Below is a booklet that was writen by Helen as a handout at a family reunion held in Flagstaff, AZ over July 4 weekend in 1990.
The Birth of a Union
Written by
Helen
Sligh
L.B. (Lannis) Mitchell was born in Lonoke
County,
Arkansas,
December 1883, the son of James Stanley
Mitchell.
He was the son of Benjamin William Mitchell of
Snow
Hill, North Carolina.
When
the Civil (slave) War broke out in 1861, James Stanley
was
a young sixteen year old Confederate soldier who went
through
four years of war and came out in one piece. Part of the time he was a drummer
boy.
After the war he settled down in Lonoke
County where
he
studied for a while to be a doctor. In 1872 he married
Mary
D. Hodges. Her people came from Shelby County, Tennessee. To them were
born
six children, three daughters and three sons.
Tragedy struck the little home on December
3, 1881.
Three
of the children were playing outside near the home.
A
dead tree fell on them killing one instantly. Another
died
in a few days of injuries from the accident. The other
one
recovered. A few years later she died. (We think it was
from
some kind of illness.)Then in a year or so the middle boy was wrestling with a
neighbor boy and tore the lining of his stomach and he died in a couple of days
or so. The mother went into shock and nothing seemed to help. She couldn’t take
so much sadness. They put her in mental hospital.
Uncle Belve, Mary's brother, came and Lonoke
Co. and
got
L.B. who was about 3 yrs old at the time. He took him home with him to
Prattsville, in Grant Co. Arkansas and raised him sending him
to school along with his own three daughters.
James Stanley and his older boy, James
Frank, continued to live there at the little home. James Stanley went
everywhere on horseback doctoring the sick and delivering babies. He also
visited his wife in the hospital when he could. He died from sickness in May
1890.
James Frank was fifteen years old when his
father died. He made it on his own for a few years. He married and to him and
his wife were born two daughters. James Frank studied to be a Methodist
preacher and preached a lot. At around the age of 45, he was in Snow Hill helping
his relatives with the harvest tobacco. A storm came up while he was hanging
tobacco leaves over a metal bar. Lightning struck the barn he was in and killed
him immediately.
L.B. is the only one of six children who
lived a long life. (there must have been a reason)When he was about nineteen
years old he fell in love with
Pearl
Hope and they married.
They started housekeeping in Prattsville,
Arkansas, about
one-half
mile down the road west of the Bodie Hope home. About
a
year later a son, Stanley, was born to them and about two
years
later Beron was born. Then Pearl was pregnant again. She suffered
from
a severe sick stomach that nothing seemed to help. She
died
in March 1909.
L.B. was left with two small children. It
was time to start
a
crop. There was nothing else to do but to take the two
children
to his father-in-law, Bodie Hope, and let them take
care
of them during the day. He would go plow all day, go back
to
the Hope's house and pick up his two little ones, take them
home,
fix supper, bathe them and then put them to bed. The next
morning
he would do the same thing all over again. Day after
day
this had to be done. I am sure Claude (Pearl's younger
sister)
actually took care of the two little ones during the
day.
Claude was fifteen years old at this time
and Bodie Hope had
big
plans for her. He was going to make a school teacher of her.
He
already had two sons in college, one studying to be a doctor
and
the other studying to be a dentist.
Claude and L.B. had other plans (secret
plans). Claude loved
L.B.
so much that the college plans went out the window. On her
sixteenth
birthday, at a certain hour she went in the bedroom
and
got all dressed up. She looked down the hot, dusty road and
saw
L.B. coming in a one horse buggy (just as they had planned).
She
jumped off the back porch and made a run for the road. L.B.
reached
out a hand to help her get-aboard the buggy. Pop! went
the
horsewhip and off they went. "Gitty-up, gitty-up! Pop! went
the
whip again. Faster and faster they went. Then they heard,
"Stop!
Stop! I said. Stop! I'll shoot! Stop!" Pop! went the whip
again,
but they were too far gone. Bodie went back in the house
and
put the shotgun back on the wall rack.
