On our trip in June to Southwest Oklahoma, in addition to tracing my mother's childhood roots, I was searching for the burial place of the only one of my 4 great-grandmothers I hadn't found. Earlier this year I had looked for Emma J. McElyea and learned she was buried in Sayre Doxey Cemetery. After we got to Sayre, it was easy to find on a hill about three miles east of town. Doxey was a one-time rival town, named for one of the earliest ranchers in the area. 
Right near the entrance, I found these tiny yellow flowers blooming. I don't yet know what they are, but they seem to be the same as the larger flowers on the cemetery sign. There has to be a story there.
We went out to the cemetery in the evening on the day we arrived in Sayre. We thought if we couldn't find a marker, we would try again the next day after getting a map from the town funeral home. But we headed for a part that seemed older--Emma died suddenly in 1914 and Jesse lived until 1950--and after about 15 minutes, we spied it. Their marker appears newer than 1950, perhaps placed by one of their daughters. It is out of the same red granite that we found in the Wichita Mountains on our trip.
Jesse and Emma are in block 4, not far from the south entrance to the cemetery. Their grave has a view to the west across part of the North Fork of the Red River valley, and it is very peaceful. I know they came from Arkansas to this land between 1901 and 1910, when my grandpa Earl was a young boy. I wish I knew more about their life and maybe someday I'll uncover more information.
Two days later we were heading for Tulsa, and we stopped at the Stroud Cemetery so I could leave a bouquet for my great grandmother Belle Paris. I know this cemetery and plot well, having visited it as a child and being present at 5 burials in it--both great grandparents, my grandparents Mary and Earl, and my Aunt Bess. Belle is one of two great-grandmothers I knew in life. She died in 1962, just shy of age 98.
The two families -- McElyea and Paris --
joined in 1912 when Earl McElyea married Mary Paris. Mary had gone to Sayre to teach, and I think that's where she met Earl. Their daughter was Frances, my mother. The Paris plot is bounded by three large Abelia bushes, and their small white blooms were attracting a lot of bees. Mary planted them after Earl died. I helped her and later my mother weed, prune and water them. The 4th one didn't make it but three of them are now taller than I am. We should have had pruning tools with us! (Note to self: next time.....)
As we closed this gap in my quest to visit the graves of all four great-grandmothers, I realized something remarkable. ALL of them lived, died and are buried along the storied Mother Road, old U.S. Highway 66. Sayre is the farthest west, then Stroud. The great-grandmothers on my father's side are buried in Missouri. Sarah Gilmore Brown is in the Springfield cemetery although her husband is in San Antonio. I visited her and heard her stories when I was a child. And Martha Stanley Burch is in a small country cemetery, Salem, in Lawrence County just north of Mt. Vernon. Of course, US 66 didn't exist when they moved into new country from their homes in Arkansas, Tennessee, or Kentucky. I know the ones in Oklahoma came by train. The all moved in order to start over: Emma had buried her youngest daughter, 7 months old; Belle and her husband moved west after their tobacco crop failed in Kentucky; Sarah and William sought a better farm; Martha and her husband left a slave state for one that was caught up in border conflicts during the Civil War. All of them lived into their upper 90s, except Emma, who died at age 48. Emma, of course, is the one who started my quest. I am looking forward to putting their stories into a narrative that will trace their lives.
Over the years, our Christmas tree, Norm's and mine, has evolved into a family album of sorts. When I go back through photos, as I did this summer looking for images for the 40th anniversary celebration, there seemed to be a few constants for picture taking: Christmas decorations, pets, fronts of houses, and garden plants. This is our tree as it looked on Christmas morning, 2008, before we dug into the presents.
The oddly tilted foil star on top of the tree is a rescued ornament from one of my mother's housecleaning sprees. I know, Unclutterer says that when something new comes in, something old must go out. Mother practiced that. When my parents got an angel for their tree topper, this star, which I remember from my earliest days, was consigned to the trash. Except I brought it to my home and it has topped our trees for 40 Christmases.
