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March
11,
2011
The following is information was told to me by my Aunt, Marjorie Jean Baker Spencer. She is the ninth child of James Otis Baker and Bertha Rachel Love Baker. Marjorie is a twin, 15 minutes younger than Margaret Jane Baker Chadd. Her parents:
James Otis Baker born in
1882
Bertha Rachel Love Baker born in 1889 Married in 1905 Children:
Delores: married Jess Rogers, Had two boys Bob and
Don
Nell: married Jess Holzworth, He died from TB, they had one child Jack married Don Taylor, they had one child, Joy Ruby: Born with no rectum.She had to eat liquid food, nothing solid. She lived until she was 4
years
old. She died when she managed to get a piece of bread and ate
it.
Alta: Died of Whooping cough at age 3 months and 28 days. James: ( Jimmie) (my father) married Ruby Alene Wardrip First child Robert Lee died shortly after birth. Mother had urine toxicity and baby weighed 14
pounds at birth. Ruby was in a coma for several
days.
Other children James Richard Jr. (Bite) married Judy Cooper Donald Gene (Duck) married Tammy Hand Linda Lou (Bo) married Don Owens (divorced) Terry Dale (Rusty) married Shirley Kimzey (divorced)
James and Ruby divorced - James remarried to Dorothy Seibert,
they had Jeffery Ray and Jami Lynn.
Ruby remarried to John
Watts
Helen: married Harry (Bus) Rimmer they had three girls Barbara married Darrell Belcher Patty married John Epps Doris married John Fairall Patricia Lee: married Raymond Bliss. Their first baby was a boy and it died.They had 4 more
children.
Judy Rae married Edward Groves Roy Robert (Skip) married and divorced Peggy Sue, married Bud Kimzey Millie married Thomas Rose Margaret: (twin) married John Chadd , first child Johnnie Lee died shortly after birth. They had 4
more
sons.
Larry married Michelle Glenn married Nettie Gary married Nettie, divorced, then married Vicky, divorced, married again Johnnie married Toni Cargill Marjorie: (twin) married Vern Spencer, they had 3 children Vern (Butch) Married Donna Wardin Melba married Gary Hogan John James (Jay) Married and divorced Mildred: married Logan (Buck) Files (divorced). He went missing in flood waters between
Nevada and Ft
Scott and was
never found. They had three
children.
Norma married and divorced Eddie Lee, married, wife died Mona Dean Mildred had another child, Kathy by a man in Ft Scott. Kathy later met him. Bertie Lucille: (Bertie) married Jerry Cook, they had Bill, then divorced Married Lloyd Nims they had 3 children. Lloyd adopted Bill. Sheila married then divorced Ray Walt Jack Allen (Skeet): married Freda Wooldrige they had 7 children. Melinda Rose died at 4 years due to falling out of the back door of a car and it passing over her. Jacqueline (Jackie) David Brenda Jack Allen Margaret Ann Danny
All thirteen children were delivered by a Mrs. Biggs. She had a Black lady
who helped her.When Bertie was born she kissed Bertie on the bottom of her
feet. She said if she had kissed her forehead the white people would not
like it. Mom told her it wouldn't bother her. The Black Lady's husband
worked at McKays lumber with Dad. The Doctor (Dr. Todd) would come later
and check mother and baby out.
The Baker family was raised in East Nevada, Missouri, the poor part of town. Margie relates "we were poor but we were happy." There were times when they had little to eat. Margie recalls that Dad gave them a biscuit and had them go out in the yard and pick wild onions to put on their biscuit. Their Mother would cry because she didn't have food to give them. Mom would make oat meal and give each child a small glass of watered down coffee. They would pour the coffee on their oat meal. Mom cooked on a wood cook
stove. Every Sunday they had chicken and dumplings. Mom would make 5 pies
out of anything she could get to make a pie, apples, cherries,
blackberries. It would take 5 pies to feed all of
them.
