AT ODESSA MO - THEY STAYED MARRIED and LIVED LONG
The Remarkable Records of One Family
Of True Vow Keepers & Their Kinsmen in Lafayette County
From the Kansas City Star Sunday March 5, 1939
A Feature Article - Written by Conwell Carlson
From the Estate of Kestie Hammond
The postoffice of Odessa, Mo, in Lafayette County, adjoining Jackson County on the east should find a place in some national guide book or a "Believe It Or Not" chart as being the address of two sons and two daughters of one family who have been married 50 years or more - an octette of golden wedding celebrants.
Trying to find their formula for a long and happy wedded life, a member of the Star's staff called on these outstanding True Vow Keepers one day last week. His observations concerning their marital permanence and longevity records, which also seem to embrace a half dozen or more of their kinsmen, follow.
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Now that modern doctors without Van Dyke beards are sagely agreeing that one's chance for a long life (barring accident and infectious disease) depends mostly on how long one's pappy, grandpappy and great grandpappy lived, is it possible they will some day also lean on the family tree while predicting who is most likely to stay married a long time? Is there something in the germ cell that promotes marital permanence in certain families?
Of course, anyone has to live long to be married 50 years, but there are picturesque cases of octogenarians having been bachelors or married and divorced a half dozen times. What concerns us here is families that have produced both long-lived and veteran singly mated members. Such as the Browns, Lewises and Keatersons of Lafayette County, Missouri for example. Since settling before the Civil Mar on farms southwest of Odessa, these families have established a curious record of protracted Intermarriage and longevity.
Consider the facts as outlined in a letter received from Odessa by W. D. Aurant, 4915 Baltimore Ave. founder in 1925 of the National True Vow Keepers Club of couples wed at least half a century? Four of the children of Mr. & Mrs. W.C. Brown have been married 50 years or more and now live in and around Odessa, two of these four are married to children of Mr. & Mrs. Gross S. Kesterson. Three sons of Mr. & Mrs. Brown married daughters of Mr. & Mrs. T. W. Lewis, Including one married 54 years, another 44 years and the third passed away leaving his widow after thirty years of wedlock.
It looks as if there should be some recipe for compatibility in these Lewis and Kesterson lines with the Brown lineage and perhaps some day the biologist will Join with the sociologists in expounding a theory. Heredity, environment and all would be examined minutely and correlated in the attempt to explain the potentials of a golden wedding in your family,
Would the absence or presence of numerous children be a factor? If so it would be a confusing one for in the case of the Odessa couples there are sharp contrasts, the two husbands from the Brown family, for instance come from a prolific strain. One of them Havey I. Brown, 79 years old is the father of eleven children, the other R. Marion Brown, 78, thirteen children. Their father, Wm. C. Brown was blessed with ten and his father had twelve. But the daughters of Wm. C. Brown are wives in the half century wed octett, Mrs. Thomas Dick Kesterson and Mrs, William Schrimsher had only four and one respectively. Yet their wedding voyages have been relatively as long and as agreeable as their brothers.
Perhaps the pictures of environments and habits offers easier suggestions, the Brown, Lewis, Kesterson and Schrimsher farms were not far apart south or west of Odessa, All the families were protestant and the settling fathers had come from states where social
customs were largely the same - Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia. Their children met at church, school, pie suppers and picnics. All worked busily in farm homes or fields, the girls at cooking and chores the men at clearing the knolls of oak trees and planting the fields and harvesting the corn and small grains.
They were neighbors with similar customs and problems and so when R. Marion Brown married Lucy Kesterson, Harvey N. Brown married Mary Lewis, Thomas Dick Kesterson married Alice Brown and William Schrimsher married Sarah Brown they all quietly established homes with patterns essentially alike. Excepting Harvey Brown who moved into Odessa to operate a canning factory and later to deal in real estate and insurance, they stayed on the farm but the H. N. Brown home remained a farm home with a large kitchen and pantry and both a living room and a parlor.
Plenty of outdoor work, plain cooking and "9 o'clock to bed and 5 o'clock to get up" have marked the lives of all four families. Steady work and abstemious Conduct never hurt any marriage all eight husbands and wives agree. Yes, it is a good guess the open air life with its bent for useful work has helped the four teams pull together so long. One gets that impression from a visit with the Kestersons, in their home almost at the top of a hill beside Highway No. 40 west of Odessa. This was the home they moved into 51 years ago last November.
The hugh cedars in the front year were planted by Kesterson. The vines and flowers have been planted and tended by his wife. There children have gone and they have the house to themselves now as when they were first married. Through the east windows the sun streams in early of mornings and there is just enough hilltop on the west to shadow the sun's setting rays. The Kestersons look toward the east down on the valley and a speed inviting slab that supplanted a more leisurly horse and buggy route to town.
They are a lively pair, busy with chores, cooking, stoking the kitchen store with wood and the parlor stove with coal,
No time to quarrel? Don't they ever grow tired of each other and want to call it quite? Mrs. Kesterson seemingly had anticipated those questions for one of her first remarks was: "Its not so hard to be good natured if you've got things to keep your mind and hands busy. Not too much work but enough. Sure we have them, When the preacher of our golden wedding said "Married 50 years and never a cross word", he was being polite but I had to tell him, "No it is not true and that goes for you and your wife, too." Anybody who has been married any length of time makes adjustments for disagreements. If they don't the marriage isn't a marriage long,"
Dick Keaterson's pale blue eyes were smiling over his spectacles, "She makes good buttermilk biscuits, That's why I am still here*, he said, "Biscuits, honey and a small piece of ham. If I can't eat these for breakfast, I go back to bed because I know I am sick,"
From the side porch he looked out upon the rolling hills, once covered with trees, now mostly fields and remarked, "I've helped clear a right smart of ground around here - oaks, elms and hickorys.
From the Kestersons, the Browns and Schrirashers almost any observer could catch one other attribute of their long cemented marriages. Besides their mutual work, mutual tastes and general good health they exhibit independence of opinion. Their lives reflect an abundance of will power as it is needed to conform their routines to the hard facts. They have obviously lived within their means, pinched though at times these have been. Pride in their families has been a binding tie.
At the old farm home where William C. Brown died in 1897, after 40 years of married life and with ten children surviving him, Mr. and Mrs. R. Marion Brown now carry on. They are to celebrate their 55 wedding anniversary today with manyof their 13 children present. And in a neighboring farm home, Mr. andMrs. Wm. Schrimsher will celebrate their 50 anniversary tomorrow.
Perhaps it is something in the air around Odessa. The married folks there have seen a lot of life and a lot of each other and flourish on it.
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