The Blind Hour

Back in the day every one had party lines.
I know that the youngsters that hear that think of long lines of people dressed to go have a party, but in our day it was all about the telephone party line. We all had those black rotary telephones and every one had a party line.

A party line was a shared telephone line that was used by up to 4 households. In our case, we had 4 people that used the same line. The only way to tell it was your phone was the number of rings. Ours was two if I remember right. Ring ring.. ring Ring.. and we would pick up. It if were any other ring, we let it ring. The phone rang all day long and you could not turn it off just in case you got a call. If you wanted to make a call, you picked up the telephone and if someone was on the line, you hung up and waited.

Our telephone was always busy because we had a talker on our line. We could never make a phone call and I am embarrassed to say that sometimes we asked the operator to break in so that we could make an important call. It was the only way to get a word in edge wise!

One day in particular, my parents and younger sister had gone into town to buy me some ointment that the doctor had prescribed for these ring worm areas on my arm and leg. I was always barefoot and in stagnant mud puddles so I had a fair amount of worms as a kid. All of us did because shoes were for school or church. We had one pair of shoes and we wore them to school and then took off our school clothes and shoes and put on our work clothes or play clothes. You don't hear of children changing clothes when they get home from school these days. I don't see any of the kids I know here do that. But back in that day, I had 3 dresses and they had to be handed down so I took care of them.

On that stormy day, I was home alone. Now I know what you are thinking; the movie about being home alone and the adventure that followed. I had an adventure that terrified me and I was not near so prepared as the small boy in the movie..
When I decided to make a phone call, I knew that we did not talk on the phone if it was lightening but the desire to talk to a friend overcame the warning and I made my call. The party line talker was miraculously off the phone and that should have been my first clue, but I was 12 and motivated..

I sat on my favorite little stool and put in the call to my friend. We had talked for a few minutes and the I heard the lightening strike and then the thunder rumbled through the house. Wow, that was close my.. I saw the lightening and started counting. 1- 1000... 2- 1000.. 3-1000.. 4-1000.. That was a little close for comfort but I kept on talking and turned my back to the open front door. That was an invitation for disaster in my house.

You see, Daddy built the house in 1949 but it wasn't grounded well and the lightening would sometimes crackle into the house. We knew to wear shoes when it rained on the tile and to not step in something wet and walk
about barefoot. I know that sounds odd but that was our house.

I talked and just as I was about to end my conversation, the lightening crackled through the telephone line into the headpiece and into my ear. It was strong and I could smell it in my hair and feel it in my body when it knocked me off my stool to the ground.

You have to appreciate what I was feeling at that time. I was 12, home alone and the worst thing of all, is that I was blind. All I could see was black! I was on the floor, turning my head from side to side, trying to get the smell out of my nose and starting to panic some because I could not call my folks (no cell phones) , we did not have neighbors to speak of ( my old aunt Lizzie Creamer lived across the stree but I was not about to try and crawl over there with it storming) , and I was blind. I crawled on the floor feeling my way to the couch and climbed up on it and cried. I tried to reconcile myself to the fact that I was blind and I may stay  blind. I prayed.
I kept closing and opening my eyes thinking that I would be able to see if I just blinked, but it did not work. And I waited for my Daddy. I do not know how long I lay there but after what seemed like an inordinate amount of time, I opened my eyes and saw white puffy clouds. Then I saw shadowy shapes and then my sight returned. When I looked at the clock, it had been almost an hour of terrifying darkness and feelings of helplessness about what to do.

By the time daddy got back with my medicine, my sight had returned and I told him I got shocked from talking on the phone and that I couldn't see for a while. He asked, " can you see now?" and I said, "Yes". and then he said, "you shouldn't have been talking on the phone" and I said, " I know, Daddy."
That wasn't the only time I inadvertently got struck by lightening but that is a tale for another day..
It gave me a whole new meaning to the old spiritual, that I was blind and now I see.. And I did not talk on the phone during a lightening storm..
Gloria Peacock Kimmel Nov. 9, 2015
(image from a google search)

Tale Of An American Spy

3 September 2011 at 11:42
The tale of spies is one that intrigues and stirs the imagination and the tale that I am telling today is no less than intriguing and will spark the imagination. It begins with the birth of a daughter in Sacramento, California in the year 1893. Her name was Velvalee Malvena Blucher. Her lineage was from the Hillbilly country of West Virginia and Kentucky. Both of her parents were of German Descent and hard working folk. Velvalee was going through a difficult period in her life. She had studied Japanese, but found it too difficult and started attending the University of California in 1937 and graduated from Stanford with a Bachelors of Arts Degree. Her personal life was in turmoil due to three marriages, two ending in divorce. Her third and final marriage was to Lee. T. Dickinson, a west coast commodity broker. Velvalee was a member of the Japanese-American Society and was a person well connected to the Japanese Consulate. She was entertained by Japanese Dignitaries and was invited on Japanese Warships. It is said that a Japanese Spy had her name in a book he brought from Japan.

