The Ggma Chronicles, part 5: The Green Roots
Family and Community Solidarity; Written by Alice Green-Kollenborn (1911-2005)
Virginia Belle Myers, daughter of Eunice (Reeder) Myers and Sylvester Myers, was born near Grant City, Missouri, Worth County, on December 20th, 1879.
When Belle was three years old, in the spring of 1882 [actually, she would not turn three until 12/20/1882], her parents homesteaded land in western Kansas, Graham County, 15 miles north of Hill City. Her father, Sylvester, drove a herd of cattle to market across the frozen Missouri River. The last head had just stepped ashore when the ice buckled in the middle, and with a horrendous roar, ice and water hurled high into the air.
When Belle was about 16, she met Thomas Green at a camp meeting where her brother Emanuel was preaching. She was signing. Thomas was born in Wells County, Indiana, February 28, 1869 to Andrew Jackson Green and Mary Magdalene (Haecker) Green.
Thomas and Belle were married in 1896 in Graham County, Kansas, and moved into a sod house Thomas had built on his homestead. They had three girls, Effie, Lillian, and Ruth, born near Morland, Kansas. Belle was unhappy without her parents, since they moved to Benton County [Arkansas] in 1904. Thomas traded his Kansas homestead sight unseen for a 480-acre farm in Benton County on Sugar Creek in the Dug Hill community. He sent Belle and the three children ahead by train, following on a freight train with this stock and furniture.
There were few buildings on the farm, only a crude 4-room house with a front porch and a huge fireplace made of native stone. There was also a 2-story evaporator for drying fruit and a big log granary.
There were two sparkling springs that never ran dry. Thomas piped water into the house from one, and the other he piped into the new rock-walled spring-house and out to the big hollowed-out log trough where the stock always had fresh water.
Some of the hills were timbered, lush with wild berries, grapes, persimmons, and some in orchards (peaches, apples, pears, and plums). The timber was lush with wild huckleberries, strawberries, mulberries, wild grapes, and persimmons.
Sugar Creek meandered serenely around the lush alfalfa fields below the clay (Old Pineville) road that ran past Dug Hill School, now Highway 71.
Thomas built a long swinging bridge over Sugar Creek.
On January 11, 1907, Jesse Vilas (“Man”) was born. Charles Hurley was born in 1915 an died at four months. By 1915, Thomas and Belle had seven children, to whom they were devoted. They were gentle people, religious, and hard-working farmers. Thomas loved to sing and play the organ and his harmonica and rattle the bones as the children promenaded across the worn wood floor. He often invited friends in to play and sing old negro spirituals, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “Don’t You Hear Dem Blues?”
An outgoing man, Thomas loved to speak in public and debate political issues.
Fall was a busy season for the family. There was haying to finish, fruit to harvest and preserve, corn to shuck, fodder to shock, and many chores.
On October 9, 1915, at the age of 46, Thomas died of Bright’s Disease. Baby Charles died at four months the same year Thomas died. Belle managed to keep the seven children together on the farm and they continued attending the little one-room Dug Hill school and came home to be greeted by Old Shep, Thomas’ devoted black shepherd that had so faithfully followed his master down the fresh brown furrows as he plowed the fertile fields. The faithful dog that refused to part with his master but continued crossing Sugar Creek each evening and lying on his master’s grave.
In the fall of 1919, Belle and a couple of the older children were cutting sorghum cane below the pear orchard when the sharp knife slipped and cut deep into her shin bone. By the time Dr. Hurley drove the nine miles from Bentonville, gangrene had developed. The doctor advised immediate amputation as the only means of saving her life. But Belle begged, “Dr. I have to keep my leg. I have a farm to run and seven children to raise.”
He gave in to her pleading and did what he could, but had no miracle cures. To his amazement, when he returned early next morning, Belle’s temperature was down slightly and her breathing was easier. “Belle, when I left last night, your heart was pounding like an old rusty tin. I never expected to find you still hanging on,” the doctor said.
“But doctor, I had to live for my children’s sake,” Belle said. “I prayed all night for the Lord to spare me for them.”
She spent several months bed-fast with daughter Ruth in charge. Ruth quite school and was nurse to her mother and second mother to the younger children, a big responsibility for a 15-year-old.
The neighbors were wonderful. They came with baskets of home-grown food, baked goods, and even came in rigs, bringing gallons of molasses and food for winter. Belle and the children never ceased to be grateful for their kindness and help.
Ruth finished her college education on a scholarship and became a schoolteacher until she married a neighbor boy and raised a family. Lillian also went to school until she became a general secretary to C.A. Linebarger, co-owner of B.V. She never married. Mary worked her way through school, married, and raised four children on a farm in Idaho. Alice [Ggma] also worked for her education, married, and raised her children in California. Effie married and had three children and lived in Benton County most of her life, as did Andy, who worked for Burger Motors 34 years. Married Janet Strate, a local girl of Bentonville, and raised two boys. Man married a raised three children in California. Man and Alice are the only surviving members of Thomas and Belle’s children. Both live in California [at the time Ggma/Alice wrote this].
Virginia Belle never remarried, but continued living on the old home place at Dug Hill. She died in December, 1962, at the age of 83. She and Thomas rest beside baby Charles and Belle’s parents, Eunice and Sylvester Myers, in the family plot at Dug Hill Cemetery. May they rest in peace.