Meet the Ancestors!

 Meet the Ancestors was one of my favorite British TV shows a few years back, although they were researching folks as old as Stonehenge! One of my favorite pictures is an old family photograph in my Mom’s cedar chest. It is three generations of my Stucker ancestors. My great grandfather is the tallest boy on the right (Charles McCollum), his mother, my great great grandmother (Clara Stucker McCollum Asa) and my great, great, great grandfather ( the older gentleman seated, Thomas Reuben Stucker). This photograph was taken circa 1899. My great great grandmother had been widowed the year before with three small sons. She remarried the fellow seated to the right of her father (R. J. Asa). 

Times were very hard for these southeast Missouri pioneers. As you can see, they are standing in front of a cypress board shack in Canalou, Mo. Just about all of the children are barefoot. My mother remembers the house burning down one very hot, Fourth of July day. She said Ma was canning jelly and the house burned to the ground. They managed to save 2 trunks of family heirlooms. Can you imagine? Canning jelly on the hottest day of the year, WITH A WOOD STOVE in hot, humid southeast Missouri! They stood and watched their whole livelihood burn in a matter of minutes. My Mom remembers seeing old family photographs be licked up with flames while they hung on the wall. What heirlooms were lost? Probably my great, great, great grandfather’s civil war memorabilia. He joined at age 15 and went through the whole thing without a scratch. He was said to be “meaner than a dog”. I guess so, no telling the horrors he witnessed. Post traumatic Stress Disorder was not given a name until over 100 years later during Vietnam Nam. 

Their legacy goes back even further. The Stucker family emigrated from Germany at the dawn of the French and Indian war (1750’s). They settled in Berks county Pennsylvania. Their next door neighbors happened to be the family of Daniel Boone. My 5 times great grandfather (George Stucker) and Boone were friends. Everywhere Boone went, my family followed. They followed him to Kentucky during the American Revolution. My 5 times great grandfather and his son (also named George) joined the militia as was pretty much required of all able bodied men. In 1781, a British General named Byrd had his Shawnee Indian allies attack Boone’s little forts all along the Kentucky frontier. Both my 5 times great grandfather and his son were killed.  Everyone left alive fled to the next fort (or station as they were called) Bryant’s station, which was Boone’s in laws. The Indians followed and laid seige  to the little fort.  The settler’s only water source was a spring outside the stockade. The women and children volunteered to get water, knowing the enemy was just outside that gate. The Indians left the women and children alone, wanting to lure out the men. My 5 times great grandmother was one of those women. She volunteered even after just losing her husband and son to the enemy just outside that gate. 

I can’t comprehend the bravery, stamina and just sheer guts it took to survive those hard times. We have it so easy today. Water and food at our fingertips. Our every want and desire within easy reach. I pray I can live up to the standard they set so long ago!

Manners.....what a concept?  It seems like something we used to take for granted, something everyone seemed to have ingrained into our early years from the time we could speak.  "Don't forget to say please and thank you" we would say to our children and also heard from our own parents.  What prompted this dialogue on manners you say?  Well, I'll tell you a story that happened to me today and I just can't ignore it.

I was running errands in town this morning and stopped by my favorite store: Barnes and Noble.  If you know me, you know I LOVE BOOKS!  While browsing the shelves and relaxing and enjoying myself, a woman passed right in front of me and the bookshelf.  Slowly, sauntering her way into my line of vision, I was appalled.  Excuse me? EXCUSE ME!!!!! I wanted to shout.  How rude!  And then I thought, does no one have manners any more?  Not even the most basic of manners?  Evidently they are getting fewer and far between.  But then I thought, "have I done something similar before?"  I would like to say absolutely not, but probably I have.  Not as rude as what happened to me today because I try to say excuse me constantly in a public area, even when it's not my fault.  But I have probably been guilty of some faux pas in the manners department.

Reading through the above little books, I am reminded how big a part manners played in early America.  George Washington memorized those 110 rules of civility while he was 15 years old.  No wonder he was considered the very image of gentlemanly behaviour.  Some are out of use and quite comical, such as #13: "Kill no vermin as fleas, lice, ticks &c in the sight of others.  If you see any filth or thick spittle, put your foot dexteriously upon it. If it be upon the clothes of your companion,  Put it off privately, and if it be on your own clothes, return thanks to him who puts it off."  Now I know we don't have to pick vermin from each other, but the point is be aware of how you look and help a companion if necessary.  Glad he never went to Wal-Mart!  But my very favorite rules are the first and the last that he memorized: #1"Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of  respect to those that are present" and #110 "Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of Celestial fire called Conscience".  Remember Jiminy Cricket? "Always let your conscience be your guide".  