She began collecting dolls in 1934 when a friend brought her a pair of Native Dolls from the Philippines. Her interest in dolls grew quickly and soon she and her husband borrowed 100 dollars from a friend and moved to NYC. She started to work in a department store but did not work there long before she developed a real love of dolls. She joined the Doll Collectors of America and also the Toy Collectors Club of NY, the parent company of UFDC. She lived in a co-op apt. with her brother and opened her first doll shop at 718 Madison Ave. There was an excellent article written up in the Hobby Magazine of 1938. It talked about the different nationalities represented in her collection. One of her customers was Elizabeth Hooper whom she wrote letters to, including one addressed January 9th, that said “ My dearest 'Baltimore Doll' What hour shall we talk on Jan. 28? Please let me know so that I may plan to be away from my shop to hear you. “ On June 27, 1939 she wrote saying “ I am bringing my very ill husband to John Hopkins Hospital on July 10th. Please tell me if I may room within walking distance of the hospital?” Other letters were sent to Elizabeth indicating that her husband had had the surgery elsewhere.

Meanwhile she continued to collect and amass a huge array of foreign dolls and started publishing a list for sale as early as 1939. There was great appeal of her shop at that time as foreign dolls of all types had been cut off due to the War and she had a marvelous collection of latest dolls from Paris and England. She continued to write letters to her clientele including one Senore Inez de Monanali in Argentina. The letters looked innocent enough on the surface but the astute gentleman from the FBI soon figured out that the reference to “Irish Dolls” old women- with pack on their backs in actuality meant modern airplane carriers or that “ the cite little doll shop she happened to run across where they did repair so skillfully was not a reference to the Humpty Dumpty Hospital run by Emma C. Clear in Redondo Beach, but the the condition of the battleships in Pearl Harbor. For a year the FBI shadowed the receivers of the letters, most of the, chatty and seemingly innocent til one day an Oregon collector received a long typewritten letter addressed to a woman she had never heard of before and with her SIGNATURE clearly written at the bottom of the letter. She thought to herself “Am I going mad?” The letter indicated the South American woman was going to visit them but she had no clue as to who the woman was or who had written the letter. She took the letter to her husband who suggested they take the letter to the FBI. They went over the letter sentence by sentence and all of the statements did not make sense.

The name of her daughter was incorrect and one did not just happen upon the Humpty Dumpty Doll Hospital. It was 20 miles outside of town. One sentence in the letter did make sense. Had she ever mentioned the vacant bedroom of her daughters since the daughters marriage? That did ring a bell. She had mentioned it to Velvalee Dickinson whom had mentioned she and her husband would be traveling to Oregon and the rooms were crowded. As a fellow doll collector she had offered them hospitality in her home. The FBI agents wanted to know who Velvalee Dickinson was and she told them that she was an antique doll dealer, lecturer and collector well respected in all doll circles of that day and that Mrs. Dickinson had continued to send her dolls on approval, even though she had not purchased one in a long while, yet still they came once a month.
Without realizing it she had been carrying on a long standing correspondence with Velvalee. Several other collectors had been receiving these strange nonsensical letters as well. The FBI pursued all these leads and cleared the people writing to as time went on. The letters were sent from every city the Dickinsons had stayed in and were written on the typewriters in the various rooms.

Before long, the FBI had enough evidence amassed and had confiscated dolls that had cryptic messages inside. One in particular comes to mind. It was a penny wooden doll that had a tiny purse on the front of her dress. Inside was a message concerning treasonable information given to her by Japanese Allies. When confronted by the FBI, she immediately turned the spotlight on her dying husband by saying he had contracted with the Japanese Government for $25,000 to learn and betray our secrets. As her husband was dying this seemed like the easy way out. It was ascertained that her complete doll business had been built up in order to betray our government,as her knowledge of dolls was brought to question on one of her Ca. trips to Mrs. Gustav Mox. The Mox collection filled rooms in a Santa Monica setting and Mrs. Mox one day gave a garden party to which Velvalee was invited. Everyone present was very excited, as we would be today to see a Coleman present at one of our soiree's and her Granddaughter was particularly looking forward to showing off her grand collection of the many fine French dolls in their collection.

When Velvalee saw the showy dolls dressed as various Queens with costumes of hand embroidered satin with royal purple capes and ermine tails and jewelry she said “ Oh, you collect those?” No one in the East would have them. We have a whole cellar full of them and you can have them for a song.” This statement was made to Eleanor St. George, whom was also attending the party.  Little Bonnie Jean Mox, in her first party dress, promptly burst into tears that could not be quieted and wept her heart out in her Grandmothers arms because she thought as everyone else did, that this was the premier doll judge in the country. Things were quiet at the doll party for a few moments until Velvalee discovered a large case of Parians, Chinas and Bisque. She said, “now these are the kinds of dolls we love,” entirely missing the fact that they were Emma Clear reproductions and a real old case of the aforementioned dolls were right next to this case. There were many more of these faux pas in her dolling days and such episodes tended one to surmise that she was not the knowledgeable doll judge she made out to be. Speculation exists that someone more clever than her actually set her up in the doll market for an elaborate cover.