Curious, I asked where did everyone sleep. She said at first they had a two story house with enough room. When it burned, Dad could only build a two bedroom house. So Mom and Dad had a room, the girls all slept in the other bedroom. Jim slept on the couch and Jess slept on the foot of Mom and Dad's bed, Jess was about 5. At first they moved into an old shack that was across the street. They all slept with blankets under a tree. Mom and the girls would do the wash on a washboard with tubs. The girls would lay the clothes out on the grass to dry. When they were dry they would pick them up and shake them. The girls just had dresses, no long pants. They would put the iron on
the wood stove to heat and a blanket on top of the table to iron the
clothes.
The girls each had two dresses, one for home and one for school They wore black underpants that Mom made and black socks to their knees. The kids at school would make fun of them. Margaret would fight them. They had an outside toilet. One time MIldred found a snake in the hole. Dad had to kill it. The kids would catch
crawdads and peel them and cook them. They didn't know until later that
you are suppose to take that little black vein out of the center
(poop vein).
Mom would take all the kids
fishing. They would cook all the fish. The little ones they would cook the
whole fish, head tails and all. One time Mom had a big fish she
couldn't pull out. She slid down the bank and all the kids grabbed her to
keep her out of the water. Mom was a small woman. The big fish turned out
to be a gar. They are not edible. On one fishing trip Jesse caught
Mildred in the face with a hook. Jesse ran toward the house and told Dad
he caught a big one. Dad had to take a razor and cut the hook out. Mildred
had that scar until the day she died.
When they went fishing,
Bertie would always wait for Jimmie to pick up and carry her on his
shoulders. She called him her "big horsey".
Her Dad and Elmer Love
(Mom's brother) would make home brew and sell it to make some extra money.
One time they heard the government men were coming. They buried the liquor
in the garden. It got hot and started exploding. You could see little
puffs of smoke coming up through the dust in the garden. They didn't get
caught.
At Halloween, Dad would take
an old sheet and cut a hole in it for one eye. He would put it over his
head and go outside the kids window and scare them.
One time he took Butch, 3
years old, down into the bottom of the well so he could look up at the
stars. Butch remembers that to this day.
One time Helen made
chocolate candy. She lowered it into the well to cool it. It spilled. Dad
had to go down into the well and clean it out so the water wouldn"t taste
like chocolate.
They would pick blackberries in their neighbor's back yard. The take them to their front door and sell them to that neighbor. She said she thought the neighbor knew what they were doing and felt sorry for them. They used kerosene on their
feet for cuts, scrapes and bruises. They never got
sore.
Jesse would have nightmares
and get up and run to the well. Mom would holler at the other kids to go
catch him. They always did. They never found out why he had
nightmares.
Margie and Margaret were in
the ninth grade. Their teacher a Mr. Ames tried to make Margaret stand up
in front of the class and pantomine. Margaret had a problem with
stuttering. She hit Mr Ames. He took both girls to the Principal's office.
Mom always dressed them alike. Mr Ames could not tell the Principal which
one did it. The girls went to their lockers, got their stuff, left school
and never went back.
The girls, Marjorie,
Margaret and MIldred walked to the High School near the Square (downtown
). One day as they walked through the subway (the road ran under the
railroad tracks) A man grabbed Mildred. The twins beat him until he let
her go. After that they walked over the tracks and crawled under the
trains. At one time Margie just made it when the train jerked to
roll.
A neighbor boy, Babe Howard
approached Mildred, Margie and Margaret on Baker's Bridge. He peed on
them. Baker's Bridge is just North and West of the Baker house. It had big
rocks that were a half circle on the underside. Until recently it was
still there. It was replaced by a more modern bridge, that isn't nearly as
pretty.
