Sketch of the Life of Lillie Belle Munroe Read, part 1

On September 13, 1892 Lillie Belle Munroe was born at home, a house in rural Newton County, Arkansas. She came into a blended family consisting of nine persons: her father,

Lester Munroe

William Lester Munroe, a curly-haired, blue-eyed Scot about 34 years old; his father, William Orlando Munroe, a widower about 66 years of age; Lillie’s mother, Mary Jane Whittenton Johnson Munroe, about 33 years old and widowed at the age of 21 before she married Lester; Lillie’s half sister Annie Frona Johnson, about 13 years old; her half brother Sam Johnson, age 12; her brother John Munroe, age 7; her sisters Agnes Telitha, age 5, and Allie May, age 4; and her brother Claudy, age 1. She would have had twin sisters, Flora and Florence, but they had lived only 4 and 5 months through the summer of 1886, when John was a little over a year old and before Agnes was born. A little over a year and a half after Lillie’s birth, her younger sister Jessie was born, and then the Christmas when Lillie was three years old, Medora was the last to join their family. When Lillie was only a baby, her brother Sam ran away from home. He was not there most of Lillie’s childhood, but she certainly knew him.

Mary Jane Munroe

May remembered their mother, Mary Jane, as a sweet-tempered, quiet, patient lady who liked having a houseful of children and never minded the noise and commotion they created. All children adored her. May said once that the only thing her mother did that a lady wouldn’t want known in public was once in a great while, she’d dip snuff. She’d send the little ones out to the field to find a certain kind of twig that could be chewed and frayed to make a paintbrush or a toothbrush, or, sometimes, a snuff dipper. Snuff is pulverized tobacco, and when put on a brush and held in the mouth against the cheek, the user would get a nicotine rush through the mucous membranes. That type of tobacco use did not contribute to lung cancer, but it could cause the teeth to loosen, and sometimes caused cancer in the mouth.

William Orlando Munroe

Tragedy struck the Munroe family a year after Dora’s birth when Claudy died in January 1897 at the age of 5. Lillie’s grandfather William Orlando Munroe, who lived with them, died the next year after Claudy, in April 1898. He was 71 years old. Then the worst tragedy for the family came eleven months later when their mother, Mary Jane, died on the 3rd of March 1899 in Little Rock. Lillie was only six and a half years old. Her brother John was 13 years and 10 months; her sister Agnes had turned 11 just four days before; her sister May was two months shy of 10; her little sisters Jessie and Dora were four and three years old. Her older sister Annie Johnson was about to turn 20. It was a severe blow to the family, especially to Lester, who never recovered from his wife’s death.

Munroe Girls about 1897
Front: Agnes, Dora, Jessie
Back: May and Lillie

Lester Munroe stayed in Arkansas for a few years more, and then he decided to move his children and himself to the northwest where there was room—land and opportunity. Annie, recently married to Clint Cusick and with a home of her own, stayed in Arkansas. Sam was living in Georgia and eventually moved to Pennsylvania.

In 1903 Lester and the children took the train to Idaho, settling in the Nampa area where Lester hoped to get work on the Bureau of Reclamation’s new Boise Project, among other things. The family was poor and lived in a sod house. John worked some and was in charge of his sisters, 15-year-old Agnes, 14-year-old May, 10-year-old Lillie, 8-year-old Jessie, and 7-year-old Dora, called Dodie. Because Lester couldn’t get all the work he had thought, the family became very, very poor. One time May and Lillie thought up a scheme to beat their poverty by coating pennies with mercury to make them look like dimes and sending Jessie and Dodie to the store to spend them. When their father found out about it, he tanned their hides!

Late in 1904, Lester decided to move on to Oregon, but Agnes was upset about the plan. On Christmas eve 1904 Agnes eloped and married William Henry Allen, who came from Pennsylvania.

In 1905, Lester bought a spring wagon and two horses to draw it, and with another horse, they headed west to Oregon. Lester drove the spring wagon loaded with all their belongings, and John rode the other horse alongside the wagon. Lillie and her sisters generally walked.

They hadn’t been on the trail long when they stopped near Vale, Oregon, and some men at the general store asked about buying their horses. Lester replied that the horses weren’t for sale. That night they stopped to camp, and Lester rode back to Vale to buy more supplies they would need before heading into the wilderness of eastern Oregon. He had taught John and May to shoot and they both had pistols, May said. She said he told them strictly that they must hobble the horses and not ride them anywhere, but stay close and guard the camp. As soon as he was out of sight, May recalled, she and John jumped on the horses and rode around a while. She could not remember whether she and John had remembered to hobble the horses or not after they were through. She thought they had. Meanwhile, the younger girls remembered they had spread the canvas tarp on the ground with their bedding on top, and they lay and sang while looking up at the stars. When their father came back to camp, he asked, “Where are the horses?” They were gone! The family searched for days and found one horse, but they never found the other. Those unscrupulous men had evidently led the horses quietly away while the children were singing. Their father was furious and certain children got a whipping for their negligence.

They continued their journey across Oregon, walking beside the wagon. The weather was cold as they traveled through the central Cascades past Three Sisters. When they got to the top of the McKenzie Pass, they had to spend a night in the snow because a broken-down wagon blocked the trail ahead, which led down through Eugene and over the coast range to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. They settled in Marshfield, near what is now Coos Bay, where their father got work building bridges, houses, and whatever else he could find. He had been a finishing carpenter for the railroad back in Little Rock, so anything to do with woodworking was what he tried to get now. The children lived in a camp a little ways outside of the town because they couldn’t afford to rent or buy a house. They had cleared the brush and forest from some of the land and built a platform on which they erected their tents. They built a cook stove on which May cooked most of the meals. May and John hunted rabbits and squirrels sometimes for food. May remembered it being scary being off there by themselves a lot, but she also recalled liking being by themselves. They were a close and loyal family.

Munroe Family about 1905: Lester in the center;
clockwise from top: John, May, Lillie, Dodie, Jessie, Agnes

Lester decided to move to Portland, but he waited until after the World’s Fair (Lewis and Clark Fair) of 1905 was over. He did not want to deal with his teenage girls and the crowds that the Fair drew. Lillie was about 13 years old. John and their father were often away from home, finding work anywhere in the Pacific coastal states from Seattle to San Diego, and at first the family lived in tents on two lots their father had bought in Portland. May was in charge of the family, but her younger sisters weren’t easy on her. One day, Lillie and Dodie recalled, they and Jessie had been so “ornery” to May that May had announced that she was going up the hill to visit her friend Amanda to get away from her impossible little sisters. Lillie and the younger girls waited all night, but May didn’t come home until morning. When she came back, the girls cried, “Why didn’t you ever come home?” May replied that she would have if they treated her better. Not long after this time period, May married Paul Rieboldt, October 1, 1907.

In about 1906, Lester Munroe had finished a little house on one of the lots, so they had a better place to live. Dodie had become very sick soon after the move, and Lillie took care of her, nursing her night and day. The doctor told Lillie she was a natural nurse. When May was expecting her first child, Lillie was the one who stood by to take care of the baby. Paul ran for the doctor that night, and the doctor gave the new baby, Pauline, to Lillie with orders to dress her. Lillie had never dressed a baby before, but she guessed she could handle it. When the trained nurse arrived to take over, Lillie asked her whether she had done anything wrong? The nurse replied that she had done everything right, excepting maybe the nurse wouldn’t have put a little slip on the baby along with the other clothes. Lillie was happy with the praise. When John got double pneumonia, Lillie nursed him too. He was unconscious for eight days, and when he awoke, the doctor told him his sister was the one to have pulled him through. The doctor told Lillie that if she would enter a nursing school, he would pay her way. But she hadn’t done well in school and didn’t think she would be able to handle the course work, and without anyone else to advise her, she didn’t go.

