YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU MIGHT FIND

 

My sister Sula was an avid genealogist. She spent hours in the musty basements of courthouses looking for clues of our heritage. She sparked my interest in the fact finding and desire of answering the gene questions. But I must admit I do most of my searching online.

While filling the holes and gaps with new found knowledge is exciting, finding the “dirt” or “horse thieves” in the family takes the cake. Recently while working on my wife’s family line, imagine my surprise when my paternal fifth great grandparents names popped up! She also has the same paternal fifth grandparents! Which I think makes us sixth cousins?!?!

My Family Tree

1. Agnes White (1765-1817) (my 5^th Great Grandmother) married Zachariah Warren (1763-1817) (my 5^th Great Grandfather).
2. Sarah Ann (Sally) Warren (1783-1854) married Edmund Hendley Richards Sr (1783-1840)
3. Edward Nathaniel Richards (1804-1180) married Janie C Stewart (1798-1870)
4. Peter Warren Richards (1823-1917) married Elizabeth 'Eliza Lizzie' Warren (1828-1850)
5. Peterson Warren Richards (1850-1907) married Sarah Ann Wolfe (1854-1925)
6. William Oliver Richards (1872-1915) married Pheobe Ann Rogers (1878-1925)
7. Earl Richard (1907-1978) married Nan Marie Edmonds (1933-1978)
8. Roy

Her Family Tree

1. Agnes White (1765-1817) (her 5^th Great Grandmother) married Zachariah Warren (1763-1817) (her 5^th Great Grandfather).
2. Zephanian L. Warren (1792-1864) married Eleanor Reese Evans (1797-1840)
3. Lucy Jane Warren (@1840-?) married John Thomas Butts (1834-1914)
4. John W. Butts (1861-1937) married Barbara Ellen Sails (1861-1928)
5. Rosa E Butts ((1890-1969) married Hubert Leander Stogsdill (1879-1930)
6. Hubert Leo Stogsdill Sr (1910-1945) married Caroline May Gutch (1911-2002)
7. Hubert Leo Stogsdill Jr (1930-2014) married Gaylia Eulene Kenslow (1931-2015)
8. Kirstie

Copyright Roy Richard

PLAYBOYS by Gaylia Kenslow – Stogsdill

 

 

Two nephews have I! They’ve an interest in girls!

Not in their clothes, their smiles, or their pearls.

They marvel at the different shapes!

Those “PLAYBOY” curves, they appreciate!

BUT NEPHEWS!

Whether you know it now not –

This phase will pass – that is our lot.

With age there’s more to “bare” in mind –

Then “knockers” and a “bare behind”.

Have fun –

 

Gaylia Kenslow – Stogsdill

Written for her two nephews, Randy and Tim Stogsdill. While on a fishing trip, they showed no desire to go out on the lake. After returning home the “adults” found a stash of adult magazines under the mattress in the camper. Seems the boys wanted to stay at camp and research girls.

 

Copyright Roy Richard

MEMORIES by Katherine Carey-Place 1878-1934

  

Up in an attic high, so high,

Far above the city roar,

A poet sat when the day was done,

           And pondered a question o’er and o’er.

 

His hair was long and most unkept,

           Bushy and thick, was the poet’s hair,

His pen lay idle beside his pad,

            His clothes were old and worn threadbare.

 

“I have written,” said he, of love and life,

           I have dwelt on nature for weary hours,

I have raved of bees and birds and sky,

Of trees and woodland and vine-covered bowers.

 

Up in an attic high, so high,

          The shadows lengthened at close of day,

But a lingering sunbeam strayed within,

          Right on the poet’s pad it lay.

 

It danced about like a thing aflame,

          It sparkled and glittered as though to thrill,

Then softly as thistledown it rose,

          And softly slipped past the window-sill.

 

Up in an attic high, so high,

          A poet sat in fading light,

He reached for his idle pen nearby,

          And wrote on the pad, “tonight, tonight.”

 

Then straightway a vision came to him,

          No more he felt alone, forlorn,

As in a dream far, far away,

          He saw the home where he was born..

 

He wrote of the vine-clad cottage there,

          The hollyhock beside the wall,

The mother-love, the babbling brook,

          The fern-decked rocks and waterfall.

 

The tiny window, where the sun,

          Each morn came peepin in,

The light was gone, the room was dark,

          But fame had come to him.

 

For a little sunbeam filled with joy,

          Brought memories of a sturdy bot,

Of mother-love and bygone friends,

          Of a vine-clad cottage and fern-decked glens.

 

And swiftly they came in a merry row,

          The joys of the days he used to know,

So he wrote of the flowers and waterfall,

          And a tiny sunbeam on the wall.

 

Katherine Carey-Place 1878-1934

April 26, 192

The Warrens and the Duckworths

 

As you work on the Richard family history, one fact continues to pop up. As they travel across the United States, the Duckworth family traveled with them. Virginia, Illinois, Missouri and Michigan all find the Richard clan living in close proximity of the Duckworths.

Are we related? You would think that some budding romance between the two families must have occurred. But not until my Father’s generation did a blood relative of mine marry a Duckworth and even then they were not  Richard.

My Dad’s father passed when he was eight and when he was thirteen his mother married Edward Chadwell. The story changed depending on the telling, either his new step-dad threw him out or he left home. Whichever might be the case, the two did not get along and so Earl began to run the roads.

During that time he lived with his half-brother Homer Warren in Illinois for a time. But most often he talked about staying with ‘Aunt May’ Duckworth or his cousin, Uncle ‘Lawn’ (Alonzo) and Aunt Effie Warren.

