text:
The Sloan Family Chronicles, Volume 1
1781 – 1981
By Nora Sloan Waddell
June 7, 1981
In appreciation to my great grandson, Kelly Fulton, who drew the cover for my book from my description of the "Old Home Place".
Also, to my granddaughter, Beverly Johnson, who gave freely of her time to type my story and without whose help my book would never have made it to the printers.
[Editor's Note: It's now November 1999. I became interested in genealogy and remembered that my Grandma Dell had written this book. I knew it would be a great source of information, and indeed it was. Aside from correcting a few grammatical and spelling errors, and re-formatting the pages, I changed nothing of the original text. It's wonderful reading the stories written here by my grandmother and a couple of my aunts. I can almost hear their voices telling the stories. I omitted the original list of descendants of Robert Sloan from the back of the book and replaced it with a more accurate and up-to-date report. Also, I added only a couple of notes from my own memories. Those are preceded with the words "Editor's Note" so you will know they are not part of the original text.]
Table of Contents
*Memories Recalled by Nora Sloan Waddell
*The First Generation Sloan in America - 1800
*Year of 1895
*Spring of 1896
*Year of 1897
*Spring of 1898
*Year of 1900
*This Happened the Fall of 1901
*Year of 1902
*Christmas of 1903 and Charlie's 6th Birthday
*Year of 1904
*June of 1905
*Year of 1906
*Year of 1907
*Years of 1907, 1908, and 1909
*Year of 1909
*Year of 1910
*Years of 1911 and 1912
*More About The Years 1911 – 1912 – 1913
*Year of 1914
*Year of 1915
*Year of 1917
*Frankie and Nora On A Mushroom Hunt
*Sloan Family Picnics
*The Sloan Family
*Sloan – Matson Heritage
*George Sloan, born October 4, 1881 in Belmont, Illinois
*Nellie Sloan, born February 6, 1885
*William Sloan, born February 6, 1887 in Keithsburg, Illinois
*John Sloan, born December 6, 1889 in Keithsburg, Illinois
*Nora Sloan, born July 25, 1892 in Keithsburg, Illinois
*Caroline Sloan, born February 3, 1895 in Keithsburg, Illinois
*Charles Sloan, born December 25, 1897 near Oakville, Iowa
*Ursula Sloan, born October 11, 1900 near Oakville, Iowa
*Frisby Sloan, born February 8, 1903 near Oakville, Iowa
*Helen Sloan, born June 3, 1910 near Oakville, Iowa
*Nora Sloan Waddell as an Adult
*The Wedding of Nora Sloan and Thomas Waddell
*1949 Trip to Canada
*1961 Trip to California
*1964 Trip to California
*My Last Long Trip in 1976
*Memories Recalled by Frances Sloan Abolt
*Life on Huron Island and the Year of 1896
*Rotten Tomato Fight
*Memories Recalled by Ursula Sloan Trickey
*Life At Home
*Genealogical Reports
*Descendants of Robert Sloan
*Generation No. 1
*Generation No. 2
*Generation No. 3
*Generation No. 4
*Generation No. 5
*Generation No. 6
*Generation No. 7
Memories Recalled by Nora Sloan Waddell
The First Generation Sloan in America - 1800
My great grandfather, Robert Sloan, was born in Belfast, Ireland March 12, 1781. He immigrated to the United States when he was 19 years old. He arrived on the East Coast in the United States and visited with relatives for a few weeks. Then he joined a group of families who were going to the Midwest to apply for homesteads to farm. Robert left the group at Zanesville, Ohio. He homesteaded several hundred acres of land there. He cut down trees and built a log cabin.
He married Martha Antis on September 17, 1801. She was an Indian woman. In a few years as their family increased they built a nice house large enough to accommodate their increasingly large family, which finally reached a total of eight. When their last child was born, Martha died. That child was a son who later became my grandfather, George Sloan.
Robert Sloan then married his wife's sister, Ruth Frisby, also an Indian. To this union was born seven children. One died at birth. He now had fifteen children to support.
He decided to bond out two of his boys to a baker so they could learn to be bakers. This was the custom in those days. The two boys were George (my grandfather) and Frisby. George was ten years old and his youngest son by his first wife. Frisby was George's half-brother, nine years old. The boys were happy about the arrangement. The agreement was for the boys to stay with him for four years. They were to work for room and board and learn to bake bread and cakes. But the baker was mean to them. They had to cut all the wood for the ovens as well as learning to be bakers.
One day the boys decided to run away. So one night they decided they would go home. When they got home their mother told them the baker would come after them and that they should go back with him and finish the time they were bonded for. One day they saw him coming. He came in the front door and they went out the back door and ran for the timber and hid in a cave. He looked and looked but could not find them so he went on home.
Chief Blackhawk's scouts captured the boys and took them to Chief Blackhawk. He adopted George (my grandfather) as his son and gave him an Indian name. Translated to English, it was White Fox. The other boy, Frisby, was adopted into the tribe. George and Frisby didn't tell Blackhawk that their family name was Sloan and that their father was a wealthy farmer. They used another name. They were afraid the baker would hear they were living with the Indians and get them.
Blackhawk's tribe was the Sac and he was living on the Rock Island Arsenal. They didn't all live in teepees. Chief Blackhawk lived in a long "hogan". The frame was made of willows and covered with buffalo hides. It was located on the west end of Arsenal Island. The white settlers and the Indians were real friendly and attended parties with each other.
George and Frisby were very happy living with the Indians. The scouts taught them how to make bows and arrows and how to shoot with them. They often went on hunting trips with the scouts.
The Fox chief declared war on the white army. The Sac tribe was closely associated with the Fox tribe, so Blackhawk joined with the Fox tribe in the war against the army. The Indians lost the war so they were told to leave their home territory and go south. Chief Blackhawk was getting old and it broke his heart to leave his home where he was born and raised. He died before they got out of Iowa.
After Chief Blackhawk died, my grandfather left the tribe and married an Indian girl and started an Indian trading post in Oquaka, Illinois. The Indians would bring their furs and trade them for things that they needed.
He had five children by his Indian wife. When the last one was born, his wife died. When an Indian girl marries a white man and she dies, the children must go back to the tribe. She was buried in a white mans cemetery close to Oquaka. Then grandfather married an English woman, Frances Betterton. They raised his baby son who belonged to him and his Indian wife. His name was William Betterton Sloan and his birth is registered in Washington DC. This was the law in those days if you were of Indian blood.
After my grandfather was married to Frances Betterton and had one child, George born in 1848, gold was discovered in California. He wanted to go so bad and try his luck. His wife told him he could go and she would stay with her folks until he came home. She was pregnant but she didn't tell him so he would go. He joined a wagon train and the baby was born while he was gone in 1849. She named him James R. and he died shortly after birth.
On the wagon train they had many experiences. A man and his son from New York City joined the train. The son had bragged to his friends that before he returned home he would kill an Indian. One day he saw a squaw sitting on a log. He got his gun and shot her in the back. The Indians found her and they knew that somebody from the wagon train had shot her. So they went and asked all the men who had shot her. They all said they didn't kill her. The scouts told them if they didn't tell who shot her they would kill everyone on the wagon train. Finally the young man confessed that he had shot her. The Indians took him and made his father go along and watch while they skinned him alive.
After that experience things went along fine until they came to Death Valley, California and they got lost in amongst the old Black Hills. They all look alike, not a tree or a blade of grass. Not a living thing but spiders and such.
The wagon train ran out of food and was starving and some of them had the scurvy. My grandfather told them that he could speak Indian language well enough so any tribe could understand him and if one of the men would go with him he would go and hunt until he found an Indian camp. So they started and walked until they got to the Rocky Mountains. George knew the ways of the Indian and he finally found signs of a trail and he found their camp. He told them the wagon train was out of food and they were starving. So they all went hunting and killed several deer and many kinds of wild game. The Indians had horses and they made some travests to load the meat on. The Indians helped take the meat back to the wagon train and showed them the way out of Death Valley. Then the wagon train crossed the Rocky Mountains until they came to Stockton, California. There they broke up in small groups of two or three. George and his partner went to Virginia City, Nevada and staked out a claim. It paid well and they mined several thousand dollars of gold dust and nuggets before the vein ran out.
My grandfather decided to go home. When he returned home he came by sailing around the Horn at the south end of South America. In Jamaica he purchased a jewelry box decorated with tiny seashells as a present for his wife. It was very pretty and is still in the family. My niece, Cecil Lamb, has it in Wyoming. Cecil is my sister Frankie's youngest daughter.
After his return home he paid for his farm and built a large house and a big barn and bought all modern farm machinery. He bought the latest thing in farm equipment at the time called a harvester and was used to cut wheat and oats. When Grandpa Sloan bought his harvester he thought it was so wonderful he said, "There isn't anything they can do to improve it". I wonder what he would think if he could come back and see the harvesters the farmers use now with a closed cab to ride in, radios, CB's, and air conditioning. It cuts and thrashes and the wheat comes out of a spout that runs into a wagon attached to the harvester and spreads the straw over the fields all at the same time. No horses any more. All big powerful gasoline engines.
He also predicted that some day men would fly but he did not live to see his prediction come true. The Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, built the Kitty Hawk and tested it out on December 17, 1903. Grandpa died in 1893 so his prediction was right but he was unable to witness the reality of his predictions.
Frances and George Sloan had six more children. Josephine in 1856, John (my father) in 1858, Mercy in 1860, Frances in 1862, Martha in 1864, and Nellie in 1872. All their births are registered in Oquaka, Illinois.
Every summer my Grandfather George's daughters would drive to his first wife's grave and pull the weeks and plant flowers on her grave. All their lives, George and Frisby kept in touch and visited each other.
After Chief Blackhawk died, Frisby Sloan stayed with the tribe until they got to Missouri. Then he left to work on a farm. There he met a girl and they were married. They rented a farm and in time they had four children. One night the house caught on fire. Frisby and his wife ran out and when the looked around for the children they missed two of them. One neighbor who was there had a Negro slave. As soon as the slave found out that the two young children were upstairs asleep, he ran in the burning house and went up to get them. He wrapped blankets around each child and he carried one in each arm. The stairs was on fire by this time and he was pretty badly burned, but the children were hardly burned because he had wrapped them in blankets.
Frisby was so grateful to the slave for saving his two children that he bought him. Frisby did not believe in slavery so he had a paper drawn up to set the slave free. His name was Charlie, and Frisby gave him the name of Sloan. [Editor's Note: I recall from my childhood that there was a very old black man who attended the Sloan-Odell family reunions every year in Burlington, Iowa. I never knew his name, and I don't recall him talking with anyone or joining-in in any particular way].
Frisby decided to move to Illinois so he would be closer to his brother, George. He bought a covered wagon and loaded it with things they would need, such as blankets, bedding, cooking pots and kettles. He hired Charlie to help him drive the cows and sheep. He even took two female hogs. He told Charlie he was going to buy a farm and that he would give him enough land so he could raise a garden. They built two log cabins. One for his family and one for Charlie's family. The farm was located close to LeHarp, Illinois which was about 75 miles south of his brother George.
My grandfather, George, had a large farm. In the summer he needed help so he would hire Charlie to come and work during the busy season. One summer my oldest brother George and my sister Frances was visiting Grandma and Grandpa. They saw Charlie coming down the road and riding on a mule. They had never seen a black man or a mule with big floppy ears. They were afraid of him and ran into the house and crawled under Grandma's bed. Their aunts came and told them that Charlie wouldn't hurt them. Charlie talked to George and Frankie and told them that he liked little girls and boys. Well, it wasn't long before they were sitting on his lap and he was telling them stories about the South and about his boyhood days.
My father, John Sloan, was born on February 4, 1858 in Belmont, Illinois. He attended school at Belmont. From there he went to college to learn to be a lawyer. Before he graduated he went home to visit and never did return to college. He went to Colorado and worked on a cattle ranch for a year. He got homesick and went back home and then he met my mother, Caroline Matson. They were married on December 22, 1880. They went on a honeymoon to Nebraska to visit his brother William. After their return home they farmed with his father and lived in the tenants house for three or four years.