Lillie’s schooling had been sporadic, and after she completed some high school in Portland, she looked for work, never to return to school. Despite her lack of schooling, Lillie was educated very well in many things. Besides nursing, one in particular was her botanical knowledge. She knew the names of all the domestic and wild flowers in Oregon, all the trees, all the shrubs. She was always a skillful gardener, although her methods could sometimes be unconventional. She used to tell her house plants, “Bloom, or I’ll throw you in the trash,” and they always obeyed her. She also read extensively. She always liked to learn new facts, esoteric and otherwise.

Lillie about age 16

In 1908 at age 16, Lillie was baptized in the Arleta Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon. Her father had earlier been a Seventh Day Adventist, but he didn’t go later in his life. Lillie was always a faithful Christian and church goer throughout her life. She read her scriptures regularly and she loved hymns, especially “Whispering Hope” and “In the Garden.” After her marriage she joined the Disciples of Christ Christian Church that her husband belonged to.

To support herself in her teen years, she was working in a mill in Portland when she heard that Meier and Frank’s department store needed a bookkeeper. She started studying bookkeeping at night while she kept working in the mill during the day, but then she landed a job as a clerk at Meier and Frank’s. She worked with lace and notions on the first floor (no cash register; she had to calculate prices and change), earning $17 a month. She said her room and board with Mrs. Douglas of Kern Park at that time was $10 a month, and she had to spend $2 a month for street car fare. Then she had to stretch the rest to do her washing and so on. And she wanted to be a missionary someday, so she was saving her last pennies each month with that in mind.

As a grown woman, Lillie was short. She was 4’11” at her tallest and later admitted she was 4’8”—but her feet always reached the ground, she said (except when she was sitting in someone else’s chair!). As a young woman she had reddish brown hair with a slight natural wave in it, and she had bright blue eyes and a pale complexion that freckled easily. She was never thin, but never too heavy either. She wore a small but wide shoe size, 4½, and when it was hard to find women’s shoes in her size, she could get put out about it. The selection was never very good for clothes and shoes in her size.

One day in 1909 she was riding the train from Portland to Yacolt, Washington with her sister May, who had been visiting her in Portland and, finding her suffering from a case of the flu, said, “You’re coming home with me.” While on the train, a young man stopped to talk to May for a moment, and then he went on. Lillie, feeling terrible and thinking she was looking her worst, nonetheless thought that the young man certainly looked interesting. She asked her sister who he was, “the young man with all that hair.” May told her his name, Lloyd Read. Before the train arrived in Yacolt, Lloyd had come back to find out more about the girl with May, red nose and all. And he got permission to call on her when they were back in Portland.

One of Lloyd's postcards

Their courtship lasted through 1909 and into the spring of 1910, with Lloyd seeing Lillie every chance he got and writing her postcards or just sending a postcard he thought she’d like even with no message on it to make sure she knew he was thinking of her all the time. In June they attended the social functions of the Portland Rose Festival together. After the Starlight Parade on June 11, 1910, Lillie accepted Lloyd’s proposal of marriage, and they were engaged.

Lillie’s father and family approved of Lloyd, but Lloyd’s parents disapproved of the match. They said Lillie was “white trash” and wouldn’t have anything to do with her. Even though Lloyd’s mother, May Corlinda Robertson Read, had had to walk partway to Oregon herself as a little girl and had known poverty, she felt that this poor girl from the South with little formal education would do nothing to help her son advance in the life that she had pictured for him. Lloyd’s father didn’t want his son marrying so young, and marrying a girl of a different religion at that. He wanted his son to go to college, to have material advantages. They tried to break up the match, even telling Lloyd that if he would call off the marriage, they would pay for him to get a college degree. He refused. They threatened to cut him off without a cent. He regretted their attitude, but he wouldn’t give up Lillie. He didn’t care what they said or did.

Lillie and Lloyd were married in Portland on October 5, 1910 at the home of the minister, Francis (Frank) Cook, at 795 E. Salmon St. On the marriage license Lillie reported her address as 247½ Fifth St., City and her occupation as chamber maid. She had lost her job at Meier and Frank’s and had gone to work in a hotel that belonged to friends of her family. After the wedding, while Lillie and Lloyd continued to live in the hotel while both of them worked, Lloyd’s parents pointedly showered money and privileges on their younger sons still at home and tried for a time to have nothing to do with Lloyd and his new wife.

That didn’t last. Lillie’s good humor, hard work, strong faith, and loving ways won them over. When Lillie’s first baby was born March 20, 1912, her mother-in-law was there to attend her. Viola Maybelle, named May for her paternal grandmother and Belle for her mother, was the first Read grandchild and great-grandchild. The Read grandparents were suddenly very proud! They had pictures taken with their granddaughter. She was probably spoiled rotten at first. Or she would be if she had the disposition to be spoiled, and if her mother had let her be—and Viola herself said she felt she was given much more than any of her younger siblings. Everyone was delighted with the baby, and more importantly, Lillie was finally accepted by the Reads.

Lillie and Lloyd at left, Lloyd's parents at right (Virgil and May Read)
Grandparents Clifton Kittridge Read and Elizabeth Nancy Porter Read
and Viola Maybelle Read, born in early spring 1912

This is the first of a two-part series. Click here to read part 2.

The Munro Great-Grandparents of Lillie Belle Read

Leicester (Lester) Munroe and Lurany Ralph

Leicester (pronounced Lester and later written that way) was born 16 April 1795 in Cooperstown, Otsego, New York to David and Anna Andrus Munroe. Lurana (Lurany) Ralph was born 5 April 1801 in Susquehanna, Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, parents unknown.

They were married 14 September 1817 in Penfield, Monroe, New York, and moved to Lockport, the Niagara County seat. The following children were born to them there:

• David Madison, b. 25 February 1820
• Mary Anne Celina, b. 28 December 1821
• Dow Ralph, b. 8 June 1824
• William Orlando, b. 25 September 1826

Dow Ralph (age 4) died in 1828 and the family moved to Carleton, Monroe, Michigan, where the following children were born:

• Adams Fernando Munroe, b. 23 March 1829
• James Ralph Munroe, b. 18 October 1833
• Lurana Maria Eliza Munroe, b. 29 July 1835

The family moved to Pittsford, Hillsdale, Michigan, and there the following children were born:

Leicester Munroe

• Harriet Adelia Jane Munroe, b. 28 March 1838
• Henry Harrison Munroe, b. 13 May 1841
• Edmond Vallios Munroe, b. 10 March 1843

The 1840 Census in Pittsford found the family all together, and a man aged 80–90 lived with them, as did a woman aged 70–80. Since Lester’s mother died in 1817 in Monroe County, New York, and his father died in 1837 in Pittsford, Hillsdale, Michigan, this probably means that Lurana’s parents, the Ralphs, lived with the Munroe family.

These elderly people (the Ralph parents) were both gone in 1850, probably having passed away in Hillsdale County, as the family was still living there in Pittsford when the 1850 Census was taken. In May 1843, Mary Anne married Jabez Northrup in Pittsford, Hillsdale, Michigan.

