|
a.
|
Note: . Hamp gave his birthyear as 1886 in his later years, which is what he believed to be true. But I'm sure his mother gave the information for the 1900 census and the dates are correct as she gave them except for Bertie who was 7 and the birth year should have been 1892.
He said that his parents lived near Sulligent, Alabama at Greenwood Crossing. Present day Greenwood Springs, Mississippi is about ten miles from Sulligent. It was a railroad flag stop and years ago there was a post office there. Grandpa said it took a whole day to go to Columbus by oxen. They were probably living at Greenwood Crossing when most of the children were born.
In a letter from my grandmother, Ethel Robertson Isabel, dated April 12, 1965 she wrote the following. "Grandpa's Daddy (referring to Hiram) had some bee hives. One of the Klux Klan come in the yard and picked up one of the bee hives and was carrying it off. Grandpa's Daddy shot the man. Then a note was put in the fence post to leave in 36 hours. But his daddy did not leave. He loaded his gun and waited for their return. They came in the night and was braking in the house. His daddy got up and killed one. Then he had to run. He left in his night clothes. His mother carried him some clothes the next day but he didn't know how she done it. Your Grandpa was between 6 and 7 years. He remembers his mother having a sale. The only thing he remembered her selling was hay. That was in the fall of 92. His mother put what she could in two wagons, yoaked up some cows to pull the the wagons. They crossed the Mississippi river at Memphis on a barge. That was in the spring of 93."
!CENSUS-AR-CROSS-1900: Tyronza Twp, Vol 10, ED 27, page 1
Isabell, Rhodie Head Jun 1855 44 AL AL AL Farmer
Isabell, Thos Son Jan 1883 17 MS AL AL Farm laborer
Isabell, Hampton M Son Jun 1888 11 MS AL AL Farm laborer
Isabell, Eliza Jane Dau Jan 1890 10 MS AL AL Farm laborer
Isabell, Bertie Dau Sep 1893 7 MS AL AL
Isabell, Marion E Son Jun 1894 5 AR AL AL
!CENSUS-AR-ST FRANCIS-1910: Griggs Twp., Vol 56, ED 121, page 72, 155/155
Sproles, R. B. head 58 TN VA NC Wd, Timber laborer, rents house, can read & write
Sproles, James P. son 32 TN TN TN Timber laborer, mar. 1 year, can't read or write
Sproles, Ed W. son 22 TN TN TN Timber laborer, can't read or write
Sproles, Maggie dau 11 AR TN TN Can read & write, att. school
Isabell, Hamp M. boarder 20 AL AL AL Timber laborer, not out of work since Apr 15, can read and write
!CENSUS-AR-CRITTENDEN-1920: Earle, Mississippi St., ED 67, Sheet 11B, 240/253, Image 22
Isabel, Hamp Head 35 AL US US Foreman
Isabel, Ethel Wife 26? AR AR AR
Isabel, Ervin Son 6 AR AL AR
Isabel, Thomas Son 3 AR AL AR
Isabel, Mitchell Son 3/12 AR AL AR
Hamp lived with his parents in Smithdale, Cross County, Arkansas until they both died in 1900; his father before the census was taken and his mother afterwards. He was left orphaned at twelve years of age. Dr. Orr of Smithdale arranged to have the four youngest children committed to an orphanage in Memphis called the Porter-Leath Home. When Hamp knew they were coming on December 1, 1900 he ran off down the railroad tracks so they couldn't take him. So he lived with one person then another. The next ten years must have been very difficult for him. He lived with his older brother Tom right after his parents died. And he lived with another older brother Jim for a while, also his Aunt Alice (Horton) Goad who was his mother's half sister. They all lived in or near Earle. Hamp lived most of his life in the vicinity of Earle In 1910 he was boarding with the Sproles. Mr. Sproles daughter Maggie married Ethel's brother Willie.
Hamp and Ethel's marriage is recorded in Marriage License Book S, page 482. They were married on Uncle Wallace Fulkerson's place north of Earle.
He attended the Assembly of God church with Grandma (mostly outside looking in the window). Hamp was 5 ft. 8 in. tall; weighed 145 lbs. in his prime, but dropped to 128 as he got older. He had almost black hair before it grayed. His eyes were a gray-blue. Hamp had a bony prominence above the instep. Irving, Tom, Mitchell, Janice and Jeanette all had it too.
