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Note: Robert moved his family into the house with his mother when his father, John, died. Robert would tell his mother whenever she would start to do anything, "Go sit down, Ma, let these girls do that". And so began an inactive period of her life where she sat and read the Bible most of the time for the rest of her life. When snows came the boards of the ceiling were just laid on the rafters and there were cracks in between them. The snow would drift down between the cracks. Robert would take the wagon cover (a conestoga wagon-like cover) and place it over the fire-place area so the snow would not fall into the room and the warmth would be contained in that area. (Source: Flora Woodley Otwell, Neice. Per Willie Barton) Robert was a deacon at the Sipsey River Primitive Baptist Church in Winston County, Alabama. After the family moved to Walker County he was a deacon at Pleasant Grove Primitive Baptist Church at Boldo. He just would not miss church at all. He was a very faithful and good leader. Robert had a sawmill, cotton gin, syrup mill and he farmed. Their pay for making syrup for other people was a portion of the syrup which was put in a large barrel (possibly a 50 gallon barrel) which sat on the porch. It had a plug in it to drain off whatever amount the family needed at one time. Jodie's brother, Decatur (Uncle Dee) Pruitt, persuaded Robert to move from Winston County to Carbon Hill in Walker County to try his hand at coal mining. The first day Robert went to the mines he stayed four hours and came out, saying mining wasn't for him. Since a crop had already been started they stayed the year and then moved back to Winston County. Lena was the only child borned outside Winston County. She was born while they were in Carbon Hill. (Source for above three paragraphs is Dovie Butler Alexander Lawson. Per Willie Barton) After the family moved into the house off the Whitehouse road neighbors would gather and quilt at the Butlers. The men raised the barn. Jodie would cook dinner for everyone. It was a combination barn raising/quilting bee. On the fourth of July we always had ice cream, usually two freezers full, made in a wooden ice cream maker with a manual turn mechanism. If there wasn't enough milk for the second freezer Annie would go to the pasture and milk the cow, bring it back still warm to strain and make the ice cream. Jodie never worked in the fields but cared for the garden and always did the churning herself. After Annie got old enough Jodie never went to the spring to wash clothes. Annie and the younger girls did that chore. (Source for the above two paragraphs is Ophelia Butler Cain daughter of Robert and Jodie. Per Willie Barton)
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