1850 Census with Leicester and Lurana Munroe
and their family on lines 7 - 14

Leicester was a farmer with land valued at $150 in 1850. At the same time, his 29-year-old son David was a farmer with land valued at $300. Since they still lived together, probably a check of the land records would show that Lester had turned over much of his land to his son.

Before 1854, the family moved to Branch County. Harriet (age 14) died in 1852, in either Hillsdale or Branch county. In June 1854, William married Ann Charlotte Flanders in Kinderhook, Branch, Michigan. In June 1855, Maria married James M. Pound in Branch County. In September 1856, James married Roxana Ralph in Branch County. In February 1857, David married Mrs. Elizabeth Rose Browning, place unspecified.

In 1860 the Census showed the family living in Ovid, Branch County, Michigan. Leicester was still farming, with his real estate valued at $100, and his personal property valued at $125. Adams married a woman named Ann sometime after that census was taken.

Lurana Ralph Munroe died 1 January 1866 in Ottawa County, Michigan.

Their son Edmond died 10 June 1866, at the age of only 23, place not specified.

Leicester was apparently missed by the census taker in 1870.

In 1880, Leicester Munroe lived with his son Henry and family in Olive, Ottawa, Michigan. Henry’s wife, Maria, died in December 1882 in Olive.

Leicester moved to Kalamo, Eaton, Michigan sometime in the 1880s and died there on November 16, 1890. He was buried in the little cemetery there. Because his son David died and was also buried there the next July, it is possible that Leicester was living with David and family in Kalamo.

William Orlando Munroe and Ann Charlotte Flanders

William Orlando Munroe was the 3rd son and 4th child of Leicester and Lurana Ralph Munroe of New York. He was born in Lockport, Niagara, New York on 25 September 1826. When he was two, his brother closest to him in age, Dow Ralph Munroe, died. The family moved to Monroe County, Michigan before he turned three years old. He gained four younger brothers and two younger sisters while the family was there and in Hillsdale County. In Hillsdale County, they lived in the town of Pittsford. William’s grandfather, David Munroe, died there in 1837 just before William turned 11. William’s elder sister, Mary Ann, married Jabez Northrup there in 1843 when William was 16.

Around the same time, probably William’s Ralph grandparents died—they were likely living with the family in Pittsford. The family moved to Kinderhook, Branch, Michigan before 1854. In 1852, William’s sister Harriet, age 14, died. Within a four-mile radius, just across the border of Indiana near Jamestown, lived a beautiful girl named Ann Charlotte Flanders, who caught William’s eye.

Ann Charlotte Flanders was born in Pennsylvania in 1837 or late 1836. Her parents were Christian W. and Mary Ann Flanders. She was the eldest of six children. Her siblings were Mary Ann (1839), Robert W. (1841), Elizabeth (1842), John M.R. (1845), and Loisa A. (1849). (In the 1840 Census, the parents were between 20 and 30, the two eldest girls were under 5, and there was a boy 10–15 living with them—possibly a brother of one of the parents.) When the 1850 Census was taken, they were living in Jamestown, Steuben, Indiana, about four miles south of Kinderhook, Michigan. Christian Flanders appeared in 1864 tax lists living in Noble township, just west of Kinderhook.

William Orlando Munroe and Ann Charlotte Flanders were married on June 1, 1854 in Kinderhook, Branch, Michigan. She was 17 years old; he was 27.

William does not seem to have had a steady trade. The family moved around quite a bit in the next fifteen years. In 1860 William was a teamster. In 1870 he was a carpenter. We do not know all the jobs he had in all the places they lived. The following children were born to them, the first five each in a different place:

• Anna Jane Munroe, b. 18 September 1855 in Branch County, Michigan.
• William Lester Munroe, b. 21 April 1858 in New London, Waupaca, Wisconsin.
• Mary Lurana Munroe, b. 17 January 1861 in Oshkosh, Winnebago, Wisconsin.
• Charles Henry Munroe, b. 9 May 1863 in Green Bay, Brown, Wisconsin.
• James Deyoe Munroe, b. 18 March 1865 in Bear Creek, Manistee, Michigan.
• John David Munroe, b. 31 August 1867 in Bear Creek, Manistee, Michigan.

William’s mother died in January 1866 and six months later his brother Edmond died. His and Ann’s baby, John David, died at the age of four and a half months, on 15 January 1868 in Bear Creek. A greater disaster befell the family when Ann Charlotte Flanders Munroe died the next year on 21 July 1869 in Bear Creek. She was only 32 years old. The family was broken up by her death; probably William could not care for all of the children by himself. Thirteen-year-old Anna took over the housekeeping and the care of eleven-year-old Lester and four-year-old James, but nine-year-old Mary and seven-year-old Charles were farmed out to relatives.

The 1870 Census found Charles and Mary living with William’s brother James and his wife, Jane, and their three children who were younger than Charles and Mary. James was a preacher. Charles and Mary were reported to be 11 and 8 years old, respectively, which does not agree with the family records of their ages, but the census taker or their aunt or uncle could easily have mixed up and changed their ages. William’s family in the same census has all the ages right, but the birth places are incorrect, and Anna’s name is spelled Hannah.

William Orlando Munroe

There is a marriage record for William Munroe and a widow, Mrs. M. L. Smith, in Kinderhook, Michigan in 1873. Family records contain no corroboration that William Orlando Munroe married a second time, but it is entirely possible. She may have died not long after their marriage, which could explain why we knew nothing about this.

William’s daughter Anna Jane Munroe died just before her 21st birthday, on 26 August 1876 in Grand Haven, Ottawa, Michigan.

In 1880 William must have been missed by the census takers. Later he lived with his son Lester’s family in Arkansas. While he was with them, his 5-year-old grandson Claudy died in January 1897. William Orlando Munroe died in Little Rock at the age of 71 on 21 April 1898.

 

William Lester Munroe and Mary Jane Whittenton Johnson Munroe

William Lester Munroe

William Lester Munroe was the second child and first son of William Orlando Munroe and Ann Charlotte Flanders Munroe. He always went by the name “Lester.” He was born 21 April 1858 at New London, Waupaca County, Wisconsin. His sister Anna was 2½ when he was born. The family moved to Oshkosh in Winnebago County, and there his sister Mary Lurana was born when Lester was almost 3. They moved again, to Green Bay in Brown County, and there his brother Charles Henry was born when Lester was 5. The family moved again, to Bear Creek in Manistee County. There, when Lester was almost 7, his brother James Deyoe was born. They were still living in Bear Creek when Lester’s youngest brother, John David, was born at the end of August 1867, when Lester was 9.

Lester’s family endured a loss the next winter when his baby brother, John David, died. A year and a half later their mother, Ann Charlotte Flanders Munroe, died on 21 July 1869, and the family suffered severely. Lester’s father could not take care of all the children, so the two middle children, Mary and Charles, went to live with their uncle and aunt James and Jane Munroe. They would never be all together again. Anna took over the household duties, and Lester helped as much as he could. They had the care of their little brother, James, while their father worked.

Lester’s father remarried, to a widow named M.L. Smith in 1873. Sadly, Lester’s sister Anna died only a month away from her twenty-first birthday in 1876.

Later in life Lester swore he would never allow his own family to be broken up the way his father had had to do. His sister Mary became close to Lester and James later on, but Charles did not.

Lester moved to Arkansas in search of work, and there when he was 26, he met and married a widow, Mrs. Mary Jane Johnson, who had two children (though one of them had probably died by this time). Despite her coming from a staunch Southern family that had sympathized with and fought for the Confederate Cause in the Civil War, and despite Lester’s being not only a Northerner but practically a carpetbagger to boot, he seems to have overcome their prejudices for a time.

