The Ggma Chronicles, part 7: More on the Myers and Green Families in Kansas and Arkansas
Black Measles and a Talking Parrot
Green family, Benton County, Arkansas, c. 1914. Left to right: Ruth, Mary (in front of Ruth), Alice (Ggma), Thomas, James “Man” Vilas, Virginia Belle, Andy, Effie, Lillian, Phydeaux
Mary Myrtle was born Jan 13, 1889, the year of the big blizzard. When she was about 3 years old, Sylvester took a claim in Rooks County, Kansas, near the first sod house he had built. Here, he built a tornado cellar and bought a frame building (store) with the front all glass. It had a front porch, 2 rooms upstairs and 2 rooms downstairs. Here Sylvester built a big stone kitchen and dining room on the north side of the store, taking rock from the rock quarry on the claim. He also built a stone barn and chicken house and well house with a trough that held cold water for keeping milk and butter cold. He hung whole beefs in here in winter where it froze and kept well.
He planted an orchard of peaches, plums and currants. He also planted wheat, corn and lots of alfalfa and raised horses and cattle and built corrals and wire fences.
The wild geese stopped on the nearby pond to eat grain and rest while continuing their southward trek to winter.
Sylvester and Eunice lost their oldest daughter, Harriet in April 1905 with “black” measles, they called it. She was 27 years old. She left a husband and baby boy George, 8 months old.
By now, all Eunice’s and Sylvester’s children were married except Mary and Birdie, with homes of their own nearby in Kansas.
Hearing of the Arkansas Ozarks and apple orchards there, Sylvester decided to sell out and move there. He went back by train and bought a beautiful 3-story, 10-room house on Sugar Creek in Benton County. It was about 5 miles north of Bentonville, and about 5 miles south of the Missouri line. They lived there until 1916 when they sold out and moved to Bentonville in the western part of town where Eunice had a nice garden in back, a front porch the grandchildren loved and a neighbor who owned a talking parrot. “Polly wants a cracker,” was his favorite expression—perhaps his only.
All the married children followed their parents to Arkansas. Meril, Annie and children moved to the old Mills place, [but] soon moved back to western Kansas where they lived until they died.
Emanuel with his wife Okie [?] and children Viola Ruth, Charlie, Inez, Grace, Mimi and Maxine moved to El Reno, Oklahoma, where he worked for the Railroad until he retired.
Birdie married Ariel Royer in Arkansas, soon going to Pinole, California. Mary married Ferdy Bingham, a Lowell, Arkansas man.
Thomas and Belle traded their wheat farm in Kansas for a 480-acre farm in the Dug Hill Community on Sugar Creek about 9 miles north of Bentonville. They lived on this farm the rest of their lives. Five children were born and grew up here except one, Charles Hurley, who died at age 4 months.
James V. was the first son born, on January 11, 1907 to Belle and Tom, also the first of the Green family to be born in Benton County. Two years later, December 22, 1909, Mary Eunice was the first girl born. Alice Gladys, born January 18, 1911 [Ggma] was the next girl, then Andrew Jackson, born on January 15, 1913, and Charles Hurley in 1915, died the same year.
Florence widowed followed her brother Meril back to Rolla, Kansas, where she lived with her 2nd husband, Otto Kraber, until she died fairly young [59].