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Note: Soc. Sec. Death Index entry: Cecil FERGUSON Birth Date: 11 Oct 1895 Death Date: Nov 1981 Social Security Number: 481-14-4590 State or Territory Where Number Was Issued: Iowa Death Residence Localities ZIP Code: 52240 Localities: Iowa City, Johnson, Iowa (The following family history was written by Margaret Alice (Ferguson) Anderson, eldest child and only daughter of John and Cecil (Sellers) Ferguson)
November 26, 1914 was the wedding day of John Ferguson and Mary Cecil Sellers at Sulphur Springs, Tennessee. John's brother, C. N. (Newton) and Cecil's sister Ruth Sellers went along to stand up with them. They went by horse and buggy. Not long after their marriage, John and Cecil moved to a farm near Lone Tree, Iowa, where they worked for a farmer, Mr. Burge. Cecil did housework and John did farm work. A daughter, Margaret, was born August 28, 1915. By 1917, they had moved to Lamont, Iowa to another farm. A son, James, was born there September 14, 1917. They had a car by this time and used this to go back to Tennessee, as bad as roads were in that time. They lived in a tenant house on the Sellers' farm where Harry Wallace was born June 29, 1919. (The roads were so bad on the trip to Tennessee they had to put the car on a rail car and went part of the way by train.) By 1920, they started to Iowa again, reversing the trip--shipping the car part way by rail. Cecil and the three children rode the train to a relative's home in Illinois where they waited an embarrassingly long time for John to come for them. This time they moved to east of Iowa City and worked for a Mr. Barry. James and Margaret started school at the Cherry school. This was where they lived when John's mother, Lizzie Gibson Ferguson, brother C. N. and sister Beulah moved to Iowa after the death of his father, Robert Ferguson. (His father had visited Iowa when John and Cecil lived near Lamont.) C. N., Beulah and their mother rented houses in Iowa City until they built the house at 623 Oakland Avenue. C. N. worked as a carpenter. Beulah went to Irish Business College, worked for Thompson Transfer, Yetters Department Store, Dunn's (a dress shop) and a hat shop before retiring long after her 65th birthday. One house they lived in was next to the airport, where we went to watch daring air shows. Another house was on Hotz Avenue, another was on Bowery Street, where they lived in 1923 when we moved to south Lucas Street, just around the corner. John worked for F. X. Fryder, a building contractor. James and Margaret attended Longfellow school. In the summer of 1924, Cecil, Margaret, James and Wallace went to Tennessee to visit the relatives. They went by train. They were living east of Iowa City in a rented house near the Hunters. John drove to Iowa City to work and also farmed the 25 acres of farm land. They had an apple orchard, chickens and a cow. Here John, Jr. was born on December 12, 1924, and Roy Merle was born on September 6, 1926. John's mother, Lizzie, died in July 1927. C. N. and Beulah went back to Tennessee with her body, where she was buried in the Fairview Cemetery. In the spring of 1927, the family moved to Oakland Avenue in Iowa City. This was just up the street from Grandmother, C. N. and Beulah. Their next-door neighbor was Dr. Jenkinson, the family doctor who delivered Margaret's son Randall in 1946. When the Depression hit, Fryder Construction closed their doors. John and Cecil stored their few household goods, bought a tent, cots, camp stove, etc. and stayed with John's sister Pearl, her husband Pem Bowrey and their son, Robert, who had moved to Iowa in 1923 or 1924. They lived at North Liberty, Iowa at that time. Shortly after this (1928), the family started back to Tennessee with the camping equipment in the car, a Dodge sedan. It is said that John, Jr. stood in the middle in the back seat most of the way, looking out between John and Cecil in the front. ------------------------------------------------------ We visited relatives in Tennessee until late in summer. One day the neighbor children, the five of us, and our uncle John (Cecil's brother who was about 15 or 16) were having a picnic in the meadow. Uncle John tried climbing a tall tree and fell about 30 feet, landing in the soft mud and water, knocking himself unconscious. I held his head out of the water until help came. The help were cattle buyers waved down by the other children. They moved him out of the water and moved his arms up and down until the doctor arrived. He was moved to the house where he lay unconscious for 21 days. A trained nurse was hired to care for him. No noise was permitted, so the children spent many hours in the yard and meadow with me caring for them and bossing them! We had been planning to start back to Iowa, but waited the 21 days to see the outcome, and way past the time for school to start in Iowa. So, a very old decrepit house was found for us in Leesburg for us to live in. The furniture was also decrepit--some of the relatives had rounded it up for us, I suppose. The only water we had had was carried a block or two from a spring. We started school at Mt. View School. I was in the seventh grade. By the next year we were living near Sulphur Springs, Tennessee in a house owned by a