Mary Jane Whittenton (sometimes spelled Whittington) was born in 1857 in Jackson, Madison County, Tennessee to Solomon and Mary Whittenton. Her father had died in 1874, almost a decade before she met Lester, as had her older brother, William, and younger sister, Jos Lane. Her living siblings were Valerie Jane (1851–1936), Mary Ann (1855–1885), and Frances Elizabeth (1856–1910). Her younger brothers were Thomas Jabe (1861–1910), and Bedford Forrest (1864–1887). Within a few years her sister Mary Ann and brother Bedford Forrest died also.

Mary Jane had married Barney S. Johnson on May 2, 1876 in Jackson, Madison, Tennessee. They had moved to Bald Knob, White, Arkansas and had the following children:

• Emma, born in 1877, probably died before 1884
• Annie Sophronia, also known as Annie Frona, born in October 1879

Barney was killed in an accident in the summer or fall of 1880. Emma must have died sometime in the next few years, because after Lester Munroe married Mary Jane, no records of any child except Annie Frona turned up. Annie Frona reported her birth year as 1880 a lot of the time, but since she was a 6-month-old baby on the 1880 census, she had to have been born in 1879. Mary Jane’s younger daughters said that she and Barney also had a son named either Eugene or Sam, but no records have ever been found about him. If he existed, he must have been born the autumn after his father’s death and died soon afterward, but it is more likely that he never existed; instead, his existence was likely a mistake for the actual child, Emma, who died very young.

Lester and Mary Jane were married June 1, 1884 in White County, Arkansas. He worked at whatever odd jobs he could get, and the family was very poor. They lived in rural White County—or at least his wife lived there and he traveled around working and sending whatever money he could make home to her. Their first child was born there:

• John William, 8 May 1885

Six months later in an effort to get a steady income, he enlisted in the Army at St. Louis, on 12 November 1885. His enlistment papers say his occupation was that of a painter. Apparently he couldn’t stick the army and deserted on March 16, 1886 somewhere in Ohio. He went home to White County where soon the twins were born:

• Flora, 14 June 1886
• Florence, 14 June 1886

After the birth of the twins, the family went to Jackson, Madison, Tennessee, where Mary Jane’s mother and siblings lived. There the two little babies died, Flora on October 28, and Florence on November 10. Mary Jane’s mother also died, December 20, 1886, about a month after Florence. The deaths of their children and Mary Jane’s mother must have been a terrible blow to Lester and Mary Jane. They moved back to Arkansas and lived for a time in Newton County. There the following children were born:

• Agnes Telitha, 29 February 1888
• Allie May, 11 May 1889
• Claude Solomon, 19 April 1891
• Lillie Belle, 13 September 1892

In early 1893 the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma sold to the United States government a strip of land along the northern border of Oklahoma, and the U.S. government opened it up to white settlers in September 1893. Over 100,000 prospective settlers raced to claim plots of land, the Munroes among them. They lived at Newkirk, Kay, Oklahoma for some months, and there their second-to-the-last daughter was born:

• Jessie Jane, 28 May 1894

But whatever they tried in Oklahoma did not work out and they moved back to Arkansas, this time living in the city of Little Rock. It was there that Lester’s father, William Orlando Munroe, came to live with them. And it was there that their last child was born on Christmas day:

• Medora A, 25 December 1895

Lester and Mary Jane must have been sorely grieved when their son Claudy died at the age of five on 26 January 1897. A little over a year later Lester’s father, William Orlando Munroe, died at the age of 71.

Mary Jane’s sister was married to a photographer who had a studio just east of Little Rock in Saline, Lonoke County. They took their little girls over there and had a picture done of them. Clockwise from the top left they are: Allie May, Lillie Belle, Jessie Jane, Medora, and Agnes Telitha.

The family was still very poor, and when anybody got sick they did not have the money to call a doctor. This proved to be a disaster when Mary Jane got sick in the winter of 1899. She died at the age of about 42 on March 3, 1899, leaving Lester to try to keep the family together. The family consisted of his stepdaughter Annie, who was about 19, and his children John (14), Agnes (12), May (10), Lillie (6), Jessie (5), and Dora (3).

John had suffered blindness as a result of untreated conjunctivitis and was enrolled as a charity case at the Arkansas School for the Blind in Little Rock. He was listed as a pupil there on the 1900 Census, taken in May when he had just turned 15. He recovered his eyesight in time. Lester kept the children as well as he could as he traveled around looking for work. Perhaps Mary Jane’s sister over in Lonoke County took the girls in from time to time. Mary Jane’s daughter Annie also probably took care of her little sisters, at least some of the time. The 1900 Census showed Annie was boarding with a family and working as a servant. She married Clint Cusick in June 1902. Annie, and later her children, always stayed in touch with her half-brother and sisters.

Meanwhile, Lester was having less and less luck at finding and keeping jobs. He had had some good jobs now and then. At one time he was a finishing carpenter for the Iron Mountain Railway coaches. But that hadn’t lasted. Perhaps after his wife was dead, his Southern neighbors were far less likely to cut him any slack and resented him for living among them and taking jobs from Southerners like themselves. Perhaps also Lester’s in-laws were angry at his poverty and inability to provide a good enough living to keep Mary Jane alive and well, let alone provide a decent living for his children. Whatever the problems, in about 1903 when Lester heard about the Bureau of Reclamation’s scheme to build a series of dams on the Boise River (the Boise Reclamation Project), he packed up and moved his children on the train to Idaho.

Whenever he could, Lester found the means to have portraits done of his family. This portrait of him surrounded by his children must have been taken soon after the move to the West. Clockwise from the top they are: John William, Allie May, Lillie Belle, Medora, Jessie Jane, and Agnes Telitha.

In Idaho the children began to give Lester trouble, if they hadn’t already been doing so. Agnes was running around with boys and eloped just before Christmas 1904, when she was 16 years old, with a young man named Bill Allen. May and Lillie hatched a scheme to make some money by coating pennies with mercury and getting their little sisters Jessie and Dora (or Dodie as she was called) to pass them off as dimes in the drug store.

The job on the Boise Reclamation project did not last as long as Lester expected, and he packed up the family once more, loading all their goods into a spring wagon pulled by two horses, and riding their best horse, set off for the Oregon coast. Near the town of Vale, just over the Oregon border, they were going to camp for the night, and Lester, having found that they needed more supplies, rode back to the town. He left strict instructions for John and May to hobble the horses and keep a close watch on things until he returned. But the instant he was out of sight, John and May took the hobbles off the horses and had a grand time riding them around while Lille sat in their tent with Jessie and Dodie and told them stories to keep them entertained. When John and May came in, they didn’t think anything more about their father’s instructions. But when Lester returned in the morning, the two horses were gone. Either John and May had not hobbled them correctly, or they had been stolen. No matter that John was over 20 and May was a dignified 16 herself, the two got a whipping from their irate father.

They had to walk all the way across Oregon, for the one horse could not pull a loaded wagon with anybody riding in it. Many years later Dodie still complained about having to walk through the snows of MacKenzie Pass. It is not unreasonable to assume that everybody had to strap on whatever they could carry in makeshift backpacks. They arrived in Marshfield (now called Coos Bay) at the end of 1905 and there rented a small place for the girls to live while Lester and John went out to find work.