Mother always liked this funny little styrofoam snowman. I don't know what it's sentimental value was for her, but it is one of her ornaments I kept. The pipe cleaners are really faded, but once on the tree, it's handy to fill in one of those gaps that always appears right in front!
My grandmother Burch gave me this plastic bird off of her tree when I was a little girl. I recall her tree in the house on North Florence only dimly. I know it had big bright lights (probably C7) and a whole flock of these birds. It goes on a high branch every year.
Birds were popular in Norm's family, too. We acquired this one at the family auction at the Linville reunion in 2008. Unfortunately we have lost the notes about where it came from: Norm's mother, or one of his grandmothers. But it is glass, and has a spring loaded clip to cling to a branch. This was its first year on our tree.
When I was a girl, I always looked forward to a visit with Cousin Eunice, who was a relative of my Grandpa McElyea. About the time I graduated from college, she presented me with three ornaments she had made herself, with beads, sequins and pins on styrofoam balls. One is blue, one is silver, and this red one completes the set. They go on the tree every year in her memory.
One of the last letters I wrote to Santa Claus was on Christmas Eve of a year when snow unexpectedly showed up in the forecast. I think I was 7 or 8. I asked for a last minute change to my list, if Santa had a sled in his sleigh. Amazed, I read a note from Santa the next morning, neatly printed at the bottom of my letter. He said he was out of sleds, but he was sure I would get one for my birthday in January. And I did. Upstairs in my Dad's metal box of precious letters he saved is that letter. Not long after Norm and I were married, Daddy made this wooden replica of a 1950s sled as an ornament for me. It gets wrapped in bubble wrap when it is put away and always has a very visible spot near the top of our tree. And I start to cry every time I hang it. 
There are many more family ornaments on our tree, but in time we had to start making our own memories. Christmas of 1968, I wanted a silver and red theme for the small Scotch Pine we bought (for about $7, I think.) Being on a tight budget, we strung popcorn and cranberries, bought red and white candy canes, and finished the tree with these pine cones. We picked them up in a cemetery in Pittsburg KS about two blocks from our apartment. We invested in a can of silver spray paint that must have also been a wood preservative, for they are still sound, 40 years later. Originally they were strung with silver and red metallic ribbon but after it gave out, I restrung them with red.
A few years after the pine cones, we were in Colorado and the church Norm served while he was in seminary had an Advent workshop. I was in charge of a children's craft room. We made these ornaments out of the old cardboard egg cartons, glue, tempera paint and gold glitter. It's another hardy reminder that one can create something of lasting beauty and memory out of the most everyday things, even things some people would throw away.
This Christmas, like all Christmases that occur after all of your ancestors have passed on, was bittersweet. But I decided that I would put everything in our storage boxes on the tree, that I wanted to remember as much as I could of our individual histories and our history together. I know of three women for whom Christmas 2007 turned out to be their last one. I got to thinking that at this time of life, there's no point in "saving" some things for next year. If they ever had value, they have value now, and I will enjoy them now, and hopefully for many more Christmases to come.
On Saturday morning of the retreat, I followed the voice that called me to go outside for a walk. Sometimes I have to go to meetings at retreat centers, and we stay too busy, or the weather is too bad, for me to explore outside. This weekend, I wanted to feel my feet on the path, look at the sky and the distance, marvel at small things, and breathe the air. So while others were painting and singing, I left the dining hall and walked first to the river, then up the road toward the hill cabins.
The Castor River was full, but not out of its banks. The day was over cast but bright. At this point, the river flows from south (right) to north (left). My long fascination with bodies of water gets a "fix" from watching the current in small rivers like this one. As I walked back up toward the road, I noticed several vultures circling in the sky overhead. They flew silently, and I wondered if they were hunting or if they had already spied a meal.