An update to this account was given by the Colemans in the Fall issue of the Dolls News 1992, a magazine about and for the UFDC or United Federation of Doll Clubs, one of the longest running clubs for people that collect antique dolls. They state “that many people wanted to know what happened to Velvalee after her prison sentence.” The Colemans had acquired some early Janet P. Johl books and while looking through them one day, a newspaper clipping fell out entitled “End of the Spy Trail for the Lady Of The Dolls.”. It was published in The Sunday Mirror Magazine, April 6, 1952 and was copyrighted by King Features Syndicate INC. The Colemans state that the article describes the spy activities of Velvalee Dickinson and also tells of her release on parole after being sentenced to ten years.
The following is a quote from the newspaper article and from the Doll News referenced above and says, “ Amid the enormous public interest engendered in the conviction and death sentence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for wartime A-Bomb espionage, the release from prison of New York's infamous woman spy of WWII passed completely unnoticed. Mrs. Velvalee Dickinson, who worked with the Japanese while the Rosenberg's were spying for Russia, was convicted not of espionage, which she certainly committed, but of violation of the censorship law, to which she pleaded guilty. Fined $10,000 dollars and sentenced to 10 years in prison, she was lately and quietly released on parole, and given a job in a hospital ( the location the Mirror magazine has agreed to keep secret. Her story, hitherto told only in bits and pieces during her trial, (understandably, since the newspapers of the period were occupied with more vital war news), is here related by Karl Singer....condensed from his latest, “The Worlds 30 Greatest Women Spies” and is currently published by Wilfred Funk.”

This is an updated article from The Boston Globe:

A Doll With A Dark Past: Owner Seeks Truth About It's Role In WWII Spy Network. Boston Globe, Tuesday, September 11, 2001 by Tara H. Arden Smith, Globe Correspondent. Third Edition, Metro Region section. Page 1 B

Cambridge- When she saw the doll for the very first time, black eyes glinting through the war – darkened window of a Madison Avenue bookstore, she strained on her tiptoes for a better look.
Drawing sharp breaths amid January frost, 13 year old Lee Lawrence Pierce pushed her nose to the plate glass. The gypsy rag doll appeared haunted. Certain a story of sorrow was somewhere inside, Pierce determined, right then, that she would make the doll her own.

On the day she came back for it, thin wrists sagging beneath her brimming sack of nickels and dimes, the doll was gone from the window. But Pierce's disappointment was short lived. It's owner had left town and Pierce was able to buy the doll from the bookstore proprietor.

Within days, there was a fearsome knock on the door of her Grandmothers New York apartment. Two Federal agents burst in and snatched the doll;when it was returned a week later, there was a course, zigzagging stitch across its smooth cotton neck, evidence of a crude decapitation.

That was 1944. A decade later, as a young woman working for the US state Department in Buenos Aires, Pierce made a shocking discovery. Her Doll, her most cherished possession had been a clue in one of the most extraordinary treason cases of WWII. The doll's owner had been the first American woman to face the death penalty on charges of spying for a wartime enemy.

Now, 57 years after staring mesmerized through that bookstore window, Pierce has filled her Huron Avenue home with dolls. And there, on the top shelf of her display cabinet in the front parlor, is the doll that Pierce loves, and hates, the most.

“Perla's scary, isn't she?” Pierce queries softly, eyebrows arched. “She feels like a demon sometimes. But if you can get past that and be open to her, you can feel how painful her story is and how scared she must be. I've always wanted to protect her from whatever it is that's been haunting her all this time.”

For almost six decades, Perla Negra- so named for her eyes of real black Mexican pearls-has stared at Pierce from the doll cabinet with an oddly beseeching gaze. Lately, it's led Pierce to think about Velvalee Blucher Dickinson, the spy who owned the doll.

Years ago, Pierce fixed the doll's eyes, darkening the gleaming white that had surrounded the Pearls, to make the eyes less human. Still, their intensity unsettles Pierce even now.

As her hearing fades and her arthritis gets worse, Pierce has resolved to discover the rest of her doll's secret story: whether Perla Negra was used in the bookstore window to signal new information that Dickinson had gathered for Japan. Solving that mystery, Pierce hopes, will end her first doll's long purgatory as a possible accomplice in treason- and explain her own relationship to a doll that has allured and terrified her for six decades.

The Doll Collector's House

In the parlor of the Cambridge home where she has lived for the last 33 years, Lee Lawrence Pierce looks to her best dolls, more than 50 from every corner of the world, for stories. Off her kitchen, behind
a thin curtain, a hundred more stand ready to greet any visitors with rows of grin-hardened faces.

“Dolls can be challenging,” Pierce mused during one in a series of recent interviews at her home. “If you think like they have some human characteristics, it can really be very overwhelming.”

There's the pigtailed Polish doll that she was given by a Czech colleague at Radio Free Europe, where Pierce worked in the years after the war. The doll, blonde-haired and in traditional Polish peasant dress, was handed off from her young Polish owner to a Czech friend as the Nazi's raided the girl's Krakow home. The Czech friend, herself later sent to a concentration camp, hid the doll outside the camp gate having promised to protect it. After escaping, she finally retrieved the doll on her third escape attempt and eventually entrusted her to Pierce.

“Every doll has a life because someone love and lives with it. And if the dolls are with us, they see everything,” Pierce said.

Most of Pierce's dolls reflect her fascination with worlds she doesn't know. She treasures stone Buddhas as much as the Chinese dragons, as much as Haitian Voodoos, as much as the Mexican gypsy rag doll who became Perla Negra.

