Monday, July 10, 2017

Table of Contents

This collection of stories and family history was put together by my Uncle Lloyd Lawry. I was blessed to have been given a copy of his collection.I am transcribing the collection to this blog so that more family members will have access to his writing and documents that he saved.



Memories of Hazel
Aunt Sadie

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Odds and Ends by Ben Lawry

Odds and Ends by Ben Lawry

Seven colors in the dewdrops gleam                                                                                            
When the sun is bright overhead
Violet, indigo, blue and green
Yellow, orange and red.

Even gray and morning gray
Will set the traveler on his way
But evening gray and morning red
Will bring down rain upon his head.

An ounce of keep your mouth shut beats a ton of explanation

It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

He that knows not and knows that he knows not is wise, but he that knows not and knows that he knows is a fool.

Boys flying kites bring in white-winged birds
But you can't do that with when you're flying words
Thoughts unexpressed may come back dead but
God Himself can't kill them when they are said.

As unto the bow the cord is, so unto the man is woman though she bends him. She obeys him though she leads hirn yet she folIows. Useless without the other.

The best way to multiply love is to divide it.

There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, it hardly behooves the part of us to talk about the rest of us.

If you in the morning throw minutes away -
You can't pick them up in the course of the day.
You may hurry and scurry and worry and worry
But you have lost them forever. Forever and aye.

Daddy




My Daddy, Bennie Eugene Lawry, was born February 15, 1895, near Bronson, Kansas. Evidently, he wasn't too fond of the "Bennie." By the time I first knew him he had shortened it to Ben.

When he was small, he must have had two brothers, two sisters, one half-brother and one half-sister living at home. Grandpa Lawry lost his eyesight in 1888, so they had to struggle just to live.

He attended Stony Point School. I believe he completed the eighth grade. He said he farmed the home place the year he was 14. It was done with a plow and a cultivator that he walked behind as the horses pulled them.

He never told me much about his early life. I do have two tales of his experiences during his horse and buggy days. He had a "moon-eyed" horse that ran him into a creek off a low water bridge, and one time he asked a girl if he could drive her home. She replied, "you can if you have any harness that will fit me.”

He married my mother in 1918, and they went to Santa Rita, New Mexico, where he obtained a job carrying samples of the copper ore from the mines. I think one of Grandpa Lawry's daughters by his first marriage lived there and found the opportunity of a job for him.

He told of an incident which made him think his guardian angel was watching over him. He was walking along in the dark when he felt that something had stopped him. He stopped immediately and lit a match. He was standing on the brink of a deep pit. One more step and he would have fallen, probably to his death.

They came back to Kansas after the war, and I was born at my Aunt Cody's (Cora Hixson) farm. It was a few miles northwest of Bronson, Kansas. In 1920, Mama and Daddy were living in Mildred, Kansas. There was a cement plant there, and Daddy worked as day watchman. He broke his leg getting it caught while stepping over a moving belt.

Daddy ran a restaurant in Yates Center, Kansas in 1924. I don’t know how long he had it, but I think he went broke running it. He fed the prisoners in the local jail, and I was in awe of them when I went with Daddy to take their food.

I'm uncertain when Mama and Daddy first separated, but I remember living in Chanute, Kansas when there was just Mama and I. AIso, I remember living in Wichita, Kansas with Daddy and Mama. He worked at the oil refinery. They evidently separated again before I was six, because Mama and I were living by ourselves when I started school.

In March 1926, Daddy was working for a construction company building an addition to a salt plant in Lyons, Kansas. He worked in several places, finally coming to Buffville, Kansas to work in the brickyard. He married Hazel there on September 3, 1927.


His job was shoveling shale into metal carts. I believe they were one-half cubic yard capacity. They dynamited the shale down, and Daddy loaded it with a shovel, picking up big chunks and loading them by hand. He had to push the carts on a narrow gauge railroad track to the bottom of an inclined ramp where they were pulled up to the place where the shale was ground. He got 25 cents for each cart that he loaded and pushed up the ramp.

In a letter he wrote on October 28, 1928, he said: "there were two days that I made $6.90 a day each.” In the same letter, he told of paying $240 to pay off his model A Ford. When he was thinking of buying it, the salesman came out where he was working and helped him load shale all day to clinch the sale. Daddy didn't teII him until the end of the day that he had decided to buy the car before the salesman came out!

In October 1929, the brickyard closed, never to reopen. Sometime after that, we moved to a farm east of Buffville where we rented a house with garden Space and pasture for a cow. We lived there for several years. Our house burned down when I was in the eighth grade, and we moved back to Buffville until the owner of the farm bought an old house and moved it to the farm. Then we moved back to the farm again.