Small things are easier to spot when you aren't in a hurry. This insect was on the wall inside the dining hall as I exited. It is about a month (Sept. 20) until the average first frost date. I don't know how this one deals with winter, or if it even does. Humans anticipate these climate changes, but creatures, for the most part, just react to them. Certainly they have less to worry about.
One creature that will hibernate when days grow colder is this lizard, who is cold-blooded. On this warm fall day, though, it was darting through leaves, making a rustling noise. It paused on the flat rock, its markings making it invisible to predators above. If you look closely, you can see it on the flat rock in the center, just to the right of the twig that lies diagonally across the picture. (Try clicking in the photo to enlarge it.)
Farther up the hill, I found this hawk feather lying next to the road. Another reminder of change of seasons as the bird molts and gets new feathers for winter. Hawks will perch and hunt all winter in these parts, staking out territory from a fence post or tree top. They often command several square miles, depending on the food supply. Thinking about the birds I saw this day, the vultures, a couple of hawks, several blue jays and some chickadees, I recall how the Native Americans cherished birds as messengers of the Great Spirit itself. The naturalist in me wants to return to observing such signs more intently and intentionally.
Fall is fungus time. Toadstools, mushrooms, whatever you want to call them, are abundant. At home, Norm digs them up as they sprout along the lines of decaying roots of long-dead trees. In the deep shade of the forest next to the camp road, many small toadstools flourished. This one was most spectacular. The photo doesn't do justice to the scale of the thing. It was almost a foot tall and about 10 inches in diameter, and the yellow was brighter than the picture conveys. I've never seen such a huge fungus in my life.
The hill section of Orchard Crest is full of native black walnut trees. I don't know if they were planted as part of the original fruit orchard here or not. No fruit trees remain, but the nut trees are everywhere. The leaves and nuts on this one made a nice contrast to the darker forest behind.
Up close, from the other side, the bright green husks of the walnuts glow in the shade. Often this delicate yellow green is a color of spring, but in a walnut grove, it means harvest is almost here. Calling all squirrels!
Dogwoods, lovely in spring with a cloud of white blossoms along the edge of a forest, provide bright red fruit, food for wildlife, as fall arrives. In the city, the berries are prized by mockingbirds. I'm not sure which forest birds prefer them, but if I had not needed to get back to the hall for lunch and worship, I might have just waited to see.
Walking, watching, waiting, thinking, listening to the thoughts coming into my mind--for years I have done this, solitary but not lonely, as a way to try to connect with nature, the Creator, my higher power, the indwelling Spirit of life in all things. It is a way honored by many ancient people, many Native Americans. Today, I learn that this isn't laziness or "wool gathering" on my part--an accusation I often heard when I was young. It is the way of knowing of the Naturalist, as valid as reading and writing, creating logical sequences, feeling the spirit through music, organizing visual arts and space, being in motion, interacting with friends, centering in meditation. I'm grateful to Patrice, to the Southeast Gateway Women, to Orchard Crest, and to the One who led me to take this journey farther down the path of faith.
Another year, another retreat for women at Orchard Crest Camp. This gathering of 40 women from as far south as Kennett, as far west as St. Charles and from several St. Louis area churches took place the weekend of Sept. 19-20. I'm just now getting around to editing the pictures and reflecting on the experience. Here, the group gathers in a long oval inside the dining hall for the closing worship, led by Devoree C. of Webster Groves CC.
I started loving to go on retreats when I was in college and a member of Disciples Student Fellowship. Retreat experiences have formed much of my spiritual base throughout my life. I also love going to camp, and this area retreat for women has both spiritual enrichment and a chance to spend about 24 hours in a rustic setting, close to a wilder kind of nature than I usually find in my own back yard. This outdoor chapel is the signature building at Orchard Crest Camp, but we held meetings indoors because it was damp (a week after Ike's drenching) and a tad cool.
Cabins at Orchard Crest do have indoor plumbing, but they are still a little basic. The nearby river makes the valley humid, and the cabins are often prone to mold. Somehow, I managed to escape without my allergies being riled up. Must be part of the spell of the place.