It was this first doll that sparked the fascination, and the doll whose life story has become so eerily intertwined with Pierce's own. As a State Department employee, Pierce says she lived on the same street in Buenos Aires to which Dickinson mailed her secrets to the Japanese agents. It was on that street that a missed pickup eventually alerted US authorities, sparking Dickinson's downfall.

Pierce did not know then of the street's connection to Dickinson.

But now, in heaps of faded papers, Pierce collects clues about Perla's former owner, and sifts through the responses to decades of queries to the governments of the United States and Japan. This month, her search will take her to the libraries of London, where she will rummage archives looking for her next lead.

“My Perla fille” she calls one expanse of paper, arm outstretched. “This is where we live.” What Pierce most wants to know is this: Did Velvalee Dickinson loan Perla Negra to the bookstore owner, Dickinson's neighbor and landlord, with the specific intention of using Perla as a signal doll? Did the doll's intermittent, and changeable position in the store's front display window mean anything? If so, what?
And how many people did it kill?

Special Clients

Velavalee Dickinson would be over 100 years old now and is almost certainly dead. But the most detailed records about Dickinson's case, long requested by Pierce, have been held back by the FBI because no one can prove she's not alive. The agency says that releasing the files would be an unwarranted invasion of Dickinson's personal privacy.

But not if Pierce can prove that Velvalee Dickinson has really passed away. To claim a copy of the death certificate, she needs the name Dickinson used at the end of her life, and a place.

All that Pierce has gotten the FBI to reveal is that Dickinson was a renowned Manhattan doll collector who traveled the country showing her dolls in the homes of carefully selected clients. The clients, FBI documents show, tended to be the wives of well-placed officers on the US Navy vessels in the South Pacific.

Over tea and doll talk, Dickinson would gather information on ship' placements and conditions crucial details that she would relay to her Japanese Government employers via coded letters that discussed the destroyers as if they were dolls.

On Jan. 21, 1944, Dickinson was arrested and charged with spying on behalf of wartime Japan. One of a handful of known female spies, the first American woman to face execution for espionage-Dickinson pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served 10 years in the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, W. Va.

No records of Dickinson's life or even names she may have used after her release from prison have been obtainable.

Dickinson's years of espionage are detailed in several FBI memorandum compiled in September 1944, just after Dickinson had begun to serve her sentence. The reports describe a prim, middle-aged woman who forged close ties with Japanese-Americans during seven years working for a stock brokerage that handled major accounts in California's Imperial Valley.

In 1937 , Dickinson moved to New York to launch a business selling rare and expensive dolls. Her clients soon included women across the country, and she often traveled to their homes to show them new dolls- and casually ask about their husbands, especially those serving on Navy ships.

Though the FBI 's first firm evidence of Dickinson's espionage is a returned letter she sent to Buenos Aires in February 1942, she is suspected of relaying information on US destroyers before Japan's Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pear Harbor. The surprise bombing raid killed or wounded more than 3,500 Americans and decimated the US Pacific Fleet in less than two hours.

In a personal response to inquiries from Pierce dated Dec. 9, 1960, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote that Dickinson's communications with the enemy “became known as 'doll letters' since they related primarily to the location and condition of 'dolls.' Under the code which the Japanese gave Mrs. Dickinson to use, these 'dolls' actually were various types of American naval vessels.”

According to FBI records, one awkwardly written Dickinson letter”contained the words 'Distroyed Your' and in the same sentence made reference for a Mr. Shaw who had been ill but would be back to work soon.

This letter was written a short time after it became known the the USS Shaw, which had its bow blown off at Pearl Harbor, was being repaired in a West Coast shipyard and would soon rejoin the fleet.”

Frightening Memory

Hours before Dickinson's arrest, Pierce met the anxious collector, sleek in a rigid black shirtwaist and tight curls, on her way out of town. Trailed across the country and back, Dickinson knew by then that the FBI was close behind. And Pierce, with her mother at the bookshop owned by Dickinson's affable landlady, had just picked up the doll.

What Pierce now remembers about her one encounter with Dickinson brims with the meticulous detail of a frightened childhood memory. Pierce had begged the bookstore owner, Jo Kimball, to allow her to touch the doll.

“There's nothing I can say that would describe how I felt when I first looked at her in that bookstore window.” Pierce said. “I hated dolls then, and had never had one before, but she was from another universe, and I had to know why she looked so scared.”

At first, Kimball said No, the doll wasn't hers to loan. But furtive glances and a few whispers later and the doll was in Pierce's arms.

Then abruptly, from behind a curtain dividing the bookstore form the rest of the building, a woman appeared. She looked huge, Pierce says, and cruel – though in FBI records Dickinson is described as petite and quite pretty. The woman grabbed the doll and stormed away.

In tears, Pierce vowed to go back for her.

A day later, life-savings in hand, Pierce found the doll face-down on the desk in Jo Kimball's office. Kimball told her to just take the doll home, for her owner had left her behind.

Pierce recalled “ being barely able to breathe, and as soon as I had her all I could do was run out of the room.”

For one night, Pierce was thrilled, gazing at her mysterious booty and waiting for the moment when some revelation might make that little girl her doll's confidante.

But then the Federal agents appeared.

“I knew there was something wrong with her, and I knew it was my job to protect her.” Pierce recalled. “I knew that I shouldn't let them take her away, even though I had no idea how I knew what they had come for, or what was wrong with her..... or what they thought she did.”