Our Heavenly Father put this little "Celestial Spark" in every one of us.  If we would all strive to at least follow these two rules every day, what a better place this would be.  These two rules remind me of the life that Jesus Christ exemplified for us every day and are what he calls the two greatest commandments:  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and Love your neighbor as yourself.  Who is our neighbor?  In this day and age, it is not those who are just like us, believe just like us, look like us, or affiliated with our political party, but anyone we come into contact with.

My goal for 2020 is to try to obey those two commandments with all my heart and those two rules in George Washington's little book.  Love and respect will go a long way and it begins with me!

The Brooks house: 

This is as much as I know about the Brooks house so far.  It was built in 1850 by a free black man named Etienne Cashmere.  Like so many of the folks in Ste. Genevieve at the time, Mr. Cashmere was of mixed race (French and African American).  I’m Missing the history from 1850-1890 

so that’s where we’ll pick it up.  Mr. Bill Brooks was born around 1893 in Ste. Genevieve, Mo.  He was at the right age to serve his country during WW I (The Great War).  His unit was in combat in France which was highly unusual for that time.  Colored troops were usually relegated to the service areas of the military, such as cooks, etc.  Mr. Brook’s unit saw heavy combat and he came home highly decorated.  He married a young lady named Johanna McNabb and they had three sons.  Mrs Brooks was very well educated and was a college professor at Harris-Stowe University in St. Louis, Mo.  She also taught the black children of Ste. Genevieve in this house and at the little black school on the other end of town.  She decided to go to nursing school in St. Louis and was tragically killed in a car accident on her way home one night.  Mr. Brooks never remarried and was left with three small sons to raise on his own.  They were aged six, four and two at the time of her death.  Education was very important to the Brooks family, but they could only attend school to the eighth grade in St. Genevieve due to segregation.  When it was time to go to high school, Mr. Brooks put the boys on a Greyhound bus every morning and sent them to Festus, Mo., 35 miles north of Ste. Genevieve where they attended the black high school. Wanting to achieve more, they all entered the military to get college educations through the GI bill.  The oldest son, Bill Jr. became the Vice President of GM in Detroit and was also appointed as Assistant Secretary of Labor under President George H.W. Bush.  The middle son Sydney was great at Football and went to USC where he mentored a young player named O.J.Simpson.  O.J. named his first born daughter “Sydney Brook” after his mentor.  Youngest son Jack joined the Air Force and worked at the Pentagon for a time before returning to St. Louis to work for McDonnell Douglas.  The neatest thing is my small connection to this wonderful family.  I went to a small, private school in Festus and we needed a gym facility for our sports programs.  My school bought the old high school for colored students and I was watching games and doing high school plays in the same building these boys attended school. So I call the Brooks lHouse my “miracle” and I am so honored to have played a small part in saving this historic home.

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Hannah Davis Boxes

“A place for everything and everything in its place”

If you lived in earlier times in America, closets were a rarity.  If you think the IRS is a pain now, early Americans were taxed on closets! Anything with a door in a wall was considered a room, rooms were taxed as part of the house. No wonder folks had so many cupboards, chests, boxes, etc. Clothes were stored in a linen press, blankets and quilts in a blanket chest, sugar in a sugar chest (with a lock!), pies in a pie safe- you get the picture!

Back in 1784 a baby girl was born in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Her name was Hannah Davis and she didn’t have a very easy life.  By the age of 34, she was unmarried and both parents were passed away.   Who would support her? She quickly realized she would have to depend on herself. Possessing that wonderful trait called “yankee ingenuity” she started making wonderful boxes from strips of green pine wood.  She even invented a foot powered slicing machine to cut the strips of wood faster. She used wallpaper scraps for the outside and lined the inside with newspaper gathered from neighbors and friends. With all the hats, collars, gloves and miscellaneous accessories people used, her business grew. She decided it was time to go on the road with her boxes. She loaded up a wagon with various sizes of boxes and headed to the cotton mills of Massachusetts along the Merrimack river. Young female mill workers scarfed them up, putting as one source quoted, “all their worldly goods” inside. They would make a drawstring bag for their box and carry it like a purse. 

 My rendition of Hannah Davis’s boxes are made in the same way, only I use heavy chipboard instead of wood. They are hand sewn and this little group is made with reproduction antique papers and lined on the inside with copies of colonial newspapers. A genuine Hannah Davis box will set you back thousands of dollars while mine are only $28.00 each! Maybe some day mine will be valuable heirlooms as well. I am proud that these boxes have earned me a position in Early American Life Magazines’ Directory of top traditional American craftsmen!