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Note: Personal knowledge of Ethel Titsworth Barnard Note #1: Death Certificate for Alva A. Barnard
Certificate # 13546
Falls County, Texas
Place of death: Falls County, Marlin, Texas (at the hospital)
Name of deceased: Alva A. Barnard
Date of birth: 10-25-1888 (October 25, 1888)
Age 80 years
White Male
Retired farmer
Fathers Name: Upton Barnard (name Upton Pierce Barnard s.b.)
Mothers Name: Catherine Watson (name Mary Catherine Watson--nickname Kitty s.b.)
Deceased was never in the Armed Forces
S.S. #463-26-2788 A
Informant: Ethel Harriet Barnard
Cause of death: Acute myocardial infarction
Due to Coronary atherosclerosis
No Autopsy
Burial: 4/5/69 in Kirk Cemetery
Funeral Director: Littlepage Funeral Home #554
Registrars File #5051 dated 4/10/69
(Alva A. Barnard is buried in the Kirk Cemetery s.b.)
Death certificate in the genealogy files of Sally A. Breen
Note #2: Document from State of Texas Vol. 85, pg. 75--copy in Barnard Genealogy book in home of Sally Breen, Windham, ME
Note #3: Copy of Will for Alva A. Barnard in the Barnard Genealogy Book in home of Sally Breen,
Wndham, ME
Note #4: A handwritten note, dated 8 Feb. 1942, by Harriet Ethel Titsworth Barnard, wife of Alva Archie Barnard:
Alva Archie Barnard, b. 25 Oct. 1888, 54 years old. 5'7" high, weight 196 lbs. Eyes: blue: Hair: black
Tatoo on breat of American Eagle. Born at Groesbeck, Limestone Co., Texas
Father born at Fairfield, Freestone, Texas. (This is not correct: His father, Upton P. Barnard, was born somewhere near Sherman, Texas. s.b.) Born Sept. 1848, (This is not correct. Upton P. Barnard's date of birth is 18 March 1854 s.b.) died at Kirk, Texas on 3 Jan 1890 (this is not correct. Upton P. Barnard died 3 Jan. 1893 s.b.). Cause of death: pneumonia.
Mother born 25 miles S.E. of Houston, Harris County, Texas. (This is not correct. His mother, Mary Catherine Watson was born 18 July 1862 in Freestone County, Texas s.b.) b. 1861, died 5 Jan. 1920 (This is not correct. She died 31 Dec. 1919 and is buried in the Kirk Cemetery s.b.). This note in application to ship building guard.
Wife: Ethel Titsworth Barnard; born 29 Oct. 1888 at Riesel, McLennan Co., Texas.
Referendes: O.G. Schendell, Clay W. Colgin, E.A. Monsies: (Acquainted with Lockett, Longford, McWhorter at the shipyard).
Worked for:
Briggs Darby--Eedcouch, Texas; Quit work there 25 Jan 1942--job complete. Hired by Levy.
Cage Bros.--Harlingen Gunnery School. Quit work there 23 July 1942--job completed.
Hired by Thompson
J.C. Mack, Jr., Fort Brown, hauling dirt $1.00 per load. Hired by Jim Truss, quite 1 Dec. 1942, work complete.
Note #5 compiled by Sally Breen from various sources of family lore: What we know of the early life of Alva Archie Barnard as told to members of his family: His mother owned the boarding house that was located close to the pond used by the cotton gin in Kirk, Texas. He remembered the little children running around in the dirt yard with only a shirt and no underpants.
He remembered some important men coming to their house to talk to his grandmother Watson. All went in another room. When they left, she had signed quit-claim deed to land where the San Jacinto Monument now stands. This grandmother (this would be Cynthia Nancy Haley who married Joshua Watson) was the one who told of watching the battle from second floor window-no battle-only Texans waking Mexicans from siesta, who each said, "Me No Alamo, Me No Goliad," to keep from being shot by very angry Texans.
He ran away from home and got a job as a news butch on a mail train when he was twelve years old. He lived for a while with his cousins Benjamin Barnard and Ida Mae Barnard McFarlin, on a ranch in Oklahoma. He later spoke lovingly of his cousin, Ida, who was very wealthy from income from the McCan Oil Company. He then worked with greyhounds at the penitentiary. When he was working in Uncle Upton's Livery Stable in Mart, he met the beautiful Harriet Ethel Titsworth who had curly red hair and blue eyes. These young people, both 18 years old, married on 17 June 1906. They were married while sitting in a wagon in the front yard of their neighbor, Mr. Jennings, under the shade of a huge mesquite tree with one prominent limb that artfully hung low to the ground.