Now Claude was married. She had a husband and two children. She
was
happy, happy!
This was the birth of a union in which
thirteen more joined:
Milburn,
Hope, Frank, Beulah, Reba, Helen and Hiram (twins), Bob,
Doris
and Dortha (twins), Bodie, Patti and Theresa.
Now at July 4, 1990 this union has
multiplied to about 280 people. It started 81 yrs ago.
L.B.'s oldest brother, James Frank married
and a daughter was born
to
them. The daughter, Mae, came to visit Mom and Dad one time
about
1928 or so. James Frank came to visit them about the year
1920.
Milburn remembers how much he loved Uncle Frank and how he
cried
when Uncle Frank went back to North Carolina. Milburn said
that
Uncle Frank could put a shotgun on his shoulder and walk tall
and
straight and the gun stayed on so well balanced that while
walking
about one-half mile he didn't even have to touch it with
his
hands.
Mary (Dad's Mom) finally recovered from her
shock and lived
with
her relatives. About 1915 Dad went to get her and brought her
to
his house to live with him and Mom. He then bought the "York"
house
nearby and moved her into it. She lived most of the time by
herself.
In 1930 or
so, Grandma wanted to go to the Confederate Soldiers
Home
at Sweet Home, near Little Rock. She came back to visit us a
few
times but never wanted to stay. She died there in 1949 at the
age
of ninety-five. She stood straight and tall. Her back was
straight
as could be at the age of ninety-five. She was buried at
the
Philadelphia Cemetery near Prattsville.
Bodie Hope was a deacon in the Baptist
Church at Prattsville and
about
twenty years later the church ordained L.B.(our dad) as a
deacon
in the same church. The Mitchells were all taught right and
were
baptized as members and believers into the Baptist Church at
Prattsville.
If you are reading this and you have
Mitchell blood in your veins, you can be sure that your forefathers and mothers
prayed for their children and their children’s children on down, that all of
them would gather in heaven after this life at that Great Reunion in Heaven.
Don’t miss it! You must trust Christ Jesus as your Saviour. No one can do this
for you. You must do this for yourself. Be watchful everyone. Can’t you tell
these are the last days prior to the Lord’s return?
How Did The Mitchells Make it so Good
L.B. and Claude were farmers. They first
settled at the Ed Keese
place
about one-half mile west from the Bodie Hope home. They
moved
from there to the "Parks" place about one-half mile south of
Highway
270.
The government decided to build a 20 mile
graveled road from
Prattsville
to Tull. It ran right in front of our house. The road was
called
"The Sol Burnet Pike."
Dad struck it rich. He had eight horses, a
wagon, and gravel on
his
land and he was able to work. The government employed all. There
were
four teams of horses, a wagon, and Dad. They also bought gravel
from
Dad. The place where they got the gravel is still a gravel pit
to
this day. The road work lasted about two years.
After this the Mitchells really took on big
farming. Dad bought
more
land, set out fruit trees, and bought more cows and a cream
separator.
We shipped cream in five gallon cans to St. Louis,
Missouri.
The tag was wired on the side of the can. It said, "When
full
ship to St. Louis, Mo. When empty ship to L.B. Mitchell,
Prattsville,
Ark."
One day Hope was leaving home for college at
Fayetteville. Just
for
the fun he got one of the cream can tags and marked out all
but,
"When empty ship to L.B. Mitchell, Prattsville, Ark." As he
left
home he wired it to his belt.
We milked twelve to seventeen head of cows
by hand and then
poured
the milk through a cream separator. Neighbors from all
around
came with buckets and caught the skim milk as it ran out
the
spout. They carried it home for family use and we gave all
that
was left to the hogs.
Dad bought more land. This included the
"Robinson" place down
by
the river, and the "Quinn" place with a peach orchard on it.
Mom
and Dad bought a car, ripped out the back, then added a truck
bed
at the back. Mom filled the truck bed with vegetables twice a
week
and drove to Sheridan and sold out every time. In winter she
sold
milk, butter, fresh pork and sausage, turnip greens, potatoes,
and
green shallot onions. When she couldn't go, the boys and Reba
went
for her.
