sure because she never used it.   Fifty cents seems rather high for the 1910's or so.  I am going to assume it was a lower price.  Doing a little research, I noticed that at one time it only cost 10-15 cents per mile on short journeys.  

 I thought it was interesting that Carrie included this image on her quilt.  It must have been a favorite story in the Lexington community and one the locals passed around through the years.  It appears to have made an impression on Carrie and one that made her laugh.   One day two woman were walking down the sidewalk in Lexington pushing their baby carriages.  For some reason both woman decided to leave the sidewalk and cross the street.  The streets in those days were not paved. Carrie referred to it being "Black Gumbo" and "bottom land" in those days.  When it was wet and the wagons went through it, it got to be a real "clay pool".   Side note:  I didn't know what she was talking about when she called the mud in the streets as "black gumbo" so of course I had to go and do a little research and this is what I found.   "Gumbo in this state is a black clay soil, occurring only on very level areas, either river bottoms ...

 This second block of Aunt Carrie's quilt shows three people on Main Street in downtown Lexington, Oklahoma.  The first person she talks about is the man named "Lee Geno" (if I understood correctly)   on the far left sitting on the corner of K. Blake's general store/dry goods store.  She mentions that there was two entrances into the store.  The back door was to enter for groceries and the front  door (off of main street) was for the dry goods.  Lee liked to sit on the corner eating hot tamales.    The next person she painted was "Hot Tamale Joe" going down the road pulling his two-wheeled cart and selling his tamales.  She said, that there were rumors he used stray cats for the filling in his tamales.  Carrie said that the tamales didn't taste like cat to her.  LOL  I highly doubt he used cats, but who knows.  The middle business in the block is of the Lissour Saloon.  This family pronounced the name one way unt...

In the 1994 video of Carrie Henderson, she explains the history of each of the blocks she painted on her quilt.   In this block, she has painted a woman with a black umbrella pulling a red wagon down Main Street in Lexington, Oklahoma.  The following is what I transcribed from the video. " Mrs. Robinson was often seen pulling her groceries and laundry down Main Street in her little red wagon.  She sometimes washed clothes for other people and delivered them in the red wagon.  The person who is interviewing Carrie recalls a memory.  When she was a child she used to accompany Grandma Anna Olson on Sundays to delivery dinner to Mrs. Robinson.   

 One of the daughter's of Anders and Anna Olson was Carrie Olson Henderson.  She was an artist and made many paintings and drawings through the years.  One of her projects was this quilt, depicting the early history of Lexington, Oklahoma.  I am currently listening to an interview made in 1994, were Carrie explains the history of each block.  Instead of doing just one blog post on the quilt I have decided to give each block of the quilt its own post.  Stay tuned....

Recently in some family interviews, I discovered a story /information that I had never heard before.   (Just goes to show how important it is to keep asking those questions!)  The first bit of information I was given was in regards to Anders Olson working for the railroad in Jewell, Iowa.  Jewell, Iowa was actually called Jewell Junction at the time Anders lived there.  I looked at some old maps and there was two different tracks that crossed at "Jewell Junction".  I mentioned this story to my dad and he told me that Anders worked for the railroad as a "tiler" and that he used the money he made to buy the property/farm just a couple miles west of Jewell.   I then got curious about what a "tiler" actually did.  So I began researching it, but didn't have much luck finding the information I wanted.  I decided to write a railroad museum in Oklahoma City to see what they knew about tiling.  Luckily,  they had a gentleman that was from the Mid...

 One of our family's genealogical brick walls is who the heck was Elmer Parsons' mother (or father).   Before we begin lets first get to know Elmer Ellsworth Parsons.  Elmer was my paternal grandmother's grandfather.   Elmer was born on March 29, 1862 in Holmes County, Ohio.  His father as far as I know was Henry Whitman Parsons, who died during the Battle of Antietam in October of 1862.  Now for his mother it is anyone's guess.  On some documents that we have the name was given as Mary Ann Sells and then on Elmer's death certificate it list a Mary Ann O'Connor. There is also the last name of Grey that has been suggested as his mother's last name.   Elmer's paternal grandparents were Isaac and Rachel Parsons and with plenty of DNA matches to this family, it is safe to say we link to this Parsons' line.  For a long  time we could not find Elmer E Parsons on the 1870 or 1880 census.  (Most of the US's 1890's census reco...