They then moved to Keithsburg, Illinois with their three children, George, Frankie, and Nellie. While living in Keithsburg, four more children were born. They were William, John, Nora, and Carrie. He earned a living by commercial fishing and also he worked for a lumber company. The lumber was loaded and tied on flatboats. Sometimes they would float in the river and some of the lumber would become lodged along the bank and also on sandbars. My father would gather it all up and tie it back together and float it down the river to Keithsburg and the lumber company would pay him according to the amount of lumber he brought in.
One day in early spring he received a notice from the lumber company that several hundred feet of lumber fell off a barge. It ran into the large log floating in the channel. The barges were pushed with a steam tugboat so when it hit something floating in the river it jolted it pretty hard. My father didn't want to go because it was snowing and cold, but they started out in the rowboat. He had hired a man to help him who was a Swede and his name was John Blomberg. Both of them were rowing the boat. When they were almost to New Boston, Illinois, the storm turned into a blizzard. So they decided to turn around and go home. When they were three miles north of Keithsburg, Illinois, they saw what they thought was a big iceberg floating toward them real fast. The Swede said, "Pull Yohn, pull like hell". They could see it following them for almost ten minutes but it didn't seem to get any closer and then it just disappeared. It was a "mirage" my father explained to us. It must have been a ghost of the ice ages when the continent was covered with ice.
Nora Bell Sloan Waddell born July 25, 1892. My memoirs about my family. I was born in the middle of the family with five older brothers and sisters and five that were younger. So I remember things that were interesting, fun, and also sad to all of us children.
After my sister Carrie was born, our mother did not get over her birth as she should have. She was weak and had no appetite. There were now six children plus our mother and father which made a total of eight people to cook, clean, and wash for. Mother wasn't able to do all the work and the older girls were in school so they hired a girl to help with the heavy work.
About this time they decided to move to the country. The farm our father rented was in Iowa about ten miles southwest of Keithsburg, Illinois and across the Mississippi River. Our mother had inherited from her father some property in Burlington, Iowa and two houses in Keithsburg, Illinois. They decided to sell them so they would have money to buy horses, cows, hogs, chickens, and machinery and in fact everything they needed to farm with. Our father rented a barge from the lumber company. They loaded the furniture, farm machinery and animals, including two dogs and the entire family. The captain of a small steamboat, The Helen Blair, said he would push the barge down to the north end of Huron Island as he was going to Burlington anyway. He said there would be no charge because our father and he were good friends.
We finally got moved to the farm and our country life started. We all enjoyed every minute of it. We had nice neighbors and many experiences. Some were hair raising and some were pleasant. We raised most of our food in a big garden and also raised chickens, hogs and cows. We all ate our share of corn bread in those days too. Corn was only ten cents a bushel.
Times were hard for city folks and men could not find jobs, so they would come to the country to work for room and board. One day a well dressed man stopped at our house and wanted to work. Our father did not need any help but being a kind man he said that the man could stay a few days. So they put another bed in the boys room for him. One night Willie and Johnnie went upstairs to bed and started to look at the pictures. Finally they started arguing about one of the pictures. The man, who was a ventriloquist, listened to them argue for a long time. Then he decided to play a trick on them. He threw his voice and it sounded like it came out of the book they were looking at. He said, "Stop arguing and shut me up and lay me on the table." They put the book on the table and never said another word and turned over and went to sleep.
We had lived on the rented farm about two years now and on Christmas morning 1897 our brother Charles was born. We small children thought that Santa Claus had brought him. We all took turns climbing on the bed and holding him. We hardly looked at our Christmas presents. Charley was only three and a half months old when we moved to a new house.
Our father bought 40 acres of timberland and built a house with lumber he bought from the lumber company. Our new house had three bedrooms and a large living room, a very large kitchen and dining area. We had a water pump and a sink in the kitchen which was something unusual in those days. All the rooms were large so we never felt crowded even with our large family and all the hired men. Later our father built a bunkhouse for the men who were working for their room and board. It had a small cook stove and they could make coffee. They also had a table and chairs so they could play cards and drink coffee. They had many a good card game and good times in the bunkhouse. There were two beds with pillows and blankets and they liked sleeping in the bunkhouse.
When we moved to our new house on the farm, the closest school was seven miles away and that was too far for us to walk. Our father drove to the county seat in Wapello, Iowa to talk with the superintendent of schools for Louisa County. He told them the situation and the superintendent said that he would build a school but that it would take time. He asked our father if he knew of an empty house that they could use for a school until they could get one built. Our father said there was one not far from where we lived but that it belonged to Hills Sawmill Company. He said he would ask Mr. Hill if we could use it for awhile. Mr. Hill said yes, start school right away and use it as long as you need to. The school superintendent sent out blackboards, a teachers desk and chair, and desks and seats of two or three different sizes for the students. A good teacher was hired from Wapello and she taught the first two terms and lived with a family in the school area.
In November of 1900 my sister Ursula was born. That was also the year we had a total eclipse of the sun. The moon went between the sun and earth and it got real dark for a few minutes. The roosters crowed and started for the chicken house. They thought it was nighttime. It stayed dark long enough for them to go to roost. We had smoked pieces of glass so we could look through it at the sun. I couldn't see anything except everything looked red. The moon moved slowly until you couldn't see the sun at all. It slowly moved from between the earth and the sun. It took only a few minutes until it was light again.
This Happened the Fall of 1901
Charlie was almost four years old when an old mother cat had her kittens in a box under the house. Charlie heard them mewing so he crawled under to investigate. When he came back out he had a kitten in his hand. Frankie told him to take it back to its mother. So he put it back with the others. Several times a day he would go and get three or four kittens and take them in the house. Finally Frankie told him to stop bringing those kittens in or she would take a butcher's knife and cut their throats.
In a few days he went to get a kitten again, but came out taking to himself saying over and over, "I didn't think she would do it, but she did!" What really happened was an old tomcat found them and cut their throats. We older kids told him that tomcats would sometimes do that, but Frankie had a hard time convincing Charlie that it wasn't her who did it.
On the farm we raised corn, wheat, and cane to make sorghum. In September when the corn got to a certain stage, they would cut the stalks with the ears still on it. When they got an armload they would stand it on up and start making a round shock. They would keep adding to it until it would be four feet in diameter. Then they would tie it around the middle with binder twine and let the shock stand until it was dried out. By now I was eleven and a half years old and my mother and I wanted to make some extra money for Christmas. My father said he would pay us fifteen cents a shock for shucking the corn and putting them in piles on the ground. We started to work but didn't know how to tear the shocks down. And besides, mice had built nests in them and the mice would scurry out in every direction when we disturbed them. We really weren't too afraid of the mice but we didn't like them jumping on us. We told father it was too heavy of work for us to tear the shocks down and he said he would tear down enough to keep us busy until quitting time.
One day when he was about done with a shock, a big rat ran out looking for someplace to hide. The rat ran up Pa's pant leg. Pa tried to shake him out but couldn't because he had his long johns on and that gave the rat something to stick his claws into. He ran up almost to Pa's hip before he finally got hold of him from the outside of his pants and squeezed him to death. But he still couldn't shake the rat out even though it was dead because its claws were stuck in the long johns. Pa had to pull his overalls down to get rid of the rat. We laughed about it when we got home but it wasn't funny while Pa was hopping around trying to get rid of that rat. After that experience he always tied binder twine around his pant legs at the ankles because he wasn't taking any more changes of that happening again.
The fodder was feed for the cows and horses. The ears of corn were used for the cattle and chickens, and was also ground up and used for cooking.
One morning Ma and I went to the cornfield to shuck corn and Pa was to tear down the shocks for us. He figured twelve shocks would take us all day. Somebody had left the gate open and the cows got in the cornfield. There were about 30 of them. He tried to drive them out but they scattered all over the field. They were not going to give up all that corn without a fight. So Pa called for Ma and me to come help him. It took us over an hour to drive them all out of the field. Then we went back to our corn shucking again. After awhile, Ma said, "We could of shucked two shocks while we were running those cattle, I think we will turn in fourteen shocks today." And she did. When she told Pa, he said, "Mother, I only tore down twelve shocks for you today". Then she told him that we helped drive those cows for over an hour and she figured we could have done two more shocks if we hadn't helped him. He said, "Mother, you should have been a lawyer. I suppose I'd better pay you because you were a lot of help driving the cattle out." He told us we were good huskers and didn't miss many ears and next year we could shuck into a wagon and he would raise our wages to three cents a bushel.
But Ma got pregnant and we couldn't shuck the next year. The baby was born January 8, 1903. Charlie came upstairs and told Carrie and me that they have a little baby downstairs and it isn't any bigger than an ear of corn. His eyes were as big as saucers and he was so excited. We named him Frisby Stewart. He was a sickly baby for almost two years. Ma was a good nurse though and he got well and lived to be a big man. Ma and I didn't shuck any more corn until he got well. Frankie and Nellie took care of the small children and cooked and did the house work for Ma while we were shucking corn. Carrie and Sula did the dishes, which was quite a chore for our big family and hired help.
Christmas of 1903 and Charlie's 6th Birthday
Charlie wanted a small violin for Christmas and his birthday. That's all he wanted. Our father knew a man who made violins and he asked him to make one for a small boy for Christmas. The man promised to have it done by Christmas, and he did. When Frankie and Nellie had company, they always brought their musical instruments with them and we had the piano and Charlie his violin. One night he laid his violin on a chair and Lee Odell sat down on it. It was broken so bad it couldn't be fixed. It wasn't long until Charlie could handle a large violin real well. When he was ten years old he could play all the dance tunes. Every spring at Keithsburg, Illinois they held an old fiddlers contest at the Opera House. One year Luke and Charlie signed up to enter the contest. Charlie won first prize and I think that was the year he was ten. Luke won second prize. They gave money for prizes but I can't remember how much.
Nellie married Lucas O'Dell in February of 1904. She was the first one to get married. Our parents wanted them to be married in our house and they invited everybody for miles around to come. It was a lot of work for all of us, but Ma planned everything. She baked the wedding cake and it was beautiful. We also cooked a big wedding dinner. We opened up the long dining room table and had a smaller table too. When everyone finished eating, the men rolled up the carpet in the living and dining rooms and they danced until the wee hours of the morning. The only place to sit was in the bedroom. We built a fire in the small stove that we had in the girls bedroom and took the baby upstairs and kept the door closed. I had more than my share of watching him and holding his bottle, I thought. He was a year old now and looked like he might live. We were thankful for that. Luke and Nellie drove to their new home after the dance was over. Luke and his brothers had furnished the dance music. Luke could play anything with strings on it and Cleve played the piano. Luke played the violin. Ma and Pa grieved when their first child got married and left home.
Frankie married Arthur Willey. They were married at home and all the neighbors came. Again, Ma served a big wedding dinner but we didn't have a dance as her husband, Arthur, did not dance.
George and Maggie Willey got married. Maggie was a half-sister to Arthur.
William and Myrtle Thorton got married. Willie worked at the railroad round house in Monmouth, Illinois. Willie and Myrtle left the next morning for their home in Monmouth. Now the four oldest children were married and that left quite a void in our family. Johnnie and I were the oldest living in the home next now.
John Sloan, our father, got into the snapping turtle business for J. J. Kridder of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mr. Kridder wrote my father and told him he would buy all the turtles he could ship east. He wrote that some one had told him that John Sloan was a naturalist and had studied the ways of the snapping turtles. How they hibernate every fall in the mud at the bottom of a lake or pond. Sometimes as many as a hundred in a group. They would dig deep in the mud and they always picked a place where the water was three or four feet deep. So when it froze the ice would protect them from the cold weather. Mr. Kridder sent instructions on what to use to pull the turtles out of the mud. You had to wait until the ice was frozen and safe to walk on. He used an iron rod about five or six feet long and as big around as your middle finger. On one end it was bent into a hook and the other end it was filed until it was real sharp. Then they cut a hole in the ice big enough to pull a large turtle through. Sometimes they would get twenty-five or thirty out of one hole.