Our theme was "Listening for the Voice of God" and the keynote speaker was Patrice R., whom I have known for more than two decades. She noted that she suffers from impaired hearing, and suggested there are other ways to know God than listening. She led us through a review of multiple intelligences, or the different ways we receive information, or know something. Some of the ways are verbal, numerical, musical, visual, and kinetic. There are social intelligences and inward or contemplative intelligences. There is even a naturalist (observing) intelligence, which I claimed as one of my ways of knowing.
Saturday morning we had an activity time, where women could pursue the intelligences that seemed most useful to them. This group (Patrice is at the right) used musical expression, going through the hymnbook and harmonizing a capella for close to an hour. Others enjoyed just listening, or chiming in now and then.
A craft activity engaged the visual intelligence women. Ruth B., who is a mainstay at retreats, chose to decorate a birdhouse in the shape of a church. A large number of the women did engage in this craft. Some of them sat together at tables and collaborated, showing that social interaction was important for them.
Others, like Ruth and Linda, here, took a more solitary, introspective approach. We had other activities including creating a spiritual autobiography. Mine is barely begun, but the process taught me something important about myself. You'd think, since I've been a writer and a "word" person all my life, I would have started writing. But I started instead with a timeline. And I was very particular about getting main years written on it, and getting items in order as they happened. Who knew I was a numbers person?
All in all, the retreat was helpful because it opened my mind to new ways of knowing God in addition to simply listening for a voice. I realized that I am primarily a word and visuals person (as my three blogs attest), but numbers (logical order) and music are also important to how I experience life and how I express myself. And kinetics, or moving around, can't be totally left out. Sometimes I just want to dance, or go for a walk. Usually I choose solitary, introspective activities over social interactions but as I've gotten older, I'm more comfortable in groups (although not yet in crowd scenes.) Yet the greatest revelation of all from this weekend was a validation of an "8th" way of knowing, that of the naturalist, or the person who observes and derives conclusions from the environment. It's possible I'm sure to be an indoor naturalist, but on this weekend, the outdoors called my name. More about that in Retreat 2008 Part II.
Today is a milestone of sorts, for the first installment of Thursday's Child was posted on August 15, 2006. This little blog of mine is more deliberate and reflective than Home Stories, and I haven't done much with it in the past year, but I haven't abandoned it. If you have checked it in the past, drop in again sometime in the next month and you will see some new things. In the past 11 months, the energy I would have put into Thursday's Child has gone into another blog instead, Compton Cares Update, as part of my contribution to a fundraising effort for my church. The updates on that project will now take less time, so I plan to spend more time on family history and reflections, my original intent when I started Thursday's Child in addition to Home Stories.
One thing that has happened is that another former member of Rogers Heights Christian Church in Tulsa found my entries about the church's closing in 2007 and wrote to me. She has since written her own impressions of the church of our childhood on her own blog. You can check it out by clicking here and here.
See you again soon.
Orchard Crest Camp belongs to the Southeast Gateway Area of the Christian Church - Disciples of Christ. It is located east of Fredericktown on the Castor River. The cabins have bathrooms and electricity, but the entire atmosphere is still rustic. I spend the past weekend there, at a women's retreat. I've been on retreats there before, and I've counseled at summer camp. This event is about the last one of the year as the camp will close down for winter in October. Already the trees show signs of fall approaching. Yet Orchard Crest is a welcoming place, and it is blissfully out of range of highway or aircraft noise. On a warm fall night, the only sounds are from crickets and tree frogs. By day, scores of bird species still flit in the trees and skim the river. On this weekend we were given several times to meditate and write down our thoughts. Here are some of mine.
The early morning sunlight reflects off the quiet waters of the Castor River. I'm reminded of Thoreau's famous line: "Time is but the river that I go fishing in." No fishing today, but flowing rivers always create for me a metaphor of eternity. So I walked by the river and thought about time.
