Virlenda Jennings
By Kathlyn M. Lathrop, Duncan, Arizona
I was born in Smith County, Republic of Texas, December 26, 1845, just four days before the little republic became the possession of the United States of America. I reckon you’d call me a “Squalling Christmas Present” that has lasted 94 years, come Dec. 26, 1939.
My memory is quite clear on the most important things that have happened in my own life, but I have had no schooling – that is, book learning – and I don’t recall, clearly; all the exact dates of things that happened to my people when those first bloody pages of Texas History were in the making.
I reckon we best start with some of the things I was taught to “never forget” in childhood: My grandfather, William Hamilton Smith, and his bride of a few months (her name was Sarah Tyler) came to Texas, from Tennessee, with a colony of about 300 families, back in 1821. I do not remember just which colony.
They settled in a community on the Colorado River, which later, became the city of Columbus; then when Grandfather’s land grant was given him, he moved to Nacogdoches County. Smith County was organized from Nacogdoches County, when I was about one year old, and was named for General James Smith, who was an uncle of Grandfather. The town of Tyler was named for my grandmother’s father, and built on his land grant.
Grandfather Smith, died at the Alamo; and of course, his only son – my father – fell heir to the plantation where he was born, and where I was born, which was in Smith County by that time. Father was away fighting in the war when I was born.
When he came home from the war on New Years day, 1846, he was somewhat surprised to find he had a daughter – and not a son to follow in his footsteps. And mother said she was surprised to learn that Texas was no longer a republic of its own, but now belonged to the United States of America.
My childhood was no different to other girls who were born in that age and brought up on the Texas frontiers; we learned to cook, wash, iron, piece quilts, spin and weave cloth, and make all our own clothes, and knit our hosiery from yarns that we made ourselves. Of course, we had negros to do most of the work, but that did not mean that we girls were to be brought up in idleness. No Siree!
I was only about 16 years old when the Civil War broke out, and had been married three years. I had a son almost two years old. Girls married young those days you know; we were considered grow-up, or of marriageable age as soon as we developed into womanhood.
I married Buck Jennings two months after I met him. He had come to Texas from Missouri, less than a year before that. He was just a young adventurer, whom nobody seemed to know much about, seeking to make a fortune all his very own, in the wild and wooly west. Yes, I reckon he found plenty of adventures allright.
My folks, you see, were wealthy plantation owners, and Buck, well he was just a nobody, not even a soldier – just working around where ever he could get work. Naturally, my folks objected to such a marriage for me. We eloped to the squire and were married before anybody knew anything about it.
After we were married! That’s when the fun started – if you call it fun. Elopements were not as easy all that in those days. Father always said “If you dance you certainly have to pay the fiddler.” Well, that fiddler certainly got his pay. They could, and often did, hang a man for stealing a girl in Texas at that time – no matter whether he married her or not.
I was afraid to go home and afraid not to. I was not so much afraid of what they would do to me as I was afraid of what Father would do to Buck; girls who eloped, or otherwise displeased their parents, were usually just locked up in their rooms until they came to their senses.
We had eloped on horseback over to old squire Kelly’s house, oh, about eight or ten miles I reckon. It was coming daybreak when we got started back. I knew they must have missed me already and were most likely out looking for us with the bloodhounds, or a posse of armed men ready to shoot Buck down like a criminal, or take him off and hang him.
We were riding along talking about what was best to do; Buck wanted to take me straight home and just up and tell them that we were married and meant to stay that way – he was brave like that. But I was afraid to go on. I wanted to stay at Squire Kelly’s until Father cooled down a little.
Just as we rounded a bend in the trail we came face to face with Father and a posse. I nearly fainted away. Father was as surprised as we were. We all just sat there staring at each other for several minutes before anybody said anything at all.
There had been rumors of an Indian upraising in a community a few miles to the West of us, and Father and his men were on their way to investigate that rumor – I hadn’t even been missed from my room. But, of course I didn’t know that right then, and neither did Buck.
Well, Father, suddenly exploded – those explosions of his were anything but funny. He thundered out demanding to know just what Buck Jennings might be doing at that hour of the morning with his daughter on the trail. Of course, there was not anything to do but face the music then.
Buck didn’t act the least bit excited or afraid – I was to scared to know whether I was proud of him or not right then. He began speaking up to Father as bold as brave as you please and told him all about it. In memory, I can still see us all sitting there on our horses, me scared so bad I couldn’t speak to save me, and the look on the faces of that posse of men that spelled DOOM for Buck in big letters.
The men took Buck away, they said, to jail, and they were not very gentle about it either; Father took me straight home and locked me up in my room. Mother refused to even speak to me or look at me. The last thing I heard Father say to Mother as they locked me in, was, “The scounderl’s neck will be stretched with a rope before another day.”
I cried all the rest of that day, but by night I had made up my mind what to do, or try to do at least. To hang a man for merely loving a girl enough to marry her was nothing but cold-blooded murder in my sight. Oh, I don’t know, I guess I did really love him, but what can a thirteen-year-old girl know about love?
I thought I did anyway. I was determined they should not hang him. I would stop it someway, but I wasn’t so sure I had thought of a way that would really stop it.
Right then I wished I could write. I wanted to write him a note and explain my plan, I knew I could trust old Lily – the Negro maimy – to take it to him, if even, at the risk of her own life, but I had to give up that idea as I couldn’t write and did not know anyone whom I could trust to write it.
I decided to send Lily, that night, to the jail where they had taken him, and tell him just what I was going to do. I had no idea what I might do if that plan failed to work. I was going to tell a lie and swear to it on the bible, if they ask me to.
When old Lily brought me my supper I told her what I wanted her to do for me. I can still seem to see her kind old black face and the understanding in her eyes now that I recall it all – as I do almost every day of my life – when she said to me, “Lawsymassy! Chile! They’d kill him sho! They’d kill him chile! You all musn’t do dat! I’ll go tell him, an’ I’ll swear its de truth – don’ matter what they does to ole Lily.” I knew, of course, that old Lily would be horse whipped, but Buck had to be saved.