The boys would have to load them in the wagon right away or they would freeze. One time they piled them up in the front end of the wagon too high and one fell out. It grabbed with its front feet and got its claws tangled up in one of the horses tails. The horse kicked and snorted but still the turtle wouldn't come loose. Finally the team broke the rope that they were tied up with and away they went. Pretty soon the turtle fell off of Billie's tail. Billie never forgot about the turtle in his tail. When the boys would carry the turtles by the horses tails, one in each hand to the wagon, old Billie would see them coming and he would stomp around and snort and try to break loose.
When the turtles would get too cold, the boys would bring them in the house and put them in a box behind the kitchen stove. When the got warm they would get out of the box and crawl around in the kitchen. We girls would scream and run into the living room. Turtles can't crawl very fast but they can jump five or six feet if you poke them with a stick.
Our father shipped them in wooden barrels. They had to have air so he bored holes in the sides and ends of the barrels and shipped them in refrigerated railroad cars.
Kridders was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They sent him a stencil with their name and address and father's number on it. All he had to do was to hold the stencil against the barrel and paint over it. Some of the shipments would amount to $1000. Pa made thousands of dollars by selling snapping turtles. The Jewish people bought most of them.
One winter, Pa shipped a big shipment of turtles to Mr. Kridder, about $1000 worth, in a refrigerator car. The railroad engineer put the car on a sidetrack and let it sit for a few days. When they finally delivered them to the Kridder Company, the turtles were all dead. Pa never got a cent for them because Kridder would not accept dead turtles. The railroad company wouldn't pay for them either.
Our father was in the turtle business for three winters. He also worked for the government digging drainage ditches. He drained all the water in the ponds and sloughs to a pumping station which then pumped the water out into the river. The turtles natural instinct warned them the water level was getting low so they left the ponds and sloughs. They walked across the levee into the ponds that were fed by the river.
Johnnie was twenty and Pa offered him one fifth of all the increases in cattle and grain that was sold if he would stay and help on the farm. It didn't sound like much, but Johnnie decided he would try it for one year. They sold enough corn and wheat to keep him in pocket money that summer, and to buy some new clothes. When they sold the shoats that winter, he bought a horse and buggy. He still had his share of the calves left to sell. Carrie and I were sure glad to see him drive his own rig home because he had been using the one that belonged to the family. We thought he got to use it more than his share. We were not old enough to date yet, and that was the only way we had to go any place.
Ma went to the garden to get vegetables for dinner and I was sweeping the floor. Carrie and Sula were washing dishes as usual. It seemed like it was a full time job with so many to cook for. Ma came hurrying in and said she was sick, but I knew that she was in labor. I got a wash pan of water and washed her feet and dried them. She told Carrie to go to the field and tell Pa that she was sick. I went to the bedroom with Ma and helped her put her nightgown on. I had her settled in bed by the time Pa got home. I went ahead and got dinner for the men that were working in the field. After dinner, Pa came and told me to just cover the table up with a tablecloth and take the little kids and go fishing. About five o'clock he came and said, "You can come on back to the house now. We got a new little baby girl." Carrie told me later she didn't know Ma was going to have a baby. She said when she told Pa that Ma was sick, he started to the house on the run and jumped all the fences. She said she thought Pa had gone crazy. Pa was so worried because Ma was now forty-six years old and there were seven years difference in her last child who was Fritz and this new baby. Anyway, everything was fine. We named the baby Helen Wyola. She was a good baby and all of us just loved her. She was so pretty and cute. I brought my pillow and blankets downstairs and slept on the davenport for two weeks or so. That way, if the baby cried in the night, I could take care of her for Ma.
Time just flew by and now it was 1912. Helen could walk and talk. She followed me every step I took, but she wouldn't always mind me. Ma said, "If she didn't mind you, get a stick and switch her legs". Well, I got the switch but never did use it on her. After that she always called me her Stick Ma. Even after she grew up and got married, she still called me her Stick Ma.
After I got married, every time we came home to visit on Sundays, when I got ready to leave she would cry and beg me to stay with her. Finally I said, "I have to go with Tom and cook his supper. If you don't quit crying every time I come home, I won't come back any more." Well, that took are of that.
The next year, Clara Waddell was born. We called home to tell Ma and Pa about our new baby. Helen heard the conversation and said, "Nora is just a girl and now she has a baby and all the neighbors will talk".
There wasn't anything unusual that happened during this time. We went to dances and excursions on the river on the big steamboats. Sometimes we went to Davenport. But most of the time we always went to Keokuk so we could go through the locks and ride over the rapids just south of Burlington. There weren't many cars, but our local doctor had one. Two or three of our neighboring farmers also had cars. Our buggy horse thought it was the devil himself come to get her. It took her a couple of years to get over being afraid. I guess she thought like the China man did the first time he saw a car. He said, "No pushee, no pushee, to like hell all the samee."
Airplanes in those days looked almost like a long chicken coop with an engine in it, flying around up in the air. Now days they are so big and modern you can even watch movies as you fly. I have flown back and forth to California several times and I really enjoy it. Although one time I came home on a big super 747 and we had to wear our seat belts nearly all the way. I was kind of nervous so I listened to the radio with the earphones that they gave me. I thought it would be nice to take them back home with me but my seat partner decided that they only loaned them to us for the flight. So we left them on the plane.
More About The Years 1911 – 1912 – 1913
In those days we didn't have all the modern gadgets that we take for granted today. We had a nice horse and buggy. If we wanted to go to Wapello to the county fair or to Mediapolis or Chautauqua to hear an Evangelist preach, we went in the horse and buggy. We had a good big boat and two pairs of oars. We all knew how to pull an oar and manage the boat. So we all took turns if we went anywhere in the boat. Few people had a motor for their boat in those days.
We did have a telephone and an Edison graphaphone. We seldom played it though because we didn't really care for the "canned music" as Pa called it. I played hymns on the piano and Charlie would play his violin and our mother would sing. Some evenings we played games on the croakonale board. But what we liked best was to hear them read. Ma read funny stories such as Pecks Bad Boy or Samantha at Saratoga. There were several books in both series. Pa read poems to us. Two that I remember are Paul Revere's Ride and The Wonderful One Horse Shay.
I, Nora, was married to Thomas Waddell on February 18, 1914. Johnnie married Echoe Jaren in March 1914.
Caroline married Fred Timmerman in September 1915. Next came Charles who married Edith.
Ursula married Frank Swails. In the following years it was Frisby who married Alma King. And last but not least was the last one, Helen, who married Ralph Hawkins.
Frankie and Nora On A Mushroom Hunt
One day in the spring, Frankie and I decided to go hunt some mushrooms. We didn't find any so we crossed the levee and walked north. We saw several dead trees that we had never noticed before. We thought we might go over and investigate. We saw what looked like a big next in the top of the trees. We didn't get very far until we heard a crow say, "caw, caw, caw". Right away about thirty crows started cawing and dive bombing us. We put our arms over our heads and started hollering, "Shoo, shoo", but it didn't scare them away. In fact, we thought more came. Finally I said let's pick up sticks and maybe they'll think we have guns. Well, it worked like magic. They quit cawing and dive bombing us and went and lit in the trees again. We got out of there in a hurry. Afterwards, we found out that they nested and raised their young in those old trees. Lots of crows would roost in the treetops at night. It was a hair raising experience and it made cold chills run up and down our backs and raised goose pimples as big as marbles on us.
Every summer we had a family get together at the Sloan Landing where we had two cabins and a water pump. If it rained and stormed we would go in the cabins. But we didn't like to have to stay in too long because they smelled mousy. It was a beautiful place. We had swings in the trees. Pa built a long table to set our lunches on and benches to sit on while we were eating. Our father's four sisters and their families would drive to Keithsburg from their farms. They would hire someone to bring them across the river to our landing. Ma's two sisters who lived in Keithsburg would get some of their friends to bring them across the river also. We had quite a crowd of aunts, uncles, and cousins. We called them family picnics. Later we called them family reunions. We started having these picnics when I was about fifteen years old. We finally quit having them by the river because of Ma and Pa's grandchildren. We were afraid someone would get drowned. We decided to have the picnics in our large front yard. We also had a big back yard with hammocks and a high swing for the big kids. We also had one not so high for the smaller kids.
I forgot to tell about when we built the house. There was enough lumber left to build a large icehouse with a big built-in cooling room. It had double walls insulated with sawdust. It was insulated on the roof too. We kept our milk and butter and everything that would spoil in the icehouse. It was handy when we would have our picnics closer to the icehouse because now we could make a freezer full of ice cream. I expect you wonder where we got our ice. In the winter when the lake was frozen eight or ten inches deep, the boys would use ice saws and saw cakes of ice about twenty inches square. They would load them in bobsleds and take them to the icehouse. They stacked them in neat rows and then throw saw dust over them and cover them about eight inches deep. They kept adding ice and packing with sawdust until the icehouse was full. If they put plenty of sawdust on the ice it would keep until fall. It was so nice to have ice cream whenever we wanted it. We didn't have electric or gas refrigeration in those days. I just had to tell about the icehouse, we all enjoyed it so much.
Well, back to the picnics. We had our reunions there on the home place until George moved there. Ma moved to Oakville so Helen could go to high school. Willie, Johnnie, and Luke were all firemen on the Santa Fe railroad. They all lived in Fort Madison, Iowa. Frankie lived there too.
Now we've started to have the reunions at Crapo Park in Burlington. In 1940 we began to rent the old log cabin in the park so we could have shelter in case of bad weather. We continued this until the late 1970's when we again started using the open shelter houses. We continue to do this at the present time. Last year we had five generations attend.
We, John and Caroline Sloan's children, have an odd heritage. Our mother's maiden name was Matson. Her father was John Matson who was born in Sweden. They were very rich and lived in a mansion with many rooms. They had servants and also tutors to teach the children, as they were not sent to a public school. When our Grandfather John Matson's father died, the family estate could not be sold because our grandfather had come to the United States and became a citizen. The estate therefore went back to the Crown. However, his family or any of his children could have gone to Sweden to live and claim their share of the estate and heritage. But they did not choose to do this. Eventually our mother was asked to sign papers relinquishing all rights to her heritage in Sweden, which she did.
George Sloan, born October 4, 1881 in Belmont, Illinois
When we moved from Keithsburg to the farm, George was about 15 years old. I remember him carving a sailboat out of a piece of two by four then making a sail for it. When he got it finished he took it to the pond to try it out. He could set the sails to make it go where he wanted and also to land it.
In the evening after supper, all of us kids would go in the living room and lay on the floor in front of the heating stove and George would tell us stories. He would tell us about Little Red Riding Hood, Chicken Little, the Big Bad Wolf, and other stories also. By the time he got to the Three Bears, he'd be sleepy and say three bears over and over again. Johnnie or I would say, "that's not right, go ahead and finish it". Willie thought that he was too big to listen to bear stories but we caught him listening anyway.
Time marches on and George met and fell in love with Maggie Willey. They got married and moved to southern Iowa and raised a family of two girls and three boys. They were Faith, Georgia, Virgil, Hardy, and William.
George Sloan died in the year 1939.
Frances (Frankie) Sloan, born October 27, 1882, near Belmont, Illinois
After Frankie married Arthur Willey, they farmed for two years north of Oakville, Iowa about six miles from Frankie's folks.
A man who owned a large cattle ranch in Colorado hired Arthur to manage the ranch. So they moved to Colorado. They liked it out there. One day Arthur was helping clean out an irrigation ditch with water in it. He said the water was so cold it made him have pains in his legs. Next morning his legs were paralyzed. He went to a doctor and the doctor thought he had polio. Arthur didn't get any better. He couldn't manage the ranch in a wheel chair so they decided to come home.