The Barnard family made several moves in the early years of their marriage. They first lived near Kirk, then moved to Gouldbusk in Coleman County, then Riesel, then to Coleman County again, then to a little farm between Mart and Riesel.
The next move was to Brownsville, Texas where Alva owned a dairy and a nice home on Barnard Street with two rent houses on the back part of the land. While there he owned a shrimp boat which he operated out of Port Isabelle, and a dump truck, which he used to do contract hauling for the government in and around Ft. Brown during WWII. During those depression years, after the children had moved on with their lives, money was in short supply. Alva would make Ethel move from the beautiful big home facing Barnard Street and into the smaller rent house on the back part of the property.
Later, Alva and Ethel moved back to an old farmhouse on 200 acres of land in Kirk near where Alva had been born. Needless to say, Ethel was less than happy about this move. The roof was full of holes, the underground cistern was unusable because of an accumulation of leaves and dirt, the floors were not level (and never were completely level ever after), no indoor plumbing, an outhouse, walls with ancient wallpaper falling off, etc. After years of hard work, eventually the house was habitable. They lived out their remaining years in that house while helping raise Bill and Joe Barnard, the children of Oscar and Blanche Barnard.
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Mimmi & Papa
Memories written by Patricia Jane Breen Cryer
September 2006
Harriet Ethel Titsworth was our Mimmi. Her mother died soon after her birth. Her father gave her to the McKinley family because Mrs. McKinley could breastfeed her. He got her back when she was able to eat table food. Mimmi had one brother and two sisters. They were well off and lived in Reisel Texas. Her grandfather Ramey had been a doctor at Reisel which is not far from Waco. I think her father was a farmer. Anyway her brother was Oscar and her sisters were Annie and Georgia. Annie married Joe Simmons and they were very happy. Joe loved Annie very much and they lived well. They did not have any children when Annie found the lump in her breast. It was cancer and Annie died. Georgia married John Carter who was several years older than she was, but he owned the lumber yard at Franklin Texas. They lived in a huge house that had porches all around and they had one son John Carter. My mother says she loved John Carter, but they were cousins so that love was forbidden. So Annie and Georgia girls married well - except Mimmi (Ethel). She had red curly hair and blue eyes that could look real mean - just look at her picture - but they never, never looked mean at me!
Now I don't know how they met, but I can sure get this picture. Papa came from a very different family. His mother had been married 3 times and had kids with three different names. One of her husbands (William Carmichael) was shot down on the front porch of their little house. She ended up running a boarding house in Kirk Texas. It was located next to a little lake across the street from the cotton gin. Papa didn't have much and Ethel came from a very respectable family! Anyway they married in a buggy in front of the preacher's house by a mesquite tree that made a curve about 18 inches up the trunk and ran perpendicular to the ground for several feet before continuing it's upward search for light. It was perfect for sitting on. (Bill Barnard showed me that tree in 2005 - it doesn't look the same - but it was still there).I know that Mimi's family had to have been unhappy about her choice of husbands - but once made back then you made the best of your choice. The children started to come right away. They had four; Rolla, Ralph, Oscar (Bunch) and Kathryn (my mama).Papa tells the story of her birth. Apparently Mimi had been real sick during the last part of that pregnancy. She went into labor early. When Mama was delivered she was so little there was no hope of her surviving, but Papa put her in a shoe box on some cotton and put the box in the oven to keep her warm. Obviously she did survive. Papa tried to farm, but he was not the best farmer and they did not have land of their own. The government was trying to get people to settle the Rio Grand valley - so they were offering land to people willing to move there. Papa decided that they would take them up on that offer and was given some land along the USA/Mexico border. I had not heard about this until Ralph told me not long before he died. Papa farmed that land and eventually was able to acquire a shrimp boat and a dairy farm as well as the three houses and trailer park located on what is now Barnard Bvd. The boys helped with the work and my mother says she drove the milk truck when she was only 10 years old. Milk was delivered to people's door back then. One of the boys would jump off the truck and take the milk to the door step.
