The Holland Press

September 30, 1981

Hi there! Greetings from South Arkansas!

I can't remember for sure which one of the girls that it was that I promised I'd write a journal or a few things about my childhood and growing up in the early 1900's.

First, I do want to thank all of you for making Grace and I so very welcome. I shall never forget the feeling I had about the whole trip. I told someone after I got home it was as if God Himself had rolled out the Red Carpet; everything, everywhere, went off as smooth as clockwork.

I did get a cassette recorder to talk to, as one of you suggested, but I must have been born too soon, for it just didn't work with me. I felt quite an idiot using it, so please excuse this poor writing.

My first memory is when I was six weeks old; we were on a train coming from Flandreau, South Dakota to Gentry Arkansas. Certainly it seems unlikely a baby only six weeks old could remember so well and I suppose what I remember is hearing my parents tell about it a good many times.

So: Darwin with his father, Russell John Maxson, his brother Edwin, and his oldest sister's husband, Styles Lanphere, were all living in South Dakota, where they had done well homesteading farms; then improving them, and raising wheat and cattle. After a good many years there, Father Maxson, who still suffered from rheumatism, brought on by his stint in the federal army in the civil war, thought, what good is money in the bitter cold climate here?

So he talked the two married sons and a son-in-law into moving somewhere warmer.

Grandpa (Russell John Maxson) — grandmother ‘had eleven children, at the time of moving

to Gentry. Only the three oldest were married. One girl, Celia, had died in Dakota, at the age of 17. (I don't think I ever heard the cause of her death) but there were still at home: Edith, Ora,

Susa, Nathan, George, Myrtle and Ethel.

There was a Seventh Day Baptist settlement in South Dakota, but, we'll start another one in a warmer climate,” they reasoned.

So they would all move, bag and baggage, dad said. I heard Grandpa Maxson tell how that last winter there in the "frozen north" he decided he'd rather be warmer even if it meant less money. Evidently they had all done quite well, raising grain and cattle. So one fall day he caught a train to go south. When he got to Kansas City he talked with the Station Master, I think he said, or real estate person who told him about a fairly new railroad system going south as far as Port Arthur, Texas. He boarded a train on that (The Kansas City Southern) all the way down through Missouri the next day, the countryside looked good. There were many apple orchards and the trees were loaded with fruit.

At one time the Plank Orchard, (acres and acres of apple trees, starting from Decatur, stretching southward) was supposed to be the largest in the world, and Grandpa thought about getting off somewhere along here just to look things over. The conductor called out Gravette, then Decatur, then soon came Gentry.

That“Gentry’did it. So, "Gentry it is; we are gentry," he said to himself, "My father's family were of the ruling class in England, and landed people." So, gathering up his belongings, he left the train at Gentry, "At least," he thought, "to look around."

Evidently it looked good to him, for he said he spent a few weeks there, actually buying a nice large farm a couple of miles out north- west of town. I barely remember that farm, for after three or so years they were offered a good price for it and they moved into Gentry, first to a nice house with a big yard and named Glenwood, or Glen Oaks. When I was a little older and we'd visit there, Grace and I decided we'd name our home place "Maple Lawn" but we never did get Papa to put up a sign.) I was about four, I believe, when they~- the grandparents-- moved to Glenwood. So much of my childhood memories are from there. The big shady yard and the big lawn swing that four could ride in, and ride we did, swinging high until Dad made one for us at home. He also made a merry~go-round. (I bet you remember that, Paul!)

Now, I go back to South Dakota; after Grandpa had bought the improved farm in Gentry, he scouted out four other pieces of land. There were no buildings on them. These were-for Dad (Darwin); Edwin;. and. Sylvia's husband, Styles Lanphere; the fourth, I think, was for Mother's Dad, George W. Huffman, or for Mama's sister, Lizzie, and Husband, Menzo Fuller.

Anyway, I think they were all 80 acre tracts; Dad kept selling ours off until he wound up with 20. I know he used to own the house on the corner land and the Thomas's behind us.

So now, I really will leave Gentry awhile and go back to South Dakota!