They bought a covered wagon and a team of horses and started out. Arthur could drive and manage the horses but he couldn't unharness or unhitch the horses from the wagon. I don't know how they managed. Anyhow they got to Dodge City, Kansas. Gordon was born in Colorado so he got to ride in the covered wagon across the country. Frankie got a job and they stayed there for awhile.
They then moved to Oakville, Iowa and lived on the home place. They had two children by this time, a girl named Echo, and a boy named Gordon.
Arthur had the flu in 1918 and died. In two years Frankie moved to Fort Madison, Iowa and married Ed Abolt. They had one daughter named Cecil who lives in the state of Wyoming.
Frances Sloan Abolt died December 19, 1973.
Nellie Sloan, born February 6, 1885
Nellie and Luke farmed near Oakville, Iowa for three years after they were married. Zelma was born on the farm. They moved to Monmouth, Illinois and Luke got a job in the roundhouse. He didn't like the work because it was greasy, dirty work and no chance for a promotion. So they moved to Fort Madison, Iowa and he got a job as a fireman on the Santa Fe Railroad. Roy was born in Fort Madison.
Luke always had trouble with his lungs. When Luke took his vacation they went to Colorado to visit our sister Frankie. Frankie's husband was the manager of the cattle ranch where they lived and he hired Luke as a ranch hand. The next spring Luke rented ground and sowed some oats. Just when they were coming up the alkali ate them up. Then he sowed again. That time nothing happened and he had a good crop to thrash.
Luke could breathe better now. He thought the high altitude and the dry air helped his lungs. There wasn't much humidity so they stayed another year. His lungs didn't bother him any more.
But Luke wasn't happy out there. The railroading got in his blood and Nellie was homesick. Another baby son, Johnny, was born while they lived in Colorado. The next fall they moved back to Iowa. Luke finally got back on the Santa Fe. He took his engineer's exams and passed with high grades.
After they moved back to Iowa, two more daughters were born, Edna and Lucy, and two sons, Oliver and Francis. Luke worked for the railroad until he retired on a pension.
Nellie Sloan Odell died in the year 1966
William Sloan, born February 6, 1887 in Keithsburg, Illinois
Willie was very ambitious. He was always figuring how to make money. In the winter he trapped and sold furs. In the summer he fished with trout lines in the river. He baited the hooks with crawfish. Sometimes he would catch big channel catfish and all kinds of other fish. I went sometimes but not always because I would have to get up early just when it was getting daylight. I would help with the boat while he took the fish off the hook and baited it up again. He always pulled the pinchers off the crawdaddies before he put them on the hook.
Every summer he raised a big flock of wild mallard ducks. One day a photographer stopped and wanted to take some pictures. Willie wanted a picture of a duck hunting scene so he went in the house and got his pump gun. He put on his cap and his hunting coat. He stuffed all the pockets full so they would look like he had them filled with dead ducks. He caught one of his live ducks and held it by the neck. The duck didn't like such rough treatment. Just when the man was ready to snap the picture the duck started flopping it's wings and tried to get away. He quieted down for a few seconds so the man could take the picture. Bingo, our dog had a stick in his mouth and came to sit by Willie as he wanted his picture taken too. They had a hard time trying to make the picture look like a duck hunting scene. Bingo was determined to be in that picture. Finally, Willie gave up and let Bingo stand beside him. I have that picture yet. Willie was about sixteen.
When he was about eighteen he met Myrtle Thorton. It was love at first sight. They wanted to get married. Bill went to Monmouth, Illinois and got a job working in the roundhouse. On payday he rented a furnished house and came home to marry Myrtle. He was nineteen. They went back to Monmouth. They lived there almost two years. They then moved to Fort Madison. He got a job as a fireman on the Santa Fe railroad. Later he was promoted to engineer. They lived most of their married life in Fort Madison. Bill worked for the railroad until he retired.
Bill and Myrtle had two daughters, Violet and Lillian and one son, Leslie.
William Sloan died in the 1944.
John Sloan, born December 6, 1889 in Keithsburg, Illinois
Our mother's father was born and raised in Sweden and his name was John Matson. Johnnie was the only one of us children that looked like a Swede. The government of Sweden sent an old lady who knew the Matson's to locate the heirs of John Matson. She came to Keithsburg to talk to our mother about John Matson's inheritance as the other heirs wanted to get it settled. Johnnie came in the restaurant to where they were sitting. The lady said she would know him anywhere as he looked just like John Matson when he was a boy. She told Ma that the estate couldn't be sold but she could live on it. So Ma signed her rights away. Johnnie even had a Swedish accent but we thought he must cultivate it some more.
One summer our mother's brother Charles Matson and his wife came to visit us. His wife's niece, Echoe Jaren came with them. She was seventeen years old and a nice looking girl and was full of fun. Johnnie and Echoe became engaged before Echoe went home to St. Louis. They planned to get married next February when Johnnie went down for a visit.
After they married they came back home. They lived in the tenant house on the home place. Chester was born there. Johnnie rented a farm south of Oakville. Maurice was born there.
They moved to Fort Madison and he got a job on the Santa Fe Railroad as a fireman. He was promoted to engineer and worked until he retired. Rich and Bettie were born in Fort Madison.
They moved to Cocoa Beach, Florida and lived there for many years until they both passed away.
John Sloan died in December, 1980
Nora Sloan, born July 25, 1892 in Keithsburg, Illinois
My name is Nora Sloan Waddell. I am writing about things that happened when I lived at home.
The girls in our family weren't allowed to date until we were seventeen. My first beau was Tilford Taylor from Texas. On our first date we went on an excursion boat called the W.W. That's all the name it had. It was the largest steamboat on the upper river. There were five couples in our party: Tilford and me, Tilford's sister and her date, and my sister Carrie and Ralph Dickens. I don't remember what the other couple's names were. Carrie wasn't old enough to date but I told Ma that I would ask Carrie to go with Tilford and me.
That was the time that Ma told Carrie she wasn't old enough to date and she couldn't go. I went in the house and Carrie was crying. I sang a little ditty to here. It went something like this. "Whistle Dickie, whistle and you can have a man. I never whistle Mother, but I'll whistle if I can." I told her she could go with Tilford and me. We would ask Ralph Dickens to go with us also. That cheered her up. Then Ma said she could go with us.
There was a carnival going on in Keokuk so some of us got off to look the town over. When we got back to the landing, the boat was gone. We went to the depot and bought tickets for Burlington. On the way, another storm blew in. I thought for sure it would blow the train off the tracks. The rain just poured down. When we got to Burlington, we went down to where the boat would land. The police became curious about us. We looked like drowned rats. But we were almost dry. The police told us to go to the police station. It was across the street but to be quiet as there were some prisoners in the back rooms. They wouldn't want us to wake them up. They said that they would watch for the excursion boat and come tell us when it came in.
I was a little worried about Carrie, but we knew Ralph was a nice kid. When we got back on the boat, Carrie told us it stormed so bad that the captain had pulled over to an island and tied the boat up to something to wait until the storm quieted down. What a day! When we got back to Keithsburg it was daylight and Pa was waiting for us. He was so worried about the storm. He didn't have anyway of finding out if the boat was all right until he saw us coming.
I had five sisters and brothers older than me and five younger. I was in the middle so I can remember things that happened that both groups did not remember.
Nora Sloan Waddell
Caroline Sloan, born February 3, 1895 in Keithsburg, Illinois
One summer the boys got all the wheat and oats cut and shocked which was the custom in those days. If it was shocked and capped right away it wouldn't get wet. They could leave it for months or until it came our turn to have the thrashing machine to thrash it. I forgot to tell how the binder works. It had a place where they would put a ball of binder twine in it and thread it up so when the binder cut the wheat it would fall on a revolving canvas. It would carry it back where the binder twine was and it would automatically tie it in bundles. I could never understand how it could tie the bundles practically all the same size. Getting back to the field, about a week after they got the wheat cut and shocked, we had a bad windstorm. It was almost a tornado. It blew most of the shocks down and scattered bundles all over the field. We had to leave them for a day or so until they got dry. The bumblebees had built nests in some of the shocks. When the wind blew them over the bees were real mad.
Carrie and I went out to help gather up the bundles. We did just fine, until we came to a shock with bees in it. They just swarmed around us. I told Carrie to stand real still, that they would think you were a tree and wouldn't bother you. Carrie said you can stand still if you want to, but I'm going to run. Away she went and a swarm of bumblebees were after her. There weren't many left around me, but I stood real still. I was afraid they wouldn't think I was a tree. The last time I saw Carrie she was still running with the bees still after her. She wouldn't work in the fields again.
Carrie married Fred Timmerman and had one son, Alden. Carrie and Fred divorced and she later married Walter Hendrickson. They lived in Rock Island, Illinois for many years.
Alden loved the farm that we lived on. He came to live with us until he was about eighteen years old. He met Dora Brown and they got married. They had two sons, Richard and Russell. Richard has four children and Russell has two daughters and one son.
Caroline Sloan Hendrickson died July 18, 1973
Charles Sloan, born December 25, 1897 near Oakville, Iowa
Pa had an old female hog that had some pigs. She was so cross that he had to make a pen in the cattle shed which was about a quarter of a mile from the house. He told us not to go over to the shed because if she got out she would tear us to pieces. He had sold the fat steers and thought it would be nice and warm for the pigs. Pa built the pen with willows and straw. He built a frame and threw some willows on top, then a thick layer of straw. One day Johnnie, Carrie, Charlie, and I went over to the shed. We climbed up on the roof and ran and jumped on it. Charlie must have jumped where the straw was thin because he fell through. We heard the mother hog say "bush, bush, bush". We ran to the front of the shed. We thought for sure she had killed him. But he climbed out of the pen so quick and was watching the pigs nursing their mother. He said the mother was laying down and the pigs were eating. He fell right on top of them and he climbed out before she could get up. Guess what, you are right, we never told our parents what happened that day. Johnnie and I were old enough and should have known better than to walk on a straw roof even if it had willows on it. We never went over there again. If something had happened to Charlie, it would have been our fault.
Charlie was a concert violinist. He played with an orchestra in a large theater in Texas. He also played in theaters in Chicago. He taught violin lessons too.
Charles Sloan died March 6, 1981
Ursula Sloan, born October 11, 1900 near Oakville, Iowa
One year Pa planted an acre of potatoes. They came up fine. But just about time for them to bloom he saw that there were so many hard-shelled potato bugs on them. They were eating the blossoms and foliage off the plants. He had treated the plants with Paris green to poison them. It had rained and washed almost all of it off. He hired Carrie and Sula to pick the bugs off. He would pay them five cents a hundred and they could count the bugs and even the ones that had bug eggs on them. They counted them as they put them in the can. Carrie worked a couple days before she resigned. She thought that job was for the birds. But faithful Sula kept on picking bugs until she went over the whole acre. She thought she was rich when Pa paid her. When she told Pa how many bugs were in the can, he thought surely she must have made a mistake. He was going to count them over. But when he opened the lid to the can he decided she must be correct, so he paid her price. After that he cut the price down to three cents a hundred as it was costing him too much. I didn't get hired for that job, thank heavens. I was needed to help in the house.
Ursula married Frank Swails when she was nineteen. After Frank died, she married Harry Trickey. She didn't have any children.
Sula now lives in Summit, Arkansas.
Ursula Sloan Trickey
Frisby Sloan, born February 8, 1903 near Oakville, Iowa
Frisby wasn't strong and husky like the rest of us. We guarded and watched him close to see that he never got hurt. One time when he was about fifteen he wasn't well. He put Ma's big old bathrobe on and went to the bedroom and laid on one of the beds. Echoe and Gordon got ready to go to bed. They woke Fritz up and told him to get up so they could go to bed. Fritz got up but he was ashamed to go through the living room with that big ill-shaped bathrobe on. Frankie's husband Arthur's legs were paralyzed. He sat in his wheelchair and watched Fritz out of the corner of his eye. Arthur picked up a paper and pretended he was reading it. Fritz thought now was the chance to go through the living room without Arthur seeing him. Arthur waited until Fritz was about half way, right in front of the heating stove. Arthur started singing "Here comes the bride, so fat and wide." Fritz turned around and gave Arthur a mean look and said, "It's a damned lie" and then went on upstairs.