Later we lived on similar farms north of Altoona, south of Altoona, and east of Altoona. We also lived in Buffville again part of my senior year in high school.


Daddy didn't want to go on WPA but finally did when our cash income one month was only $5. He went to broom corn harvest and followed the wheat harvest to North Dakota one year before finally giving up and going on WPA.

While he and Grandpa Reeve were working in the Dakotas, the old German farmer's wife where they were working had twin babies during the morning and yet got up and prepared their noon meal!

When we were living east of Altoona in 1940, Daddy decided to move to Missouri, so we loaded our possessions on a trailer behind the old Model A Ford and drove it most of the way to Poplar Bluff, Missouri. We lived with Jessie and John Borton in a three room house. Ten people in 3 rooms.

Daddy and Uncle John worked for a man who owned a greenhouse for 10 cents an hour. I couldn't find any work so left home in early 1941, and hitchhiked to Texas.

One year while they lived in Missouri, Daddy took the family to Michigan to pick fruit. The family moved back to Kansas and bought 80 acres of farmland with an old house on it. They lived there for several years.

Daddy worked for the W. J. Small Company in Neodesha for 15 years. It was an alfalfa dehydrating plant. Daddy was in his late 40's and his 50's during these years. He sewed sacks and stacked bags of alfalfa meaI. The filled sacks weighed 100 pounds, and it was terribly hard work.

The farm had several miles of mud roads between it and town, so these years of arduous labor were plagued by fighting bad roads and a car which often refused to start until it was pulled by their team of horses. Hazel and Delbert did much of the farm work while Daddy worked in town.

Daddy and Hazel went to Oregon to pick fruit and vegetables one year. They stayed all winter after picking was over. Hazel got a job and daddy loafed all winter and read a lot of books.


In the 1960's, Daddy and Hazel bought a farm and a few acres east of Altoona. They had a truck farm and raised tomatoes and strawberries as well as other vegetables.

After Bob's family moved to Mena, Arkansas, Daddy and Hazel also moved there. Daddy was happy with his chickens and his garden. He would say, “tell the people you have been to Paradise," when we would leave to go back to Irving. He puttered around the garden patch on the day he died. He died on December 2, 1981, of heart complications.

He was a kind, gentle, hard working, loving man. I have my Lord’s assurance that at some point in eternity I will again see him in heaven, as he used to sing, “where they ring those golden belIs for you and me.”

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Uncle Jimmie

Uncle Jimmie
by Lloyd Lawry

Uncle Jimmie, Jimmie Armine Lawry, was born April 3, 1891, and died December 29, 1955. He went to the local grade school, but as far as I know, he never attended high school.

He spent his life as a farm laborer. For recreation, he loved to hunt and fish. He was always willing to take any of his nephews with him to fish or run his trap lines.

He served in France during World War I. Apparently, he served in a warehouse, and at least part of the time he helped handle bodies which were to be shipped back to the United States.

After the war, he was subject to long bouts of depression. He would stay in bed except for trips to the outdoor outhouse for weeks at a time, never eating unless food was brought to him. Evidently, he needed psychiatric care, but he never received it.

Apparently, over the years he loaned substantial amounts of money to various women and to a few men who never repaid him.

His life ended on a tragic note as a result of the continual trust in women, to whom he was romantically inclined. He had gone to Ft. Scott to take care of a woman's home and pets while she went on a vacation. When she came back, she brought a new husband with her.

As Jimmie hoped to marry her himself, he was horribly depressed, and went home and shot himself. It was tragic for a kind, gentle man who had suffered much from being used by people he loved and trusted.

Letter From Grace Lawry to William Lawry - March 17, 1923

This letter was written by Grace Lawry to William Lawry, Grandpa Lawry's son by his first marriage, after Grandpa Lawry's death.

Bronson, Kansas
March 17, 1923

My Dear Willie for you are the same to me as when I first saw you so many years ago. I was indeed thankful that you thought enough of me to write so kind a letter. May God bless you and make you a good father to your children who he has entrusted to you to care for.

Well Billie times are hard with us too. Jimmie has not been able to do a days work for over a year and is no better now. I have always had to work so hard to try to have something for my children to eat when they was young, and as fast as the boys growed up they went to work for themselves. So Sadie is all I have to help me unless dear Jimmie gets strong again.

I always tried hard to be a good wife and mother. Sometimes I think I have made a failure. But Billie, I can say Pa always had some money of his very own. I always gave him part of any I had and he was always willing to loan one of the children a dollar if they wanted it. I miss hlm every place.