I was going to tell them that I was going to have a baby and Buck had married me to save me from disgrace. I knew Father would rather be dead than face that sort of disgrace, and I thought he aught to be grateful to Buck – if I could just get Buck to back me up in that lie.
Well, I did not have to tell that lie after all. Yes, girls that age always were and always will be that silly I reckon. Old Lily did not bring my breakfast next morning – she didn’t come back as she said she would that night and bring me a message from Buck – she never went to Buck.
Sarah, the young Negro winch who brought my breakfast, told me about it. Old Lily died in her sleep that night. I have often wondered if she took poison, or just died of fright, thinking about the whipping she would get – she was too old and feeble to have stood much of a whipping. Of course, nobody ever made any investigations in a negro’s death them days.
Mother came in around noon that day, and asked me a lot of questions – I was afraid to lie to her – but she must have understood a lot more about love and marriage than I thought she did. Anyway, she had a lot of influence on Father. I was allowed to go down to supper that night and was not locked in again – that puzzled me more than ever. I thought maybe they had already hanged Buck.
I couldn’t have trusted Sarah with anything, not even to ask her questions – she was afraid of that whip. I didn’t sleep a wink all that night, nobody said a word about Buck to me at breakfast, and I was about fit to be tied when Father and Buck came riding in around noon, yes, together, and laughing and talking. Buck kissed me right before everybody.
Well, as I said before, Buck Jennings had nothing to start on, no land, and no money to speak of. Father built us a cabin – a two-room log hut, not much better than the Negro cabins – and gave Buck all the land he wanted to tend; he gave me all my own stock, with my brand on it, and gave Buck a good wagon and span of work mules and all the farming tools he needed – or all the kind of tools that was available in those days.
My stock consisted of, one saddle horse, 13 fine milk cows, 25 head of beef stock, two sows and 16 pigs. Mother gave me a start of chickens, and I had all my own quilts and linens that I had made myself to start with. I also took the furniture out of my own room, and Buck built our tables and chairs and things like that.
Father built a Negro cabin in my back yard and gave me old Ben and old Nancy to help with the chores – they were too old to do much of anything, but they lived with me until they died. We got along fine until the Civil War broke out and Buck had to go to war.
Mother died the year I was married and Father married again, just a few months before the war broke out. Rachel, my stepmother, was a young widow with two children of her own – and the meanest, most jealous woman God ever allowed to live on this earth.
When Father went away to war, she was so mean to my two little brothers, Davy, about nine years old, and Henry, about seven, that I took them to live with me – they were company to me anyway and lots of help, now that old Ben and old Nancy were both dead, and I had my baby to look after besides tending the place.
With the Indians and the war, it was not very safe for any woman and three children to be living alone like that. Father wanted me to go to the plantation and live there with Rachel, but I flatly refused to do that. The Smith plantation was built like a fort and served as a fort for the entire community during Indian upraisings.
My cabin was about one and one half miles from the front gate of the plantation fort, and Buck had dug a tunnel about three quarters of a mile long toward the fort; it came out in a dense dogwood thicket about three quarters of a mile from the gates; that three quarters of a mile to the fort was thickly wooded and one had to cross a footlog across a creek to get there.
I did not try to tend much land while Buck was in the war, I tended about eight acres of corn, a garden, and about three or four acres of cotton – had to have cotton to get yarn to spin you know. There was not any such things as cotton gins in that part of the country, so we had to raise the cotton, pick it, and then pick the seeds out by hand, spin the yarn, dye it – if we wanted it dyed – weave it into cloth, and make the clothing by hand – we had no sewing machines either. I made all of Buck’s uniforms, even, his overcoats, while he was in the war.
We made our men’s clothes and sent them to them, or gave them to them when they happened to come home on a furlow, which was not very often. Sometimes, some of the neighbor men would come home and we would load them up with things for our menfolks to take back – sometimes they got there and sometimes they did not.
I recall it was on Christmas eve, before my 19th birthday (1864), shortly after dark, it was on the light of the moon and a cold North wind had sprung up and was whistling like ghosts around the house and soughing through the trees.
I felt lonesome somehow and did not want to go to bed early; I piled on a lot of pine knots on the fireplace, put on a pot of lye soap to boil, set the boys to picking their boots full of seeded cotton and sat down to my spinning wheel – when the children picked their boots full, each night, I would let them go to bed and not before – they had to help me you see, even little Bucky, not quite two years old, picked his little shoes full each night.
Bucky had began to nod – he always did before he got his shoes filled – and I started to pick him and put him to bed, when I heard the hoot of an owl outside. I almost froze in my tracks, I knew what that meant, it was not an owl, it was Indians, and Davy and Henry both knew it too.
I seen Davy glance up at a crack where the chinking was out by the fireplace, he did not make a sound, just looked at me and went right on picking cotton as if he had seen nothing at all – even children had to be brave in those days. I glanced at the crack and seen a pair of eyes staring in at me.
I pretended not to see those eyes, I just picked the baby up and kicked a rag rug out of my way – the rug was over the trap door to the tunnel – and laid little Bucky on the rug right by that door; then I scolded the boys, real loud, for not getting their boots full sooner – they understood me perfectly.
I then kicked up the fire real bright and began stirring the boiling soap as hard as I could; then I picked up a quart cup and skimmed the foam from the soap and carelessly tossed it through that crack – the foam I mean; there was a blood chilling yell and a terrible commotion outside – there must have been a hundred Indians out there from the noise they made.
When I threw the soap Davey jumped up and grabbed the baby while Henry jerked open the trap door, both boys darted into that dark tunnel and jerked the door down behind them; I had schooled them in what to do in case of an attack like that and I knew they would try to do it.