The marriage was not always happy. Sally and I can remember how Mimi and Papa used to argue and my mother tells me that once Mimi ran off to Houston with another man - a salesman who sold women's clothes - who promised her pretty clothes and jewelry (Ralph confirmed that story). She was gone for several weeks before Papa went to Houston and brought her back. I don't know why Papa decided to move back to Kirk. He had lots going for him in Brownsville. Mama says that the government passed a law that all milk had to be pasteurized and Papa refused to buy the equipment. Bunch (Oscar) was married to Blanche and had Billy and Joe. Papa and Bunch never got along well. Anyway Papa decided he was going back to Kirk - so he sold his Brownsville interests, except the dairy, & bought 250 acres of land in Kirk. They left the dairy for Bunch to run - but he later left Brownsville too and moved his family to Kirk. The story is that Bunch never had the capability to run the diary - but I never knew the whole story about this.
The Kirk land had a really run down house on it that Mimi & Papa worked on fixing up while they lived in Mart for a while. It did not have a roof or running water. There was a cistern (a deep hole into which rain water drained by way of gutters along the roof line) and privy. The walls let wind blow through and the floors were uneven. They worked on that house for years trying to get it livable. They put up dry wall in the living room to make it warmer. They did have propane for the cook stove and later got a propane heater. Mimmi had to boil water on the stove and pour it into a pan in the sink in which she washed dished. There was another pan to rinse the dishes. She poured boiling water over the dishes to rinse them. There was never enough water. There was a water bucket by the kitchen door with a dipper hanging on a nail. Every one drank out of the same dipper. It was rain water of course, so it tasted like rain water - it came off the roof of the house and while it sat in the cistern the dust settled to the bottom. When you drew water from the cistern you were careful not to let the bucket go to the bottom or it would stir up the dirt. A basin was on the back porch for washing hands - we all used the same water until it got really dirty. You did not bathe every night, but when necessary there was a wash tub that was brought into the kitchen and water was boiled and poured into the tub and cooled off with another bucket of water. We bathed in about two inches of water. We all used the same water. All dirty water was carried outside and poured on the rose bushes and flowers that Mimi tried desperately to grow. They had a slop jar for use at night. You did not want to have to go to the outhouse at night. There were varmints prowling around and the outhouse always had a Black widow spider in the corner. You did not dilly dally while you did your business even in the daytime, and you always kept your eye on that spider. There was a bag of powdered lime on the floor of the outhouse with a scoop in it. Once in a while you sprinkled the lime over the poop to help keep the flies off of it. When the poop built up Papa would shovel it out and bury it in a hole in the field behind the outhouse. Mimi hated flies because she knew where they had been! The used toilet paper was put in a paper bag and the bag was burned with the trash. None of the furniture in the house could sit straight since the floor was slanted this way and that, so there were pieces of paper folded and placed under the legs of the table to keep it level. Mimi had a round oak table and pressed back chairs. She kept an oil cloth table cloth on the table and everybody had a specific place to sit. The table was in the kitchen. The house had a living room - Mimi's bed was in the living room (they only slept together when it was cold) - two more bedrooms and one room that was called the bathroom, but was really storage. They had to build closets when they were redoing the house, and they only had two. There were three porches, one that was enclosed off the kitchen, one in front and one on the back. Back then you wore the same clothes several days before they got washed. Since there was not enough water & they did not have a washing machine they took the dirty clothes to Mart and did them at the laundermat.
Kirk had a small store but they only sold a few items, like bread and milk and lunch meat and some yellow, pink and white coconut balls stored in a glass jar on the counter. When Sally and I were there in the summer, Papa gave us each a nickel almost every day, and we got to go to the store and buy small bars of Baby Ruth candy. You could always find some men sitting and talking at the store. It was run by a local couple Dorothy and Jewell, and there was a wall-hung telephone there. Not every body had a phone. If you needed to talk to someone in Kirk you called the store and Jewel would give them the massage. Mimi and Papa got a phone sometime after they moved back to Kirk and they always had a newer model Ford car. Papa had a big truck too. There were several houses in Kirk then, one where the blacksmith used to be. Mimi took us to a house where the lady made soap. We got to watch the fat boiling in those great big pots. The cotton gin was the main business. There was a School and a Methodist Church and the cemetery. The best thing that happened was the mailman coming every day.
