Harley wasn't home much as he was still working at Burls on the dairy farm. Bob, Hazel and I had our bedrooms upstairs and I don't think we had any furniture up there except the beds we slept on and only sparce furnishings down stairs so it was sort of like camping out. It was good to be living together again. Dad was very thin and pale and only able to stay close to the house, lie in bed or sit in his easy chair. He would take care of things when we went berry picking I remember Mother leaving bread for him to bake while we were gone or some small chore. Abundance or wild berries grew in the woods of Wisc. and we gathered and canned them to take back to Texas along with the syrup; those things didn't grow in Texas.
We went to Aunt Claras home for a visit while we were in Wisconsin. Aunt Clara had died about a year or so before this and had been sick a long time before her death. She had an older daughter who had married a very wealthy man and of course they wanted to make their Mother as comfortable as possible so this daughter fixed up two rooms for her special use and furnished them for her pleasure and comfort while she was an invalid, and after she died these rooms were shut up and never used. Uncle Oakie was a large jovial man and there were two older boys named Frank and Alfred and a younger named Claire, then a girl named Edith who was about Claires age and an older girl named Edna. Frank was killed in the war and Alfred never did get married, Edna never married either but she died when she was a young woman. We enjoyed our visit, there were so many young folks around, the cheese factory was close by and the cheese maker was a young man and stayed at Uncle Oakies, there was lots of fun going on all the time.
It is strange that I do not remember the train ride to Wisc. nor home this time, but our trip home was in the fall and it must have been quite an undertaking with Father so sick making the long trip. We rented a house in Hereford as Lee and Velma were still on the farm. It was a large house and nicer than some of the houses we had lived in. Hazel, Bob and I went to school and Harley worked on a cattle ranch but came home weekends. Velma was pregnant but Father never lived to see his first grandchild, he was bedfast now and Mother nursed him as well as cared for the rest of us. I suppose that was why Harley came home often so he could help her.
This was the year of the flu epidemic and Mother came down with the flu, the Dr. suggested that she isolate herself upstairs away from Dad in hopes he would not get it. Dad would send her messages by we children and one night he said to tell her that he would rather have the flu than to be away from her and the next day he died quietly in his sleep.
When we found him I ran over to Mrs. Jones who was a neighbor and she phoned for the Dr. She came home with me and when she saw him she knew he was dead but she left it up to the Dr. to tell us. Dr. Price was a friend of Dads as well as his Doctor and he felt very badly that Dad was gone, he went up stairs and knelt beside my mother's bed and wept with her.
The neighbors and the Odd Fellow Lodge that Father belonged to and the minister and church people were very kind sending flowers and sending in food. Because of the epidemic no crowds were allowed to gather and the funerals were held private. Mother came down stairs to see him before the funeral but was not at the funeral itself, it was a very rainy day when we laid him away in the cemetery there at Hereford Texas, Mother not even being able to go to the cemetery with us.
We stayed on in town for a few months and then again moved to the farm with Harley taking over the work. He was still writing to the girl he had fallen in love with when he was in Wisc. and they planned to married. Bob went to the country school but I was in Hi-school so stayed in town and lived with a Mrs. Wilkerson who was a widow and had been one of our neighbors when we lived there (she wanted to adopt me but Mother wasn't feeling that way). Hazel was away taking a course in a Business College at this time. Some of the weekends I couldn't get out to the farm and generally Velma and Lee would come in and get me, they lived about six miles from Hereford on Twenty-five Mile Ave. Which was just an ordinary road except that it went 25 miles with out a curve or bend in it. I sure appreciated going out there and was happy to see them driving up on Friday evenings for me. They had their baby now, a boy named George and I adored him.
One week end when I was in my second year on Hi-school and I couldn't go home, after school on Friday night I was down town with a bunch of the girls and the guy who is now your grandfather saw me and asked me if I wanted to ride out home with him and of course I did so I got in his little Ford Coupe, went by and got my suitcase full of dirty clothes to take to Mother ... and we started on the twenty mile drive. The ford quit on us when we were a mile or so from where he lived but he found it would run in reverse so we went backward the rest of the way. He and another fellow by the name of Jim LeGrand were batching on the ranch and they saddled a couple of horsed and we finished the trip to my home that way. Mother was surprised to see me, she made us a cup of tea and a bite to eat. We had to leave the suitcase and I always hoped it wasn't opened and all those dirty clothes....
Your grandfather and Harley were friends and he sometimes took Harley and Hazel to the dances but I guess I didn't go to many dances yet or it was because I was not at home because I don't remember it but eventually we got around to going out together. I remember the first time I met him was at a party and he was being introduced around and afterward he told me when he saw me that night he knew I was the one he wanted to marry. But it was some time before we started going together.
We were married Aug. 25, 1921 at Amarillo Texas and we lived on the Conkwright ranch where he had been living. There was always extra men around because it was quit a big ranch so there was always lots of cooking to be done but Oliver had been doing it so he continued to cook until I learned more about it then I would help. We were not there very long this time for we went to Mothers to run the ranch there as Harley was going to be married and go to Wisc. Edith came at Christmas time (she was a teacher) and they were married. Mother fixed up a couple of rooms for us to live in by ourselves and we stayed there a year. Then Bob took over the work and we moved back to Conkwrights place and it was there that your Mother was born our first child Jan 21, 1823 on a Sunday morning. My mother was there to be with me and the Dr. was Dr. LeGrande. There is more but probably not of much interest to you.
This is a letter from Zella to her oldest grandchild, Jackie. I think it is a wonderful piece of reminiscing, altho each person has certain things they remember. However, I regretted one thing and that is the interpretation she gave on Grandma Steele. Grandma Steele was a wonderful woman, so patient throughout her long years of terrible suffering, never once a cross word to any of us children, and how she loved to visit! She had a deep religious belief. I have often thought how wonderful it would have been if she could have had the blessings of TV and radio, and the modern drugs to ease her pain. She was really terrific. Zella was very young then and got her viewpoint from some complaining Mother used to do. Probably Grandma was cross with Mother when she was a girl - it would have been very human to have been so when she suffered so much. And so she might have hurt my mother's feelings, some, but they had a good relationship from my remembrance.
I am a great grandson of Tompkins Daniel Green. One must keep in mind that this was written as a memory of one person, Zella; everything she states is true from her point of view and knowledge. All other sources that I have researched with regard to Tompkins Green have substantiated the following point of view; Tompkins was born in New York and his mother died when he was a very young child. He grew up to work on the Erie Canal, especially with horses and was a very competent handler of same. Later he was to raise and sell percherons to the Army. Tompkins went to Wisconsin in1854 and built a cabin on land he homesteaded after making a road the last few miles up to Irish Ridge. He married Elizabeth McGrath in 1854 in Milwaukee and they raised a large family on Irish Ridge where he Patented a large area of land and tax titled more. Some of his descendants live in 2000 on part of this land. He cut and sold railroad ties to the railroad, he delivered them. Tompkins volunteered and served time in service during the Civil War. These facts would tend to contradict the "shiftless" mention of him in Zella's writings, still, that was the impression she was given and is well to have different views of our relatives from other points of view.
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