In about a year they moved up to Portland, taking a ship from Coos Bay. At the mouth of the Columbia River, the ship was towed across the dangerous part and into the port. They arrived in Portland in 1907, after the great Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition was over. Lester had not wanted to be there with the crowds attracted by a World’s Fair. Agnes came with her husband Bill in tow, and he went out to work with Lester and John. Sometimes they would get jobs that kept them away from home for several weeks at a time. For a time, John and Bill rode the rails around the west as they worked, while Lester worked up and down the Pacific Coast. One time outside Denver John fell from the car and got all banged up. The Salvation Army picked him up and bandaged him and sent him on his way. He always had a somewhat crippled hand after that.

One reason Lester had wanted to move to Oregon was that his brother James and sister Mary had both moved there with their spouses. Mary had been in the South, actually in Little Rock, and when she and her husband moved away, she had kept writing to Lester and inviting him to join them. Lester felt drawn to be near his own family members. This picture of him with Mary and their brother James was taken in the 1920s.

The girls began working as soon as they could, and except for Agnes, they married as soon as they were 18. This photograph was taken of Lester with his daughters and their children in autumn 1917.

At left is Agnes, holding her daughter Mildred Nelson. Her daughter Mary Agnes Allen is standing beside her, and her son Edwin Nelson is holding her hand.
Back left is May, holding her son Ashley Sherman Hallett. Her daughter Pauline Rieboldt is standing in front of her, and Paul Rieboldt Jr. is standing in front of Pauline.
Seated center is Lester Munroe, holding Jessie’s son Cecil Page (left) and Lillie’s son Herbert Read (right).
Back center is Lillie, with her daughter Viola standing in front of her. Her son Carl would be born in early November 1917.
Back right is Jessie holding her daughter Thelma Page. Her son Francis Page is standing in front of her.
Seated right is Dodie holding her first son, Alfred Raymond Copeland, born in August 1917.

Lester built a house in Portland, and sometime after he sold it, he bought a small farm in McMinnville and lived there until the 1930s. In McMinnville all the Munroe children and their families would get together for huge Fourth of July picnics that lasted several days. The men would bring out trestles and set boards on them for long tables, and the women would cook and cook and cook. After Lester sold his farm to his daughter Lillie and her husband, he moved to San Diego to live the rest of his life with his daughter May.

John William Munroe married Margaret Cochrane, a Scottish immigrant, about 1920. Their daughter, Barbara, was born the next year. Margaret died in the early 1950s of cancer. John married again, but the marriage was something of a disaster and was very short. John died April 29, 1960 just short of his 75th birthday.

After Agnes eloped with William Henry Allen at Christmas 1904, the rest of the family moved to Oregon. Agnes and Bill followed soon after. Their daughter Mary Agnes was born in 1907 (Agnes had two other children with Bill, but they died as infants and nothing is known about them). They were divorced, and by 1914 she had married Ame Nelson. They had two children, Edwin (1915) and Mildred (1916). In 1923, Agnes married Ed Clow. Their two children were Naomi (1924) and Eugene (1926). Curiously, Agnes appears in the 1910 Census without her daughter, who cannot be found in any relative’s household. This is the census where Agnes reports that she has borne three children but only one is living. Then she has three children (Mary, Ed, and Mildred) with her in the 1920 Census when she was married to Ame Nelson. But in 1930 when she should have had at least the 4- and 6-year-olds if not also the 14- and 15-year olds, she is living with her husband Ed Clow and a servant woman who has a son. Her children do not appear in any other household in this census. It is very odd. In the 1940 Census she has her two Clow children living with her and her husband. Since her daughter Mary Agnes disappears from all official records and since nobody in the family ever seemed to talk about her, we think she must have died after her sole appearance in official records on the 1920 Census. Agnes grew more conservative in her behavior as she aged. She died December 12, 1967 at age 79.

Allie May Munroe married Paul Rudolph Rieboldt in October 1907 and had a daughter, Pauline May (1909), and then a son, Paul Jr (1912), and then Paul Sr. died in June 1912. May married Bud Hallett in March 1914 and they had a son, Ashley (1916). Bud died in Yokohama, Japan, in April 1918, probably a victim of the Spanish Influenza pandemic. May married third Owen Alderson Cade in December 1920. They had two children, Minnie Lee Love Cade (1924), and Owen Lester Cade (1926). They lived in the vicinity of San Diego, California, for the rest of their lives. May had her father, Lester Munroe, living with them when Lester died in June 1938 at the age of 80. May died December 26, 1975 in San Diego, aged 76.

Lillie married Lloyd Alvero Read in October 1910 and had Viola (1912), Earl (1914), Herbert (1915), Carl (1917), Loretta (1919), Charlotte (1921), Clarence (1925), Alice (1927), and Marjorie (1930). Earl lived for less than a month. After Marjorie left home, they adopted Barbara in 1952. They lived in a number of places around Oregon all of their very long lives. Lillie died March 16, 1992, age 99½.

Jessie Jane Munroe married Frank A. Page in 1912. They had Cecil (1913), Francis (1915), Thelma (1916), Hazel (1918), Thomas (1920), and Beatrice (1922). Jessie married a second time to a Mr. Putnam. Jessie’s second marriage didn’t last, and by 1940 Jessie had married George Downing, who had several children of his own. Either Mr. Putnam or George Downing had a daughter named Edith who ended up marrying Dodie’s son Clyde Copeland. Jessie informally took in two babies to rear, Mary and Barbara, in the mid-1940s. She separated from George, but they remained married although Jessie lived in California and George in Washington. Jessie’s health was not very good, and she died relatively young, at the age of 57 on September 26, 1951. Little Mary was sent back to her mother, and little Barbara was formally adopted by Jessie’s sister Lillie.

Medora “Dodie” Munroe married Fred Raymond Copeland in 1916. They had Alfred (1917) in Washington, and Clyde (1919), Iva (1921), and Jack (1923) in Oregon. Eventually Dodie and Ray made their home in Stockton, California. Dodie lived to be 100 years old, dying February 9, 1996.

What Happened to Solomon and Mary Whittenton’s Children?

Of the eight children of Solomon and Mary Whittenton, only four lived long enough to marry and have children of their own:

• Valerie Jane married James Hart and had four children. 
• Mary Jane married first Barney Johnson and had two daughters and a son. After Barney’s death, she married William Lester Munroe and had nine more children. 
• Frances Elizabeth married George Darling Pond and had five children, only one of whom lived to adulthood. 
• Thomas Jabe married a younger sister of George D. Pond, Narcissus Jane Pond, and they had eight children. 

[To see the post about Solomon and Mary and their family, click here.]

Valerie Jane Whittenton Hart

Valerie Jane Whittenton was born in March probably in 1851 on her father’s farm in District 17 of Madison County, Tennessee. She probably did not get much schooling and was never very accurate about her true age, tending to say she was older than she probably really was.

When she was a girl of about 10, the Civil War started. How it affected her in particular we do not know, but her father’s farm was reduced during the war to about half its original size. Probably Valerie, as the eldest, was responsible early in life for looking after her seven younger siblings and helping her mother with all the work around the house and garden. They made butter and cheese and other milk products from their milk cows, and perhaps Valerie learned early to do the milking and other chores.

While Valerie was growing up, her next sibling, William, died, and also her youngest sister, Jos Laney. Their father died in 1874 when Valerie would have been about 23 years old. She must have been helping her mother after that, but on May 15, 1879 she married James M. Hart in Madison County and moved away to Henderson County, next door to Madison County. She was probably 27 or 28 years old.

