Preacher Gray & Jesse James

Dick' grandfather was a Methodist circuit rider minister. He farmed outside of Allerton,IL and was also the editor of the local paper. He was not a young man when he married Orpha Jane and started a second family. But the exciting story is that he rode with Jesse James! Ha! a connection with my family! I was intrigued but like most of the family thought the story apocryphal.
It seems that Grandpa was driving the old wagon into town one day and saw a stranger along side the road. A battered saddle rested beside him, but no horse was in evidence. Grandpa offered him a ride into town and as they went, they talked. There is no record of the conversation, either by hearsay or guesstimate, but at some point a group of men overtook them on horseback.
"You need a ride, Jesse?" one of them asked.
"Nah, I'm doing OK, Frank" the man in the wagon replied.
And that is where the family story ended.
Fast forward to the mid 1990s. Son Geoff called one night all excited. He had been watching "Biography" on the History Channel and the subject was Jesse James. In an interview the great grandson told of Jesse's being "born again" after a wagon ride with a parson on a dusty old road in Illinois.
Fall back again to a Franklin County MO story that tells of my great grandfather and a group of neighbors building a church in the hills near the farm. A stranger stopped and offered to help. He worked hard, shared a meal and was gone. No one was sure who he was, but this was Union country and there were suspicions.
When my mother was a young girl a huge cavern was discovered across the road from her grandparent's farm. In the cave were artifact from the years following the Civil War including some things that were supposed to have belonged to a notorious outlaw.
I grew up visiting that cave, known across the country as Mermac Caverns, Jesse James hideout.
The wagon ride and the church raising fit nicely...and maybe they are true.

The Old Ice House.

Franklin County was a Union county. They didn't appreciate Jerry Campbell's Rebel sympathies but when push came to shove they took care of their own, even the adopted ones.
The Union needed cannon fodder and the foolish farm boys had quit signing up...probably because the previous "fodder" had come home on crutches, missing eyes, arms, or legs. Too many were not coming home ever, lost in a field or a ditch. Even the dreamiest eyed fool could see this was not the way to glory.
The fields were going untended without enough hands and feet to plow, plant and reap. A woman could plow, sow, reap, cook, wash, only as much as one woman could do. A child was help, but only help. A child could not go out and plow on her own until she was well grown. It wasn't the gender, it was the numbers. It wasn't lack of strength, it was lack of numbers. Farms require hands. So when the 'conscriptors' came to Franklin County looking for recruits, Grandma took the "boys" and hid them in the woods behind the old ice house in Union. She and the girls took baskets of food to them every day until the feds had gone and the boys could come back to the fields.
We, the family, don't remember the names of the boys or the girls, but we all know what Grandma did to save her family during the war.

Jerry Reb

We were at a family funeral. I didn't get to attend many, living several states away, but this one coincided with a visit. It might have been Uncle Charley's or Aunt Maude Brown"s, but I am not sure. An elderly relative, seen seldom, known more through story than sight. There were cousins there I had not seen since childhood, others I had never met at all. All of Franklin County is related in some way. They were mostly my mother's cousins, many some degree of distance, second cousin, once removed. Most of my generation lived at a distance or were working.
We stood in the church talking family talk with those who remembered when. Always curious about family "secrets" I asked cousin Myron about Grandpa Jerry, my grandfather's father. No one has been able to trace his origins back any further than the Civil War when he arrived in Franklin County, a decidedly pro-Union county, with a wife, Mary Elizabeth and small children.
Now mind you, we were a family who knew our people. We KNEW Great Grandpa fought in the Revolution and got his plot of land in payment. We knew who married who and who moved where. We kept track of these things.
Well, not too long after they arrived Mary Elizabeth died. Saddled with young children, Jerry remarried soon changing wives but not names. Mary Elizabeth Gideon was his second bride.
And now the story gets guessy.
How did an incomer, a stranger, marry into one of the oldest families of Franklin County, an insular kind of a place to say the least? We know that with the war on there may have been a shortage of marriageable men. Maybe Grandpa Gideon needed help on the farm. Maybe ME the II was besot and determined. Nonetheless it seems a bit odd, viewing the information passed on by Mom's cousin Myron at the family funeral.
In true Franklin County style Myron remarked offhandedly, "Grandpa Jerry was a rebel, and the neighbors didn't like it much."