Years later Fritz and Alma lived in Rock Island, Illinois. We lived in the country north of Columbus Junction, Iowa. They would drive out to our house with their family and camp out at what we called Sloan Landing. It was a beautiful place then. Pa owned the land during his lifetime. Fritz and Tom would set up the tent and make the beds across the back end of the tent. One time they stretched a rope across where they were going to put the beds. They left about two feet of rope sticking out on one side. They put the blankets and quilts down to lay on and more blankets to cover up with. When Alma and I got the kids settled in bed, we laid down. I asked Alma if she felt anything. About that time the men pulled again on the rope and kept pulling gently.
The kids all jumped up and said it felt like a snake crawling. They were all talking at once. They sounded like a flock of black birds. Tom and Fritz came in laughing and said they played a joke on us. We all laughed, glad it was a joke instead of a snake. We had such good times together. We had Junior camping with us and Frisby and Alma had some of their children.
Frisby and Alma later had two sons, Fred and John, and twin girls, Sharon and Karen.
Frisby Sloan died in the year 1957
Helen Sloan, born June 3, 1910 near Oakville, Iowa
Helen is the youngest in our family. I got married when she was only four years old. I don't remember too many things to write about her when she was real young.
When my first baby was born, Tom's sister, Kate Waddell came to live with us. She helped to doctor, wash, and dress the baby. The next morning she called my mother and told her that we had a baby girl. Carrie said that they were eating breakfast and Helen sat quietly listening. After awhile she said to Carrie, "Nora's got a baby, she's not old enough. She is just a girl and now people will talk."
She married Ralph Hawkins when she was eighteen. They had two children. A son, Forrest Dean and a daughter, Jeannie Mae. They divorced and she later married Russell Murdock. He was killed in an airplane accident. She later married Weyma Cain. They lived in a large house in the country not far from Davenport. They would invite all four of the sisters and Charlie and some of their friends for a family get-together. We would have a cookout in their back yard. After it started to get dark the mosquitoes began to bother us. We would all go in the house and the men all played some kind of musical instruments. We would listen to the music and visit. We had many parties at their house. . [Editor's Note: Oh how I remember these family get-togethers when I was a child. Especially, Uncle Charlie and his violin. As Grandma Dell writes, so many times, during family get-togethers, some of the more musically gifted family members would get together and play for hours. Popular music of the day, and oldies too. I remember a lot of country music – Patsy Cline was very popular then. But in particular I remember Uncle Charlie and Uncle Weyma playing Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey, with Aunt Helen singing the part just like Pearl Bailey. Aunt Helen was Charlie and Nora's sister. She married Weyma Cain and lived on Ricker Hill Road in Davenport, Iowa when I was a child].
Weyma was in industrial engineer at Eagle Signal in Davenport. They also had a division in Pennsylvania. They transferred Weyma to Pennsylvania. They sold their house and moved away. We missed them so much because they were the life of our parties.
Helen and Weyma had a small cabin cruiser and they loved to go out for a ride in the evenings and weekends. They would cook out over a campfire and stay until after dark. One night, after they came back to the boat dock, Helen was walking on the dock back to shore, and of course she had her hands full. She looked up and saw a full moon so she turned her head to tell Weyma to look. Just about that time another boat caused a big wave and the dock moved. Helen fell in the river and she had her camera in her hand. She went to the bottom and Weyma jumped in to get her because he knew she couldn't swim. The water was real swift in this place and he had a hard time pushing her up on the surface. But he finally managed although he was sure exhausted. Helen said she would certainly be more careful on the docks after that experience.
Helen became ill with cancer and died in Pennsylvania. She was buried in Moline, Illinois.
Helen Sloan Cain died June 28, 1974
Nora Sloan Waddell as an Adult
The Wedding of Nora Sloan and Thomas Waddell
Tom and I got married on February 18, 1914. My folks had a big wedding for us in our home. We invited all our friends for miles around. I think everybody came that we invited. We had a nice wedding. A girl from Keithsburg played the wedding march. I had a very beautiful dress. I made it myself. It was floor length and had long sleeves with a fisue of very expensive silk lace from the belt in front and across each shoulder to the belt in back. It was gathered a little on the ends to give it some fullness. The dress was made of soft lightweight silk velvet in a cream color. It was a very pretty gown. It fit perfect as I worked very hard on it so it would be just right.
We had a big wedding dinner after the ceremony. When we finished eating, the men rolled up the carpet in the living room and in the dining area. We danced nearly all night. There had been a bad snowstorm the day before my wedding. The snow was about two feet deep on the level ground and there were real deep snowdrifts. Everyone came in bobsleds including the photographer. In those days cameras used glass plates for negatives. On the way home the photographer's sled tipped over and broke all the glass plate negatives of our wedding so we didn't have any wedding pictures. We sure were disappointed because we had stood outside in the cold and nearly froze to have a lot of them taken.
We sure did receive a lot of wedding presents. So many pretty dishes and a big full length mirror with a lot of beautiful carved wood for the frame. Also, we got many useful gifts to start housekeeping with.
Tom had rented a farm ten miles south of Oakville. When Tom's father came for a visit he told us his father had owned the farm for as long as he lived. The old log house was still there yet. Granddad Waddell was born in that house and it was tumbled down some but we used it as a chicken house. There was a nice two-story farmhouse that we lived in and Clara was born there on March 17, 1915. My father died in February 1916. He had cancer of the stomach and liver.
After Pa died, Tom and I moved to Charles City on a farm we rented. Granddad Waddell came to live with us to farm with Tom. Helen was born close to Charles City on September 7, 1916.
We moved back to Oakville and lived in the tenant house on the home place until the spring of 1918. Then we moved near Wapello and soon after we had the terrible influenza epidemic. We all had it but were lucky and all of us survived. We then moved near Burlington.
The flu epidemic continued all through the year of 1918. My sister, Frankie, her husband Arthur, and their two children Echoe and Gordon were living with Ma and my brother Frisby and the youngest sister, Helen. They were all very sick with the flu and only ten-year-old sister Helen, who didn't have the flu, to take care of them. Dr. Ditto called by long distance and told me I should come take care of them. I told him I was afraid I would get the flu again, but he said since I had the flu before I should be immune. But if I did get it again I would surely die. We talked quite a long time and he said it was my duty to take care of my people as I would regret it all the rest of my life if any of them should die. Well, I went and took care of them. Arthur who was paralyzed from the waist down did not have the strength to survive the influenza and he died in a few days. The rest of the family all got better. I had just gotten home when my brother Bill telephoned us that brother Charlie and his wife had the flu and needed help. So Tom and I and the girls got in the car and went to Burlington and brought them home with us. They stayed until they were well enough to work. Them Ma called and said my Aunt Nora and her little daughter wanted me to come and take care of them for a few days. Ma said that Tom and the girls could stay with her while I was at Aunt Nora's. I went and stayed nearly a week until they were better and I could go home.
After awhile we decided to quit farming and sell everything. Tom got a job with a construction company that built paved roads. They were stationed near Taylor Ridge, Illinois. We rented furnished rooms to live in. Tom's job was to take care of the horses, ordering corn and hay for feed, and also doctoring their shoulders if they got sore. He also had a job on a machine that smoothed out the cement so it wouldn't be bumpy. They gave him the title of Barn Foreman. Tom liked that title very much. Evelyn was born while we lived in Taylor Ridge. She was only two weeks old when we moved to Davenport. That winter the construction company got a contract to build some private vaults for an entire family to be buried in and also a large mausoleum in the west end of Davenport. Then they got the contract to pave the streets in Janesville, Wisconsin. Tom was still taking care of their horses so we moved to Janesville. It's a picturesque kind of town and the town had no alleys. I don't remember what we did with our garbage. There was a square in the center of the business district and every street started from that square. We lived there about six months and then we moved to Beloit, Wisconsin because Tom had to do a small job with the company. After that we moved back to the Tri-Cities.
Tom got a job as an assistant to the engineer at a plant where they made ice. They used ammonia gas in the pipes to freeze the ice. One day a pipe burst and the building filled full of ammonia fumes. Tom was close to the broken pipe but managed to crawl out of the building, but he was gassed very badly. He was in the hospital several weeks and was never well again after that. The ammonia had eaten the lining of his throat and lungs. He could only talk in a whisper for two or three months. Shortly after this accident our son, Tom Jr. was born on August 14, 1929. When the insurance company settled with Tom, we bought a small farm north of Columbus Junction, Iowa. We lived there thirteen years.
All three of our girls got married while we lived on the farm. Clara married Gordon Todd in July 1933. Helen married Glenn Bennett in May 1934. Evelyn married Forrest Snyder in May 1941. Thomas Jr. graduated from the eighth grade there. World War II was going on so we moved back to Davenport.
I got a job on the Arsenal as an inspector. Tom went to work at the Tank Arsenal where they repaired and returned tanks to the war zones. He did precision grinding. Tom Jr. was young but with a fast tongue and with help from his dad and a little pull was hired as a fork lift driver and whatever else they needed him for.
He was only sixteen when the war was over. By then jobs were hard to find so he joined the Army when he turned seventeen. The Army sent him to Japan for eighteen months. When he came home he joined the reserves. When the Korean War broke out he was drafted. While serving in Korea he was captured by the North Korean Army near the eighteenth parallel line. They questioned him and his buddies. They took all their clothes except for a T-shirt, pants, and shoes. They were held for 24 hours as POW's. They were then turned loose and told to run. Junior said that they thought sure they would be shot so they walked slow for about forty feet and then started to run. The weather was very cold and they thought they might freeze. They found their company and everything was all right.
After the war was over I got laid off at the Arsenal. Tom got laid off the day after the war was over. We rented an apartment house at 107 Harrison Street in Davenport. We rented out the apartments and sleeping rooms. I went to work at Mercy Hospital in 1946 as a nurse's aide in the maternity department. I worked there for twenty-four years. During this time we moved to 2324 McKinley Avenue in the west end of Davenport. When I was sixty-six years old I retired for almost a year. One day a friend of mine who was a nurse in the delivery room called me and said they needed an aide to help in the labor and delivery rooms. She asked if I would come back and help until they could hire some one. I was tired of being retired and was happy to get back to work. I worked part-time until I was seventy-seven years old. I had gall bladder surgery so I had to quit.
Tom died in his sleep on April 18, 1962. My oldest sister Frankie came to live with me in September of 1962. She lived with me for six years. She then went to live with her stepdaughter, Verna Abolt. In June of 1970 I bought a mobile home and moved into Silver Creek Mobile Home Park in northwest Davenport. Evelyn and Ferp live there too. There is just one mobile home between us.
Now it is May 1981 and we are moving to Fredonia, Iowa in June. Evelyn and Ferp have property there. We are having our mobile homes moved there and we will live close to Ferp's folks. We are looking forward to having a small garden next year and lots of flowers.
After Tom Jr. received his discharge from the Army, our daughter Helen and I who both worked as nurses aides at Mercy Hospital, had two weeks of vacation coming. We told Tom Jr. that we would pay the expenses for a vacation if he would take his car and do the driving. He agreed to do this, so Tom Sr., Helen, Junior, and I set out on a trip to Canada. This was Tom Sr. and my very first real vacation. We planned to camp out on most of the trip.
We drove across Illinois and got to Indiana at ten o'clock in the evening. We drove until three o'clock in the morning then slept in a roadside park until five o'clock. We parked under a big tree. I bet there were thousands of small birds roosting in that tree. Every so often, I suppose a bird would go to sleep and fall off and wake the other birds up. They would make so much noise quarreling. They finally got settled down and everything was quiet and we went back to sleep. Then it would start all over again.
We waited until it was daylight and then drove into Sandusky and ate breakfast. We rented a cabin at two o'clock in the afternoon. We were so tired that we went right to sleep. We slept two hours and got up and ate supper. We then took a ferry ride on Lake Erie. We stayed all night at the cabin we had rented and the next morning we went to see Castilia Blue Hole. Nobody seemed to know how deep it was and didn't seem to know anything else about it either.