Time: I don't have enough of it to do it right. I feel rushed, then I can't move. The train is coming and I just sit on the tracks and watch it coming toward me, unable to move. Hospitality needs movement and also the ability to just BE in a moment of time. I really need to let go of the concept of time, the constraints of time. Standing by the river that looks still but is inexorably moving, I wonder about the connections of time and eternity. I need to trust the reality of an eternity that can still contain my time and others' time. And still I need solitude or silent time because I can't think or feel in the midst of chaos.
Around the camp grounds were several meditation stations. The theme was centered around sayings of Jesus. As I visited at each one, I wrote these thoughts:
Jesus is the rock. I can hear a line from a hymn: "On Christ the solid rock I stand, all else is sinking sand." There are a lot of times I have been on shifting sand, if not sinking. But rocks aren't always solid, either. The rocks in the creek bed shift and tumble. How did the vulnerable, wounded man called Jesus become a rock?
Jesus is living water. Why did he say living water? We spend a lot of money to make sure there is nothing living in our drinking water before we call it safe. We know that water makes life possible, but we don't always think of it as having life on its own. Come to think of it, aren't our bodies mostly water? I forget the percentage. And we are living. Is the water in us living water? Is Jesus' image of the living water a metaphor of the incarnation? Jesus is the living water. WE are mostly living water. Jesus is within us. As Cynthia Hale said in a sermon at Quadrennial back in 1998, All that you are seeking, you have within you. Right now.
Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Will a twig of pipe vine be enough to remind me of the pure energy that sends out the vines of the forest: grape, pipe vine, Virginia creeper, trumpet, poison ivy, clematis? The vines run, climb, twist, furl-- tendril after tendril until frost cuts them down, and then they rest for a season before budding again. So we don't have to grow and bloom and bear fruit constantly, just in our own season.
Jacque Foster, my pastor and the retreat leader, asked us to imagine ourselves in the place where we go for centering quiet, and then to imagine that Jesus met us there. What would we say to each other? I thought of my garden at home. I'm not sure where this following dialogue came from, but I wrote it down as it played out in my head:
Jesus: This is a lovely garden. Did you plant it?
Me: Yes...well..some of it..others did most of the work. But the plants were yours.
Jesus: I know.
Me: Why are you here?
Jesus: Why not? Aren't I supposed to be everywhere?
Me: I guess I mean, how did you find me? I forgot to invite you. I should have invited you long ago.
Jesus: Why didn't you?
Me: I think I just forgot. I'm bad about worrying or concentrating on one thing at a time, and I forget everything else. Even you. And I know I'm not supposed to forget you.
Jesus: What would help you remember?
Me: I don't know. I am getting more forgetful. Worried about becoming old. Tired. Losing interest in things I have always loved.
Jesus: What about the slant of light through the branches, or the flash of a hummingbird's wings or a sweet scent of clematis?
Me: Yes, I know you send these reminders to me. And I thank you. I thank you.
Note: This post contains a correction added on 8/22/08.
August 26, 2007 was the final worship service at Rogers Heights Christian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I grew up. My parents, Jim and Frances, were members of another Christian church when they were recruited in the winter of 1945 to help start a new congregation on the east side of the city, across from the "new" Will Rogers High School that had opened in 1939. I recall being in the "nursery" class that met in Ms. Dessa Bedford's home, and I have a fond memory of my three-year old self drawing pictures with my finger in the condensation on her window panes the next spring. In the summer of 1946, men of the church laid a foundation for a simple rectangular building that would be worship and fellowship space until 1949, when the sanctuary (above, with the steeple) would be completed. My dad and the other men built that first church building with their own hands. When the charter closed in 1947, my parents' names were on it, as well as my grandparents Hugh and Ada Burch, and my aunt Martha, daddy's younger sister. My name is not on the charter, because our denomination (it was a Brotherhood back then!) practices believers' baptism and I of course was not yet of age to make such a decision.