James M. Hart was a farmer born in Tennessee to North Carolina-born parents. His birthday was in August 1850, so he was probably just a little older than Valerie, although in various censuses she described herself as older than he was. They had five children:

• William Solomon Hart, born September 18, 1880
• Mary Ann Hart, born October 1881
• Martha Elizabeth Hart, born April 1884
• Elzie L Hart, a son, born September 1887
• Nancy Catherine Hart, born April 1895 

The family does not appear on the 1880 Census; probably they lived in an area that was missed by the census taker. But in 1900 they were recorded on their farm in District 6 of Henderson County, and the census report shows that Valerie had borne five children and all five were then living. However, that decade was deadly for this family.

By the time the 1910 Census was taken, Valerie’s husband, James, and children Mary Ann and Elzie were dead. In addition, daughter Martha’s husband died right before the census was taken in 1910 and she was left with four little children, and right after the same census, William’s wife died and he was left with three children.

William Solomon (who went by the name Bill) had been the first of the children to marry. He married a woman named Nora on May 17, 1901 in Henderson County, Tennessee. They had three daughters: Eula Mae (1902–1973), Essie Pearl (1905–1996), and Edna Daisy (1908–1988). Unfortunately for Bill and the girls, Nora died in late 1910.

Meanwhile, Bill’s sister Martha had married a man surnamed Williams and had borne a daughter and two sons: Lula (1904), Sam (1906), and Robert (1907). When the census was taken in April 1910, she was a widow, and her son Clyde was born just after that, so probably her husband had died just a few months before the census, but no records have come to light to say exactly who he was. There were plenty of Williams families living in the same area. It is a bit difficult to find the right family, because a black woman named Martha Hart married a black man named Allen Williams around the same time. There is a record of a Martha Hart in Henderson County marrying a man named D.A. Williams on July 12, 1903 that could be our family, but it could instead be the black family. If more records come to light, we might be able to figure out what our Martha’s husband’s name was.

Meanwhile, Bill married Susan Ella Petty on September 22, 1912. They had four children together: Felix Ray Hart (1912–1992), Joe Hart (1915–1920), Mary Sue Hart (1917–2000), and Rachel Elizabeth Hart (1925–1999). From the evidence of his first three daughters naming some of their children after their stepmother, Susie must have been good to Bill’s little girls.

The youngest of Valerie’s children, Nancy Catherine Hart, went by the name Nancy when she was young but changed to Cathy as she grew older. She was living with her mother when the 1910 census found them next door to Martha and her children. At that time Cathy was 15 years old. She married James M. Pollard on December 23, 1914 when she was 19 years old. He was a farm laborer who never owned his own farm. They may have had three children; if so, all three died between 1920 and 1930. James died July 23, 1932. Cathy went back to living with her sister Martha and their mother, Valerie.

In 1935 Valerie and her two daughters were all living with Martha’s son Clyde Williams and his family. Valerie Whittenton Hart died suddenly on April 27, 1936. She was 87 years old.

Bill died August 30, 1963 about two weeks away from his 83rd birthday. We don’t know when Martha died. Cathy died in January 1971 at the age of 75.

Frances Elizabeth Whittenton Pond

Frances Elizabeth Whittenton was born on her father’s farm in District 17 of Madison County, Tennessee in May 1855. She was named after her paternal grandmother, Frances (Maynard) Whittington, and perhaps also after her paternal aunts-by-marriage: her uncles Gibson and George were both married to women named Elizabeth.

Frances’ older siblings were Valerie (age 4), William (age 2), and MaryAnn (age 1). When she was 3, her sister Mary Jane was born, and when Frances was 5, her sister Jos Laney came along. Frances was 6 when her brother Thomas Jabe arrived, and she was 9 when the last brother, Bedford Forrest, was born. The Civil War had been raging during that time, and Frances would have been aware that her uncle Quince Whittenton was fighting under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

The family did not suffer as many bereavements due to the war as some families did, for Quince came home safely, as did uncle Cason Coley down in Texas. She may have heard, though, that her cousin James Whitenton, uncle Weston’s son down in Texas, had died in a battle in Louisiana, and her cousin John Peebles Whittington, uncle Richard’s son back in North Carolina, had also lost his life during the war.

During that decade Frances’ older brother, William, and her younger sister Jos Laney both died, but we don’t know exactly when. After the war was over, the family was not as wealthy as they had been, but they didn’t want for much either, except from the effects of the sad accidents or illnesses that took their siblings from them.

When Frances was 19, her father died in the fall of 1874. She and her mother and siblings kept their farm going for a number of years after that. Frances apparently went out to work, for she was not living at home with her mother and siblings when the 1880 census was taken. She met George Darling Pond, a native of Tennessee who was about 8 years younger than she, being born in March 1863. They were married October 16, 1886 in Madison County. Sadly for Frances, her mother died in December 1886, right after Frances’ marriage.

Frances and George had five children, but four of them are unknown, for they had died before 1900. George may have initially been a farm worker, but the budding photography industry was booming, and by 1900 he was a photographer with his own studio in Saline, Lonoke County, Arkansas. George took photographs of Frances’ sister Mary Jane’s family in Arkansas.

When the 1900 Census was taken, only their son Luther was living. Luther was born August 15, 1887 in Jackson, Tennessee, so he was probably their eldest child. George died in Lonoke County, Arkansas, in 1903, and Frances died there in early 1910.

Luther was working in 1910 as a bottler in a factory in Gum Woods, Lonoke County when the next census was taken. He was boarding there with the Joe J. Warren family. Later that summer, he married Miss Ethel Adams on August 17, 1910 in Lonoke County. They did not have any children. By the time Luther had to register for the draft during World War I, he was working as a night supervisor at the Pine Bluff Cotton Oil Company. His draft card described him as 5'11" tall, slender with brown eyes and hair, and a crippled right hand. Luther died in the world-wide influenza epidemic on October 13, 1918 in Pine Bluff, Jefferson County, Arkansas.

Mary Jane Whittenton Johnson Munroe

Mary Jane Munro, about 1898

Mary Jane was born on her parents’ farm near Jackson, Madison County, Tennessee, sometime in 1857. We do not know the month of her birth, and in fact, we know very few actual facts about her, which is ironic since she is our great-grandmother and yet we know a lot more about her siblings, nieces and nephews, even her cousins, than about her. She was the fifth child of Solomon Yancy Whittenton and Mary A. Hogan Whittenton. She had three older sisters and one older brother, one younger sister and two younger brothers.

She was four years old when the Civil War started and about eight when it ended. She probably saw soldiers marching along the roads near the farm, and if the family went into Jackson, she certainly saw them there. She would have known that her uncles Quince and Cason Coley fought in the war, and maybe she was told her cousins John Peebles Whittington and James William Whittenton had died during their service in the War. She would have known the South lost the War, and she may or may not have cared about that. Her father may have been bitter about losing half his farm during that time, for the family became poorer as a result, or perhaps Solomon was a philosophical man with a cheerful disposition in the face of adversity.