He was getting childish. He talked so much about old times. He always said he never wanted to suffer like hls father did. He died so easy. Sadie and I had just put him in a rocking chair and brought him from his bedroom into the setting room. And he laid down on his couch and I was going to put his socks on when I saw he was dying and Sadie saw and said Oh Ma he is dead.

His last words were “Come on Grace." He had quit chewing tobacco and maybe that made him weak. He said that just before Christmas he dreamed that his little brother Jimmie came to him and took hold of his hand and said Pa do you chew tobacco and he said yes Jimmie and little Jimmie said Pa you must quit using tobacco or you can’t come to heaven and Billie he quit. Wasn't he brave after using it so long. He told everyone his dream. He thought of it so much.

It seems like I have had so many hard trials but I am still trusting One who has promised never to leave us or forsake us. That is a blessed hope for me.

Dear Sadie is so discouraged. She hasn’t taught school for so long and has had so much expense, and feels her father's death so deeply dear child.

It is cold and windy today. It has been nice winter and we may have a late spring.

I hope you and your family are all well. As you know you never sent me your last boys picture; is he as sweet as Floyd. Well tell your wife and Isola I think of them. Please write soon and often for we are lonesome. From one who will always remember you.

Mother.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

The Lawry Family

Grandma, Mrs. Grace (Yeager) Helms, was married to my grandpa, George W. Lawry, on May 2, 1886.

It is indicative of the hard times they were to experience that, only one year after Grandma and Grandpa were married, they had to mortgage the farm that Daniel Helms, her first husband, had bought. The patent covering Mr. Helms purchase of the farm was issued at that time (1887). Apparently, the farm stayed in Daniel Helms name untiL 1929, when after Grandma Lawry's death, Aunt Sadie bought it from the heirs of "Dan Helms and Grace Helms Lawry,” for $2000.

The patent states "said tract has been purchased by the said Daniel Helms, and he paid, therefore, the fuIl amount of the purchase money, and interest, as appears from the certificate of the county clerk of Allen County Kansas, deposited in the state land office.”

Aunt Sadie was born March 20, 1887, just less than a year after Grandma and Grandpa Lawry were married. At that time Grandpa's eyesight had probably begun to fail as he was blinded by cataracts in 1888 when Sadie was only a year old. At the time he lost his eyesight they had Sadie and the three Helms children, Henry, James, and Nannie to support.

This is an excerpt from a letter Grandma wrote to William Lawry, Grandpa's son by his first marriage, after Grandpa's death in 1923: "I have always had to work so hard to try to have something for my children to eat when they was young, and as fast as the boys growed up they went to work for themselves.”

My Daddy said he worked the farm by himself when he was 11. This was with horse-drawn plows and cultivators. The operator had to walk behind them up and down the long rows. If they raised corn, it had to be shucked by hand.

Grandma and Grandpa Lawry had seven children:
Sadie Emma Lawry - born March 20, 1887 - died December 24, 1973 - never married
George Newton Lawry - born March 5, 1889 - died March 13, 1959 - married Gladys Moore
Jimmie Armlne Lawry - born April 3, 1891 - died December 29, 1955 - never married
Mary Susie Lawry - born March 20, 1893 - died June 27, 1990 - married John Ermel
Bennie Eugene Lawry - born February 15, 1895 - died December 2, 1981 - married (1st) Lucille McDaniel – 1918 divorced. Married (2nd) Hazel Reeve - 1927
Johnnie William Lawry – born April 17, 1897 – died October 9, 1984 – married Chrystal Faye Larue
Charlie Everett Lawry - born October 25, 1899 – died September 25, 1901

Grandma Lawry was a sweet, gentle woman who worked terribly hard all of her married life. She loved the Lord and loved her family. She was extremely frugal. As an example, Sadie had bought some old- fashioned high button shoes for 25 cents a pair. After Grandma's death, one pair was found in her closet with corn cobs wedged inside the heel to stretch them. Sadie always required her Mother to work very hard.

Although small in stature, Grandma Lawry was a giant in the Lord. In renewing her subscription to The Church Herald and Holiness Banner she wrote, “Jesus keeps all care away and watches over me every moment of my life. Praise His Name! Even though I am 72 years old, He is the same Dear Friend yesterday and today and as long as life shall last.”

Just before she died, she lifted her arms and cried; “Bright! Bright!” Perhaps Jesus gave her a glimpse of His glory and heaven.

She requested her children to read 1 Samuel 16:7 when she had gone home to be with Jesus. “But the Lord said unto Samuel, look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature, because I have refused Him; for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”

The Helms Family

My Grandma, Grace Yeager, was born near Lawrenceville, Indiana in Dearborn County on April 22, 1856; The daughter of Nicholas and Ellenor Yeager.