They sent Stanley to Monticello to college.
Not many people had
money
for their son's tuition.
When school was out every year, crops were
planted, plowed and
laid
by. The boys bought a broken down car, got it running, then
stripped
it down to four wheels, two seats, and a motor and
steering
wheel, packed a few changes of clothes and headed for the
wheat
harvest in Kansas and Nebraska. In two months they were back
home
with their pockets full of money. This was a yearly thing.
Two different times they brought friends
back home with them who
were
sons of the farmers that they worked for. Oscar Olsen was the
first,
then a year or so later Donald Lambert came home with them.
Both
spent a few weeks in Arkansas and went back to Kansas. Only
Donald
stayed a school term with the boys.
Stanley saw a beautiful brown eyed girl that
he just couldn't
live
without, so we lost him to the State of Nebraska and we haven't
seen
much of him since. He is still there. (The Mitchells all have blue eyes)
The house and barn needed new roofs. Dad took
the boys, two
wagons
and some food, along with saws and axes, and went to South
Arkansas
to get cypress logs. This was called “The Cypress Break”. It was a three or
four day task.
They came back with two wagon loads of
cypress logs. Then they put
up
a power sawmill, sawed the logs into sixteen to eighteen inch
blocks
and split them into shingles. They had some left over to sell.
Mom and Dad bought the girls a piano and
Beulah took music lessons
from
Mrs. Ferguson. When she learned to play well she played for
services
at our church.
We were among the first in the community to
have a piano and
Victrola
(oh, how we loved the records, 11 Home on the Range" and
"Way
Out on the Wind Swept Desert"), a radio, and a car. Saturday
nights
all the neighbors would come to our house to hear the
"Grand
Ole Opry with Uncle Dave."
Dad built a one room grocery store. We call
it "The Filling
Station"
We sold gas, kerosene, oil and staple groceries, but it
didn't
last long. Most everyone wanted to put it on a tab and
later
they couldn't pay the tab.
Bodie
Hope gave Mom a Holstein calf, white and black spotted. They named
her "Blackey." All of us remember "Ole Blackey."
She gave birth to twelve heifer calves in all.
She grew to be the biggest cow on the Mitchell farm. She was big!
Another "unforgettable" was a big,
white, flop eared mule named
"Ole
Jo." He was as big as a horse but he was a mule. All the boys
learned
to plow with "Ole Jo." He was slow and gentle. Also there
were
Jack," "Rodey," "Sam," "Bell,"
"Bess." and "Toney."
Oh! We can't forget "Ole Toney."
He mainly belonged to Hiram. He was a
quarter
horse and full of stunts, a real show- off.
Every afternoon when the sun got so low in
the sky, Mom would
call
me and say, "It's time to go get the cows." This was my job
for
years. I would go to the barn, get "Ole Fanny's" bridle and
go
to the horse pasture and find her. I would walk up to her and
give
her a few pats on the neck. She would stop grazing and I
would
talk sweet to her. Then she would hold her head down so I
could
put the bridle on her head. I then led her to the closest
fence
and climbed up on the fence to get aboard. We would then
head
for the back side of the cow pasture. It was not a hard
task
and when the cows saw us coming, they would stop grazing
and
slowly head for the barn.
"Ole Fanny" was a gentle old red
mare. I have been on her back
with
three others at the same time. "Ole Bess" was the best mare
we
ever had but she was a Mustang and too fast and high strung for
the
little ones.
Oh, yes! You must hear about "Ole
Jolley Boy." He was our
Jersey
bull. Dad entered him in the Grant County Fair in 1927 and
won
first place.
You really need to know about "Ole
Watch." He was the best stock
dog
that we ever had. He could really put the horses and cows where
they
belonged. We went fishing one day at Nalls Lake, Mom drove the
truck
and some of us rode in the back with "Ole Watch." While we
were
fishing "Ole Watch" was bitten by a large rattlesnake. He almost
died
there but we hauled him back home where he really fought to
live,
but couldn't make it. He died in the front yard under the
sycamore
tree. We were all sad for days because we lost him.