Hunt For Witnesses

Few alive today remember Velvalee Dickinson or her dolls. Becky Moncrief, the president of the United Federation of Doll Clubs, the largest doll collectors' organization in the country, says that even in the doll world, it would take a real “old timer” to know whether any others of Dickinson's known dolls are still out there.

Pierce, though , hasn't lost heart. She's on a hunt for witnesses, any who might still be alive and could tell her whether Perla Negra's irregular placement in the display window of Young's Bookstore was a signal to Dickinson's cohorts.

Somebody, she says, must have noticed something.

“I need to know if my doll was used in a way that led to people being killed,” Pierce said.


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This is the end of the account as we know it and my thanks  to the sources of this article which also include contemporary newspaper accounts of the day. The Colemans state that there are inconsistencies, as will all news accounts done by many different people and sources; Dorothy and Elizabeth Coleman and The Doll News Of Fall 1992 and Winter 1991; my friend Rene Mandell for the updated Boston Globe article on Sept. 11, 2001,  and last but probably the greatest source who actually traveled in the same circles and gave a first hand account, Eleanor St. Georges great book, The Dolls Of Yesterday, copyright 1948 published by Charles Scribe's & Sons.

Thank you to all that have completed the reading of this lengthy tale. I have enjoyed the telling and I hope all enjoy the reading.


Til next time, Kimmee


Addendum:

Velvalee died in the 1980's and much mystery surrounds her life and death.

Wikipedia Article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvalee_Dickinson


FBI Story:


http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/velvalee-dickinson-doll-woman

A Few Good Men

Samuel Peacock II was my 5th Great Grandfather. He was a soldier in the Militia for North Carolina. I have had soldiers in this country since it began and beyond in England all the way back to Jerusalem. There is a long lineage of service to our country, and its people in my family. 

There is a very cute story about Samuel and General George Washington who wanted to pass his toll bridge free of charge. Samuel told him he would have to pay like anyone else. That guy had something I tell ya!

Here is the rest of the story for a lazy start to your morning, and I hope that you enjoy the look back at some of the men in my family that have helped keep us free!




Peacock Places

North Carolina's Peacock Bridge

The Peacocks Bridge is located on Highway 58 in Stantonsburg, N.C. and is marked with a historical marker reading: Peacocks Bridge Here Lt. Col. Tarleton's British dragoons and Colonel James Gorham's militia engaged in a skirmish, May, 1781. The bridge had its beginning as a toll bridge built by Samuel Peacock prior to 1751.

Then Governor Gabriel Johnston signed a bill into law on October 12, 1751 to invest the property of the bridge in John Peacock, his heirs, and assigna (by him already built over Contentney Creek, in Johnston County) The document reads in part:

"Whereas a Bridge over Great Contentney Creek, on the main road leading from Johnston County to Edgecombe County, is as much for the conveniency of Travellers: and Samuel Peacock having already built one on his own land, at his own Expence, where the main road crosses the Creek, and Petitioning to be allowed the priviledge of taking and receiving from Travellers, the usual rates they were accustomed to pay, when he kept a Ferry there; and to be invested with the sole Property of the said Bridge, for the Space of Twenty Five Years:"
"We pray it may be enacted, and be it enacted, by his Excellency Gabriel Johnston, Esq., Governor, by and with the advice and consent of his Majesty's Council, and the General Assembly of this Province, and by the authority of the same, That it shall and may be lawful for the said Samuel Peacock, his heirs and Assigns, to keep a sufficient Gate on the Bridge built by him, on Great Contentney Creek, where the road now crosseth the said Creek, leading from Johnston County to Edgecombe County, and take and receive from all Persons that shall pass over the same, the following Rates; that is to say,

For every Man and Horse, Four Pence. For every Carriage, drawn bt one or two horses Or oxen, one Shilling. And for every Horse, Mare, or Ox, Four Pence each. And for every Head of Neat Cattle, One Penny. And for every twenty Hogs or Sheep, One Shilling. And so in proportion for a greater or lesser Number of hogs or sheep; For and during the Space of Twenty Five years, and no longer."

"And be it further enacted, That during the Time the Bridge shall be kept in Repair, and fit for Travellers and Carriages to pass and repass the same. It shall not be lawful for any Person whatsoever to keep any Ferry, build any Bridge, or set any Person, or Persons, Carriage or Carriages, Cattle, Hogs, Sheep, over the said Creek, for Fee or Reward, within six Miles of the same, during the Time aforesaid; under the Penalty of Twenty Shillings, Proclamation Money, for each and every offence, to be Recovered by the said Samuel Peacock, his Heirs, Execu- tors, Administrators and Assigns, before any Magistrate Of the County; to be applied to the Use of the Pro- prietor of the Bridge built by the said Samuel Peacock; And during the said Time, the Right and Property of the said Bridge is hereby invested in the said Samuel Peacock, his Heirs, Executors, Administrators or Assigns."

My Uncle Hardy who served in WWII. Thank you to all that have served, and that will serve our country. We owe you and all the ones before, our freedoms. Many of you have enriched my life so much over the years and I will never forget you. (((((Troops)))))

 

My Brother Clifton served in Vietnam..

Thank you to all that have served and still do...... 

