Cora Inez McBride Walters was the first child of John Sherwood McBride and Medora McGinty McBride. She passed away in Ruston in 1984. She was 95. My grandfather, William McGinty McBride Sr., was a younger brother, making her my great aunt. The following writing was found on her typing table after her death. I got it from Aunt Ann Chilcutt the other day. It's transcribed here...
When John Sherwood McBride finished his medical course in Louisville, Kentucky he decided to practice medicine in the village of Gansville, La. It was good to be near his family who had moved there from Vernon, La. Then, too, he wanted to renew his acquaintance with a certain young lady. he probably wooed her with quotations from some of his beloved poems. On the flyleaf of a lovely book of Tennyson's poems is written, "To Miss Medora McGinty, Christmas 1885". So they married and started housekeeping in a small log house about a mile or so north of the village.
I was born October 20, 1888, the first child of John Sherwood and Medora McGinty McBride. Before I was old enough to remember we moved to a more pretentious log house south of the village and almost in sight of it. This house was in a wide open space something like a pasture about 100 yards or more from the big road. There was a trough made of planks that extended from a spring on one side of the land to a mill on the other side. The water formed a pond here and it was sometimes used for a church baptistry.
In our fenced-in front yard was some shrubbery and five tall arborvitae trees spaced like sentinels watching over us. Two or three steps led up to the long front porch. A wide hall extended through the length of the house to the back porch. There were two bedrooms on each side of the hall. One of them on the right opened into the kitchen. The first on the left was our parlor. There was a fireplace at one end and in the center a round table on which was a large family Bible and an album of pictures. In another corner of the room was a bed for company. On the bolster were two pillows standing upright. On the sham of one was embroidered in red, "I slept and dreamed that life is beauty" and the other was embroidered "I woke and found that life is duty."
I was named Cora Inez and had red hair like my father. When I was eleven months and fifteen days old a little sister was born. She was named Pearl and she, too, had red hair. She was so tiny she might not have lived if it had not been for Papa's prayers and Grandma's care. The next year little dark-haired Mary Josephine joined our family. How proud our parents were when little Douglas Culpepper arrived. Then (about a year later) tragedy struck. Mama had the measles and the little sister that arrived at that time didn't survive. Another little red haired sister brought joy to our family the next year. She was named Lila Dale.
We had no store-bought clothes. My mother had a chart by which she could cut patterns and she was a good seamstress. The only stockings I remember ever having were long black-ribbed ones. Seems to me the famoshanters we wore were of brown material and the center was quilted.
Papa was kept very busy riding long distances in the country to treat his patients. Sometimes when he returned he would stop his horse at the front gate and say "Who has been here since I have been gone... a pretty little boy with red shoes on?" Sometimes Mama would sit on the front porch and while nursing a baby would softly sing a hymn. The Baptist church was about 100 yards across the road from us. We could attend Sunday School there on Sunday afternoons. A cousin would play the organ and the young folks would sing.
It was sad to hear the church bell tolling when one of Papa's patients died and the body was being brought to the cemetery in a wagon. When we developed colds Papa would say, "Dodie, give her a dose of castor oil." One of the foulest of medicines and we had no orange juice to camouflage it. When we had chills and fever we were given a capsule of quinine. I couldn't swallow mine so my quinine was put in a spoon of slippery elm goo. This was made by soaking the elm bark in water. There was no vaccine for whooping cough so we were given a toddy. Boils were lanced.
Although we had no running water, electricity or screens we were right healthy. We could fan some of the table with a peach tree witch and we could sleep under a mosquito net if we wished.
A black woman helped Mama with some of the work. She milked the cows down at the barn and taught me to milk by having me squeeze the water out of a dripping wet cloth. I don't remember ever drinking a glass of milk.
I never had toast for breakfast but hot biscuits with the bacon and eggs. Don't remember ever being urged to eat.
When Papa was away from home for several weeks taking a refresher course young Dr. Talbot stayed with us and took over his practice. He was fun to have around as long as he didn't treat us. He liked to tease Pearl. My Papa's sister, Kate, visited and helped us some at that time. When she and the doctor married we called him "Uncle Doctor."
The village school was in the Baptist church. It was so convenient for me to go there. No one had to watch me cross the road for there were no cars. One of my aunts was my teacher and taught me my ABC's. I soon learned a little spelling and reading. Pearl and Mary soon entered. We were there for several years. There was no playground equipment so at recess we could go through the back door and through the unfenced and unkept cemetery to a pine thicket and make play houses with the pine needles.