Over the next five decades, more structures would be built and added on to those two original buildings. Where we once faced north to worship, by the time of the closing, we faced south. Where once simple amber glass in casements illuminated the sanctuary, in the 1980s stained glass windows , such as this one behind the communion table at the last service, replaced them. Pews replaced the plastic chairs that had replaced the metal folding chairs that had replaced the wooden folding chairs! Paneling covered the concrete block walls. The bell still hung in the steeple, and on the last day, someone went behind the pulpit, through the prayer room, grabbed the rope and rang it, clear and true, one more time.
Why did the church decide to close at this time? An article in the Tulsa World quoted one of the few remaining charter members as saying the membership, once in the hundreds, had declined to about 15 active folks, not enough to carry on the mission of a church or support a minister. The area was not growing, and demographics were not in favor of a progressive, mainline church in that part of Tulsa any more. After several months, they decided to plan to close and turn over the assets and property to the Oklahoma Christian Church Foundation. The Rogers Heights Christian Church endowment will support other missions and church starts, carrying on the legacy of this faithful congregation into perpetuity. I think my father, and the other founders, would approve, and when everyone gathered in a circle around the sanctuary at the close of the service, I told them so.
In this view, five different roof lines are visible, and they show the stages of the church's growth. At the lower far right is the original little building that housed the charter congregation. It was the site of fellowship dinners, Sunday morning worship, Wednesday prayer meetings, and more. A house stood on the lot where the parking lot is now, with room for the church office and Sunday school. In that tiny building, those first winters, a free-standing gas stove heated the space. I remember backing up too close to it one cold night at a fellowship dinner and charring the backside of a new winter wool coat! The section with the steeple came next, dedicated in 1949. In the mid 1950s the three-story education building in the background was built, and the "bridge" section (the part with the higher roof line) connecting it to the sanctuary was added. The spring I was baptized, 1956*, the baptistry was a copper tank sitting on the grass between the two unconnected buildings, and my baptism took place on a Sunday afternoon at East Side Christian instead.
*Update on 8/22/08: After corresponding with Patricia Ferguson (see comment #3) we discovered a discrepancy in our memories about our baptisms. I finally went back and checked and I was baptized on Mother's Day of 1954, not 1956, at East Side. I know it was because our baptistry was unavailable, but I'm no longer sure if it was because of the construction mentioned above. Thanks, Tricia, for reading, commenting and reconnecting!
The final building addition in the foreground of this picture took place in the 1970s, expanding the first building into a proper fellowship hall with a spacious kitchen and accessible restrooms.
But a church, any church, is so much more than its buildings. Mostly it's memories for me, because Rogers Heights was my only church from the time I was on the cradle roll until I graduated from college and moved to Kansas to start my teaching career. This is where I learned the names of 66 books of the Bible and understood that the Bible was a library of writings of faith, not simply an infallible "word." This is where I learned to sing "Jesus Loves the Children of the World"--red, brown, yellow, black and white. This is where, after I was in high school, I taught the second grade Sunday school class and played piano for singing in Children's church, slipping back into the sanctuary just in time for communion and one of Lloyd Lambert's sermons. After I was in college, I was invited to give the Youth Sunday sermon one year.
As children, one of the boys and I kept the church librarian, a single lady named Edna Mary Letson, in poverty as she undoubtedly bought with her own money the two new books a month she added to feed our appetites for new stories to read. (At the church's 50th anniversary in 1995, Norm and I visited and I went up to the library in the educational building and found the row of orange-bound biographies of famous people. I opened one and pulled the card out of the pocket and yes, there was my name!) Knowing that my name was still on a card in a book in that library somehow made me feel still connected to Rogers Heights, although my last contact with most members of the congregation was in the summer of 1968 when a group of the women gave me a bridal shower. Shortly after that my parents moved and transferred to East Side, which was closer to them.