Mary Jane grew up on the farm and probably learned a lot about the chores of that kind of life. She would have helped with the family production of butter, which they made from the milk of their three cows and sold around the neighborhood or even in Jackson. They had a lot of hogs too, so perhaps she learned to take care of them, being careful not to fall inside their pen as she fed them over the fence. Her mother would have needed help in the house too, with ten in the family and sometimes a worker living in as well. There would have been the food to prepare and cook, the dishes to wash, floors to scrub, and clothes to wash, hang, and iron using a flat iron heated in the fire or on the stove. The mending and sewing would have seemed never-ending. She might even have learned to help plant, hoe, and harvest cotton, and to chop wood and milk the cows, for her older brother, William, surely could not have done everything, and the other boys were little. Perhaps before the war her father might have hired slaves from neighbors to help with the harder work, but during the war things got a lot harder and hiring workers became a lot more expensive.

Then William and the youngest sister, Jos Laney, died sometime before 1874. These deaths must have been hard for her and the rest of her family, but it was surely far worse when her father died in the fall of 1874. Mary Jane was 17; her older sisters Valerie, Mary Ann, and Frances were 23, 20, and 19; her brothers Jabe and Bedford were 13 and 10. The older sisters and their mother shouldered all the burdens of the farm and kept it going. Valerie and Frances went out to work, probably sending money home to help their mother.

A little over a year later, on May 2, 1876, Mary Jane married a neighbor boy, Barney S. Johnson. Barney was a farmer, 22 years old. The Johnsons had been farming land in Madison County for decades, and Barney probably was kin to one of their families, if he wasn’t actually a neighbor already. Looking for better opportunities, they moved immediately to White County, Arkansas. There Mary Jane and Barney had two daughters:

• Emma, born in 1877
• Annie Sophronia, born in October 1879 

In June 1880 when the census was taken, Mary Jane and Barney and their two little girls were living in Bald Knob Township, White County, Arkansas. Sadly for Mary Jane, Barney died in September 1880, and Mary Jane bore their only son after Barney had died. James Samuel Johnson was born January 14, 1881. Their daughter Emma must have died soon after that.

The next we know of Mary Jane, she was getting married again. William Lester Munroe (also spelled Munro before 1920) had moved down to Arkansas from Michigan. Lester, as he was called, had been born April 21, 1858 at New London, Waupaca County, Wisconsin, to William Orlando Munro and Ann Charlotte Flanders Munro. He had grown up in Wisconsin in a family that moved often. His younger brother and his mother died when he was around 10, and the family was broken up and the children lived with various relatives. Then his older sister died. Lester never got over the breakup of his family and looked for stability in his own. He had been working odd jobs in Wisconsin and Michigan when he moved to Arkansas to find work as a carpenter, and there he met Mary Jane.

But to Mary Jane’s neighbors and kin, Lester Munroe was little better than the carpetbaggers of 15 years before. He was unquestionably a Northerner, and he had Yankee roots in New York to boot. He was looking for opportunities, looking to make money. He was very poor and became poorer still in Arkansas. He was never highly educated. It is highly likely that he was never really accepted in the communities of Arkansas where he tried to live for twenty years.

But Mrs. Mary Jane Johnson ignored her neighbors and kinsfolk’s criticisms, and she and Lester Munro got their marriage license on May 29 and were married June 1, 1884 by a man named Ben H. Lumpkin in White County.

Lester Munro worked as a carpenter and cabinet maker, but when times were hard he did any kind of work he could find. He was never a steady worker, and the family became extremely poor. They lived in rural areas in White and Newton Counties and moved to Little Rock later. Their nine children were:

• John William Munro, born May 8, 1885 in Bald Knob, White County, Arkansas. 
• Flora Munro, a twin, born June 14, 1886 in White County.
• Florence Munro, a twin, born June 14, 1886 in White County.
• Agnes Telitha Munro, born February 29, 1888 in Newton County.
• Allie May Munro, born May 11, 1889 in Newton County.
• Claude S Munro, born April 19, 1891 in Newton County.
• Lillie Belle Munro, born September 13, 1892 in Newton County.
• Jessie Jane Munro, born May 28, 1894 in Newkirk, Kay, Oklahoma.
• Medora A Munro, born December 25, 1895 in Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas. 

The twins, Flora and Florence, did not live long. The family evidently went to Mary Jane’s mother’s farm near Jackson, Tennessee in the summer as soon as Mary Jane and the twins could travel. Mary Jane’s brother Jabe and sister Frances were both getting married. Jabe married Narcissus Jane Pond in September, and Frances married Narcissus’s older brother George in mid-October. But there must have been some sickness going around, or else the twins had been premature and failed to thrive, for Flora died October 28, 1886. Then Florence died on November 10, 1886. Finally Mary Jane’s mother died on December 20, 1886 at the age of about 61. It sort of makes it look as if the family suffered that autumn from something like whooping cough or some other contagious disease that takes the elderly and the very young. A year later the mother’s estate was settled, and we know that Mary Jane’s other sister Mary Ann and brother Bedford Forrest had died before the settlement, but we don’t know if they had died before Mary Jane was there or after. If they died around the same time as their mother and Mary Jane’s babies, it will be much more likely that something contagious took them all.

Mary Jane and Lester moved their family back to Arkansas, settling this time in Newton County. They lived there for about five years, and then they tried something new. In 1893 the Cherokee nation sold land along the top border of Oklahoma to the U.S. Government, and on September 16, 1893 the land was opened to white settlers, first come, first served. Over 100,000 people, including Mary Jane and Lester, raced to claim plots of land. The Munros chose land near Newkirk, Kay County, Oklahoma, where their eighth child was born. But whatever they tried there did not work out, and they went back to Arkansas within a year. About this time Mary Jane’s son Sam ran away to Georgia.

Munro Sisters, about 1898

Over in Lonoke (just east of Little Rock) lived Mary Jane’s sister Frances and George Pond. George was a photographer, and he took photographs of Mary Jane and her family. Since the Munros did not have much money, it may be that the photographs were taken as advertisements for George’s photography studio or simply as family charity. This photograph of the Munro daughters was taken by their uncle George D. Pond. Clockwise from the upper left they are: May, Lillie, Jessie, Dora, and Agnes.

Uncle George’s son, their cousin Luther, was a favorite with his little cousin Lillie. She never understood why he did not stay in touch after she and her family moved to Oregon. She did not know he lost all his own family and died himself in the 1918 ’flu epidemic.

One memory daughter May had was that her mother, Mary Jane, was addicted to snuff. She would send the girls out into the fields in the rural area where they lived to gather a particular kind of weed twig that she used to make a snuff dipper. Snuff is smokeless tobacco, made from pulverized tobacco leaves. It can be sniffed into the nose and absorbed through the mucous membranes, giving the user a quick nicotine fix, but since Mary Jane is remembered as using a twig dipper, she probably put it inside her cheek instead of sniffing it. This type of use of tobacco does not produce lung cancer, but it can contribute to tooth loss, cancers of the mouth or throat, and other problems.

Lester’s father, William Orlando Munro, came and lived with the family around that time. He had been a carpenter and had been little more successful than his son. In his late 60s he had retired and had been living with one son and then another. But perhaps it was not a good idea to have moved to Arkansas, for death stalked the family. On January 26, 1897 little Claudy died, age five. Lillie remembered playing with her brother Claudy and remembered how she missed him when he died. A year later, grandfather William Orlando Munro died at the age of 71. Then on March 3, 1899, the disaster happened when Mary Jane herself died at the early age of about 42, leaving Lester with seven children to take care of as well as to provide for.