Aunt May was the grandmother to my Dad’s best friend Walter Duckworth.

The Warrens are related to the Richard’s through my paternal grandmother’s sibling Texas Rogers (1872-1903). Texas married Matthew Warren (1871–1900). Many of their children played a part in Earl’s life, but the most significant one was Alonzo (Lonzo) Warren (1891-1981). He married Effie Elizabeth Harris (1893-1966). Their daughter Retha Leona Warren (1919-2004) went on to marry Walter (Wicker) Duckworth (1916-2010).

At last a tie to the Duckworths!

Our trips to Missouri always included visiting Aunt May. I don’t remember a lot about those trips but it seemed that Dad coming in was like him visiting his mother.

Uncle ‘Lawn’ and Aunt Effie moved to Flint and lived just down Augusta St from our home.

Wicker and Retha moved to Flint and lived two doors from us on Augusta for a number of years.

Copyright Roy Richard

ECTOME? OTOMY? PHYS? PSY? by Gaylia Kenslow – Stogsdill

 

Hours you’ve spent in getting’ your schoolin’ –

Hard work you’ve accomplished and that’s no foolin’ –

You’ve learned a lot on “anatomy” –

And how our “innards” are s’posed to be.

You’ve studied what’s proper for us to eat –

And watched in “surgery”, while they sliced “meat”.

You’ve found blood pressures vary for other reasons –

Than the “opposite Sex” and “mating season”.

You know a “bedpan” has other “uses” –

Then eliminating “highway” abuses.

Your vocabulary now has many words –

That a few years ago, you’d never heard.

“Ectomy” and “otomy” are only two –

Then “ism” and “itis” – who knows better than you?

Of the work behind the “phys” and “pay” –

And the strain the studying put on your eyes.

So take all your “larnin” and education –

And be the “best darned nurse” in the entire nation.

 

Gaylia Kenslow – Stogsdill

Copyright Roy Richard

FRIENDSHIPS by Katherine Carey-Place 1878-1934

 

It’s sad to come to the end of the trail,

When your sun is setting low,

And your journey’s end is just beyond,

                Not many miles more to go.

Oh, it’s sad, I say, if you find too late,

                As toward the west your journey ends,

That you’ve missed the joy you might have known,

                In making and keeping friends.

 

We toil for loved ones, day by day,

                We give of our hard earned store,

We laugh or sigh down the sunlit way,

                Till the journey is almost o’er,

Then perchance we pause and some to know,

                What it means when journey ends,

We have lived in vain if we do not know,

                What it means to call folks friends.

 

It’s good to feel a real friend cares,

                It’s good to know they’re near,

When sorrow comes that we all must share,

                How we prize a word of cheer,

Or the tender clasp of a true friend’s hand,

                That understands our woe,

Will help to make that long way sweet,

                As we all will come to know.

 

Oh, keep your friends, by being loyal,

                And tell them you love them dear,

The time and place to call them friends,

                Is the while you journey here,

Oh, the joy you’ll find, as the years go by,

                Oh, the glory that comes to you,

In knowing you have a friend who cares

                And you’ve earned by being true.

 

It’s not too late, though the shadows fall,

                And your sun in the West is low,

Just a tender word or sunny smile,

                Dropped here and there as you go.

And you’ll rejoice when the eve has come,

                And you’ve reached the journey’s end,

That you can say I have kept the faith,

                I have loved and known a friend.

 

Katherine Carey-Place 1878-1934

February 1932

 

Copyright Roy Richard

FAMILY by Roy Richard

 

In the greater scope of things, is your clan weird?

Mine won’t win any prizes, they’ve proven their true worth.

My dad was a “dirty old man”.

My mom a “gold digging hussy”.

Or so the respective “Families” said.

 

I have always felt disowned by my blood,

We were rarely included, given a thought

In celebrations and fun.

They all could not see the love, they had for each other,

Our “Family”.

 

Mother’s menfolk had to ‘work’ and so missed the wedding.

Dad’s family said they could still see his dead wife beside him.

Twenty-six years was too great a divide,

Their love didn’t meet the proper definition,

Of “Family”.

 

At Christmas Grandmother bought me pj’s while my cousins got trucks.

One exceptional year nothing under the tree for me,

“Oh, I left it upstairs, I’ll get it in a moment”, she muttered.

I could hear her wrapping something and I was presented with mis-fitting pj’s.

Some “Family”

 

The Uncles took the boys fishing and hunting,

To learn life skills that would make them men.

I wasn’t included, wonder what they were thinking?

But I learned a life skill,

How to hate “Family”.

 

Older cousins left me on the bench at little league.

Psst, dad forced them to put me on the team,

Then they lied why I didn’t play

I learned isolation at an early age,

From “Family”.

 

Funny, they could ask my parents for loans.

Risking handouts wasn’t forbidden.

Deals on cars, loans for houses, a little pocket money,

Dad never complained, just did what was right,

For “Family”

 

Only mother could care for grandmother when she took ill,

After all she had the ‘room’ and the ‘time’.

Never complaining after working forty hours and then cleaning up shit.

Sitting near the hospital bed, knitting mittens and waiting.

For “Family”.

 

Their marriage was not perfect,

Yes they quarreled and fought,

No more than others I’m sure.

But the love they shared inspired,

Our little “Family”

 

I’ve now built my own little brood,

Successful and strong,

Based on the example of their love.

I’m sure mom and dad would be proud.

If they could see, my “Family”

 

Roy Richard (Coot)

July 2022

 

Copyright Roy Richard