Remarkable Vashie

by Doris Hillger

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Doris Hillger

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Foreword

This is the story of a lady who will dwell in your memory for a long time because of her tenacity, her perseverance in the face of hardships which we can only imagine, and the way she looked at life. When there was work to be done she may have not liked it but her sleeves were rolled up and ready for the fight to go forward. This is a lady you will wish you had known.

She started with a family who loved her dearly. When each sibling came along she was right there to help Momma raise that family of six girls and one boy. Then when Lenny came along she fell in love. He offered her a way to have her own home and children. He also saw in her a woman who could be the kind of mother he loved. Together they began to make a home and to enjoy life.

Lenny never was able to provide all the things a young girl needed or wanted. He tried to forge a way in the railroad company, later he worked for a cabinet maker, always wanting to be back on the farm. These things did not bring in the money necessary and Vashie found herself sewing to have a little nest egg for herself.

She started life before electricity, before appliances or telephones, before heat and air conditioning, before readymade clothes, before transportation other than horse and buggy and before hot water ran from a faucet. A washing machine was a shiny new rub board and a dryer was a fence. She did live in a time when church and religion were uppermost socially and spiritually. They became the support she needed for the overwhelming odds which would come her way. She was not alone in her survival as a woman but she was unique in the way she conquered adversities. These were the golden explosive years of a young country and this lady saw it all. She grew up with a young country and grew old with it.

Place yourself alongside her as you read. Realize what she must have been thinking and experiencing. Many days she felt bad. Doctors could only do a little with medicines which were limited in their benefits toward recovery.

The diaries that Vashie wrote meticulously each evening have been kept in a box for over a hundred years. Some are now missing and only a few remain. The dialog in this book is naturally fiction as is so much of the story. The general facts are true. The dates have come from Ancestry.com and other research. The record from her diary has been underlined so you will know exactly what she wrote. She also kept a scrapbook which has revealed much of her life. Try to hear her as you read.

Traveling across the Texas wasteland in a wagon with a few supplies and a team of horses, she witnessed this state as it began to emerge into a charming and delightful bouquet of cities and farms. Just as a flower bud emerges into a beautiful blossom, and wilts in time, to be kept intact between the pages of a favorite book, she too began to bloom, and wilt. This is the story of her life as it is preserved in the sanctuary of this book for generations yet to come. This is written for my children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and now all the rest to come. God speed.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Introduction

To read a book about a unique person one must first explore the world in which they lived. In the case of Vashie we will begin with world events. That is where she would want us to start.

Before the Civil War the white men pushed the Indians away from the east coast into a land which was called Indian Territory. A treaty was signed and the Indians would have their land free and clear without any more danger from guns and hunger. As soon as gold was discovered in California the boundaries were extended past the Great Plains. By 1860, a Navaho leader named Manuelito would be engaged in the undeclared war with the United States in New Mexico and Arizona. In 1876 Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would make history as they defeated General Custer. Slowly the many Indian tribes were defeated and left with rags and few rations to exist on reservations. Most of these Indians would be driven into the ground long before the Indian freedom came at Wounded Knee in December, 1890.

Meanwhile, in 1820 the division of slave states and non-slave states was becoming a major threat. A compromise was proposed that would allow Maine to be admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave-state. No state would be admitted north of the Louisiana Purchase area.

The United States produced its first gas well at Fredonia, New York and Davy Crockett, was elected as a state legislator for Tennessee.

During this time land grants were given to white men to homestead and to plow their fields. People came by the hundreds to take advantage of this free land. It was surely a country of promise.

Red River County, Texas was a lush green country with soft rolling hills and dark green grasses. Leonard W. Ward I was born in Hamilton Co. Tennessee on January 3, 1813 and received a land grant of 160 acres in Red River County, Texas on November 17, 1851. Malvina Hill was born on April 19, 1817 in Ivytown, Tennessee. They married and came to Red River, Texas to establish their home and to raise their family. They had seven children.