The whole family went to the Salvation Army church. Margie. Margaret and Mildred would clean the Chapel on Sunday afternoons. One day a girl outside the church was teasing Margaret about stuttering. Margaret started whipping her. The preacher came out and had to drag her off. The Salvation Army church was located in the 600 block of East Cherry. One Sunday Helen kept raising her hand in church. When the preacher asked what she wanted, she told him she didn't think her Mom and Dad were married. After church the preacher asked them. Of course they were married. The church also had beds for transients and also fed them. They went to grade school at Jefferson School on East Locust Street. At that time it was a four room brick school. They burned coal to heat it. She said they shoveled the coal through a window into the basement. When it was hot the whole
family would each get a blanket and sleep on the porch. One night Helen
told Dad there was a man sleeping by her feet. It was a Bum. Dad went into
the house and got the man a blanket and told him he was welcome to stay
but he needed to come over and sleep by him. And not by his kids. He slept
by Dad. In the morning the Bum had breakfast with the family. Dad noticed
the man did not have any shoes. Dad took his own shoes off his feet and
gave them to the Bum. Back in those days times were hard. Men traveled
around trying to find work to send money to their families. Bums would
come to the door and ask for something to eat quite
often.
Dad worked several jobs, He
worked on the WPA at the Nevada State Hospital. His job was milking cows.
He worked on the railroad. He worked at McKay's Lumber before Jimmie
worked there. He worked shoveling coal on Smelter
Hill.
Dad had a cancer on his ear. A doctor told him it was caused by shoveling the coal. An Indian friend put medicine on the cancer. Half his ear fell off. The cancer went to his esophagus then to his stomach. He died from stomach cancer. Lucille Love , Mom Baker's
sister in law was holding the twins in a rocking chair. Dad and Elmer Love
were dynamiting a well under the house. Elmer told Lucille to take the
kids and go outside. She didn't do it. The dynamite blew her, chair and
twins up to near the ceiling. Fortunately no one was hurt. Mom had a fit.
They had two wells, one under the house and one North of the
house.
Nevada had one small area of
town where all the Blacks lived. Dad told his kids that 1/2 the kids in
"NIgger town" were his kids. Then he would laugh.
There were no street lights
in East Nevada. The Baker family didn't get electricity until Margie was
about 15. They had ice boxes, not refrigerators. When the man would bring
the ice, by horse and wagon, the kids would eat ice chips off the back of
the wagon.
Jimmie had an old car that
wouldn't run. All the kids would push it to get it rolling. then jump in
the car and ride it down the hill and around Baker's Bridge. Then they
would get out and push it back up the hill and do it all over
again.
On Easter they didn't have
Easter baskets. They would each gather grass and make their own little
nest on the porch. Mom would boil eggs. and they would each get two boiled
eggs in their grass basket.
Mom bought some baby chicks
to raise. She fixed a place for them to run. Margie and Margaret dared
MIldred to pull the baby chicks heads off. She did. The Twins blamed
Mildred
Jesse would crush leaves and
roll them in paper to smoke. Mom and Dad tried to make him stop. They
couldn't, so Dad would roll him bull durham smokes.
When they got electricity,
it was a single bulb hanging in the center of the room. Margaret told the
other girls she could make the light come on without touching it. She said
"light come on" . It did. Then she said "light go off" It did. She told
them she could make the piano in the other room play. They waited a few
miutes , it played. The girls jumped up, ran into their parents room and
told Dad to make Margaret quit. Dad told them Margaret wasn't doing
anything. The light bulb was loose and went off and on by itself. And the
cat ran across the piano. They got their blankets and slept on the floor
of their parents room that night.
There used to be an old rock
house just to the North of the Baker property. Between the fence and the
creek. It was very small. Some very poor people lived their. Their name
was White. They had a baby die and Dad let them bury it in the Baker
family plot in Click cemetery. Another baby by the name of Durham was also
buried in the Baker family plot.