I seen another pair of eyes at that crack and threw some more soap, another, another, and another; I just kept right on with my soap throwing and counting out loud thinking about the children “One, two, three, four,” I counted in betwixt thoughts, “will Davey make it from the tunnel – five, six – to the gates – seven – will Henry – eight – stay in the tunnel – nine – with the – ten – baby – will the soap – eleven – hold – twelve – out – thirteen, fourteen – until – fifteen – help comes.”
Well, I kept that up until I had counted nineteen Indians that I had thrown soap in their eyes, and too, I was wondering why they did not break into the cabin, or why they did not set fire to it but I guess they were too scared. Indians you know, are a superstitious lot; they might have thought it was some kind of a fire God in there.
Just as I was about to count to twenty, the trap door few open and ten men from the fort arrived. I counted “Twenty” threw my cup down and grabbed my rifle and shoved it through that crack and began to pull the trigger. Nobody spoke, the men just rushed to the gunholes in the walls and began shooting.
In a very little while everything was quiet outside, and the men decided we had better get to the fort while the getting was good – if it still was – them red devils were a tricky lot you know. The first thing I remember saying to the men was that I couldn’t have held out more than one more Indian, as I had used all the soap but about one cupful of scrapings.
When I got to the fort, I found my three children safe, Davy had made it across that foot log like nobodies business – as they say now-a-days – and two of the men had turned back at the thicket to take Henry and Bucky to the fort. For once in Rachel’s life, she was human enough to act glad we were safe under the old home roof.
Next morning, the men captured twenty soap-blinded Indians in the woods, and they had killed fifty or more. That’s sure one time the Indians got the worst of a raid. Even Rachel, begged me to stay at the fort after that, but I refused – I had to stay in my own house.
I went home that Christmas day with the children, and by night the earth was covered with a blanket of snow and everything seemed so peaceful, I just had to sing as I sat at my spinning wheel that night, and the children were picking out their boots full of cotton. I was humming “Silent night,” when Buck opened the door and stepped in. That was a real Christmas to me!
Oh, yes, of course I had the door barred, but when Buck knocked and called to me I got up and opened it for him; I wasn’t much surprised to see him as I had been expecting him home on a furlow for some time. I had a new suit, new overcoat, and three pair of new sox ready for him.
He brought news from the battlefront that meant more to me and all the rest of the women in the neighborhood then any kind of a Christmas present could have meant; that was the first furlow Buck Jennings had had since he went away to war in 1861, and it was the last one until the end of the war.
When the war finally ended, Father was dead – killed in battle – and both my little brothers had died of colriehobis during that last winter of the war; the negros were free and my stepmother claimed all the plantation – what there was left of it to claim.
The United States Government gave me my share of land as the heir of a Civil War Veteran when the time came around, and Buck got his land as Civil War Veteran, over in Sabine County, on the Sabine River. We moved to our new home in the fall of 1868.
Our new house was a real mansion compared to the little cabin Father had given me; it was built of hawed logs, set endwise, like a fortress fence, a round building with a large veranda running all around it, and a wide hallway down the center, a two-story affair, six rooms downstairs and a big empty loft above, that was eventually cut into bedrooms.
We did not build a wall around our house, although we often wished we did have one – I mean a fort wall, like the old plantation had. We had a bunk-house for the cowboys in the back yard and hired a cook to take care of them. We hired around twenty cowboys the year-a-round after we got started raising cattle and driving them over the long trails to markets in Kansas and other points.
We lived there until 1890, when we sold out, bag and baggage, as the saying goes, and came to Arizona Territory. All nine of our children were born there in Texas, and the youngest was about five years old when we left there.
We landed in Douglass, Arizona, in the fall – I forget the exact date – of 1890. Buck had made a trip out here and located a place on Cave Creek, in Rucker Canyon, and we went straight out to our new home as soon as we could get our wagons ready – we came to Douglass on the train you see.
That was the first train ride I, or any of the children, had ever had in our lives, and it seemed to us that we were going around the world, and the world went around and around – I guess it was just our heads that went around and around. We were everyone sick as could be and vomited most all the way.
I recall, that a Negro porter came through the coach where we were, selling ham sandwiches on buns – the first we had ever seen or heard of. Buck, bought each of us one – eleven in all – and as soon as we ate them we wanted another, another, and another, until we ate about six each; that made about 66 sandwiches at ten cents apiece.
That porter kept saying, “Lawdy! You all sho’ do like these hyar things don’ you all?” and I’ll say we did! But it made every lasting one of us sicker than ever – not to mention the cost. But, Buck Jennings never did kick about the cost of anything his family ever wanted, as long as he had the money to pay for it, and if he didn’t have the money he most generally managed to get it someway or other.
The ranch house we moved into was just a nigger-shack compared to the big comfortable home we left in Texas, and if it had of been possible, me and every one of the children, would have taken the next train right straight back to Texas – that train-sea-sickness was nothing compared to the homesickness we endured those first few months in our new home “way out West.”
But, Lan’ sakes! When we did get used to it out here, why, wild horses couldn’t have dragged us back to Texas, or anywhere else, as to that matter. I reckon there is just something about this Arizona country that gets into your blood and stays there.
When I first heard about trains and railroads I couldn’t imagine what they were like until I seen one. I remember the first train I ever seen. Out home, you see, was between Sabinetown and a little village called Milam, and the railroad never did come out that far as long as we lived in Texas.
I don’t recall just what year it was, when the branch line of the G.C. & S. F. was built from Bronson out to Himphill, but it was back in the early “80’s” I think; anyway, Buck took us all in to see the train come in on it’s first run. That was certainly a red-letter day for all of the Buck Jennings family; we took our dinner and stayed all day, then went to a wagonyard and stayed all night, going home the next day.
If anyone had been silly enough to try to tell me, then, that there would ever be such a thing as an airplane I reckon I would have called them crazy as a bat, and if they had suggested that I would ever ride on one of the things I would have known they were crazy.
