FIFTH GENERATION
My Great Grandparents
(Picture- Ethel Hoots at 65 years of age)
William Thomas (Willie) and Lulu Ethel (Ethel) Hoots Phillips had
aspirations of success. Willie was an attorney, who ran for County Judge in Clinton County in 1933 (according to vote count on file by the Clinton County Board of Commissioners dated Aug. 7, 1933,) and he and his wife ran
a family cafe and hotel in Albany located where McWhorters now stands around that same time. Prior to that time they owned a grocery in Burkesville and had moved to Missouri and then back again. They also owned the a in New Castle, IN across from the auto plant there. When he passed away from prostate cancer in 1938 Ethel built and ran a boarding house for a time that apparently had a waiting list for boarders (I understand it was because she was such a wonderful cook, not to mention the fact that Wolf Creek Dam was being built).
She
lived to be in her nineties and I remember well seeing her house high up on
the hill across from the Methodist Church in Albany and wondering how she
managed at her age to still walk downtown for groceries and cart them all
the way up that hill. Until the last couple of years of her life, she cared for herself. Her housekeeping was immaculate.
The last time I saw her, she made my grandfather's favorite peppermint cake
on that old wood stove of hers. She could have had an electric or gas stove,
the house was equipped, but she didn't like the taste of food cooked that way.
So there she was at her age, feeding the firebox with the pieces of wood that
she had chopped earlier for the purpose. Her house had a certain aroma, a
cross between wood burning, peppermint and age that I have only occasioned to
smell one other time at a small general store in Marrowbone, Ky., where I had
stopped to buy some of Granddaddy's favorite soft peppermint sticks.
She was a spry lady, somewhat stooped, standing about 5'4" or so in height.
My mother told me that she had been a "large lady" when she was younger, but
I never remember her any larger than the fragile size she was in her nineties.
Her hair was silver-white and she wore it twisted in a bun at the top of her
head. She hadn't cut it ever, until her much later years, and at one time
that silver mane fell down past her feet to the floor. She always seemed to
me to wear a blue flowered dress, leaving me to believe that blue was her
favorite color, but it set off her ocean blue eyes well. She was stern, she
had to be to raise four boys into excellent men, and commanded your attention
and respect immediately. She loved to sing and was a
shape-note choir member in the days when her children were young. It was gift of music that was passed down to five generations now and was inherited from the Hoots side of her family.
Her house burned down in the early 1970's and she
went to live with Uncle Otis and Aunt Jeanette, with whom she lived until she
was no longer able to function well. She died in a nursing home in 1972 at
the age of 91, having never drawn a penny of Social Security income. She wouldn't have heard of it, to her that would be accepting charity.
Having known great-grandmother makes me wish that I had the opportunity to
have known Willie, my great-grandfather.
WILLIAM THOMAS PHILLIPS b. Jan 17, 1880
- d. Feb 27, 1938
m. Lulu Ethel HOOTS
b. Jul 16, 1881
- d. Sep 14, 1972
Children:
1. Earnest Otis (Uncle Otis) b. Aug 23, 1901
- d.
- m1. Nannie Susan Goff
- m2. Jeanette Carter
2. MARION LOWRY PHILLIPSb. Jan 18, 1902
- d. May 25, 1975
- buried Marrowbone Cem., Marrowbone, KY
- m1. Anna Mae Taylor
- m2. Daisy Christine Hodges
3. Howard Ensor (Uncle Moke, Moko)b.
- d. April 1987
- buried , Corbin, KY
4.(Uncle Kenny, KC)