In South Dakota, everybody rushed around getting ready to move before the weather got so bitterly cold. Everything was loaded into the three freight cars. Except Eunice and her two little girls, Ruthie and Grace. They were to stay with Mother's friend, Gertrude Sanford, until the new baby arrived. So Darwin went with the furniture, farm tools, and stock in the freight car, and when he got it safety unloaded at a place east of Gentry that Grandad had rented for him, he left Uncle Nathan to look after it all and got on a passenger train, and went back to Flandreau to spend Christmas with his wife and Little girls, and to be with her when the new baby arrived. How he hoped this one would be a boy!

One cold day, the 15th of February, 1901, that baby did arrive, after Dad had ridden his horse ten miles to get the doctor to come (on his own horse) with medicine in the saddlebags. No telephones, (or cars!) And sad news! It was another girl! Anyway, they let me live, kind hearted as they were.

When I was six weeks old, Papa, Mama and the two lovely little girls, and Gertrude Sanford, carrying the big, homely new baby, boarded the train for their new home in the sunny south. Little Ruthie, past 5, now, with those beautiful blue eyes and ever ready smile, was popular with the other passengers as she was dragging her beautiful little curly haired, brown eyes sister Grace up and down the aisle; poor little Geneva, either asleep on one of the seats, or snug in Mama's or Gertrude's lap, wanted some of the happy attention, and thought long and hard how she could get it. She couldn't walk, or even sit up alone yet, so what did she do? Well, she got sick. (Really sick, with a high fever and croupy cough.)

Getting into Kansas City where they had to change cars at Union Station into the Kansas City Southern train, they had a two hour wait and it was decided to leave friend Gertrude with the two girls sitting in the depot while Mama and Papa took the poor little sick baby, so tiny, so sick, to see a doctor. That was done and the doctor gave a dose or two of some evil tasting concoction and said "Double pneumonia; Get right back on the train; continue your journey; it has only been the movement of the train track that has kept the little one breathing." |

Papa told me later he felt by the time they reached Gentry (222 miles from Kansas City), he'd probably be carrying a little dead baby; but he prayed to God and promised he'd try to be a better husband and father if he would spare the life of this precious child. Sol lived and thrived, but two times while I was small I almost died with pneumonia, they say, and the several times I heard this story, with my overactive imagination, it really seems to me that I remember it... .-

So that was the last few days or March, or early in April, 1901.

We lived in the rented house until barns were built for the three families. There were already good barns, corn cribs, cellar, smoke house and well at Grandads, so when the nice big clean fresh wood smelling barn was finished on the 80 acres a half mile southwest of gentry, Papa said to Mama: "Since its springtime, warm and lovely, how about you, the girls, and I, moving out home. We'll live in the barn until my brothers and I get a house built?" Mama agreed, and it worked out nicely. My bassinet (a wicker clothes basket and added sides and a pillow for a mattress) was kept safely on top of mother's big trunk in case a pig would come rooting around in the barn and possibly overturn the baby's bed. I slept warm and safe, and mama said she picked me up, told the other girls, "Come, lets go up and see how they are coming along with the house." So we did, and quite to her surprise, Papa was so far up on the structure

hammering away, she, standing below yelled up: "What are you trying to do, build on up to heaven?" "Oh, no," he answered, "just going to have plenty of room for a big bunch of boys." What I thought was raindrops falling on my head was probably Mama's tears!

No, it was not a huge house, but comfortable for the four boys they did have, as well as for us three girls, and for a time, all of Uncle Burt's motherless children) I was only Two and One/half when Russell James joined us on Jul 5, 1903. I'll have to admit

I don't remember that day. But I do remember kissing his cheek until it was red, and Mama telling me, "Not so hard", and the next summer when he was walking, I hugged him and said, “when you grow up I'm going to marry you, you're so sweet" (That I do remember), and quite well I remember Papa putting the four of us in the buggy and taking us up to Grandma's to spend the day and late that same afternoon, March 15, 1907, he came to take us home and there we found mother in bed with a sweet baby boy whom she decided to name "Pitch Huffman” after her brother who had been killed by a horse kicking him when he was in his twenties.

Then, again in December (19th), 1908, Papa took all of us (even baby Fitch, only 15 months old) to Aunt Lizzie's to spend the day.

It was so pretty and warm when we went in the morning that Russell, five years old, was allowed to go barefoot and when Papa came after us about dark, there was snow on the ground and he (Russell) had to be carried, along with baby Fitch, to the wagon, and wrapped warmly in a quilt.

So again, when we got home, there was another beautiful baby brother, whom Papa named Paul and Mama said Leland— there was some joke about a beau Mama had had in Wisconsin-- a doctor named Leland-- which I didn't understand! I wasn't so dumb, I was just a bit young--(seven years old at the time!)