In 1867 when she was 11 years o1d she came to Kansas with her parents and her brother John W., her sister Nancy, and her half-brother Willie. They made the trip in a covered wagon pulled by oxen. They settled in what is now Allen County.

Nicholas Yeager's parents were Joseph and Margaret (Everlee) Yeager. Ellenor Yeager's parents were John Wilson and Grace (Van Kirk) Wilson.

Grandma's mother Ellenor Yeager died in 1870. Her Daddy, Nicholas Yeager, died in 1880. They are both buried in Old Elsmore Cemetary south of Moran, Kansas.

Grandma married her first husband, Daniel Helms, on March 2, 1876, at Elsmore, Kansas. She was 18, and he was 32.

Daniel Helms bought the old home place near Bronson, Kansas on a "State Patent." My cousin Lowell Lawry obtained a copy of the patent and gave me a copy.

The patent was not issued until 1887, apparently only after Grandma and Grandpa Lawry took out a mortgage on the place in 1887, though Daniel Helms had died in 1880.

Grandma and Daniel Helms first lived in a one room house located about 1/4 mile south of the second house which Daniel built later. Their two sons Henry Finley Helms and James N. Helms were born in the first house.

Nannie Leota Helms, their only daughter, was born after her Daddy's death in the second house which her Daddy had built before he died.

Daniel Helms died tragically in 1880. He was just recuperating from typhoid fever when a neighbor's cows got into his cornfield and ruined a lot of it. Daniel had a very quick temper, and against the protest of a friend, Wm. H. Fuhrman, he went to the neighbor's house and got into a very heated dispute. Apparently already weak from his recent illness and extremely upset, he again became ill.

Grandma had Mr. Fuhrman go to Uniontown for the doctor (Dr.Halm). When he got there, he explained the circumstances to the doctor. The doctor said he was sure Mr. Herms was going to die, but that he would go to see him. Mr. Herms died that evening, October 7, 1880. He and Grandma had been married only four years and seven months. He is buried in the Old Elsmore Cemetary.

That was a tragic time for Grandma. At the age of 23, she was a widow with two little boys, ages four years and one year, and she was expecting another baby.

After Mr. Helms was buried, Grandma took her last 50 dollars and bought his tombstone which stands in the Old Elsmore Cemetary. Grandma's friends and relatives tried to get her to keep the money to care for her two boys and the baby she was expecting, but she said she might never have the money again and she wanted him to have a grave marker. The inscription on his grave marker reads, "Free from all care and pain, Asleep my body lies, until the final resurrection calls, The dead in Christ Arise.”

I have always felt that Grandma loved Daniel Helms more than my Grandpa Lawry. When she died, she was buried next to Mr. Helms; several spaces away from my Grandpa.

Aunt Nannie Helms was born in 1881 several months after her Daddy died. I had wondered how Grandma managed on the farm with three IittIe children. Oscar Burrows said that Grandma went to live with her sister in Uniontown. She rented the farm to Sam Helms, a relative of her late husband.

Three children were born to my Grandma and Daniel Helms:
1. Henry F. Helms - Born 1876 - Died 1892 of typhoid fever
2. James N. Helms - Born 1879 - Died 1959 - never married
3. Nannie L. Helms - Born 1881 - Died 1954

Aunt Nannie married John Burrows. Their only child, Oscar M. Burrows was born November 19, 1904. He married Beulah M. Skaggs on September 17, 1928. They had two children, Alvin D. Burrows - born July 23, 1929, and DeVaughn J. Burrows - born November 27, 1931.

Aunt Nannie died February 27, 1954, in the Main Street Hospital in Ft. Scott, Kansas. Uncle John Burrows died January 14, 1963, in Uniontown, Kansas. They are buried in Bronson Cemetary.

Aunt Nannie was a sweet, gentle woman like her mother. I never knew her very well. My last memory of her is when I spent the night with her and Uncle John Burrows. I had hitch-hiked over to Nevada, Missouri in search of a job and got back to Bronson about dusk. I remember I slept in a cold bedroom on a big feather bed with plenty of quilts.

Uncle Jim Helms seemed to me to be an old man when I first knew him. He was 50 when I was 10. I have a precious memory of him. Kathy and I walked into his little church in Bronson one Sunday morning with our Bibles in our hands, and he met us with big tears in his eyes, happy that we had come to worship the Lord with him.

Beulah Burrows, Aunt Nannie's daughter-in-law was leading the singing. They were singing "The Old Account Was Settled Long Ago.” I had never heard the hymn, but they sang all seven verses, and before it was finished, I was singing right along with them.