The first automobile I ever seen was as we came through the city of Dallas on our way out here; a strange sight to my eyes, these horseless buggy things. The first airplanes I recollect was during the world war when we heard them soaring over our ranch through the sky, army planes I guess from the fort at Douglass, or maybe they were just ordinary planes but anyway, they were an interesting sight, and I never was too sure that one of them wouldn’t fall right through the roof sometime.
I went with my daughter to El Paso two years ago (1937) and took my first, and only, ride on an airplane. Yes Siree! I climbed right on, or into, the thing and did not get seasick or the least bit dizzy all the time I was in the thing, but when I got out of it my head whirled around so I couldn’t stand up. Of course everybody around the airport laughed at me, and the El Paso paper carried a big front page article about the 92 year old grandmother riding in a plane. Some stunt for me to pull wasn’t it?
Yes, Arizona was still a little wild ‘n wooly when we came here, but all the Indians had been corralled on reservations by that time, all but one half-bred called the Apache Kid. I never did see him myself, but he holed up in a canyon near our place once when the soldiers, or a posse, was after him for killing somebody over here near Safford, Arizona; he stayed there several days.
None of my boys was ever outlaws that I know of and I don’t know just why they didn’t kill that Indian when they knew he was there, but they didn’t – that’s just another one of the million things a mother never learns about her children I guess. He was a killer and needed killing, but my boys said they was not being paid for killing anybody and besides he had done US no harm.
I tried to argue with them that he had killed white people and that he was just an Indian, but they argued that he was half white also, and the world hadn’t given him a right to live a civilized life and if he had killed it was for a reason other than just the merciless shedding of white blood.
The only Arizona outlaw I ever knew personally was a fellow called Lee Woods – his right name was Lee Wright, so I learned in later years. He had a hideout away up on the mountain above our ranch, and he had stayed at our house lots of times.
He had a young wife named Ellen – I guess she was his wife – anyway, she ran away from him once and came to our house and was there almost a week before he came after her and took her off to El Paso, or some place else; they said they were going to El Paso to be married by his right name. I never seen either of them since then.
I heard a few years ago that an officer by the name of Lee Wright had been killed by a woman outlaw named Irene Schroder over near Phoenix, and I supposed it was the same Lee Wright that I had know to be an outlaw at one time. I learned that Ellen Wright died over here in the Greenlee County hospital several years ago; she and Lee were divorced at the time they said.
Buck Jennings died and left me alone on the ranch in Rucker Canyon in 1918, while the last of our sons were away in France in the world war; our son, William, never came home either, they are all gone now except Luther – he lives in Globe – and my baby daughter Ethel Moore, and I live with her.
Ethel has had bad luck with her men, it seems that she can never get one to live somehow; she has been married five times and has buryed every one of her husbands, the longest any of them lived after they married her was seven years – that was Bill Moore, the last one. He got killed by being thrown from a bucking bronco on their ranch up here at the head of the Blue River, around ten years ago.
Her first husband was struck by lightening two days after they were married in Flagstaff, the second died of pneumonia three months after they were married, the third was a gambler and he was shot and killed about a year after they married, the fourth was drowned in the Rio Perko at Holbrook during a flood. So that’s just the way of it – they just won’t live after they marry her.
People seem to think it strange that a woman, or any person, my age could remember things so clearly. Well maybe it is rather unusual in a way, a person who has seen nearly one hundred years of life is bound to get things a little muddled in their minds at times with so terribly much to remember you know.
God has seen fit to let me live on earth this long, I suppose for his own reasons, and he has given me a second eyesight to see with, but I reckon he thinks these store teeth are good enough and he certainly has found no reason to begin giving me back any youth.
I weigh just two pounds more than my age (96) and I reckon most people think I am a mummy, or something dried on the bones, until I start talking – then I reckon they know I am something that has still got life in it allright.
My hair has been snowwhite like this since I was a little past fifty, but I never had it cut until two year ago when I pulled that airplane stunt – I was just in one of the stunty moods I guess, and had my hair cut while I was at it. I never needed one of them permanent things, my hair was always curly like this.
I learned to read when my children began to grow up and go to school. I can’t read so very well, but I do enjoy reading anything that I can understand at all, like the newspapers, the bible – a little western magazines with those bang, bangity, bang, stories in them that keep the old days fresh in my mind.
I have practically quit piecing quilts now as we have so many, more than Ethel and I will ever need – Ethel is an old white-haired woman herself you see. And as my rheumatism bothers me so much I don’t get out and around as much as I would like to, I just sit and read most of the time.
Read, dream, and wish! That’s about all there is left for one my age to do, and I thank God that he has left me my memory and I do not have to sit in that shadow of half-insanity and wait for the death angel to take me home to be with my loved ones who have gone on before me.
I came to Clifton to live with Ethel when I sold the ranch back in 1920. We lived at her home on the head of Blue River until last winter, or fall rather, (1928) when she sold out and moved to town. She got enough out of her ranch to keep her about the rest of her life I reckon, and I draw a Civil War widow’s pension myself, so that takes care of us two very nicely.
I love this part of Arizona very much, you see these old hills are old, old, old, and wrinkled like me, and I know they’ll still be here after I am gone. I think I have lived the most wonderful life one could wish for. True, it has not been a bed of roses, and it is not without tragedy either, but it has been LIFE! LIFE! LIFE! To the fullest extent, the bitter and the sweet and I am thankful to have been spared to see so much of it.
It isn’t likely that I will be spared to live a century, I have known very few people who have lived even this long. My old time friend J.L.T. Waters of Duncan, always wanted to live a century, well, he didn’t make it quite, he died on East Sunday 1939, and he liked a bit reaching 96. So you see it isn’t very likely that I will be sticking around so very much longer myself. I am ready to go, not anxious to end anything as pleasant as life, but willing when the Master calls.
Very respectfully yours,
Virlenda Jennings,
North Clifton,
Clifton, Arizona.