My Two Peacock Aunts

I was away from Jay for over 40 years with only a few visits in between but in 2011 I went home to visit and stayed for 6 months. During that time I went to visit My Aunt Thelma and I was amazed at her energy for someone 102 years old. I complain to myself about how much pain I am in, yet I never heard her say a word about how much she must feel at her age. We sat on her couch and she told me stories of our family. The one I was most intrigued with was of her Great Grandfather Michael Creamer. She told me that he had to sneak from his country of Germany because he killed someone or more than one someone. I had never heard this story and I am the genealogist of my family.

There is sometimes a grain of truth in the stories our families tell us, but maybe not all of it is true. The facts of my 2nd Great Grandfather elude me but I know that he was born around 1815. I found him in the 1840 Census living in Butler County, Alabama with 2 males under 5, one male between 30 and 40, one female under 5, one female under 10 and one female between 20 and 30. He had 2 boys and 2 girls and a wife in the 25 years since his birth. He was married to Mary sometimes called "Polly" in records. Some have her last name as Odom but I have not seen documentation to that effect. She was born in North Carolina and so were her parents.
We find them still in Butler County in 1850 and his number of children have increased to 10. He is going by the name of Mitchel and named a son Mitchel so it is possible that his name is Mitchel instead of Michael that is on the other Census. He and Mary had 6 children in 10 years and they already had 4 children to keep them busy. I can't imagine at this time of civil unrest and the War right around the corner having 10 children to feed and shelter.
Michael died sometime between 1860 and 1870 which is the next time I find Mary. She is listed as Polly J and is living in Conecuh county Beat 1 Sepulga. Right next door is her first born son William and his wife Mahala Pinkerton. The next time we see her and her family is 1880 and she is listed as Widowed and living with my Great Grandfather Josiah and his young family enumerated in The Mixons, Conecuh County, Alabama. She is listed as 62 which means that she was just on the shy side of 20 when she had 4 children. People married young in those days or at least they did in my family. He may have died in the Civil War or of some other malady from those days.
I may never find out the whole story about this family but Aunt Thelma told me her grandfather "Sy" played a mean fiddle and would not allow his picture to be taken. If someone had a camera and was taking pictures of the family, she said he would hide. I don't know what that means but there are no known pictures of him nor his wife, Mary Jane Gilmore.

Their Granddaughter my Aunt Thelma was the epitamy of "Southern Hospitality". This is what it means to me and how I grew up. NO one would ever eat a bite unless you had something to eat too. When anyone visits, even if is unexpected, a huge spread will be put on for them. The whole time, the hostess will say, if I had known I could have made something special.. Mean while you are sitting down to southern Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh vegetables straight from the garden, home made biscuits, several homemade preserves including watermelon and fig, to put in that hot biscuit with real butter, and just when you think you can't eat another bite, she would bring out a tiny 7 layer homemade yellow cake with chocolate frosting that melts in your mouth and the hostess will keep saying , did you get enough to eat Sugar, cause I can fix something else for you in a heartbeat... Then you go sit outside on the front porch with a glass of iced tea and watch the kids play in the yard. That is what I know to be southern hospitality and how I grew up. That was my Aunt Thelma and I miss her.

Now her little sister Mary Elma was my favorite Aunt. I spent a lot of time with her when I was little and she was the one that told me stories. I was a quiet child and I sat at her feet while she talked and I listened. So many of my stories came from sitting at her feet and listening. I named my daughter after her and my favorite Morris Aunt. That is how much they meant to me.
Aunt Elma was the baby of the family and she was coddled and taken care of as the baby. When she married, she married someone that was going to coddle her too and Uncle Johnny did. They married after knowing each other two weeks. She said, "when you know it, you know it" and they had 5 children. Aunt Elma was beautiful and I can see why Uncle Johnny fell hard and wanted to seal that deal quickly. You can see them in the photograph with their first son, Alton. 

One of the stories that Aunt Elma told me was about my Mothers great Grandfather. When Aunt Elma married Uncle Johnny, she did not know that he was kin to my mother but I finally convinced her that he was. Every time it was brought up when I was growing up, I heard, "oh, those are different Morris'" But they weren't.
Her husbands Grandfather and my Mama's Great Grandfather was William M. "Bud" Morris. He and his wife Matilda Jane Spears are buried at Cora along with some of their children. The story concerned Matilda. According to my Aunt she was full blood Cherokee Indian and her parents had been killed by a raiding party of white settlers at Mims Island Santa Rosa County, Fl. The white party of community members included her husband William. 

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When Aunt Elma told me this, she seemed sad and whispered a lot of the story to me. I got the notion that this was not talked about.

The genealogist in me started to explore the story and I found Matilda with her Mom at age 5 without a father and living with her mothers brother James Spears. Some have said that Matilda's mother, Mary Spears had married a Spears and then he was killed by the Indians, a different story than Aunt Elma told me. I was never able to figure this story out completely but with the help of Sherry "footprintseeker" Schindler Bloodsworth, we were able to conclude that Mary Spears was not killed by the Indians and went onto marry James Waller.
Sherry found her buried in Milton and also found her husband James Waller buried there. Mary Spears Waller died in 1880 and so she did not die at the hands of the Indians but her first husband might and his name may have been Spears. It is a mystery to this day but it is always on the back burner so that I can prove the lineage of being Native.