The boys liked to fish by setting out
trotlines for catfish. We
didn't
have time to fish much so they just set out lines and caught
the
fish while we all slept. Sometimes they didn't catch very many
and
at other times they caught a bunch, but as usual the big one
always
got away.
Dad and Mom's legend was, "Be honest,
be kind, and love one
another."
When Doris and Dortha were little (one and a
half to six years
old)
you could ask them, "Who is the prettiest?" Doris would say,
"Dortha
is." And Dortha would say "Doris is."
If anything broke that had a motor, Frank
and Bodie could fix it.
Milburn
was the school's athletic boy He won ten gold medals at the
school
contest. Mainly he won in track. Some of the medals were won
when
he went to Sheridan High School.
Mom fixed her school kids such good lunches
that the boys began
stealing
Hope's lunches every day at school. Mom couldn't stand for
her
boy to go all day without lunch. So about the fourth day they
got
his lunch and hid to eat it, Mom tried a cure; it worked. She
fixed
Hope two lunches. For one lunch she opened the sandwich,
shaved
a few slivers off a new bar of soap and let them fall in
the
sandwich. Then Hope took off to school, put the lunch in the
usual
place and hid the good lunch. Sure enough the boys got it,
but
it was the last time they swiped his lunch!
Back on the farm, Dad grew cotton, corn,
sorghum, soybeans,
peanuts,
popcorn, watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins, sweet
potatoes,
and all kinds of vegetables. When dry weather hit like a
drought,
Dad and Mom would go to the low land near the woods and
plant
fall gardens. They turned out good.
Never a land knew so much business as did
the Mitchell farm. It was highly alive and growing from sun to sun. It was
alive on all four comers and in the center. Everyone worked hard, and at
times
a little harder, to get the job done.
We were taught to love and respect one
another, but in spite of
our
good teaching, our human nature took over and we fussed some.
We
all got spankings if we just wouldn't obey. We all had
responsibilities.
Our mom and dad loved us. Mom knew where we
were every minute
and
also knew what we were doing. Mom was the leader of the
family
and always seemed happy. Thank God for such a super mom
and
dad. If Mom ever regretted not being a school teacher, she
never
said so.
(4 paragraphs have been left out here about
living descendants to protect their privacy)
What about Sickness in The Mitchell Family?
There was sickness in the Mitchell family? Yes!
There was the
usual-colds,
fever, flu; and malaria fever. There was also measles
and
chicken pox and mumps. All who had such got special care. The
one
that was sick was the favorite until he got well. Attention
centered
on the ones who had need.
Bob was the first severe case. He was born
with a mole on the
back
of his neck which he kept scratching and it got to looking
real
bad. Mom carried him to a doctor in Little Rock and it was
pronounced
malignant melanoma (skin cancer). The doctor began
treatments,
burning it off with radium. It took five or six
treatments
to heal it.
Doris was born with a blood blister on her
back. At the age of
three
or four Mom carried her to Little Rock and had it burned off
with
radium.
When Bodie was about eight or nine months
old he got into a pan
of
parched peanuts. He tried to eat one and began coughing and
sucked
part of a hull down his throat to his lung. After a week of
hard
breathing and coughing Mom took him to Little Rock. The
doctor
x-rayed and there it was. He went down Bodie's throat with
long
prongs to remove it. Mom and Bodie stayed several nights at
St.
Vincent Hospital.
When Mom first got there and saw the doctor,
a Catholic Nun
tried
to take Bodie away from her and send her home. Mom held fast
and
said, "If I go, my baby goes with me. And if my baby stays, I
stay."
She had several rounds with the Nuns but never did let go of
her
baby He coughed continually. Her staying with Bodie and holding
him
in her arms helped save his life.
Pattie was born with a big blood blister on
her back. When she
was
about one year old, Mom discovered a hard lump in her own breast.