I was born in Smith County, Republic of Texas, December 26, 1845, just four days before the little republic became the possession of the United States of America. I reckon you’d call me a “Squalling Christmas Present” that has lasted 94 years, come Dec. 26, 1939.
My memory is quite clear on the most important things that have happened in my own life, but I have had no schooling – that is, book learning – and I don’t recall, clearly; all the exact dates of things that happened to my people when those first bloody pages of Texas History were in the making.
I reckon we best start with some of the things I was taught to “never forget” in childhood: My grandfather, William Hamilton Smith, and his bride of a few months (her name was Sarah Tyler) came to Texas, from Tennessee, with a colony of about 300 families, back in 1821. I do not remember just which colony.
They settled in a community on the Colorado River, which later, became the city of Columbus; then when Grandfather’s land grant was given him, he moved to Nacogdoches County. Smith County was organized from Nacogdoches County, when I was about one year old, and was named for General James Smith, who was an uncle of Grandfather. The town of Tyler was named for my grandmother’s father, and built on his land grant.
Grandfather Smith, died at the Alamo; and of course, his only son – my father – fell heir to the plantation where he was born, and where I was born, which was in Smith County by that time. Father was away fighting in the war when I was born.
When he came home from the war on New Years day, 1846, he was somewhat surprised to find he had a daughter – and not a son to follow in his footsteps. And mother said she was surprised to learn that Texas was no longer a republic of its own, but now belonged to the United States of America.
My childhood was no different to other girls who were born in that age and brought up on the Texas frontiers; we learned to cook, wash, iron, piece quilts, spin and weave cloth, and make all our own clothes, and knit our hosiery from yarns that we made ourselves. Of course, we had negros to do most of the work, but that did not mean that we girls were to be brought up in idleness. No Siree!
I was only about 16 years old when the Civil War broke out, and had been married three years. I had a son almost two years old. Girls married young those days you know; we were considered grow-up, or of marriageable age as soon as we developed into womanhood.
I married Buck Jennings two months after I met him. He had come to Texas from Missouri, less than a year before that. He was just a young adventurer, whom nobody seemed to know much about, seeking to make a fortune all his very own, in the wild and wooly west. Yes, I reckon he found plenty of adventures allright.
My folks, you see, were wealthy plantation owners, and Buck, well he was just a nobody, not even a soldier – just working around where ever he could get work. Naturally, my folks objected to such a marriage for me. We eloped to the squire and were married before anybody knew anything about it.
After we were married! That’s when the fun started – if you call it fun. Elopements were not as easy all that in those days. Father always said “If you dance you certainly have to pay the fiddler.” Well, that fiddler certainly got his pay. They could, and often did, hang a man for stealing a girl in Texas at that time – no matter whether he married her or not.
I was afraid to go home and afraid not to. I was not so much afraid of what they would do to me as I was afraid of what Father would do to Buck; girls who eloped, or otherwise displeased their parents, were usually just locked up in their rooms until they came to their senses.
We had eloped on horseback over to old squire Kelly’s house, oh, about eight or ten miles I reckon. It was coming daybreak when we got started back. I knew they must have missed me already and were most likely out looking for us with the bloodhounds, or a posse of armed men ready to shoot Buck down like a criminal, or take him off and hang him.
We were riding along talking about what was best to do; Buck wanted to take me straight home and just up and tell them that we were married and meant to stay that way – he was brave like that. But I was afraid to go on. I wanted to stay at Squire Kelly’s until Father cooled down a little.
Just as we rounded a bend in the trail we came face to face with Father and a posse. I nearly fainted away. Father was as surprised as we were. We all just sat there staring at each other for several minutes before anybody said anything at all.
There had been rumors of an Indian upraising in a community a few miles to the West of us, and Father and his men were on their way to investigate that rumor – I hadn’t even been missed from my room. But, of course I didn’t know that right then, and neither did Buck.
Well, Father, suddenly exploded – those explosions of his were anything but funny. He thundered out demanding to know just what Buck Jennings might be doing at that hour of the morning with his daughter on the trail. Of course, there was not anything to do but face the music then.
Buck didn’t act the least bit excited or afraid – I was to scared to know whether I was proud of him or not right then. He began speaking up to Father as bold as brave as you please and told him all about it. In memory, I can still see us all sitting there on our horses, me scared so bad I couldn’t speak to save me, and the look on the faces of that posse of men that spelled DOOM for Buck in big letters.
The men took Buck away, they said, to jail, and they were not very gentle about it either; Father took me straight home and locked me up in my room. Mother refused to even speak to me or look at me. The last thing I heard Father say to Mother as they locked me in, was, “The scounderl’s neck will be stretched with a rope before another day.”
I cried all the rest of that day, but by night I had made up my mind what to do, or try to do at least. To hang a man for merely loving a girl enough to marry her was nothing but cold-blooded murder in my sight. Oh, I don’t know, I guess I did really love him, but what can a thirteen-year-old girl know about love?
I thought I did anyway. I was determined they should not hang him. I would stop it someway, but I wasn’t so sure I had thought of a way that would really stop it.
Right then I wished I could write. I wanted to write him a note and explain my plan, I knew I could trust old Lily – the Negro maimy – to take it to him, if even, at the risk of her own life, but I had to give up that idea as I couldn’t write and did not know anyone whom I could trust to write it.
I decided to send Lily, that night, to the jail where they had taken him, and tell him just what I was going to do. I had no idea what I might do if that plan failed to work. I was going to tell a lie and swear to it on the bible, if they ask me to.
When old Lily brought me my supper I told her what I wanted her to do for me. I can still seem to see her kind old black face and the understanding in her eyes now that I recall it all – as I do almost every day of my life – when she said to me, “Lawsymassy! Chile! They’d kill him sho! They’d kill him chile! You all musn’t do dat! I’ll go tell him, an’ I’ll swear its de truth – don’ matter what they does to ole Lily.” I knew, of course, that old Lily would be horse whipped, but Buck had to be saved.
