12/24/2024
This beautiful story is shared from Karen Kilgore Johnson. I thought it was a lovely reflection of Christmas along the Buffalo River in times past.
“I wrote this for the CCHS Quarterly. Thought you might enjoy reading a very sweet Christmas story. Many things have changed in the last 100 years. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!
Mt. Sherman was a remote community in Newton County. In 1924, my mother, Faye Raney Kilgore, was 6 years old living with her family and extended family down by the Buffalo River. All her Christmas presents up to this one consisted of a stick of candy and home-made gifts in one of her stockings hung on the wall. She spoke of this Christmas the rest of her life and how special it had been. I found a newspaper story in the Newton County Times from 30 years ago that my Great-Aunt wrote about this particular Christmas. My grandfather was the oldest of 13 children so my mother was raised with aunts and uncles that were like siblings.
The following is in the words of my Aunt Henrietta Bateman Raney:
I remember the excitement of the coming days before Christmas. I must have been 8 or 9 years old. I was raised on Mt. Sherman and all we who lived there were very poor. Most of us had the food we needed to eat by working hard and raising it. We had the clothes we needed, but most of us, as you might say, were in the same boat – poor.
There was an old lady who had lost her husband, a Dr. O.C. Trice, living in Kansas City. She had seen the Ozarks before and fell in love with it. She bought a home near where we lived. Below her home was a large rock on top of the bluff and she would go there often and sit on the rock for hours and enjoy the beauty of the Ozarks.
She was lonely and a little afraid, so I stayed with her and went to the Mt. Sherman School. Mrs. Trice had many friends in Kansas City she wrote to often. When the honeysuckles were in bloom, she would box them up in boxes and load the horse and take them to Jasper and mail them to her friends in Kansas City.
She felt sorry for all us kids on the mountain because we didn’t have much for Christmas. She wrote to her friends and told them about us. They got together and mailed a lot of packages to her for us. Where we lived there were no roads except wagon roads. The mail was delivered on horseback. With the extra mail at Christmastime, the mail man road a horse and led two mules tied together.
Mrs. Trice, the horse and I walked a mile or more each mail day to the mailbox to meet the mailman and get the packages the ladies from KC sent. We stored the packages in a shed. We did his for days.
The week before Christmas, my mother, Mrs. Trice and other ladies came and filled the stockings the ladies sent and put names on all the things. You have no idea the wonderful feelings I had knowing what was going on at this time. There were nuts of different kinds we had never seen, candies and a big orange. I had seen oranges, but never ate one, as I’m sure was the same for the other children.
The men met at the Mr. Sherman Schoolhouse and put a large tree up and put the little candleholders on the tree and the candles in them. I’d never seen holders like those before. They had a handle hook to hang them on the tree. A large star went on top and all those beautiful trimmings! Then the men and women put all the gifts on the tree. I remember there were lots of dolls, teddy bears, car, trucks, scarves, caps, socks and many other things. There was one large doll handing there. It was so pretty! I’d never had any doll this nice and how I wished for it. Sure enough, my name was on the doll. I was so thrilled! I kept the doll for years.
My mother is the only child looking at the camera. The other children all have their eyes on the presents! My mother received a China doll with hair and clothes - her first and finest. This is one of my mother’s best Christmas memories. I don’t believe children today appreciate Christmas like the ones in this picture.”
Henrietta identified the following in the picture:Bob Arbaugh on the left end, Paul Raney, Nellie Raney, Mintie Raney with the cap on, Ford Henderson (baby looking up), Faye Raney behind him, Dean Spencer with cap on, Jessie Spencer Cothren and baby in fronty of her is Nail (Woody) Woodruff, Eilene and Lucille Arbaugh, Harold Poyner with hat on, Willis Morgan on end and Ethel Arbaugh in middle, Bonnie Henderson next to Faye and me behind Jessie (barely see me), Graydon Spencer, left end standing looking up.