We drove on towards Canada and reached Buffalo, New York at eleven in the morning. We crossed the bridge into Canada. We finally arrived at Niagara Falls. We put on raincoats, boots, and hats and went in the tunnel under the falls. I didn't feel very brave as it made so much noise. There were three or four openings and you could look out and see the waterfall down from above. It just roared. We didn't stay very long in the tunnel. I would rather watch it in a safer place.
We drove north on a super highway called Queen Elizabeth Drive. It was lit up all the way to Toronto. We saw signs along the road that said, "You are now halfway to the North Pole." We saw the Dionne Quintuplets that afternoon. We rented a cabin in Colander. It didn't have any electricity or heat but it had plenty of warm blankets. We used a kerosene lamp and a small wood burning heating stove. The rent was cheap, $1.50 a night, so we rented it.
We drove through North Bay and Sudbury and saw copper and nickel smelters in operation. From there we drove to Ste. Saint Marie, Canada and crossed on the ferry into Michigan and headed for home. It was a nice trip and very interesting, but it was good to get home.
Gordon and Clara's two married daughters, Marilyn and Mona, and my son Junior lived in San Jose, California. Gordon and Clara went out to visit them in the spring of 1961. They liked the climate real well because it hardly ever freezes in the winter and flowers bloom all year round. They decided to come back to Davenport and sell all their furniture and put their house up for sale. They kept a few things that could be put in their car. They asked Gordon's mother and Tom and I if we would like to go with them to California for a visit. We all three told them that we would like to go. So Gordon got a long box just wide as a car top and packed everything in it. He tied it good and solid so it wouldn't slip off. Their car was a station wagon.
On September 16, 1961 they stayed all night at our house on McKinley Avenue. The next morning we got up at five o'clock and started out. We each put $25 in the jackpot for expenses and started on our long journey of over two thousand miles. When we arrived in Des Moines we took the wrong road so we had to drive many miles out of our way before we came to an interchange to turn around to back to the right road. Finally we got on the right road and everything went fine until we got to Sioux Falls, Iowa. We made the same mistake only this time it was worse because we had to go further before we could turn around on the freeway.
From Iowa we drove into South Dakota. We found a nice cabin in Bridgewater. It had cooking privileges too. Sunday we drove 650 miles on those cussed freeways. Monday, the eighteenth, we drove on to Mitchell, South Dakota to see the Corn Palace.
Tuesday the nineteenth, we drove to the Bad Lands in South Dakota. The hills looked rocky but they were just sand and gravel. We saw a herd of buffalo and also some wild donkeys. We drove through the eye of the needle. The clouds were low and it was raining, so our heads were in the clouds. We drove past Mount Rushmore and crossed into Wyoming. By four o'clock in the afternoon we had driven 341 miles.
Wednesday, the twentieth, we drove over the Blue Powder Pass. It is 9666 feet high. It is in the Big Horn Mountains. At Cody City there are some tunnels nearly a mile long and they have electric lights in them. When we got to the East Gate we were sure surprised to see it snowing. They wouldn't let us drive through Yellowstone Park as there was eighteen inches of snow on the ground. So we drove back to Cody and stayed all night. We drove 330 miles this day.
Thursday, the twenty-first, we drove back to the East Gate again. They had used snowplows to open it up. They let us drive through this time. It was the first time that I had been in Yellowstone and the first time to see wild bears. After leaving Yellowstone, we drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We drove 560 miles on Thursday.
On Friday, the twenty-second, we drove 530 miles. We put another $10 in the jackpot. We were really getting in high mountains at Brigham, Utah. We crossed into Winnamuca, Nevada at Pilot Peak which is ten thousand feet high. I hadn't played any slot machines yet.
Saturday, the twenty-third, we drove to Sacramento, California and got on the wrong road again. We were going south to Stockton. We finally got to San Jose. We all enjoyed the trip very much. Marilyn and Brooks were real glad to see us. Clara called Junior and told him that we arrived and to come over. Tom and I stayed at Junior and Judy's. Marilyn had a full house. We had a real nice visit with them. Mrs. Todd, Tom, and I returned home on the bus later.
Every summer after Clara and Gordon and Junior moved to San Jose, I would take a four-week vacation and go visit them. They would take me to the ocean and mountains. We would go deep sea fishing and also camping. One day we caught a blue shark about seven or eight feet long. I say "we" because we didn't know whose hook he was on. When he swallowed the hook, he circled the boat and got tangled up in all of our fish lines. We caught five small fish which was enough for our dinner that night.
Clara and Gordon always took me to Nevada. Either to Reno or Virginia City. I thought about Grandpa Sloan when we where there. We went to the cemetery and saw Boot Hill and the assay office where the miners took their gold dust or gold nuggets to get them analyzed. I saw the hearse that was called "The Bucket of Blood" and I also saw Mark Twain's office.
Frankie came to live with me after Tom died. I asked her if she would like to go to California with me to visit Clara and she said she would. I was seventy-one years old and she was eighty-one. We had to wait until school was out because my granddaughter, Joyce, was going with us. She graduated from high school in June 1964. The last week in June we bought our tickets for the Greyhound Bus and we were off to California or bust. The tourist season hadn't started so there weren't many passengers. Sometimes there wasn't anybody but just us and the driver. We had lots of fun. I think Frankie sang every song she knew. I couldn't sing because my vocal cords had started to get weak. I could laugh and talk though. The bus driver was so nice. He enjoyed us two old women. When Frankie sang every song she knew, she recited this poem. "There was a man, his name was Horner, he used to live at grumble corner and cross patch town, he was never seen with a frown." She remembered all of it. The driver laughed and thought it was funny. But Joyce was mortified. She got up and sat a few seats behind us. After awhile, two young fellows got on the bus. They sat across the aisle from us. Frankie sang a few songs. I think they were rhymes. The boys were friendly and talked to us. When the bus stopped at a rest stop they got off to get a cup of coffee. When they came back on the bus they had brought us two ice cream cones. We were tired and sleepy so we curled up and went to sleep. By that time the bus started to fill up. All we could do the rest of the way to California was to look out the windows. We bought our tickets for San Francisco and when we got there, Clara and Gordon were waiting for us.
The next weekend we went camping in the high Sierras. We went to Yosemite National Park. It was late when we got there and almost all of the camping spots were taken. We looked in number seven first, but it was full. We then tried camp eleven and it was full. But we saw a place and we squeezed into it by parking the car on the driveway leading into the park. It wasn't dark yet so while Gordon, Clara, and Joyce was setting up the small tent and making their beds, Frankie and I made our bed in the station wagon. While we were making our bed, Frankie and I decided to take a walk. But Clara heard us talking about it and got a little sassy and said that we would get lost. I told her that we were raised in the timber. She insisted that we couldn't go because the people next to us had got lost and the park ranger had to bring them back.
So the next morning after breakfast, Frankie and I started out. We followed the river that runs through the park. It was just a little path. The trees weren't very big around but they were real tall and very close together. I was ahead of Frankie and we were talking. She didn't answer me after awhile. I looked around to see why. She had stubbed her toe on something and fallen down hard enough to knock the breath out of her. There she lay, flouncing around. I went back to help her up but she said, "just let me lay here for a few minutes until I can breathe better". But the people who were camped close by got her up. She had cracked a rib which we didn't know about at the time. It had hurt for a couple of months more after we got home. But we went on our way. We followed the river until we came to a place where the rangers gave talks about the park. There were a lot of seats so we sat down and rested a few minutes.
I was looking around and saw Half Dome Rock. I said to Frankie, "See that big rock? We are camped just across the river from it. If we go through the trees we will come to our camp." We started watching the rock every step we took, or we thought we were watching the same one. I heard later there were five more half dome rocks in those mountains. I believe it now. We walked until we came to a stake with a number on it. I think it was twenty-two. Also, someone had lost a silver teaspoon. Frankie kicked the spoon by the post and walked on. Pretty soon a Swede and his wife came out but we didn't pay any attention to them until they said, "Ya Hoo" several times. They talked real broken with a Swedish accent. They said, "You girls are lost and are walking in circles. You have been by here three times. Do you remember any landmark?" We said, "Yes, we remember a stake with the number twenty-two on it." The man said it was down there just a little ways, to just follow the path and we would find it. Well, we didn't see it and it seemed like we walked more miles. I could see that Frankie was getting tired and I was too. But we kept on walking until we saw two young fellows sitting on a big boulder. We asked them about the stake. They said it's right down there a little ways, you can't miss it. He said you girls are walking in a circle. You've been by here four times already. They had called us girls but by this time we realized that we weren't girls anymore but old women and foolish old women at that. After we walked a little ways we heard a car coming. It was one of the young men. He said my buddy and I talked it over and we decided that I should take the car and help you find your camp. He asked us if we remembered anything close that would help us locate it. I told him that there was a toilet just across the road and was built out of yellow brick. The other toilets are built with redwood lumber. Every time I said toilet, Frankie would correct me and tell me to say "restroom".
After we rode about two miles, I saw a restroom built with yellow brick. Just across the road we saw three people watching us. Frankie said it looked like Clara. We didn't recognize them until Clara started to bawl us out. Here is how she greeted us, real sassy. "You have been lost, you have been gone three hours. You wanted to go for a walk last night but I wouldn't let you. We have been real worried."
We ate our lunch and laid down to rest and watch the free entertainment. We never mentioned taking a walk again while we were at Yosemite. We enjoyed sitting in camp and visiting. We enjoyed our camping trip as it was a beautiful place even though there was a sign on the bathroom door that read, "Warning, watch out for bears."
When we got back to Clara's, Frankie went to visit her stepdaughter. She lived in Vallejo, not too far from Clara's. Joyce went to visit Mona and Marilyn. We went home on the bus and it was a full load. So we didn't have as much fun going home as we did going out there.
Evelyn and Ferp asked me if I would like to go on a vacation to Las Vegas with them. Of course I said yes, so they got their travel trailer ready and we took off. We were delayed in starting because the refrigerator was acting up and they had to have it repaired. We left about three o'clock in the afternoon and only got to northwest Iowa the first day. We stayed in a nice little private campground that night and had our supper and went to bed early. We left early the next morning and it took us two more days to get to Las Vegas. We got there early in the afternoon and we camped at the Star Dust Casino campground. We had all the comforts of home in our trailer. Even air conditioning, thank goodness, because it was 107 degrees most every day we were there. We stayed three days and nights and sure did have fun playing the slot machines. Sure it's a lot of fun but the noise and pulling the handle down and letting it up makes you awful tired so we went to camp and slept the rest of the night.
Next day, we went to the casino about noon and started playing the slot machines. Evelyn says I played nine hours straight without eating or drinking and only going to the restroom once, when she made me. She decided to take my picture and she had no more than snapped the shutter when the security guard was at her elbow telling her that picture taking was not allowed in the casino. She said, "but I only wanted a picture of my elderly mother, she's eighty-four and she has sat for eight hours straight pulling that handle." Well, he let her keep her camera and film and she treasures that picture. But she was scared at the time because he seemed so serious and business like with his gun on his hip and all.
We played until around midnight and then went to bed. Ferp had hooked the trailer up that morning and we checked out of the campground. As we pulled up by the casino on the way out, he said, "are you sure you don't want to play for just a little while more?" Naturally I said okay, so he parked along some of the motor homes in the parking lot and we went in to gamble. We stayed longer than a little while. It was a good thing the trailer was close because we were sure tired from sitting on those stools and gambling so long. We slept right there in the parking lot, but so did other people, so we were not afraid.
The next morning we still were tired but decided to leave Las Vegas. Ferp drove north and crossed the state line into Utah. When we got to Colorado we went to see the Royal Gorge. It was quite a sight. We were on a high mountain and could look down thousands of feet and see a train at the bottom of the gorge. It made me dizzy. We couldn't drive the van down because it was too steep. Ferp bought tickets and we rode the trolley down and back.