When Margie was 14 or 15
years old, Her brothers and sisters would go out on Halloween. They would
turn over outhouses. Alphonzo Bunker went with them. He fell into the open
hole and had to go home to clean up. They climbed a tree near Patience
Brown's house. One of her kids came out and told their Mom "It's them
Baker kids in the tree." Back in those days nobody locked anything up.
They would open gates and let cows out of pastures.
Mildred went to work in a
beer joint. She usually had a few before she came home. Dad would tie a
rope from a tree near the street so she could follow the rope to find the
front door.
All the streets were dirt.
There was no blacktop.
Dad always protected Mildred
because she had two operations on her ears---mastoidectomy. Dad called her
his "little honey."
On the South side of Highway
54 near the State Highway barn was a big mudhole. Mom would let them go
there to swim. Skeet was 4 or 5 years old. Dad had given him an inner tube
to hold on too. He got out in the deep water and someone grabbed his inner
tube. Margie said he went under two times before she could get to him. She
got him out of the water and beat him on the back until he vomited water.
The kids all agreed not to tell Mom because she wouldn't let them go back.
Mildred told anyway.
When they went to church they had dresses made out of feed sacks and button up shoes.Their Grandma Cynthia Baker went to another church that was close by. The preacher there was Frank Carroll. He would give them the button up shoes and the tool used to button them. Cynthia Baker lived on the corner of Hickory and Mill street, right next door to her daughter Lera Gilmore (Dad Baker's sister). When she got older she depended on Lera to fix her meals. Lera would make her eat outside in a garage. Margaret would stay all night with grandma Cynthia as she was afraid to stay alone. She didn't want Margie to stay because she kicked in bed. They would go visit Grandma Cynthia after school. The night she died, Margaret went and got Mom and Dad. She had a stroke and died the next day. One time Cynthia got her social security check. She hid it in the oven. She forgot it was in the oven and burned it up when she went to bake some bread. She had beautiful silver hair that she wore up in a bun. Ulmont Gilmore was married
once before he married Lera. It was rumored that Lera had twins that died
and Ulmont buried them in the back yard.
Maime Winston was one of the
twins teachers. She asked Margaret to read aloud in class. Margaret
stuttered. Margie asked if she could read it for her. Ms. Winston said no
and slapped Margaret in the face with the book.
One time it was bitterly
cold. They had no heat. Jimmie told Dad there was some coal over by the
railroad tracks. But they would get in trouble if they took it. Dad took
some anyway to keep his family warm. A man tried to stop him, Dad hit him
with a chunk of coal.
Grandma Josie (Love) was Mom
Baker's mother. She came to visit one time. She fixed breakfast, oatmeal.
She asked for sugar. They didn't have any. She asked for milk. They didn't
have any. They used watered down coffee on the oatmeal. They also had
sardine, water gravy. Margie said it wasn't too bad.
Nell's little boy, Jack, wore braces on his legs. The Doctor had diagnosed him with TB Meningitis, one day at school a boy pushed Jack down the stairs. He died three days later. Margie's
Dad bought a cow, he didn't know the cow was sick. Helen got what was
diagnosed as TB bronchitis. Margie said she had TB. SHe just laid with her head on her
desk and couldn't move. She had to drink cod liver oil 3 times a day for several days, Dr. Todd
told them they got the Tb from drinking the cow's
milk.
A
lot of people died of starvation back in those days, Jesse fed half of the
neighborhood by hunting rabbits and giving them to the neighbors. He did the same with
fishing.
Jimmie
quit school and shoveled coal to help support the family. Jesse helped
him. Jesse said that Jimmie had a special shovel made just for him that would not hold too
much coal. He didn't want him to hurt his back.
Mom and
Dad Baker took in Bob and Don Rogers after Delores died. Later their
father Jess got remarried to Dot Atchison? And he came and got the boys to live with
him.
Margie
thinks that Mom Baker and ELmer Loves father was married two or three
times. Possibly to a woman named
Carton.