I was going to tell them that I was going to have a baby and Buck had married me to save me from disgrace. I knew Father would rather be dead than face that sort of disgrace, and I thought he aught to be grateful to Buck – if I could just get Buck to back me up in that lie.
Well, I did not have to tell that lie after all. Yes, girls that age always were and always will be that silly I reckon. Old Lily did not bring my breakfast next morning – she didn’t come back as she said she would that night and bring me a message from Buck – she never went to Buck.
Sarah, the young Negro winch who brought my breakfast, told me about it. Old Lily died in her sleep that night. I have often wondered if she took poison, or just died of fright, thinking about the whipping she would get – she was too old and feeble to have stood much of a whipping. Of course, nobody ever made any investigations in a negro’s death them days.
Mother came in around noon that day, and asked me a lot of questions – I was afraid to lie to her – but she must have understood a lot more about love and marriage than I thought she did. Anyway, she had a lot of influence on Father. I was allowed to go down to supper that night and was not locked in again – that puzzled me more than ever. I thought maybe they had already hanged Buck.
I couldn’t have trusted Sarah with anything, not even to ask her questions – she was afraid of that whip. I didn’t sleep a wink all that night, nobody said a word about Buck to me at breakfast, and I was about fit to be tied when Father and Buck came riding in around noon, yes, together, and laughing and talking. Buck kissed me right before everybody.
Well, as I said before, Buck Jennings had nothing to start on, no land, and no money to speak of. Father built us a cabin – a two-room log hut, not much better than the Negro cabins – and gave Buck all the land he wanted to tend; he gave me all my own stock, with my brand on it, and gave Buck a good wagon and span of work mules and all the farming tools he needed – or all the kind of tools that was available in those days.
My stock consisted of, one saddle horse, 13 fine milk cows, 25 head of beef stock, two sows and 16 pigs. Mother gave me a start of chickens, and I had all my own quilts and linens that I had made myself to start with. I also took the furniture out of my own room, and Buck built our tables and chairs and things like that.
Father built a Negro cabin in my back yard and gave me old Ben and old Nancy to help with the chores – they were too old to do much of anything, but they lived with me until they died. We got along fine until the Civil War broke out and Buck had to go to war.
Mother died the year I was married and Father married again, just a few months before the war broke out. Rachel, my stepmother, was a young widow with two children of her own – and the meanest, most jealous woman God ever allowed to live on this earth.
When Father went away to war, she was so mean to my two little brothers, Davy, about nine years old, and Henry, about seven, that I took them to live with me – they were company to me anyway and lots of help, now that old Ben and old Nancy were both dead, and I had my baby to look after besides tending the place.
With the Indians and the war, it was not very safe for any woman and three children to be living alone like that. Father wanted me to go to the plantation and live there with Rachel, but I flatly refused to do that. The Smith plantation was built like a fort and served as a fort for the entire community during Indian upraisings.
My cabin was about one and one half miles from the front gate of the plantation fort, and Buck had dug a tunnel about three quarters of a mile long toward the fort; it came out in a dense dogwood thicket about three quarters of a mile from the gates; that three quarters of a mile to the fort was thickly wooded and one had to cross a footlog across a creek to get there.
I did not try to tend much land while Buck was in the war, I tended about eight acres of corn, a garden, and about three or four acres of cotton – had to have cotton to get yarn to spin you know. There was not any such things as cotton gins in that part of the country, so we had to raise the cotton, pick it, and then pick the seeds out by hand, spin the yarn, dye it – if we wanted it dyed – weave it into cloth, and make the clothing by hand – we had no sewing machines either. I made all of Buck’s uniforms, even, his overcoats, while he was in the war.
We made our men’s clothes and sent them to them, or gave them to them when they happened to come home on a furlow, which was not very often. Sometimes, some of the neighbor men would come home and we would load them up with things for our menfolks to take back – sometimes they got there and sometimes they did not.
I recall it was on Christmas eve, before my 19th birthday (1864), shortly after dark, it was on the light of the moon and a cold North wind had sprung up and was whistling like ghosts around the house and soughing through the trees.
I felt lonesome somehow and did not want to go to bed early; I piled on a lot of pine knots on the fireplace, put on a pot of lye soap to boil, set the boys to picking their boots full of seeded cotton and sat down to my spinning wheel – when the children picked their boots full, each night, I would let them go to bed and not before – they had to help me you see, even little Bucky, not quite two years old, picked his little shoes full each night.
Bucky had began to nod – he always did before he got his shoes filled – and I started to pick him and put him to bed, when I heard the hoot of an owl outside. I almost froze in my tracks, I knew what that meant, it was not an owl, it was Indians, and Davy and Henry both knew it too.
I seen Davy glance up at a crack where the chinking was out by the fireplace, he did not make a sound, just looked at me and went right on picking cotton as if he had seen nothing at all – even children had to be brave in those days. I glanced at the crack and seen a pair of eyes staring in at me.
I pretended not to see those eyes, I just picked the baby up and kicked a rag rug out of my way – the rug was over the trap door to the tunnel – and laid little Bucky on the rug right by that door; then I scolded the boys, real loud, for not getting their boots full sooner – they understood me perfectly.
I then kicked up the fire real bright and began stirring the boiling soap as hard as I could; then I picked up a quart cup and skimmed the foam from the soap and carelessly tossed it through that crack – the foam I mean; there was a blood chilling yell and a terrible commotion outside – there must have been a hundred Indians out there from the noise they made.
When I threw the soap Davey jumped up and grabbed the baby while Henry jerked open the trap door, both boys darted into that dark tunnel and jerked the door down behind them; I had schooled them in what to do in case of an attack like that and I knew they would try to do it.