Going to Mart was a big deal. They went grocery shopping and sometimes ate lunch at a little caf'e9 there. The grocery store in Mart had apricot pies that were to die for! There was a train station at Mart and that's where Sally and I got picked up when we came from Houston to Mart in the summer. Mart had a bank and funeral home and variety store. It was a nice little Texas town. When you wanted to go big time however you went all the way to Waco.
Mimi and Papa raised cattle and cotton and of course grain and hay for the cows. Mimi raised chickens. She made sure none of her chickens ever got into the back of the outhouse. She wouldn't buy eggs from a woman who lived down the street because she had seen the chickens in the outhouse. There was a field to the side of the house where Papa usually grew potatoes or field corn and sometimes a garden. When the potatoes were ready he would plow then up and we would go out with the wire potato picking up basket and harvest the crop. The potatoes would be stored under the house where it was dark and cooler. For many years there was a pig pen a good way from the house. It smelled really bad, but the pigs were interesting to watch. The pigs got all the kitchen scraps which were kept in a bucket on the back porch in the slop bucket until it got full.
Sally and I have lots of memories of those summers at Mimi's house. It is strange that even though we were only there for a few weeks in the summer, those memories are the most vivid for us. Gail was too little to come with us. Mimi would get up early in the morning. She drank very strong coffee. She said she had to have her coffee because she would have terrible headaches and the coffee helped them. She gathered her milking pails (one with a little water in the bottom and a clean rag to wash off the tits) and drove to the lot which was down a nearby road about a quarter mile. The lot was where the milking cows and their calves were kept. There was a shed where hay was stored and given different years, sheep, turkeys and one horse were also kept there. The lot changed from year to year depending on the requirements of the inhabitants. After Bunch and Blanch with Bill and Joe moved to Kirk they had a tiny house at the lot. Mimi would milk the cows and take the milk back to the house where it was strained and refrigerated in glass jars. Mimi would have some milk that soured and she knew just the right time to churn the milk into butter. Papa liked buttermilk. There were always chores to be done, but they did not seem like work to Sally and me. We shocked hay one year - now that was work - and we helped hoe cotton some years. We chased cows from one place to another and we herded turkeys with Mimi until she finally gave up on turkey raising. We fed the chickens, peeled tomatoes and peaches washed the dishes and helped with what ever needed doing. Papa took us in his big truck to buy tomatoes and peaches and we helped Mimi with the canning. Sometimes Mimi would make ice cream for us to eat after nap time. She made custard and froze it in the ice cube trays (the freezer section was only big enough to hold about three trays). She would put bowls in the refrigerator so they would not be too hot and melt the ice cream too fast. Nap time was mandatory. After the dinner dishes were done (we had breakfast dinner and supper)everyone took a nap. It was really hot in Kirk Texas in the summer. Mimi had a fan and Papa had a fan. Sally & I took a nap or played paper dolls on the double bed which was located between two windows where it could hopefully catch some breeze. We did not have air conditioning at home then either - so we were used to the heat. The temperature was a big topic of conversation. I remember one year that it got 109 in the shade. When we would go to bed at night we couldn't leave the light on to read very long because the blister bugs would sting us. If they got you, you got a blister by the next day. Papa let us go swimming in the tank sometimes. The bottom was slimy and the water was muddy, but it was cool and we had a great time. We did not have to bathe on days we went swimming in the tank!! There was always something to do and we were never bored that I can remember. We played, read, worked and ate. It was wonderful. My daddy threatened to not let us go back one year because we gained so much weight. We cried when we had to go back home. We stopped going to see them in the summer when we got to be teenagers and had stuff to do at home. Only short visits once or twice a year.
Mimi and Papa tolerated each other. They lived on that farm the rest of their lives, working and in later years watching TV and reading crime magazines. Bunch eventually moved to a house across the street, so at least they had someone there. The other kids seldom visited. They were married more than 50 years and nobody gave them a 50th anniversary party or put the notice in the newspaper. At least they were not sick a long time before they died. Papa had had some gallbladder trouble - but I don't even know what his cause of death was. Mimi lived on alone in that shack of a house and Bunch was across the street, but she never needed anyone to take care of her. She died in the hospital of heart failure. I will never get over missing them.
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