Mary Jane’s death certificate said she died “for want of care.” The harsh words are heartless, but they reflect the reality of the Munro family’s poverty. They could not afford to call a doctor no matter how serious the illness; the death certificate says that the doctor did not see Mary Jane during her illness at all. Certainly with her elder daughter age 19, and younger daughters ages 11 and 12 and little girls from 3 to 7, she would have had children who would have tried to wait on their sick mother, but we don’t know if her elder daughter, Annie, was working elsewhere at the time, whether the younger children were also sick, or what the situation was. We do know that around this time 14-year-old John contracted scarlet fever and became blind to the degree that he was enrolled at the Arkansas School for the Blind in Little Rock. (He later recovered much of his sight.) All of this evidence draws a grim picture of the Munro family’s condition when their mother died.

One ironic note is that within a few years Lester left Arkansas and took all his children to Oregon. After everything he had experienced himself and had determined not to repeat in breaking up brothers and sisters, he left his stepdaughter behind and moved almost as far away as he could get. The Whittenton in-laws did not keep in touch with Lester nor with any of his children. The one exception is Annie Frona Johnson, Mary Jane’s daughter, who married Clint Cusick in June 1902 and who wrote letters to her sisters in Oregon and entertained them on visits in later decades. Annie died in 1957. She had also kept in touch with her runaway brother, Sam, who remained unknown by his half brother and sisters for the rest of their lives. He married when he was in his 40s, and he had one daughter. His great-granddaughter got in touch with one of Lillie’s granddaughters in 2017 after taking a DNA test, and the branches of the family were finally known to one another.

Thomas Jabe Whittenton

Thomas Jabe Whittenton was born in September 1861, the seventh child of Solomon Yancy Whittenton and Mary A Hogan Whittenton. His elder siblings were Valerie (age 10), William (age 8), Mary Ann (age 7), Frances (age 6), Mary Jane (age 4), and JosLane (age 1). The Civil War had just started, so Jabe (as he was called) probably didn’t remember much of it, but as he grew up, he would have been warned about soldiers and told especially to stay away from the Yankee soldiers who were just a mile away holding the town of Jackson. He would also have been warned against forming any childish friendships with African American children, whom his parents called “darkies,” avoiding the more pejorative terms common among the whites of that time and place. It was a time of great social turmoil, with the white population desperate to maintain the fiction of their own superiority over the minority races.

Jabe’s brother William and sister JosLane died sometime before 1874, perhaps while he was still quite a young child. Then his father died when Jabe was just 13, leaving him as the “man of the house,” so to speak. He would have helped his mother and sisters all he could to do the farming work, but it wasn’t enough. He hired himself out to work for neighbors as much as possible, as did his younger brother, Bedford Forrest Whittenton. The 1880 Census found him living with his mother on their farm still, with siblings Mary Ann and Bedford. But within seven years his mother, sister, and brother all had died. He and his other sisters had married—Mary Jane in 1876, Valerie in 1879, and he and Frances in the fall of 1886.

That summer he and Frances were planning their weddings to siblings George D. and Narcissus Jane Pond. Their sister Mary Jane had come from Arkansas with her daughter and son and newborn twin girls, born in June. Thomas Jabe Whittenton and Narcissus Jane Pond were married on September 23, 1886, and Frances Elizabeth Whittenton and George Darling Pond were married the middle of the next month. There may have been some sickness in the air, for the twins died within two weeks of each other at the end of October and beginning of November. They were followed by the death of their grandmother Mary A. Hogins Whittenton in December. Perhaps there was some kind of contagious disease going around that will be found to also have caused the deaths of Bedford and Mary Ann at the same time.

Jabe and Narcissus set up housekeeping and had a son the next spring whom they named after Jabe’s two brothers. William Forrest Whittenton was born in Madison County, Tennessee, on May 15, 1887. He died young in 1901, age 14, and was buried in Rocky Springs Cemetery in Madison County, Tennessee.

Their second child, Ernest L Whitenton, was born in March 1890. Ernest married Cora Lee Horton in 1909. They had a son, Elmer Cosett, in 1910, and a son, Lawrence, in 1914. Soon after that they were divorced. Ernest died in the ‘flu epidemic on 13 December 1918 while serving in the U.S. Army.

Their third child, Thomas Arthur Whittington, was born March 19, 1894. He married Annie Stacy Jennings in Mississippi and they had a son, Arvie Thomas, in 1916; a daughter, Lettie Jane, in 1918; twin sons Elbert Earnest and Earl in 1920 (Earl died at birth), sons Forrest Leon in 1921, and Roy Reese in 1928. Thomas Arthur died November 25, 1967 and was buried in Tupelo, Mississippi. His wife, Annie, died in 1968.

Their fourth child, Hubert Solomon Whittington, was born 11 June 1896. He married Daisy E. on April 29, 1916. They had a daughter, Helen, born May 27, 1917 who lived until 1994. They lived in Mississippi. Hubert died July 2, 1985, and Daisy died September 30, 1984.

The fifth child, Luther Plez Whitenton, was born April 15, 1899. He married Lula Velma Anderson and lived in Tupelo, Mississippi. He died there August 30, 1961. Lula died in 1986.

Their sixth child, Robert Whittenton, was born in 1901 in Tennessee. Nothing is known of him after he was listed on the 1920 Census living with his mother in Tupelo, Mississippi and working as a plumber.

Their seventh and eighth children were twins, Roy and Ruby, born October 13, 1903 in Mississippi. Roy lived in Shelby, Tennessee and died in May 1979. Ruby married Lawrence Mack Clark and lived in Mississippi. She died August 15, 1990.

Jabe and Narcissus Whittenton made their living farming in Madison County, Tennessee until 1901. After burying their son William, they moved to Tupelo, Mississippi, where they lived the remainder of their lives. Jabe must have suffered bad health, because at age 50 when the 1910 Census was taken, he was reported to have no occupation, and he died later that year. Meanwhile, his sons were working in the cotton mill. Nothing further is known of Narcissus Jane Pond Whittenton after the 1920 Census was taken in January, when she and her children Robert, Roy, and Ruby were living in Tupelo.

A Summary of Cousins

1. Emma Johnson, born in 1877
2. Annie Sophronia Johnson, born October 1879
3. William Solomon Hart, born September 18, 1880
4. James Samuel Johnson, born January 14, 1881
5. Mary Ann Hart, born October 1881
6. Martha Elizabeth Hart, born April 1884
7. John William Munro, born May 8, 1885
8. Flora Munro, a twin, born June 14, 1886
9. Florence Munro, a twin, born June 14, 1886
10. William Forrest Whittenton, born May 15, 1887
11. Luther Pond, born August 15, 1887
12. Elzie L Hart, a son, born September 1887
13. Agnes Telitha Munro, born February 29, 1888
14. Allie May Munro, born May 11, 1889
15. Unknown Pond #2 of Frances and George Pond, born about 1889
16. Ernest L Whitenton, born March 1890
17. Claudy S. Munro, born April 19, 1891
18. Unknown Pond #3 of Frances and George Pond, born about 1891
19. Lillie Belle Munro, born September 13, 1892
20. Thomas Arthur Whitenton, born March 19, 1894
21. Jessie Jane Munro, born May 28, 1894
22. Unknown Pond #4 of Frances and George Pond, born about 1894
23. Nancy Catherine Hart, born April 1895
24. Medora A Munro, born December 25, 1895
25. Unknown Pond #5 of Frances and George Pond, born about 1896
26. Hubert Solomon Whittington, born June 11, 1896
27. Luther Plez Whitenton, born April 15, 1899
28. Robert Whittenton, born 1901
29. Roy Whittenton, born October 13, 1903
30. Ruby Whittenton, born October 13, 1903