One day Papa said that we could not go to school in the church for it was against the law for church and state to mix. So we had to walk a mile or so to a one-room school house. Like the school in the church it was ungraded. just a place to learn a little more reading, writing and arithmetic. There was no playground equipment. just long strong vines attached to the tops of trees. They made good swings but Papa told me not to swing because I might fall and break my arm.
We didn't go to this school long before Grandpa McGinty passed away. That meant that Grandma would be alone except when Uncle Herschel, her young son, would be home from his store in the village. So Mama and Papa decided to live with her.
This place was a children's paradise. There was a big persimmon tree on the side of the road as we came in. In the orchard was a huge pecan tree, several fig trees, a variety of apples, peaches and pears. We could swing on the low limbs of the large elm tree in the back yard. There was an ash hopper where lye was collected to make delicious hominy. We were careful to stay away from the bee hives on a nearby bench. There was a smoke house, a cider press and an iron pot. Soap was made in this pot.
Over the side yard fence was a meadow often dotted with little blue daisies and other wild flowers. At the bottom of it was a covered spring where the black woman boiled and batted our clothes. Had to walk back up the hill to hang them on the line in the back yard.
A trough built with planks ran from the spring a few yards to a pond by Grandpa's gin. It was fun to play around the spring and watch the farmers bringing cotton to be ginned.
When school time came we had to walk another mile or so to a one-room school in Possum Neck. As I walked along I sometimes studied my multiplications. On my way home I could sometimes find huckleberries on the side of the road.
Our teacher taught us to parse sentences, one of which was "I saw a man digging a well with a Roman nose." This, too, was an ungraded school. I always was so glad for school to open.
I enjoyed going somewhere. Once Uncle Herschel took the three of us, I think, to visit Uncle Cyrus and his family in Montgomery, La. As we traveled mile after mile we saw no one nor saw a house. There were tall pine trees on both sides of the road and scattered beneath them were large pine cones.
Sometimes we went to Dugdemonia to a fish fry. The men fished and the ladies kept the children out of the creek. We enjoyed it very much even though the chiggers feasted on us.
Sometimes we went to visit Great Grandma Stinson. She lived in a two-story house on the other side of the village. Great Aunt Josie who lived with her was an unusual person. She kept her curly hair cut short long before the movie stars started the style. She spent much time growing flowers in her front yard. The upper story of the house was one big open room. In this Aunt Josie had installed hammocks made of barrel staves, and we did enjoy swinging in them. Great Uncle Alex had many grape arbors and we were allowed to feast on the grapes. When we came in for dinner I noticed that Great Grandma's teaspoons were different from ours. had never seen copper colored ones before. Seems to me at this time Grandma's advice to us was to "never write in a letter what you wouldn't want the whole world to see.
Papa read scriptures to us and explained it when we didn't understand. Mama bought a copy of Aunt Charlotte's Bible stories and we enjoyed reading it. Was so easy to understand. Papa also liked to read "It is Never Too Late to Mend."
Mama could play hymns on our pump organ. One song at that time I especially liked was "I'll Remember You Love in My Prayers." The first stanzas were, "When the curtains of night are pinned back by the stars and the beautiful moon leaps the skies and the dew drops of heaven are kissing the rose, it is then that memory flies."
Another red-haired baby brother joined our family and he was named McGinty. Now there were six of us and we were growing up so fast. Mama and Papa were really concerned about our future. There was such little schooling, no library and no advantages. After much discussion they decided we better move. They had heard that Ruston was a growing town and had good schools. Mama hadn't regained her health and had a swollen leg and Papa told her we couldn't move until it was lanced and healed. I don't know who helped with the operation; probably Pearl held the lamp.
When McGinty was six weeks old Mama was able to travel. One fine morning the horses were hitched to the three-seated hack and after we were tucked in with our numerous bags we drove on through the village about eight miles to the big road and on to Ruston to seek knowledge.
That was the end of Aunt Cora's narrative. A quick google search found that you could buy those pillow shams with the pithy phrase patterned on them out of the 1897 Sears and Roebuck catalogue. You had to do the cross stitch work yourself. The verse was from a poem by Ellen Sturgis Hooper published in 1840.
Aunt Cora lived a long life. Born in 1888, she witnessed a lot of changes, but what is amazing to me is her first hand references reached much further back. Her Great Grandmother Stinson, who she mentions visiting on the other side of the village (Gansville), was Eliza Lamkin Stinson.
Eliza was born in Wilcox County, Alabama two years after it became a State and only eight years after the horrific massacre at Fort Mims. Eliza was born 40 years before the start of the Civil War! Her husband was too old to fight in it. Eliza could have sat Cora on her knee and told her about Eliza's own father who was born in Virginia during the Revolutionary War and who served during the War of 1812. Those connections are reaching way back for a woman who died in 1984.
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