Janice wrote "I was born in Earle. Daddy and Mama owned the house where Jeanette and I were born and another one with a vacant lot between them. (According to the following deed it was bought in 1922.) You could see the Gunn's house from ours." "Release Deed No. 1805 KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS: that the American Building & Loan Association of Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas...acknowledges full payment and satisfaction of the debt and obligations which are secured by a real estate mortgage dated the 16th day of September 1922 and executed by Hamp Isabel and Ethel Isabel to the said American Building & Loan Association of Little Rock, for the principal sum of nine hundred fifty dollars ($950.00) upon the following described lands, situated in the town of Earle, county Arkansas, State of Arkansas, to-wit: Lot nine (9) block thirty (30) of the amended survey to the town of Earle, Arkansas, which said mortgage is recorded in the office of the clerk of the circuit court of said County, in record book 112, at page 615 and the said mortgage is hereby released and discharged of record...on this 20th day of June 1928." Recorded in Volume 134, page 77 by the Clerk of the Circuit Court on 28 June 1928. The county was Crittenden, not Arkansas, a mistake on the clerk's part.
Janice said "Daddy sold the house and vacant lot to Aunt Kate and Uncle Tom Ingram. Aunt Kate (my step grandmother, Jake's second wife) and Uncle Tom lived there when they were first married. I think Aunt Kate and Grandpa Jake lived there when I was born in 1925. Grandpa died there. You will have to ask somebody older than me as to who bought the house and lot. I only remember Aunt Kate and Uncle Tom being there when I got older."
"About 1926/7 we moved to Twist. We were living there during the overflow which happened in the spring of 1927. Jeanette got blood poisoning from it. One of her legs swelled up to her groin. A doctor was treating her by painting her leg with Mercurochrome. Every morning Jeanette would wake up and the swelling would be a little highter than where the Mercurochrome was painted. An old black women who lived near us picked some herbs, put them in a tub of warm water and soaked Jeanette in it. It helped her; she was just two years old. That's about the only thing I remember about living there. Daddy worked as a woods foreman. He worked for some company that cut the timber on both sides of Blackfish Lake. I remember riding the dumy out in the woods at the logging camp to visit Daddy. One day everyone was riding on the dummy to go see Daddy and I just went to sleep from breathing in the carbon monoxide from the old engine. They gave me a drink of the slough water. It's a wonder it didn't kill me. We lived at Twist until we moved onto the 80 acres of land south of Earle that Daddy bought in 1929."
Warranty Deed No. 2171 was recorded by the Circuit Clerk Recorder in Book 138, page 333. It stated in part "we, Luther Wallin and his wife Eve, for the sum of thirteen hundred sixty dollars...to be paid as follows, ...$400.00 cash in hand paid...and three promissory notes for $320.00 each due in one, two and three years from date, with interest at 6% per annum ...do hereby grant, bargain, sell and convey unto the said Hamp Isabell and unto his heirs...the following lands lying in the county of Crittenden and State of Arkansas, to-wit: North half (N. 1/2) of Northwest quarter (N.W. 1/4) of section thirty four (34) township seven (7) North, Range six (6) East, containing eighty acres more or less. THIS deed is given subject to a timber deed given to W. H. Pitts, by Luther Wallin and is to have priority over this deed until November 1, 1930. Luther Wallin agrees to pay all of the 1929 taxes on said land....for and in consideration of the said sum of money do hereby release and relinquish unto the said Hamp Isabell all my right of dower and homestead in and to the said lands. WITNESS our hands and seals on this 7 day of August 1929." Signed by Luther Wallin and Eve Wallin.
Janice said "Daddy and his brother Marion built a house on it. It was mostly Uncle Marion who did the building, since Daddy wasn't much of a carpenter. Mama was always unhappy about where they put the doors. I remember her getting the saw out and she moved the inside doors. In 1930 or 1931 we moved into the house. It was on the only road that went through from Earle to Highway 70 back then, between Little and Big Blackfish Lake. Daddy never farmed the land, just grew corn and alfafa for the cows. One time he let a couple, the wife was Chinese, sharecrop on 20 acres of it. Daddy got part of the cotton.