A couple of years ago, I had my DNA done and they classified me as a North American Native American so some of the story is true.
Aunt Thelma, who gave herself her middle name, because her parents would not lived to be 102 years and 4 months old. They died 2 months apart with Aunt Thelma Going first.
She smiled every day even though she faced such hardships. She lost a husband, she lost children, she lived through the Great Depression of 29. Yet look at that smile on her face.

Aunt Elma died right after her 90th birthday. Look at that smile on her face. She lost her husband, and one of her children and was sick at the end, but her face lit up last year when I came home, and my sister and I sang for her! These two were gems in my life, and I want to go out of mine, smiling, being thankful for my abundance......

Written by Kimmee on Nov. 4, 2015

The Pecan Basket Rails

When I was a young kid,  my family and I used to go visit my Aunt Arbelle Creamer in her big old wooden house. It was a lot larger than the one pictured here and had a really large porch that I loved to jump off of and play on. It seemed so tall with 6 steps to get to the porch itself and there were no hand rails as I recall. Probably because my people were wiry and tough. They could get up and down those steps without any help carrying a basket or two on their hips. 

The porch was lined with wooden rockers and on any given day my Aunt or other members of the family, were outside rocking the day away after a long day of chores. The porch back then was not just a place to keep the rain off the front door; it was a place to observe life.  We might have been outside rocking but we were noticing the few cars that came down the road, we were forecasting what kind of day it was going to be or night, and we were often planning what we were going to do next, although we would not state that out loud. Some of the menfolk would smoke a pipe and the women were usually busy with shucking corn, shelling peas and beans, or cracking and shelling pecans. We did not have the nutcrackers they have today to use to crack all those nuts. We either did it in our hands cracking two nuts against each other or we put a nut in a handkerchief and hit it with a hammer. Sometimes we had an assembly line going. One would be cracking, one would be shelling, and one would be checking the final bowl for little piece of shell that you did not want in your pecans to sell or to eat. It went very fast considering how many pecans we shelled every year. 

I did not realize how hard my family had to work then. The only job or income Aunt Arbelle had as I recall,  were her pecan trees. People would come and pick pecans or they could buy ones from her already shelled. If you have never shelled pecans for any length of time, it is hard to understand just how much it hurts after awhile, but she did this everyday without complaint. 

I helped shell pecans at times but more often than not, I was asked to shimmy up the trees and shake the branches. I loved doing this even though I was hit in the head a hundred times by the falling shells. The trees were huge and filled with nuts and they littered the ground when we were done. Then we would pick them up in baskets and put then on the porch. When we were done the porch would have a rail made from baskets and that was the only rail the big old porch had on two sides. 

Sometimes in the stillness of the night such as this, I can still hear that screen door slamming and my Aunt Arbelle yelling to us.. "Either come in or go out", she would say. LOL. We knew that we had to make a decision to stay out or it would be made for us.

What a daunting task that much have been to shell the pecans, bag them, and bake stuff with them to make a living, but I can't ever remember her being cross. She simply accepted her life and went about living it. 

What a lesson for life that was for me! 

She had no expectations about her life. She knew that tomorrow morning she would wake with the dawn and begin her work. 

As I have lived my life and encountered hardship upon hardship, I remember this valuable lesson. We can accept our life, or we can fight it and have happiness elude us.

My smile has left me at times in my life, but it has always found its way back and I KNOW it is because of the strong men and women I have had in my life to teach me. 

My Aunts, the wonderful 6th grade teacher that helped me believe in myself and the wonderful friends that embrace me every day. 

One day I hope to be in a squeaky rocker, hearing the screen door slam shut but if not, the sounds live on in my memory and it makes me smile:-) 

I pray that you all have a wonderful start to your day. One with acceptance of the day and what comes. I am starting mine out with a heart smile that reaches my eyes:-)

Gloria Peacock Kimmel Oct 29, 2015

Mumps And Rag Ties In My Hair

My horror of a school picture happened in second grade. I was in Mrs. Hendricks class and I had learned to love school by this time, especially our library days. All of us would line up and walk silently down the hall to the library.

Our class was at the beginning of the hallway and we had to walk all the way down this long corridor past the Principle's office, past the 5th grade Mrs Hendricks, and out of the doors to a covered walkway to the Library and the High School. It seemed like we marched a mile back then. We were all tiny and we had to be quiet, which amazingly we were able to do. It was my very favorite thing to do but soon we were going to do my very least favorite thing to do, the school picture.

I had given my parents the required paperwork to let them know when our photographs were going to be taken and I guess my Mother stayed home just for this occasion. She called me into the kitchen where I saw strips of a white stiff cotton fabric beside the sink. I did not know what she planned but I did not like the looks of it. I saw scissors, strips, another bit of cloth off to the side and my mind was saying, "what now?"

The experience of the chickens was fresh in my mind but we were not outside with the animals so I felt relatively safe on that quarter, but still I did not know what Mama had in mind. She told me to get up on a chair, the one I washed dishes standing on, and said, " hold still." I really wasn't moving much because I had an overactive imagination for 7 and I did not know what those strips were going to be used for.

