Granddaughter Emma gave me a stare and then swallowed hard as she tried to fathom the import when I mentioned her great-great-grandmother married when she was 13. Emma is 14.
Without saying so, I knew what she was thinking. How could that happen?
A day later, her twin sister, Alayna, had much the same reaction. “No way,” she exclaimed.
It was a different time, I said, and in a place where convention even in the late 1800s didn’t travel too often — the hills and hollers of southern Missouri.
Amanda Riley was without a father and her mother thought finding a husband for her as quickly as possible would be the right thing to do. She talked to Dr. John Wesley Hoots, my great-grandfather, who not long before had lost his wife to illness. The marriage was arranged. The backwoods doctor, who traveled on horseback to treat patients, was 35.
Family legend has it once married, Amanda spent more time the first year or two outdoors playing with two stepsons rather than tending to household chores. Great-granddad was understanding and didn’t push new wife from childhood to womanhood too quickly.
Eventually she had five children of her own, including my grandmother, who older folks in Humboldt will remember as Meme Oliphant, and twins Marion and Rose. Another daughter died in infancy. Rose, who married my grandfather Sherman’s brother Jim, also lived in Humboldt.
The Oliphant families migrated to Humboldt sometime before my mother, Violet Johnson, graduated from Humboldt High in 1936. The appeal was jobs at Humboldt Brick and Tile. My granddad later worked several years at Monarch Cement.
He and Meme — her real name was Ada — were close to me and sister Jenelle, after she was born in 1950. We all lived in the same house, which gave us two sets of parents.
Granddad had a tough life, not unusual for when and where he grew up.
He told me only once did he and his brother have enough money on July 4 to buy a package of firecrackers, and then made the mistake of using a match to unravel them. They unraveled quickly, and loudly.
At 16 he worked in Montana for a sheep rancher. His job was to spend the winter — by himself — in a line cabin. When spring came, melting snow swelled the Power River. He swan it to get back to the ranch house.
Granddad was on course to go to France with American forces, but the flu pandemic of 1918-19 kept him at Camp Funston, now a part of Fort Riley.
Having seen hard times through most of his life, granddad was conservative almost to the extreme, but was as kind as any one man could be to his grandchildren. A great source of pride for me is my grandparents were charter members of First Baptist Church in Humboldt.