Matthew Nettle was my great grandfather. He was a farmer in Franklin Co. MO from about the time of the Civil War through WWI, I think. A man with a twinkle in his eye and a love for things that little boys are made of such as snips, and snails and puppy dog tails.
Mom (Blanche H. Campbell Downs) tells that Grandpa would come into the kitchen with his shirt rippling and a big grin on his face. He would pull out little green snakes or big black snakes, curling them around his arms and stroking them lovingly. Grandma Nettle was not fond of things that crawl, but her only admonishment would be a tiny shake of the head and a sad "Why, Matthew..." I suspect she had learned that a greater reaction brought larger incursions...in true little boy fashion. But we'll never know, now, will we?

In Memory of a Really Good Dog.

Billy, gone 3 years now, is still so part of our lives we look around for him. Baby turns to look when we say his name and some days I swear she is searching for him. Or maybe just something to fill that blank space in the heart where he used to be.
On the other hand she now has toys of her own...Billy insisted they were ALL HIS!
One day after he died I picked up all the toys he had left around the house and placed them all in a basket in the bedroom. Baby watched the last toy go in, looked up at me, stalked over to a basket which is taller than she is...stood up, and tossed Billy's fave back onto the floor. She backed off, looked to see what I would do. (Nothing)
Over the next few days all the toys came back out and were placed on the bed...where they reside to this day. Twice a day at 3:30 p.m. for the kid who used to come home and play at that time, and at bedtime, she tosses and squeeks, then replaces them at the foot of the bed until tomorrow.

The Red Riding Hood woods

My mother was born in 1914, the 5th of 7 siblings. The Campbell family lived with Rebecca's parents on the farm near Stanton, MO.
The older children attended a one room school house up by the road about 3 miles along the driveway and south a bit. It is long gone, but if you know where to look you can find the ruins. It wasn't too far from where the boys killed a wolf one winter.
The fields all lay beyond the woods...Little Red Riding Hood woods. Big, dark and scary to 6 and 4 year old girls commissioned to take the stone jug of lemonade and the basket of food to the men in the field. The older girls and the women were cooking up supper for the field hands. Biscuits and pies in the oven, pots at the boil, babies can't be left alone, feet and hands must be useful. Even tiny fearful hands and feet.
My mother never forgot those trips. Her voice trembled when she talked about it at the ages of 40, 57, 78, and 84. The dire fear of not only knowing that her brothers had killed a wolf nearby, but the responsibility of her little sister never left her.
She did it. She survived. But the adventure was pretty much knocked out of her.
She didn't like storms, but I never knew it. She didn't like the dark, but I didn't know it. She hated surprises and anything new or different, but I never knew. I thought she was strong and unconquerable, but really, she was just stubborn...and the bravest person I ever knew. Because I never knew...not until she told me.

My great grandfather Matthew Nettle, owned the farm Uncle Orville purchased just before he retired from the St. Louis Post Office. He was an Anderson and Aunt Hazel (Campbell) was my mother's oldest sibling. Both families had and still do live in Franklin County, Missouri.
The farm is 500 acres that would probably double in size is you could iron it out. With hills, gullies, creeks, dry creek beds, forests, bluffs, caves and a few tiny fields and ponds, it is beautiful and more than a little dangerous. My uncles killed wolves in the woods above the house. Coyote dogs killed and ate a flock of ducks. Lambs and calves disappear entirely on occasion. The family pony, April wandered down the hill, never came home and was never found. The sheep kill rattlesnakes in the old barn every day.
But there has never been a smell like that of the cedar woods at any time, but especially after a rain. There's fresh washed odor with an ancient tang at the back of your head that says heaven is very near here and has been, forever.
The stone in the shelter of the towering cedars is carmel colored, and so smooth and beautiful you want to taste it like candy. A shelf of this stone forms part of the old road down to the cabin. Chips from horse shoes and cuts from iron wrapped wagon wheels can be seen when you know what you are looking for. Cool and smooth on the hottest, dustiest day, I think it must be God's footstool.