I climbed up on the chair and sat down. Mama picked up one of the strips and turned on the water. Oh lordy, now what.. lol. She put the strip of cloth underneath the water and got it good and wet and then wrung it out a bit. Then she took a bit of my hair and started rolling it up with the strip of fabric. Over and over until she got it up tight against the head and then she tied a knot in the fabric to hold it in place. She did that over and over til my head looked lik an old rag mattress and then she tied that big piece of cloth on my head like a handerchief to hold the water in tight, I guess or to keep me from pulling those awful things out.

She sent me to bed to sleep. I still remember that night, trying desperately to find a comfortable spot on my head to sleep. But I had those knots all over. I tried to pull enough of them to one side to have a place to lay my head but she had done a good job of tying my hair up so there was not much rest that night.

I have neglected to mention that I had mumps too, both sides swollen out so that it was noticeable, but Mama was not going to let me stay home and miss my picture. In the morning, she took down my hair which was curled and frizzed in all direction and tried to spritz it into behaving to go to school. She finally got it in manageable curls and put me in my dress for the day. I remember begging her to let me stay home. I was so sick but she was going to have her school picture or else. As Earline mentioned pictures were a rare commodity and she was going to have one of me that day.

I got on the bus with a raging fever and sickly looking eyes and went to school. I tried to smile when the photograher pointed the camera at me but I could only manage a sickly grimace. Mama got her picture that day and I went to school looking like a curly mess.

Years later I got the picture from the old black purse and I almost tore it completly up but I restrained and I still have it today. The one I am sharing today is a copy of the original which has two chunks torn out of it where I was going to end this memory, but refrained.

Today, I am glad that I have the photo and the reminder and my perspective has changed. Mama was trying to make me pretty and what she thought was pretty, was curly hair and mine was straight as a board.

This was not the last time that Mama tried to make my hair curly and when I was 9, I had to revisit these awful feelings again in the form of a having my beautiful long hair cut short and permed. I never quite got over that one either and the memory of that one stays in my book. I forgave Mama and Daddy for all that for, that is the beauty of time , the ability to forgive big things and let God take care of it.
Gloria Peacock Kimmel 10/28/2015

Cure For The Chicken Pox

We did not have our shots when we were little like they do now. You start your little ones getting their shots at age 6 weeks, but back then parents did not inoculate every child. We went through all those childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, and chicken pox. They were miserable and itchy and in some cases embarrassing, but we made it through..

When I was 7 , I had the unfortunate experience of getting the Chicken Pox . In those days if someone had chicken pox you did not isolate the child, you took your kid over so they could have them and get it over with.

My Daddy was an interesting concoction of superstition, healer, and denier of all things medical, but on this day he told me he had a cure for my chicken pox.

He started walking to the many brooder houses we had for chickens in the side yard and I took off behind him. I was getting a little nervous because I spent more than enough time in the cages gathering and candling eggs that I had no desire to have anything to do with those chickens. You did not dare voice concerns or disobey daddy, so I followed him to the front of the largest cage.

It was an interesting experience for me, because I had an inquisitive mind and daddy said he had a cure for chicken pox. In my 7 year old mind I was already thinking, this could be big! lol

He said, "take your shoes off" and I started to squirm a little. I never went into the chicken coop without shoes or it would be a squishy, smelling mess for what I thought would be years to come, but I silently took off my shoes and looked to daddy for the next direction.

With some trepidation and my shoes removed, daddy opened the chicken coop door and motioned for me to go in. I immediately thought this is not going to be any fun and I entered the coop. There were two levels of long poles that the chickens roosted on and all around the outside walls were little bins filled with straw for them to lay eggs. I picked my way over to the side thinking we were going to be getting a few eggs and I might get something good to eat.

Then Daddy said "go over there Glorann" and he motioned underneath the tallest roosting pole. I walked over or slunk over there slowly and positioned myself under the first and tallest pole. This sent the chickens into flapping and clucking because I was invading their territory.

He then said, "now Glorann, I want you to walk underneath these roost 3 times." My eyes opened wide because I was old enough to know that the chicken poop was going to go in between my toes and I hesitated, which made him give me a look.

I gulped and started marching underneath the roost.. I could feel the poop squish in between my toes, and I could smell the chickens and hear the flapping. It took every thing a body could do to finish one turn but I kept walking and crawling til I got to the end. The roost were different heights so that when you made it to the end of the walk, you were crawling to get under the chickens.

When I ended one pass, I started another. The poop was now on the top of my feet, my hands and legs. My feet were sliding as I tried to complete another turn. The second pass completed, I started my third pass gingerly stepping to try to keep myself afloat and to finish this up as quickly as I could.

When I was done, daddy said. " now go wash yourself off with the hose" and off I went. He seemed confident that I would be cured so I went back into the house to goop myself up with calamine lotion. At night daddy tied socks on my hands so that I could not scratch myself to death, because the itch is like nothing you have felt unless you have had those dreaded chicken pox.

Daddy thought it would cure me and it did.

My Chicken Pox went away in 10-14 days and daddy just knew it was all due to walking and crawling underneath the chickens.
All I really got from it was a chicken poop smell that lasted 3 days, but daddy meant well.. lol

( I tried to take a clear picture of the chickens. I could not get a good one, but I tried)

Gloria Peacock Kimmel Oct 21 2015