Mitch Walker. He lived in part of the house and Mother (Cecil) prepared his breakfasts for him. A year later we moved near the Sulphur Springs school, where John, Jr. and Roy Merle started school. A Miss Horton, my history teacher, roomed and boarded with us. She was from Virginia and I visited her home once or so. The family next moved to Jonesboro, Tennessee. I stayed in Sulphur Springs until the school year ended. I lived in an old boarding house with an old lady and another student, Sally Phillips--who in later years shot herself to death. Another year found us living in an old 3-room house. Dad had gone back to Iowa to find work before we moved. The boys found jobs, but they were few and living was hard. We didn't stay long in that house, but moved to the old tenant house at the Sellers grandparents' farm where Wally was born 14 years before. The boys went to Mountain View school again and I rode the bus to Jonesboro for my 12th year of high school. James quit school for a year to work on graveled road projects--he was 16! One year later, Dad borrowed Uncle C. N.'s car to come to Tennessee to get us. At Pineville, Kentucky he fell asleep at the wheel and wrecked the car. He bought another car in Tennessee, but while taking the possessions into Jonesboro for shipping to Iowa he had another wreck. He broke his hand and some ribs, and was in the hospital for a few days. After the car was repaired, we left for Iowa with Mother driving. She was so nervous about driving--never having driven much and then not for a long time. We stayed with C. N. and Beulah--we upset them a great deal--five children, and they were not used to children! The year was 1934, a hot, dry summer--no fans, no ice water. We finally moved to North Liberty. It was the time of the deep depression and Dad had no work or didn't work. I started doing housework and the boys started school, James and Wallace going to University High in Iowa City, and John, Jr. and Roy Merle to North Liberty. Mother took in ironing to make extra money. After a year we moved back to Iowa City and 611 Oakland Avenue. James and Wallace went to City High School and John and Roy to Longfellow. The family moved next to an apartment complex on Washington Street. Here we rented out a room to a University student. The next move was to 2127 Friendship Street. They rented a room out to Henry and Mary Pohler, who ran the Last Chance Bar on N. Dodge Street. The next move was to 747 Rundell Street, where they lived for 30+ years! All four boys left for military service in World War II from the Rundell Street home. James was in the National Guard, 113th Cavalry in the late 1930's when it was a horse-mounted unit. This unit was called up in 1940 and stationed in Texas. After America entered the war in 1941, the unit was mechanized. James went to the European theater in 1942, serving with Hodge's 1st Army throughout Europe until being discharged after the war ended in 1945. Wallace joined a Cavalry unit at Fort Riley, Kansas in 1939. He transferred to the Army Air Corps, trained at Chanute Field, Illinois and became a Sergeant Bombardier. (Later in the war, bombardiers were commissioned officers.) He flew out of New Hampshire on A-20-A attack bombers on submarine patrol. He then transferred to cadet school to train as a pilot. He received a medical discharge in 1943 because of arthritis in his back, aggravated by an injury playing football during a recreation period. John enlisted in the army in November, 1943. He trained at Fort Benning, Georgia. He served with Patton's 3rd Army through Europe as a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) rifleman. He was in the Battle of the Bulge in France in December, 1944. He received a wound in the cheek. The family received a telegram that he was wounded in action, but afterward found out he had been treated and sent back to the front before they even received the telegram. He was discharged Nov. 26, 1945. Roy Merle enlisted in the Navy in November, 1944. He trained at Great Lakes Naval Training School, then served on the USS Savannah (CL 42) and the USS Scott (DE 214). His ships patrolled the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Cuba. He was discharged in June, 1946 at Jacksonville, Florida. In 1974, John, Sr. died of cancer. The following year Cecil and John, Jr. moved to an apartment at 2315 Rochester Avenue in Iowa City. Cecil died in November, 1981. John, Jr. lived on in the apartment until moving to an apartment in Coralville, Iowa and then moving to the upstairs portion of Roy and Norma's home at 802 12th Avenue in Coralville. (Addendum by Neil Ferguson, March 2004: John, Jr. then moved to another apartment in Coralville, where he lived for several years until he then moved to another apartment on South Dubuque Street in Iowa City.) I married Zell Anderson on July 12, 1941. Zell enlisted in the Army Air Corps and reported to Lubbock, Texas. I joined him in June. Zell's sister, Inez, helped me drive down. We spent three years there. Our son, Roy Zell was born July 31, 1943. We were transferred to Childress, Texas in 1944, where Zell was discharged after the war ended and we came back to North Liberty.
-- Margaret Ferguson Anderson, June 1990
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