I seen another pair of eyes at that crack and threw some more soap, another, another, and another; I just kept right on with my soap throwing and counting out loud thinking about the children “One, two, three, four,” I counted in betwixt thoughts, “will Davey make it from the tunnel – five, six – to the gates – seven – will Henry – eight – stay in the tunnel – nine – with the – ten – baby – will the soap – eleven – hold – twelve – out – thirteen, fourteen – until – fifteen – help comes.”
Well, I kept that up until I had counted nineteen Indians that I had thrown soap in their eyes, and too, I was wondering why they did not break into the cabin, or why they did not set fire to it but I guess they were too scared. Indians you know, are a superstitious lot; they might have thought it was some kind of a fire God in there.
Just as I was about to count to twenty, the trap door few open and ten men from the fort arrived. I counted “Twenty” threw my cup down and grabbed my rifle and shoved it through that crack and began to pull the trigger. Nobody spoke, the men just rushed to the gunholes in the walls and began shooting.
In a very little while everything was quiet outside, and the men decided we had better get to the fort while the getting was good – if it still was – them red devils were a tricky lot you know. The first thing I remember saying to the men was that I couldn’t have held out more than one more Indian, as I had used all the soap but about one cupful of scrapings.
When I got to the fort, I found my three children safe, Davy had made it across that foot log like nobodies business – as they say now-a-days – and two of the men had turned back at the thicket to take Henry and Bucky to the fort. For once in Rachel’s life, she was human enough to act glad we were safe under the old home roof.
Next morning, the men captured twenty soap-blinded Indians in the woods, and they had killed fifty or more. That’s sure one time the Indians got the worst of a raid. Even Rachel, begged me to stay at the fort after that, but I refused – I had to stay in my own house.
I went home that Christmas day with the children, and by night the earth was covered with a blanket of snow and everything seemed so peaceful, I just had to sing as I sat at my spinning wheel that night, and the children were picking out their boots full of cotton. I was humming “Silent night,” when Buck opened the door and stepped in. That was a real Christmas to me!
Oh, yes, of course I had the door barred, but when Buck knocked and called to me I got up and opened it for him; I wasn’t much surprised to see him as I had been expecting him home on a furlow for some time. I had a new suit, new overcoat, and three pair of new sox ready for him.
He brought news from the battlefront that meant more to me and all the rest of the women in the neighborhood then any kind of a Christmas present could have meant; that was the first furlow Buck Jennings had had since he went away to war in 1861, and it was the last one until the end of the war.
When the war finally ended, Father was dead – killed in battle – and both my little brothers had died of colriehobis during that last winter of the war; the negros were free and my stepmother claimed all the plantation – what there was left of it to claim.
The United States Government gave me my share of land as the heir of a Civil War Veteran when the time came around, and Buck got his land as Civil War Veteran, over in Sabine County, on the Sabine River. We moved to our new home in the fall of 1868.
Our new house was a real mansion compared to the little cabin Father had given me; it was built of hawed logs, set endwise, like a fortress fence, a round building with a large veranda running all around it, and a wide hallway down the center, a two-story affair, six rooms downstairs and a big empty loft above, that was eventually cut into bedrooms.
We did not build a wall around our house, although we often wished we did have one – I mean a fort wall, like the old plantation had. We had a bunk-house for the cowboys in the back yard and hired a cook to take care of them. We hired around twenty cowboys the year-a-round after we got started raising cattle and driving them over the long trails to markets in Kansas and other points.
We lived there until 1890, when we sold out, bag and baggage, as the saying goes, and came to Arizona Territory. All nine of our children were born there in Texas, and the youngest was about five years old when we left there.
We landed in Douglass, Arizona, in the fall – I forget the exact date – of 1890. Buck had made a trip out here and located a place on Cave Creek, in Rucker Canyon, and we went straight out to our new home as soon as we could get our wagons ready – we came to Douglass on the train you see.
That was the first train ride I, or any of the children, had ever had in our lives, and it seemed to us that we were going around the world, and the world went around and around – I guess it was just our heads that went around and around. We were everyone sick as could be and vomited most all the way.
I recall, that a Negro porter came through the coach where we were, selling ham sandwiches on buns – the first we had ever seen or heard of. Buck, bought each of us one – eleven in all – and as soon as we ate them we wanted another, another, and another, until we ate about six each; that made about 66 sandwiches at ten cents apiece.
That porter kept saying, “Lawdy! You all sho’ do like these hyar things don’ you all?” and I’ll say we did! But it made every lasting one of us sicker than ever – not to mention the cost. But, Buck Jennings never did kick about the cost of anything his family ever wanted, as long as he had the money to pay for it, and if he didn’t have the money he most generally managed to get it someway or other.
The ranch house we moved into was just a nigger-shack compared to the big comfortable home we left in Texas, and if it had of been possible, me and every one of the children, would have taken the next train right straight back to Texas – that train-sea-sickness was nothing compared to the homesickness we endured those first few months in our new home “way out West.”
But, Lan’ sakes! When we did get used to it out here, why, wild horses couldn’t have dragged us back to Texas, or anywhere else, as to that matter. I reckon there is just something about this Arizona country that gets into your blood and stays there.
When I first heard about trains and railroads I couldn’t imagine what they were like until I seen one. I remember the first train I ever seen. Out home, you see, was between Sabinetown and a little village called Milam, and the railroad never did come out that far as long as we lived in Texas.
I don’t recall just what year it was, when the branch line of the G.C. & S. F. was built from Bronson out to Himphill, but it was back in the early “80’s” I think; anyway, Buck took us all in to see the train come in on it’s first run. That was certainly a red-letter day for all of the Buck Jennings family; we took our dinner and stayed all day, then went to a wagonyard and stayed all night, going home the next day.
If anyone had been silly enough to try to tell me, then, that there would ever be such a thing as an airplane I reckon I would have called them crazy as a bat, and if they had suggested that I would ever ride on one of the things I would have known they were crazy.