The
doctor advised surgery as soon as possible. In a week or so she
had
surgery at St. Vincent Hospital. One breast was removed. It
was
malignant.
Dad was really busy with farming and got
someone to bring her home
from
the hospital. When Dad came from the field and got to the field
gate
he saw Mom was home. Dad dropped the horse's reins and ran to
meet
her and she opened the yard gate and ran to meet him. They
embraced
each other and I saw them both wiping away tears.
Patti, about thirteen months old, caught a
cold when Mom was in the
hospital.
After Mom got home Pattie just kept getting worse and Mom
got
Dr. Hope, her brother, to come over to treat her. After a week of
bad
sickness Patti died. Dr. Hope pronounced it pneumonia. Her lungs
had
filled with infection. Mom had planned to have the blood blister
burned
off with radium but never got a chance.
Later Theresa was born. When she was about
two and one half years
old,
Mom began going down. The cancer began to spread. The doctors
did
not know about cobalt treatments in 1931. Mom kept going as long
as
she could. In February 1935 she asked me if I would quit school
and
stay home with her and Theresa so Dad could start a crop. I
dropped
out of school when I was fourteen years old. She was up and
down
for a few weeks. About the last six days she was bedfast. One
of
those days she took her ring off her little finger and gave it to
me.
I thanked her for it and I wear it to this day. Mom was
conscious
till the day she died. Theresa was about three years old.
Dad lived twenty-five years longer and died
of colon cancer in 1960.
He
was seventy-seven years old.
At this date, July 4, 1990, three more
adults have died.
1)
Hope died June 1984 at age 72 of cancer and arthritis.
2)
Dortha died July 1984 at age 60 of cancer of the liver.
3)
Beron died October 1988 at age 83 of strokes.
We
have also lost four of Dad's grandsons. 1) Robert Mitchell
(Hope's
son) and his wife were killed in an auto accident December
1946.
Robert was 2 years old. 2) Brad Mitchell (Stanley's grandson)
at
about age 25 died in 1981(?) of a motorcycle accident. 3) Loch
Mitchell
(Bob's son) died at age 36 in 1988. 4) Robbie Worthen
(Beron's
son) died at age 52 in 1988.
What About War?
Civil War 1861-1865
James Stanley, at sixteen years of age, was
in the Confederate army with headquarters at Ft. Smith, Arkansas. He
was a drummer boy part of the time. He went through the four years and
came out in good shape. The following is from records at the History
Commission, Little Rock:
"James S. Mitchell who served as a
soldier in the army of the
Confederate
States being a member of the 13th Regiment of Infantry
from
the State of North Carolina.
"He was honorably discharged from such
service on or about the 19th of April 1865 and did not desert."
James
Stanley died May 17, 1890. This was twenty-three years after the
Civil War. (I found this on the record of Molly's application for a
Confederate pension.)
Barney Mitchell, James' older brother, was
sent to Tennessee as a
Confederate
soldier. He was wounded two different times, but recovered
from
both wounds He later settled in Oklahoma.
World War I
1914-1918
Clifton Hope, Mom's brother served in World
War I in Europe. He
returned
home safe and healthy in spite of all the influenza that
killed
so many.
World War II
1939-1945
Hiram, Bob and Milburn served in World War
11. Hiram wanted to be
an
aircraft pilot but he couldn't tell Army green from brown (a bit
color
blind). This was a real disappointment to him so they put him
in
the aircraft mechanical department.
Bob got the job of office work, searching
and guarding German
soldiers
that had been taken prisoner by the United States.
Milburn had asthma problems and was discharged
some time later.
Bodie was drafted later and sent to the
South Pacific, the Philipines.
Thank the Good Lord, all got back home safe
and sound.
Since then there has been wars and rumors of
wars. The end has not come yet. Aren’t you glad we live in the good ole U.S.A.?
World War
III ?
Oh God! Come get all your children before
then. Would you help all the Mitchells be ready for the rapture?