I was older, all of 12, when the next baby boy came to our house-- Carl (named after a good friend, Carl Parker, from Chicago) and

wonder of wonders, Mama said, and Dad agreed, I could give Carl his middle name. Roderick. (Some book I had read had the hero named that} And I had been such a good baby-tender for my little brothers they said probably would be a great help in caring for this new one. Indeed I was! I was the main one in "spoiling" him! Mama said several times, "Carl is a bit spoiled, we've all helped, but it's Geneva’s fault, I would take him and run upstairs or out of doors if I tried to correct him.”Poor Carl – it was my fault, but he was a beautiful and sweet child.

The house seemed always to be full of life, love and people.

Mam’s brother Burt (Huffman) lost his wife (Mabel Wheeler Huffman) only a few years after they had moved to Arkansas, leaving their children motherless. There was Vancha, Myrtle, Herbert, Purl, Dolla and Eeri.

They lived across the fields and railroad tracks or the road to Siloam and some of them, most often Puri and Dolla who were the ages of Grace and I, were staying with us. Not until later did I realize what a hardship it must have been on Mama and the older girls but if they ever complained about the extra children in the house I didn't hear it; we always had an abundance of food it seem a the long table was surrounded by family, and always others, mama didn't always go to church, but Papa always did and as always took we children. I remember I was three years old, or so, and he had a canvas seat that fitted on the handlebars of his bicycle. That is where I rode. Usually it was in a buggy we went on prayer meeting nights, and the horse old Dan would be cold, standing outside. When we came out from church to start home, Dan would rear up and prance around. It would scare me so much, because I felt surely he would fall backward on us; but Papa spoke soothingly to him, and he soon quieted down and trotted at a brisk clip all the way home. Sometimes I pretended to be sound asleep when we got home, so Papa would carry me in and up stairs to my room, pulling the covers over me and saying "Little Dovie". Mama came in later and removed my shoes.

How I love those memories! Also remembering sleeping on the little bed in Mama's bedroom and awakening to see Papa and Mama kneeling by their bedside asking God to guide them and guard us. The wick on the bedroom lamp had been turned down to a soft glow and I could see the soft light on the sides of their faces, and the mellow shadows on the floor and walls, and I felt surrounded by warmth and love.

Where we grew up in Northwestern Arkansas, there was no black population which is why perhaps I grew up without the prejudice against race that was suffered by many southerners; there we had no black maid, but we called the household "help" "Hired Girl”. Until Ruth, Grace and I grew old enough to be of more help to Mama, Papa paid a hired girl to come in and help with the work. (He said he had rather work out and pay someone to come in and help mother than to do it himself.)

I remember one of the Jones girls as our hired girl, and especially do I remember Iva Fox. Iva worked for us a lot, and I vividly recall one incident. She scrubbed the freshly painted dining room floor and kitchen floor with boiling hot water and strong lye soap. When Mama saw it, she cried because Iva had scrubbed off all the fresh paint in her zeal for cleanliness. When Mama asked Iva why she had scrubbed so hard, Iva replied, "My Maw makes us scrub our floors with a broom and lye, and I thought you would like yours that way, too." When Papa came home from work, Mama went outside to meet him, and to tell him about the floors. He laughed and said he would repaint them for her, and she could tell Iva just to use a mop and warm water.

In our house, the parlor always had a clean, fresh, colorful carpet.

We all helped in the carpeting project, tearing colorful rags, discarded dresses and shirts, etc, into strips. Mother sewed them all together into one long strip, and we rolled this into balls; When she had a bushel basket full of strips in balls, she took them to someone to be woven into a carpet.

Iva Fox must have been between 18 and 20 years old, but to me she seemed OLD; and when she said, "You girls run out to play now, I want to red up the bedrooms," we scampered out without a word (I think! )

Mama taught her how to make "light" (or yeast) bread; that sort of bread was unfamiliar to her, as she said at home they never had any- thing except corn bread or biscuits. Mother's bread was something to be remembered all of one's life; each Monday and Friday she baked several large loaves and a huge tin or two of buns. (We never called them rolls). While they were still warm and spread with butter, they were angel's food! Also, sometimes she made cinnamon rolls and Ruth and I argued about who would get the crusts (ends of the rolls).