The first automobile I ever seen was as we came through the city of Dallas on our way out here; a strange sight to my eyes, these horseless buggy things. The first airplanes I recollect was during the world war when we heard them soaring over our ranch through the sky, army planes I guess from the fort at Douglass, or maybe they were just ordinary planes but anyway, they were an interesting sight, and I never was too sure that one of them wouldn’t fall right through the roof sometime.
I went with my daughter to El Paso two years ago (1937) and took my first, and only, ride on an airplane. Yes Siree! I climbed right on, or into, the thing and did not get seasick or the least bit dizzy all the time I was in the thing, but when I got out of it my head whirled around so I couldn’t stand up. Of course everybody around the airport laughed at me, and the El Paso paper carried a big front page article about the 92 year old grandmother riding in a plane. Some stunt for me to pull wasn’t it?
Yes, Arizona was still a little wild ‘n wooly when we came here, but all the Indians had been corralled on reservations by that time, all but one half-bred called the Apache Kid. I never did see him myself, but he holed up in a canyon near our place once when the soldiers, or a posse, was after him for killing somebody over here near Safford, Arizona; he stayed there several days.
None of my boys was ever outlaws that I know of and I don’t know just why they didn’t kill that Indian when they knew he was there, but they didn’t – that’s just another one of the million things a mother never learns about her children I guess. He was a killer and needed killing, but my boys said they was not being paid for killing anybody and besides he had done US no harm.
I tried to argue with them that he had killed white people and that he was just an Indian, but they argued that he was half white also, and the world hadn’t given him a right to live a civilized life and if he had killed it was for a reason other than just the merciless shedding of white blood.
The only Arizona outlaw I ever knew personally was a fellow called Lee Woods – his right name was Lee Wright, so I learned in later years. He had a hideout away up on the mountain above our ranch, and he had stayed at our house lots of times.
He had a young wife named Ellen – I guess she was his wife – anyway, she ran away from him once and came to our house and was there almost a week before he came after her and took her off to El Paso, or some place else; they said they were going to El Paso to be married by his right name. I never seen either of them since then.
I heard a few years ago that an officer by the name of Lee Wright had been killed by a woman outlaw named Irene Schroder over near Phoenix, and I supposed it was the same Lee Wright that I had know to be an outlaw at one time. I learned that Ellen Wright died over here in the Greenlee County hospital several years ago; she and Lee were divorced at the time they said.
Buck Jennings died and left me alone on the ranch in Rucker Canyon in 1918, while the last of our sons were away in France in the world war; our son, William, never came home either, they are all gone now except Luther – he lives in Globe – and my baby daughter Ethel Moore, and I live with her.
Ethel has had bad luck with her men, it seems that she can never get one to live somehow; she has been married five times and has buryed every one of her husbands, the longest any of them lived after they married her was seven years – that was Bill Moore, the last one. He got killed by being thrown from a bucking bronco on their ranch up here at the head of the Blue River, around ten years ago.
Her first husband was struck by lightening two days after they were married in Flagstaff, the second died of pneumonia three months after they were married, the third was a gambler and he was shot and killed about a year after they married, the fourth was drowned in the Rio Perko at Holbrook during a flood. So that’s just the way of it – they just won’t live after they marry her.
People seem to think it strange that a woman, or any person, my age could remember things so clearly. Well maybe it is rather unusual in a way, a person who has seen nearly one hundred years of life is bound to get things a little muddled in their minds at times with so terribly much to remember you know.
God has seen fit to let me live on earth this long, I suppose for his own reasons, and he has given me a second eyesight to see with, but I reckon he thinks these store teeth are good enough and he certainly has found no reason to begin giving me back any youth.
I weigh just two pounds more than my age (96) and I reckon most people think I am a mummy, or something dried on the bones, until I start talking – then I reckon they know I am something that has still got life in it allright.
My hair has been snowwhite like this since I was a little past fifty, but I never had it cut until two year ago when I pulled that airplane stunt – I was just in one of the stunty moods I guess, and had my hair cut while I was at it. I never needed one of them permanent things, my hair was always curly like this.
I learned to read when my children began to grow up and go to school. I can’t read so very well, but I do enjoy reading anything that I can understand at all, like the newspapers, the bible – a little western magazines with those bang, bangity, bang, stories in them that keep the old days fresh in my mind.
I have practically quit piecing quilts now as we have so many, more than Ethel and I will ever need – Ethel is an old white-haired woman herself you see. And as my rheumatism bothers me so much I don’t get out and around as much as I would like to, I just sit and read most of the time.
Read, dream, and wish! That’s about all there is left for one my age to do, and I thank God that he has left me my memory and I do not have to sit in that shadow of half-insanity and wait for the death angel to take me home to be with my loved ones who have gone on before me.
I came to Clifton to live with Ethel when I sold the ranch back in 1920. We lived at her home on the head of Blue River until last winter, or fall rather, (1928) when she sold out and moved to town. She got enough out of her ranch to keep her about the rest of her life I reckon, and I draw a Civil War widow’s pension myself, so that takes care of us two very nicely.
I love this part of Arizona very much, you see these old hills are old, old, old, and wrinkled like me, and I know they’ll still be here after I am gone. I think I have lived the most wonderful life one could wish for. True, it has not been a bed of roses, and it is not without tragedy either, but it has been LIFE! LIFE! LIFE! To the fullest extent, the bitter and the sweet and I am thankful to have been spared to see so much of it.
It isn’t likely that I will be spared to live a century, I have known very few people who have lived even this long. My old time friend J.L.T. Waters of Duncan, always wanted to live a century, well, he didn’t make it quite, he died on East Sunday 1939, and he liked a bit reaching 96. So you see it isn’t very likely that I will be sticking around so very much longer myself. I am ready to go, not anxious to end anything as pleasant as life, but willing when the Master calls.
Very respectfully yours,
Virlenda Jennings,
North Clifton,
Clifton, Arizona.