Leonard W. Ward was their first born March 16, 1852. He married Fannie Dick on November 1, 1876. She was born in Kentucky on April 23, 1854. They had two children, Leonard W. Ward III born March 8, 1879 and Sam D. born February 27, 1885. Vashie Mayse came into their life in 1900 when she and Leonard were married March 1900.

She was born in Arkansas on October 13, 1881. Her parents, Henry F. Mayse and Jennie Elizabeth Wallace Mayse came from Tennessee to the new state of Texas. They had six girls and one boy.

The Mayse family traveled around with their wagons selling goods and establishing general stores in Oklahoma and Texas before they settled into their home in San Angelo, Texas and Girvin, while the Wards continued to live on their farm in Red River County.

Vashie’s schooling consisted of public school for a while, and home schooling from her parents since both had been school teachers back in Tennessee. Frugality was taught as a necessity and love of family from her five sisters and one brother would simply come from living life together. That was the way it was back in the late 1800’s.

The sleeping giant of a country was just beginning to awaken as the industrial revolution began. Railroads became popular as a means of travel as well as the covered wagons. People no longer remained in one place as more and more means of going from one place to another were introduced. Benz built his first horse-less carriage and Henry Ford invented his Model T while Rudolf Diesel patents his diesel internal combustion engine. Discovery of petroleum oil from the ground was the newest fuel. John D. Rockefeller became the second most powerful man in the United States next to the President with his Standard Oil Company. Scots-born Andrew Carnegie devoted his entire fortune to education, libraries, and scientific research. Susan B. Anthony led one hundred women in a march in Washington, D.C. for female suffrage.

The fields of medicine, music, art, and literature were thriving. Madam Marie Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize for her work in discovering radium. Dr. John Pemberton invented a new drink which would help in a woman’s hysteria. He mixed a certain caffeine-rich essence of cola nut to make a refreshing drink. This drink was the fore-runner of Coca-Cola. George Eastman perfected a new camera he called a Kodak. In Paris the Eiffel Tower was completed.

In Oklahoma on April 22, 1889, precisely at noon, a government official would fire a single shot and a great race for land would begin. Thousands of settlers headed west into territory that was supposed to house 75,000 Indians. It was estimated that more than 200,000 people crossed from Texas and Kansas. Law enforcement officers were pressed to ensure that sooners who tried to beat the gun would not snatch up the prime plots. U.S. Boomers who were railroad executives and real-estate agents and farmers had finally succeeded in pressuring President Harrison to open up the land. Most of the Indians moved on westward. The name of Boomer-Sooners caught on and many people in Oklahoma enjoyed this title.

Queen Victoria celebrated sixty years as Queen of England. Five years later she would die at age 81, in 1891. During her reign she had married Prince Albert from Germany in 1881, and had nine children. She became known as the grandmother of Europe. One grandson, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein died of a fever in South Africa. This person would be important to Vashie’s family much later.

President William McKinley was killed on September 14, 1901 by a Polish anarchist. He served six months of a second term and was succeeded by vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt. These are but a few of the international events shaping the United States. Vashie would be glad we talked about some of them for she loved hearing about history and studying about the changing of all guards around the world.

Vashie kept up with world news and tried to be a part of it. She did her best. She never had television for entertainment when she was young. There would have been no time for such things. She learned early on how to work with her hands for them to be useful, and to make beautiful things. She was a wonderful product of loving parents and was blessed with five sisters and a brother who enjoyed the closeness of them as long as she lived. She was also a product of hard work, determination, perseverance, and commitment to her community. She participated in civic organizations, holding offices in all. She always maintained a strong faith in her church and her God, which carried her through many of life’s trials. She tried to pass these character traits to her children.

Chapter 1

Vashie! Vashie! her mother called as she stepped to the corner of the house. Get the children to the cellar! Looking at the sky Momma saw the rolling orange clouds in the northwest down close to the horizon. She had seen other storms and knew what could happen. Last summer the family in the adjacent home had lost their horse and barn in sudden high gusts of wind and dust.

The weather was not kind in this part of the country. The sun was hot and the air was dry making lips so parched they would crack and the skin so desiccated it would