We drove east across Kansas and Missouri. Charlie and Joyce lived close to the Bagnell Dam in Missouri. They were surprised to see us coming with a van pulling a twenty-seven foot camper. We had a nice visit with them before we headed for home in Davenport.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
[Editor's Note: This may or may not have been Grandma Dell's last trip. However, she traveled to California and Nevada more times than she wrote about. When I was 16 (that would have been in 1969) she and I rode the Greyhound Bus to San Francisco. But the point of this note is to relate just how much she enjoyed playing those slot machines. She tells you about how she played those one-armed bandits for nine hours straight. What she didn't tell you was this. During one of her trips to the casinos with Evelyn and Frep, she was sitting on the stool and playing the slot machine as usual. Evelyn came over to see how she was doing and Grandma was wiping off the handle and the front of the machine with her handkerchief. Evelyn said, "Mother, what on earth are you doing"? Grandma Dell had been playing so long that her hand had gotten so dry and blistered that she was bleeding. She was cleaning the blood off of the machine!]
Memories Recalled by Frances Sloan Abolt
Life on Huron Island and the Year of 1896
Here are more memories of the Sloan family, as written by my sister Frances Sloan Abolt in 1971. She was ninety-one when she passed away on December 19, 1973.
This is when we moved to Huron Island on a big barge. That trip is what I'm talking about here. Sister Carrie was only about a month old. We landed on the upper end of Huron, near Pop Charbneau's place. Our place was a mile south. Country people are real friendly. They turned out and helped us load up on their wagons. Men, women, and children alike, and also the dogs, so we got moved in.
Huron Island was seven miles long and one mile wide. There were about twenty-two families living there at that time. That was before they built the dam. Huron Island had a school and church. The store, hotel, steamboat landing office, and the post office were all in the same building. Now and then a little patch of ground was fenced in for corn and gardens. It was good extra pasture. The families on the main land for as far as ten miles back would turn their stock cattle on the island to graze. This didn't suit the islanders one bit. The farmers always claimed that they were several head of cattle missing in the fall. Well, maybe so. They had free pasture all summer.
When we moved there we didn't know we had the whooping cough, although it was going around. Our younger children had it I guess, but up to that time we never had heard them whoop. Brother John, age six, and Brother Willie, age eight had coughed for a long time but they wouldn't mind Ma and come right home after school each night. Instead they would hop on bobsleds after school and play until darkness would drive them home. Which wasn't too late as dark comes early in the wintertime. They would have wet feet each night, so for a little persuasion to mind her, Ma gave each boy a tablespoon of caster oil each night. "Oh, ugh," it makes my mouth water even now to talk about it. For me there was nothing worse unless it was the assifidety, which I never ate or didn't like the taste of it. Well, to make a long story short, while the people of the island were helping us get settled for the night, Sister Nora, who was nearly four years old, got to coughing and she whooped for the first and only time. But that was enough for some of the women to hear it. That day she had been out on the barge most of the day and Ma thought nothing of it at the time. Boy, she sure did later. I think every kid on the island who hadn't already had it, cough the whooping cough then and there. Our new neighbors didn't think too well of us for some time as they thought we surely must have known better.
I don't think we ever would have been accepted if it hadn't been for our good friend Mrs. Wantz interceding for us.
Life on Huron Island was a new and interesting experience for us. We liked it fine. Our Ma having been raised in town didn't know anything about making a garden other than to put the seeds in the ground. She had all her garden planted and most of it up by April 1st that year. The garden was sandy soil and easy to work. Well, you know how early spring acts up sometimes. The first thing us new farmers knew, along came a cold freezing spell. Ma got out most all the extra clothes the family had, both clean and dirty, to cover and protect her garden. Her efforts were in vain as the wind blew so hard in the night that nothing stayed covered. She lost all of her garden. After that she planted when the experienced gardeners told her it was time to plant.
There was still two months left to go to school that year so we went to school there on the island. Never having been in a one-room country school, it was another new experience for us children. There were four children who had moved from the North Country before we moved to the island. I fourteen, one girl was about my age, and another was two years younger. They had to start in the first reader. I felt pretty smug being the farthest advanced of any scholar there. But say, did those kids eat it up. Learning, I mean. You wouldn't believe it. It was no time at all until both of those girls, Emma and Nora St. Ore, were up and in the class with me. They sure knew what they were going to school for. We sure had lots of fun while we lived there those ten months. The school was near a sawmill where the boys would catch snakes to scare us girls with. We would run and scream and the boys sure enjoyed scaring us.
There was a great big tree right on the bank of the river with an old grapevine clear to the top of it. The boys cut the vine off where it came up out of the ground. It made us a dandy grape vine swing. We would get a good hold of it and back up as far as it would reach, then run to the edge of the riverbank and swing out over the river. The water was real deep as it was just below the dam. We would take turns, first the boys then the girls. The boys would always swing longer than their turn called for. We girls didn't like that so one day we were just ready to throw everything we could get ahold of at the boys out on the swing. Kerth Charbneau was the boy on the swing and one day his one and only suspender broke and down went his pants. He had presence of mind enough to put his feet together and caught his pants. Us girls ran for shelter as we didn't want to see a boy without his pants. This suited the boys fine as they had the swing the rest of the noon hour that day.
We liked it fine on the island. Every day we had a new experience it seemed. I planted peanuts and hilled them up high so they would have plenty of room for the nuts to grow. After they were up and doing real good, Old Davis, our horse, was rolling like horses do, only he got in my peanut patch and couldn't get up as he laid in the hollow between two rows. Pa came and got him up without ruining my peanut crop completely.
Aunt Frank came to visit us while we lived there on the island and as a child she had liked to go squirrel hunting with Pa. So Pa took her hunting and Brother Bill went along. Our little dog Jack soon treed a squirrel and Pa said, "You stand back and I'll go up and try to get him". Just about then the dog, Jack, took off. Hiking as fast as he could go, Pa went on to the tree, then he dropped the gun and took out as fast as Jack had or maybe even faster. Willie called out, "I'll bring the gun, Pa", but before he got to the gun he took off through the woods on the run. Aunt Frank said she thought to herself that squirrel hunting sure has changed since I grew up. But not to be outdone, she ran to take the gun back to Pa. Before she got to the gun, she found out why squirrel hunting had changed so. It was caused by a yellow jacket next at the foot of the tree. They didn't bring the gun home that night but sure had plenty of bumps for Ma to put ammonia on. We often laughed and talked about Aunt Frank's squirrel hunt, although it was no laughing matter at the time.
Another time we had a small field of corn near our house. One day a snake was discovered there. Ma had us children bring rocks and bricks to throw on it so it wouldn't get away before Pa came home and would kill it. It was a rattlesnake and Ma made the little children stay in the house for fear they would get bit. Well, unbeknown to her, I took a club and killed the snake. Soon as Pa came home, Ma took him out to kill the snake. She and Pa were in the lead and the kids were following behind. All but me, I didn't go to the killing. Pa said, "this snake is already dead," and Ma said, "well, the way we weighted him down with rocks, it's no wonder". Pa wasn't that easily fooled though. He called me and said, "Frankie, did you kill this snake?" I said, "Y-E-S" real scared, but Pa said, "good girl, those rocks would not have held him five minutes". So it turned out I wasn't a culprit after all.
Huron Island was not a dull place to live. Church people sometimes would charter a boat to bring them out there for a picnic. One group that came there always had lots of lemonade and lots and lots of good food. Emma St. Ore and myself decided we would attend the picnic uninvited, and boy did we sure enjoy it. After dinner they had the children speak pieces. I was disgusted with them the way they chewed the corner of their handkerchiefs and twisted around and didn't speak loud enough to be heard. Now, I had been taught how to recite while attending school in Keithsburg and wasn't lacking for nerve. I went up to their preacher and said I wanted to speak a piece. He said here is a little girl (emphasis on little) for I was little for my age but didn't like to have it rubbed in. He continued on to say a little girl who would like to speak a piece. I spoke loud and clear and the title of the piece was Grumble Corner.
There was a man whose name was Horner
Who always lived on grumble corner
Grumble corner in cross patch town
Then after I got started, the thought struck me that I was speaking a Thanksgiving piece when I ought to be speaking some kind of a religious one. But it was no time to be changing now. When I got through I got so much applause that I was astonished. The preacher said, "and so appropriate too". It took me a long time to figure that one out my self. I didn't want to ask at home as I didn't feel I should have went to the picnic uninvited as I was suppose to be spending the day at the St. Ore house.
Our little church there on the island was Methodist. Our preacher was Reverend Tague and a good one too. He was a farmer-preacher combination and a good leader. He was one among many. He could always soothe the trouble in the community. One winter some of the converted ones wanted to be baptized right away. The rest waited until warmer weather when we had a picnic on the bank of the Huron Shoot near Good Charlie's place. This was an all day affair. Dinner at noon, then a sermon by Rev. Tague. Next came the baptism out where the water was waist deep. Another new experience for us children.
When fall came, Pa pulled a lot of tomatoes and put them in two tubs in the shed to use later in making pickle lillig and chow chow. The nearly ripe ones rotted and were put aside. We kids liked to play war. One day Willie and Nellie tackled me and Nora, who was about five years old, with walnuts that were in a pile to be thrown away. Nora and I retreated to the shed and shut the door. Finally, Willie and Nellie got tired of waiting for us to come out. They went down to the end of the garden where there was a big huckleberry tree. They were up in the tree laughing over their victory and eating huckleberries. In the meantime, I was preparing to attack. We always used lots of Karo syrup so we had a lot of empty gallon buckets in the shed. I filled up about two dozen with soft tomatoes. Nora and I carried them to the end of the garden where I left Nora to wait for orders to advance with two more buckets. I went up to the tree and asked for some huckleberries, which started them off again to laughing. I started lambasting them with rotten tomatoes. They couldn't come down as I had plenty of ammunition with Nora bringing me more buckets of tomatoes. I didn't let them down until they gathered some huckleberries for Nora and me and they said that they surrendered.
The weather got cold before we moved from Huron Island. One day Pa and Ma decided to go to Keithsburg which was seven miles away. They went in the skift. They had to go to the head of the island where the skift was kept. When they got there the river was so full of ice that they couldn't go. That spelled disaster for us kids because we were making taffy. We had poured it out in the dishpan to cook, when one of the kids looked out the window and said, "Here comes Pa and Ma!" This is a miserable warning that I think all kids have heard some time during their life. Well, I grabbed the hot taffy pan to take it out to the shed. Nellie jerked the outside door open and knocked the pan out of my hands and spilled the taffy on the carpet of all things. Of course, I tried to spoon it up with a tablespoon and was doing fairly well. Only it turned cold and wouldn't spoon up anymore. Now I started to scrape the outside edges of it loose, and glory be, it was cool enough to come up in one piece except where I had rubbed it in with the spoon. By this time the folks were there. Ma said, "What makes you children do things like this ever time we leave the house?" Pa came to our rescue by saying, "Mammie, if you let them do these things when you are here they wouldn't have to wait until you are gone to do it." From then on, Saturday afternoon was our day for candy and popcorn. It didn't take us girls long to change the kids day from Saturday to Friday as it took us a good part of the day on Sunday to clean up the house and get candy off of the doorknobs. From then on until I got married at the age of twenty-three, the Sloan'' had popcorn and taffy every Friday night. All the neighbor kids found out and came over too.
We moved from the Island to the Gates farm that winter as the Gates' had moved to Oakville. The farm had twenty-three sheds, barns, and cowsheds on it. It was a grand place to play hide and seek or hide eggs at Easter time. The cowshed was a big long shed covered with poles with straw on top of them. A place where sparrows built their nests on the inside. The boys would climb there to rob birds nests or get young birds for pets. But if only eggs were in the nest they would break them. But if young birds where there they would leave them alone unless they wanted them for pets. One day brother Willie reached in a nest and pulled out a snake. Well, he let all holds go and fell pretty hard and that was the end of that.
