Aug. 2, 2004

from Aunt Jane:

Easley7, was glad to get your letter today giving us the name of the baby in the picture over the mantle in Gran's room. I believe the name should be Martha Elizabeth Johnston instead of Martha Elizabeth Jett. Gran's Mother's maiden name was Johnston, and she married a Jett. I think I'm right. If that is the case, it would be Gran's mother, my grandmother, your great grandmother, and your children's great, great grandmother, and David Coon's children's great, great, great grandmother. I have searched all the "drawers" in Gran's room and living room to try and find the papers on the clock and the ancestors whose pictures are on the mantle, but could not find them. Do any of you children know where they are? Connie, are they in the desk in your living room?

Martha wrote today and suggested that I write on the clock, the bed room furniture, and the pictures on the mantle. Am not sure where the pretty little desk that Aunt Martha has came from. Martha wanted these things in writing for all of you to keep. Will expect all of you tomorrow night for supper.

Marianne, Perth is several miles south of Union Church. We attempted to find it one day when we went to the Union Church Cemetery. As we left the cemetery, I asked Malcolm where we would go if we turned right instead of left when we were coming out of the cemetery. He said we would go to Perth where his parents were living when he was born. We decided to go, but the road had changed and we got on the wrong road and ended up at Fayette. He said that his parents didn't live there very long, and moved to Fayette, where Mr. Malcolm worked as a salesman for Swift and Company. Also, you asked who "delivered" me. Dr. Clark delivered me. Dr. Clark was lecturing my Daddy preparing him to enter the Masonic Lodge. Gran told the two men, "If my husband and my doctor are off studying to be a Mason, and she needed them both when her baby decided to enter this world, she would kill them both." Dr. Clark was there to take care of her. Thank Goodness. Thanks for bringing back the memory of Easter going to Monroe with our family when I was a little girl and stayed with Aunt Malie's cook. We never did convinced her that Neil Armstrong had landed on the moon.

Emmett, how nice that you have the birth announcements to go back to and be able to tell how much Malcolm and Gerald weighed. Also, the comments on the setting hen, and 15 making a setting. Loved about marking the eggs so there were no alien eggs in the group.

Question: Another thing we did as kids to have fun?

Answer: My Daddy raised cattle, and every year they would get the cattle in the barn and separate the calves from their mothers and sell the calves and turn the mothers back out to pasture. We would get up in the hay barn on top of a huge pile of hay and watch the whole show. Every once in a while they would "miss" a calf and they would get out, and would be in next year's batch, quite a bit larger. One year that happened and the large calf broke out again, and as it passed "Book" my Daddy hollowed to Book, "Stop him", and Book jumped on that big animal and tired to "throw" him, but the animal kept running across the pasture with Book on his back. The animal finally threw Book off, and Daddy said he heard Book's leg break as he hit the ground. Book ended up getting his leg broken 13 times, all at different times.

jm

from Marilyn Easley:

David said he is mad at himself because Gran told him the history of the clock, but he doesn't remember it 100%. He does remember that she said that the clock came from a French family who had moved to the United States. They fled France and their posessions became their wealth. They sold items as they needed money. The clock's first home in the U. S. was in Virginia. This is where our family purchased it. It went next to Kentucky, and then to Tennessee (Memphis, I think). >From there it came to Port Gibson, where it has rested for at least 50 years. Gran said that the glass globe was cracked when it was packed between two things, and when the glass got hot and expanded, it cracked. She said it broke granddaddy's heart.