Because of Rogers Heights, I entered adulthood with a useful grounding in biblical history and the Christian faith. I knew my baptism had not been into one congregation, but into the universal church. During the next seven years of college and work, I would undergo the usual periods of young adult questioning, and doubt, and begin the recovery and re-creation of my faith. Because of the love and encouragement I had always known at Rogers Heights, I continued to attend church, first in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and then in Pittsburg, Kansas. Somewhere in those early years at Rogers Heights, I got the idea that if I persisted, even if I thought I had lost touch with God, God would somehow find me.
It was a very bittersweet experience, the closing and decommissioning of my childhood church. I found out about it in an e-mail my cousin sent me by chance, mentioning the article in the Tulsa World that appeared on Aug. 18. Although I wanted to be there, I would not have made a special trip, but Norm and I found ourselves in Tulsa that week anyway when the same cousin's mother-in-law died and Norm was to conduct the memorial service. It seemed a sign that we should stay over, and I'm glad that we did.
The "little church on the corner" belongs to history now, but it will live on in the memories I have and in the bequest it has given to the larger church. I have said that the death in my cousin's family and our trip to take part in the service had seemed a sign that we should be there for the closing of Rogers Heights. Imagine my astonishment when, at the close of the service, we all repeated the same words of Isaiah that had been the text for the service for my cousin's mother-in-law three days earlier:
For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field
shall clap their hands.
Isaiah 55:12
This week is an anniversary for this blog and its companion. The first post to Home Stories appeared on Aug. 11, 2006 and the first entry on Thursday's Child is dated Aug. 15, 2006. So a year has passed, and I have learned that blogging requires some self discipline, energy and creativity that I don't always have. But I'll continue whenever something needs to be said.
August 15 is also the birth date of one of my great grandmothers, Paralee Belle Morgan Paris. She was born in 1864 and she died in 1962 at the age of 98. For all of the 19 years of my life to that point, she was old, forgetful and eventually an invalid, but stories about her younger days are intriguing. When she was barely 20, she married a tobacco farmer named Roscoe Paris, of whom her parents did not approve, in 1884. Evidence suggests an elopement. She apparently was a feminist before her time. When her younger daughter (my grandmother) was born in 1890, she told Roscoe "no more babies." Belle had been the oldest of 11 and she didn't want to be bedridden from childbearing like her mother. The family moved to Oklahoma Territory in 1903 and became part of the pioneer settler movement that created the 46th state. I have much more to write about her when I get the 4 Great Grandmothers project underway. For now, happy 143rd, grandma Belle!
What's with the numbers in the picture, you ask? Well, Norm and I were in the Missouri Botanical Garden gift shop a month or so ago and we purchased the lovely ceramic tile numerals and the frame to hold them as an early anniversary (or belated housewarming) present for ourselves. Six years after our move to this address, we decided to upgrade and personalize our house number. So now you know where we live.
On our trip in June to Southwest Oklahoma, in addition to tracing my mother's childhood roots, I was searching for the burial place of the only one of my 4 great-grandmothers I hadn't found. Earlier this year I had looked for Emma J. McElyea and learned she was buried in Sayre Doxey Cemetery. After we got to Sayre, it was easy to find on a hill about three miles east of town. Doxey was a one-time rival town, named for one of the earliest ranchers in the area. 
Jesse and Emma are in block 4, not far from the south entrance to the cemetery. Their grave has a view to the west across part of the North Fork of the Red River valley, and it is very peaceful. I know they came from Arkansas to this land between 1901 and 1910, when my grandpa Earl was a young boy. I wish I knew more about their life and maybe someday I'll uncover more information.
Two days later we were heading for Tulsa, and we stopped at the Stroud Cemetery so I could leave a bouquet for my great grandmother Belle Paris. I know this cemetery and plot well, having visited it as a child and being present at 5 burials in it--both great grandparents, my grandparents Mary and Earl, and my Aunt Bess. Belle is one of two great-grandmothers I knew in life. She died in 1962, just shy of age 98.