Later years.Margie and Vern Vern
managed some apartments in Overland Park, Kansas, vern did most of the
upkeep and repairs on the units. Margie helped him. She also cleaned the apartments
before they could be re-rented after someone moved, she also kept the grounds clean. They worked
for 17 years taking care of the apartments. The following are
some of Margie's
experiences while working there.
One day when she was
picking up paper off the grounds she found a bag of peat moss behind some
bushes near one of the
dumpsters. she was at the trash bin and Edward Groves was there. He also
worked for the apartment complex. He asked her what she had in the bag.
She told him Peat oss and she was going to take it home and use it on her flowers. He looked at
it and told her she better call the police and show it to them. It was
marijuana. They took
Margie to the police station and questioned her. They let her
go.
She
shoveled and spread gravel and carried shingles up a ladder to help
vern.
Once when
she was sitting on a window sill, cleaning the outside windows, a police
officer stopped and told her Not to jump. He said nothing is so bad you need to
jump. Margie laughed and told him she was just cleaning
windows. The police
officer told her to tell her boss to get a professional to clean the
outside windows. Of course she didn't.
She found
a man who had hung himself in one apartment.
She had to
go into an apartment and clean it up after a boy shot his father because
his father was going to make him get a haircut.
Another
time she was cleaning an apartment and the police came in looking for a
man. They found him in that apartment hiding behind the hot water
heater.
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Margie's Ghost
stories
Nell and
Jess had moved to camdenton. The police came and told Mom and Dad that
Nell was sick and needed them to come. Mom went, Dad stayed with the kids. He took
them out in the garden to work 19 keep them busy. From the garden they looked at the house.
They all saw a woman sitting in the upstairs window. Dad went and
checked. There was no
one there. About two hours later they were told that Nell had
died.
Margie said she had family at her house shortly after Mom died. One of them told her that Mom was in the bedroom. Margie walked into the room and said Mom what are you doing here? Mom faded away. She told her Aunt Lera about the episode. Lera asked if she still had Mom's clothes in the closet. Margie told her yes she did. Lera told her to box them up and put them on the porch and a woman would come and pick them up. She did as she was told and waited and watched. Sure enough, a woman picked up the box and started walking toward Baker's bridge. She then disappeared. Margie asked Lera who the woman was, Lera told her she didn't know, she just had a vision that told her to do that. Margie had a grandaughter, Tammy who was killed in an automoble accident when she was two years old. A dump truck ran a stop sign and hit the car that Tammy and her Mother were in. Tammy was killed.Tammy had her special ball that she loved to bounce around Margie's house. After she died the ball was placed in a closet in a bedroom, one day the ball came bouncing out into the hall. She picked it up and placed it on the table, it bounced off the table and continued to bounced. Margie called the police station and asked for her brother in law, Raymond to come to her house. She told him what was going on. He took the ball and placed it into a lower shelf in a display case, and closed a door on it. Even later the family could hear the ball bouncing. During a
tornado alert they were in the storm cellar. A lady stranger had stopped
and went into the storm cellar with them. Margie's older grandaughter had to go to the
bathroom in the house. The stranger went with her. The grandaugher slipped and fell on the floor
when they went into the house. Tammy was standing there and
laughed at her. The
stranger asked why they kept the little girl in the house, when they were
ready to go back into
the house, Margie and vern both saw a little girl get into Tammy's parents
truck.
The little girl
vanished.
One night
after uncle Vern passed away, Margie saw lights on in Vern's shop in the
garage. She went out and peeked in the window and saw vern. The doors were locked.
She called her son. He came and the doors were locked. He opened the doors and went in and
could not find anything. He turned the lights off and relocked the
door. The lights came
back on.
There have
been other experiences of family members seeing deceased family members in
the house, we talked
about the ghosts and feel they are good ghosts and don't mean any harm to
anyone. Although Margie has asked family members to stay with her. They refuse
because of the ghosts. She is not afraid of them. She
feels they are looking
out for her.
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