Then about 1933/4 we moved to Heth, Arkansas for one year. About 1934/5 we moved back to our house south of Earle. I started to school in Earle (fall of 1932) through the third grade and also went to Earle in the fifth and sixth grades. Uncle Marion's wife, Minnie, came to our house a lot. We were still living there in 1936 because I remember Irving and Ruth bringing Pat when she was a baby."
Ruth Isabel Bokker, Jim's daughter, said that Uncle Hamp built two houses that they lived in. One had an upper story. She lived with them a year when she was about 13 or 14 (1932-33). She said she helped Aunt Ethel do everything - wash and iron. She ironed Irving's white pants. She'd put a damp cloth on them and used a flat iron. They made pickles which they put in brine in wooden barrels. They cut up cabbage and put in barrels also and made chow-chow.
Warranty Deed No. 2594 states "...That we, Luther Wallin and Eva Wallin, his wife, for and in consideration of Ten Dollars to us in hand paid by Ethel Isabell...do hereby...sell and convey unto the said Ethel Isabell...the following lands in Crittenden County, Arkansas, to-wit: The South Half (S 1/2) of the Northwest Quarter (NW 1/4) of the Northwest quarter (NW 1/4) in Section Thirty-four (34), Township Seven (7) North, Range Six (6) East, containing 20 acres more or less. TO HAVE AND TO HOLD the same unto the said Ethel Isabell and unto her heirs...do hereby release and relinquish unto...Ethel Isabell all my right of dower and homestead in and to the said lands. WITNESS our hand and seals on this the 29th day of October, 1934. signed Luther Wallin and Eva Wallin. Filed for record in the clerks office on 7th day of Novemeber 1934 and is recorded in Record Book, Vol. 153, page 222.
Janice said he sold the last 20 of the 80 acres in 1937. He sold the first part of the land to help Irving pay a debt (1936) for something he had bought. She didn't know the circumstances except someone wanted their money from Irving. She also said that Grandpa didn't go into World War I because he had three children. You could have two and still go, but not three. About 1937 Janice wrote that "we moved back to Earle and lived across the street from Aunt Kate. Then we moved by the Organs who were kinfolks. Daddy had an older half-sister, Annie Smith Goad. Her daughter Bessie married an Organ. We moved out from Wynne, Arkansas, I think in the latter part of 1938."
Hamp and Ethel and family were living in Vanndale in 1940 when Ethel's sister-in-law, Maggie Sproles Robertson, died. "About 1941we moved out in the country behind your Mother and Father. I think it was Little Twist. We had a 1939 Ford that Tommy left when he went in the service in 1942."
Janice wrote that "in the summer of 1942 we moved to the mill yard where Mr. Wallin's lumber company was. We didn't have to pay any rent or utilities until Mitchell came home after the war in late 1945. He and Edith and their children started living with Daddy and then Mr. Wallin started charging them rent. Daddy worked for some company that cut the timber on both sides of Blackfish Lake. Mitch and Edith lived there until Irving got him a job with Dealers Transport in Memphis. Then they moved to Louisville, KY. Tudie must have been eight.
Then in 1943 Mama and I moved to Memphis when she bought the restaurant on Southern called The Southern Grill. It was near a golf course and a lot of golfers would come in and eat. In 1944 Mama bought the restaurant on Jackson Ave. called Sullivan's Grill which was bigger and better. Sold it in 1945. Then she moved back to Earle and lived there until Daddy retired. Daddy would visit us every weekend.
After Hamp's retirement, they moved near Dover, Tennessee on Kentucky Lake about 1956. He was about 66 years old. Mitch moved Mama and Daddy to Kentucky Lake in his big truck that was unloaded. It was a very nice place with a front yard going right down to the water. They were still there in 1960 when Mark was a baby. But they had to move from there when the government bought up that land to flood it. They then moved to Pine Point, Springville, Tennessee. That's where they were living when Mitch and family moved back. They camped out on Jeanette's property for a while. Punkin already had Catherine, who couldn't walk, at that time. Then Grandpa bought them a house near him.
Janice said Grandpa took pills for high blood pressure. Death certificate gives cause as cerebral and coronary vascular insufficiency; generalized arteriosclerosis. He is buried in Wofford Cemetery. Charles and I attended funeral and took Craig with us, but left Mark and Pam at home to go to school. I realize now that they should have gone too. Hamp's social security number was 431-20-7281.
Note: Hamp's birth year was taken from the 1900 Census of Cross County, Arkansas listed below
|
