My great-grandparents married in Greenville, Texas on Christmas Day, 1919. Robert Marvin Turner had just returned from his Army duty in World War I and Mary Marie Jones was 20 years old. Marvin was a mechanic and achieved the rank of Sergeant in the Army before being discharged in 1918.
When he came home from his service, Marvin was a farmer, working on his father Alexander Kyle's land. A.K. Turner was married 3 times. He had brought his second wife Laura Stapleton Turner and his children from both marriages to Greenville from Lee County, Virginia in a covered wagon in 1895.
A.K was also a farmer, was 6'7" tall and had an impressive mustache. After Laura's death in 1912, he remarried, to Mary Ann Rorex. A.K. died in 1926.
A.K.'s mother Araminta Linkous Turner was the grand-daughter of a Hessian soldier who had been brought from the Palatine district of Germany by the British to fight the Americans in the Revolutionary War. He was captured by the American forces and kept as a prisoner of war on the Shiflet farm in Montgomery County, Virginia. When the war was over, he decided he liked the Americans and he married Farmer Shiflet's daughter, inheriting the farm when the old farmer died. Their family still owns the farm.
The Turners originally came from Cornwall, England and were practicing Quakers. Laura's family the Stapletons came from a rather aristocratic background; originally from Scotland, descending from the Barons Beaumont of Carlton Towers. Her ancestors were Oxford and Cambridge University graduates and one was a member of Parliament who narrowly escaped execution by Oliver Cromwell.
Marie had lost her father Jeff Jones the year before her wedding. He had been underneath his Model A Ford when it fell off its jacks and ruptured his intestines. He died 2 days later. Jeff was a hack dealer, selling wagons and buggies as well as the horses needed to pull them. He also worked on the railroad for a time. Jeff was a member of the Greenville Volunteer Fire Dept. Jeff's mother Susan Daugherty Jones was a distant relation to both Queen Elizabeth II and Captain Meriwether Lewis. Marie's mother Mattie Honeycutt was the daughter of John Honeycutt III from Union Parish, Louisiana and Sarah Ann Warren from Mississippi. John Honeycutt's father was the first European settler of Union Parish. He obtained a grant from the Spanish government for a lease of land along the Bayou D'Arbonne. John Honeycutt III tired of his role in the Confederate forces in Hunt County and with a few friends, set out for Mexico, planning on sending for Sarah and his children when settled. When no word came, Sarah and the children set out looking for him. They got as far as Williamson County when they got word that John and his friends had been waylaid and murdered either by Confederate bounty hunters looking for AWOL soldiers or unfriendly Comanches. Sarah and the children returned to Hunt County and she remarried.
Marvin and Marie immediately started their family: Jack Robert was born in 1920; Charles Franklin in 1922; Rosemary in 1924; Mattie Joyce in 1926 (she died in 1927); and Alice Marie in 1930. They lived close to downtown Greenville their entire married lives, eventually settling in a little house on Henderson Street. Marvin worked as a groundskeeper at the cemetery he and Marie are now buried in before retiring. My mother remembered going to the cemetery with Grandad and playing while he was working. He would put her to work gathering old and faded ribbons and floral displays for the trash.
My own memories of their house on Henderson Street were that there was a small sitting room, where Grandad's recliner was and Granny's chair and sewing kit. The TV was also in that room and Mom and I would spend Sunday nights there with them watching the Ed Sullivan Show. From there, you either walked straight back through their bedroom, which had two twin beds on either side of the room and a bathroom at the back with a claw foot tub and the kitchen entrance; or if you turned left, there was a bigger parlor, which was used for gatherings, such as holiday parties or playing dominoes with friends. Behind the parlor was a tiny dining area. It was connected to the kitchen, which ran along the back of the house and had a severely sloping floor, from the pier-and-beam foundation needing repair. Everything was covered in a thick haze of many years of pipe tobacco smoke.
The back yard of the house had several plum and pear trees, all of which gave succulent fruit. Grandad's years at the cemetery helped him keep the luxurious St. Augustine lawn pest-free. I used to roll around and even nap in the grass and never got so much as a chigger bite. Granny would grow huge hydrangeas at the side of the house. She would push long iron nails into the soil to make the flowers a brilliant blue.
Grandad's recliner always had pipe tobacco sprinkled in it. Grandad smoked a pipe and smelled like vanilla tobacco. He was about 6'4" tall and rail thin, with a triangular shaped face, jug ears and a thick head of gray hair. He would say things like:
"Don't run in the house! You'll fall down and break your journey!"
"Laws, laws, laws!" - Quakers couldn't swear and that was as close as he would get.
There was a small corner store at the end of the street and my aunt Vicki would pester him to walk with her and buy her some candy. "I can't walk, honey. I got a bone in my leg." She would always reply, "Oh no! Does it hurt?"
Grandad was a very kind and sweet man and I never remember him ever losing his temper or raising his voice. He developed phlebitis when he was in his 80s and had to have his leg amputated at the knee. He used a wheelchair afterward. One day in May 1975, I was sitting with him on the front porch of the house on Henderson Street. Mom and I were living in the rent house across the street at the time. I was showing Grandad my new doll when he suddenly slumped over. I called out for Granny and Mom and they called an ambulance. Mom took me to my Uncle Larry's house. My Aunt Jackie was there but Uncle Larry wasn't home yet. My cousin Mathew was just a toddler. My Mom called a few hours later and told us that Grandad had died. A bit later Larry came home from work. Jackie told him about Grandad and I remember him slumping in his chair and putting his hands over his face. Jackie and I both put our arms around him.
Mom and I moved to the Spanish Trace Apartments we lived in off and on through most of my childhood, and we convinced Granny to move there as well. She took an apartment facing my elementary school on Stonewall Street, and I would come by to visit every day after school before Mom got off work. Granny looked stern and humorless in photos but she had a great sense of humor and loved to laugh. She and I would watch Match Game. Granny would cackle at the racy answers, and insist that Charles Nelson Reilly had "sugar in his britches" long before I knew what that meant. He was Granny's favorite person on that show. She laughed uproariously at anything he said.
Granny then moved into a duplex on Division Street for the remainder of her life. Her friend and cousin Mrs. Quattlebaum lived in the other half of the duplex. Mrs. Quattlebaum had a hearing aid that she always kept going full blast. When you talked to her, you could hear your voice feeding back, like Jimi Hendrix was buzzing out of her head. It made you want to t a l k v e r y s l o w l y.
When my parents had divorced, my Mom had sold her wedding ring to Granny, who had it refashioned into a dinner ring. She told me that when she died, I would get it because it had been my Mom's ring. I was very close to Granny since Mom and I lived in a small house next door to her when I was in junior high school. She lived until 1980, when I was 15. She developed stomach cancer. Mom and I were at the hospital with Aunt Alice and Mimaw. We were all there with Granny when she passed. I didn't get the ring, by the way. It went to my Aunt Alice. I think that bothered my Mom more than it did me.
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