We went to another school while we lived on the Gates' farm. Our father was the school director. He asked the teacher to teach George the first two years of high school study. He may have paid her for it, I don't know, but she taught us well and we were willing to learn. George and I were through school at sixteen years old. Willie sat in the seat behind George. One day he managed to fasten a pin in the toe of his shoe and gave George a real hard jab in the setter through the crack in the desk seat. George threw both arms up and let out a loud shriek. The teacher asked what was the trouble. George said, "no trouble, no trouble at all". Willie managed to have to remain in the schoolhouse during recess. He told me afterwards, "twas just as well, I wouldn't have wen out anyway, George would have given me a beating if I had".
Memories Recalled by Ursula Sloan Trickey
We always ordered groceries in large amounts. Crackers came in big wooden boxes; flour was purchased four or five hundred pounds at a time, and sugar the same way. Peanut butter by the big buckets full. Of course we had many other items in the grocery line but these stand out in my memory. We used a lot of groceries since there was such a big family and always several hired hands and lots of company too. We baked bread two or three times a week and pies by the dozen. Our mother was a real good cook. She used to make buns, sweet rolls, cinnamon rolls, Parker house rolls, donuts, and coffeecakes. We had a big cabinet and it was real tall with glass doors in it. She always put the pies in there. Our dining table was real long and it was full every meal, even breakfast.
On wash days we always had vegetable soup. We had a big stove out in the back yard and they'd cook the soup on it in a great big kettle. Boy, was it good. They used to do the washing down at the creek as the water was soft. They built a big fireplace and heated the water in a tub on that. They even took the washing machine down there and put up several long clothes lines and boy they were always full too. We always had some little wagons to put the baskets of clean clothes in up to the house.
Oh, another thing our father did was to put up ice. We had a big icehouse and a big icebox. We made lots of ice cream too. We always had picnics on the 4th of July over on the riverbank. It was nice and shady there and nice grass too. They had made long tables and benches and put up swings and hammocks. We'd go wading and always stayed till dark as we'd have fireworks. I'll tell you, that was a lot of fun. The entire neighborhood would bring picnic baskets and all was happy to be together for a good time. This place on the riverbank was named Sloan's Landing. Even folks from Keithsburg would come over in boats to our picnics.
In the early winter months, we'd trap for muskrats, mink, possum, and skunk. We kids made enough money to buy Christmas presents. One year, Carrie and Charlie decided to get rich making and selling maple syrup. Well, we had lots of maple trees so they'd tap them and put a spigot in and hang a pail on it to catch the sap. They rigged up some kind of a sled to haul a big barrel on it and started on their get rich project. The first batch they boiled down to make maple syrup made only about one pint. Well, they decided it'd take too long to get rich so they quit that project.
Even though we didn't have much money to spend we were happy, well fed, and had nice clothes. When I look back on my childhood I think we were very fortunate to have had such a loving large family and wonderful parents. Our mother was very kind and loving and our father would tell us younger kids good stories. Fritz always wanted a good bear story where there was scaring and killing. Helen always wanted a story where there were little girls, dolls, kittens, and puppies. Fritz would pretend he wasn't listening, but he did anyway.
This time of year, meaning in June, July, and August, our mother was always canning vegetables and fruits and making preserves, jellies, and butters. Our cave was full of canned goods, potatoes, apples, and even some pears. The pears didn't keep very good. We even wrapped some pears so they'd keep until Christmas. We had a big pear tree and also had lots of walnuts, pecans, and hickory nuts. We'd crack them and pick out the meats. They sure were good in candy and cookies that we made.
During the blackberry season we'd all go across the river on the ferry at New Boston and camp along the Mississippi River. We'd take a big tent, buckets, fruit jars, sugar and a camp stove. We'd camp out on a big landowner's farm on the Illinois side. This man knew our father and would always let us camp on his farm. We would pick and can blackberries. Boy did we enjoy that.
One time a bunch of cattle came near us and our mother scared them away by raising an umbrella and closing it real fast. It scared them away too. Johnnie stayed home to do the chores. Even though our mother had to work the hardest canning them, she enjoyed it too.
We had good clear spring water to drink and use in our cooking and washing dishes. We heated it for baths and to wash our clothes out. We must have looked like a bunch of gypsies. But we sure enjoyed it that way.
Another thing we kids enjoyed was when the circus came to Burlington, Iowa. Our dad would take us to the circus. I don't remember how we got there unless we went on the train. That was a big day for us. One time, Pa had his pocket picked and his billfold was stolen. He carried it in his hip pocket so it was easy for a pickpocket to steal it. I don't know how he got enough money to take us on to the circus and back home again unless he could have had enough change in his pockets. Anyway, it didn't keep us from enjoying the day at the circus.
These are only some of my memories and I wish I could put them all down but it's impossible when you have so many wonderful memories as we all have.
OBERT1 SLOAN was born March 12, 1781 in Belfast, Ireland, and died 1838 in Muskingum, Ohio (Zanesville?). He married (1) MARTHA ANTIS September 17, 1801 in Pennsylvania, daughter of RHINEHART ANTHIS and KATHERINE ?. He married (2) RUTH FRISBY 1819 in Zanesville, Ohio, daughter of RHINEHART ANTHIS and KATHERINE ?.Notes for R
OBERT SLOAN:Information Source: Sloan Family Tree.
Lived in Zanesville, Ohio
Children of R
OBERT SLOAN and MARTHA ANTIS are:i. M
ARY2 SLOAN, b. June 03, 1802.ii. J
OHN SLOAN, b. November 06, 1804.iii. M
ARTHA SLOAN, b. November 08, 1805.iv. J
ANE SLOAN, b. October 08, 1807.v. R
INEHART H. SLOAN, b. September 03, 1809; m. LOIS.Notes for R
INEHART H. SLOAN:Is found in the 1850 Ohio Census (no other relevant information)
2. vi. R
OBERT SLOAN, b. June 01, 1810, Pennsylvania; d. August 15, 1875, New Boston, Illinois.3. vii. G
EORGE SLOAN, b. May 22, 1819; d. 1893.viii. M
ARTIN SLOAN, b. Unknown; d. Unknown, Died in infancy.ix. N
ANCY SLOAN, b. Unknown; d. Unknown.
Children of R
OBERT SLOAN and RUTH FRISBY are:x. F
RISBY2 SLOAN, b. September 04, 1820, Zanesville, Ohio; d. February 10, 1889, LaHarpe, Illinois; m. PHOEBE SPANGLER, March 09, 1849.xi. T
HOMAS WILLIAM SLOAN, b. September 19, 1822, Zanesville, Ohio; d. November 09, 1891, Terre Haute, Illinois.xii. W
ORKMAN SLOAN, b. January 15, 1825, Zanesville, Ohio; d. March 16, 1868, Terre Haute, Illinois; m. PERRY ANN ROBERTS, March 17, 1853.Notes for W
ORKMAN SLOAN:Probably born in Henderson County, Illinois
xiii. S
ARA SLOAN, b. October 01, 1830; d. December 09, 1912, Bentonville, Arkansas.xiv. R
EBECCA SLOAN, b. June 21, 1833, Zanesville, Ohio.xv. S
OPHIE SLOAN, b. February 24, 1836, Zanesville, Ohio; d. October 11, 1863, Terre Haute, Illinois.xvi. A
NACHE SLOAN, b. August 01, 1838, Zanesville, Ohio; d. January 09, 1898, Downing, Missouri; m. O. P. RECHARD, January 18, 1878.
OBERT2 SLOAN (ROBERT1) was born June 01, 1810 in Pennsylvania, and died August 15, 1875 in New Boston, Illinois. He married AMANDA TRUSSLER.Notes for R
OBERT SLOAN:July 10, 1860, Farmer, real estate $8000, personal property $1900
Children of R
OBERT SLOAN and AMANDA TRUSSLER are:i. B
ARBARY3 SLOAN, b. October 22, 1832, Zanesville, Ohio; d. February 06, 1896, Eliza, Illinois; m. JACOB LOOSER, March 10, 1859.Notes for J
ACOB LOOSER:1854, Came to USA from Switzerland
ii. E
LIZA SLOAN, b. 1834, Zanesville, Ohio; m. JACOB BEARD.4. iii. J
OHN CALVIN SLOAN, b. December 08, 1836, Zanesville, Ohio; d. February 09, 1901, Mannon, Illinois.iv. G
EORGE W. SLOAN, b. May 03, 1838; d. March 08, 1863; m. LUCINDA MCMANUS.Notes for G
EORGE W. SLOAN:March 8, 1863, Died in the Civil War
v. H
ENRY H. SLOAN, b. March 30, 1841, New Boston, Illinois; d. March 03, 1863.Notes for H
ENRY H. SLOAN:March 3, 1863, Died in the Civil War
vi. R
OBERT GILBERT SLOAN, b. Abt. 1844, New Boston, Illinois; d. Unknown; m. AMANDA BEARD.vii. L
EVI LEWIS SLOAN, b. 1846, New Boston, Illinois; d. June 07, 1890, Aledo, Illinois; m. SARAH BEAUGESS.viii. A
MANDA J. SLOAN, b. December 31, 1849, New Boston, Illinois; d. June 17, 1925, Rosedale, Kansas; m. ALFRED PIERCE EIKENBARY, December 20, 1875, Mercer County, Illinois.More About A
MANDA J. SLOAN:Burial: Forest Hills Cemetary, Kansas City
ix. P
RINCE ALBERT SLOAN, b. Abt. 1850, New Boston, Illinois.3.
GEORGE2 SLOAN (ROBERT1) was born May 22, 1819, and died 1893. He married FRANCES BETTERTON Not Married in Henderson County, Illinois.Notes for G
EORGE SLOAN:Grandma Dell's Grandfather
Children of G
EORGE SLOAN and FRANCES BETTERTON are:i. N
ELLIE AGNES3 SLOAN.ii. W
ILLIAM BETTERTON SLOAN, b. 1846.iii. G
EORGE ANTIS SLOAN, b. 1848.iv. J
AMES R SLOAN, b. 1849; d. 1849.Notes for J
AMES R SLOAN:Died at birth.
v. J
OSEPHINE SLOAN, b. 1856.5. vi. J
OHN WESLEY SLOAN, b. February 04, 1858, Belmont, Illinois; d. February 1916.vii. M
ERCY REBECCA SLOAN, b. 1860.viii. F
RANCES SLOAN, b. 1862.ix. M
ARTHA ISABELLA SLOAN, b. 1864.
OHN CALVIN3 SLOAN (ROBERT2, ROBERT1) was born December 08, 1836 in Zanesville, Ohio, and died February 09, 1901 in Mannon, Illinois. He married RACHEL BEARD, daughter of ABRAM BEARD and BETSY CRULL.
Children of J
OHN SLOAN and RACHEL BEARD are:6. i. L
EVI C.4 SLOAN.ii. M
ARY A. SLOAN, b. Abt. 1860, New Boston, Illinois; m. ACHILLES HINES.iii. I
NEZ SLOAN, b. 1860; d. 1875, Mannon, Illinois.iv. J
ANE BEARD SLOAN, b. Abt. 1862.v. R
ACHEL BEARD SLOAN, b. Abt. 1863.vi. A
MANDA E. SLOAN, b. 1864.vii. A
NN SLOAN, b. Unknown; m. "UNKNOWN" WIRT.viii. E
LIZABETH SLOAN, b. Unknown; m. "UNKNOWN" HULL.ix. W
ILLIAM SLOAN, b. Abt. January 1866; d. August 09, 1866, Mannon, Illinois.5.
JOHN WESLEY3 SLOAN (GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born February 04, 1858 in Belmont, Illinois, and died February 1916. He married CAROLINE MATSON December 22, 1880, daughter of JOHN MATSON. She was born Unknown, and died Unknown.Notes for J
OHN WESLEY SLOAN:Grandma Dell's father
Notes for C
AROLINE MATSON:Found on the Internet (unconfirmed):
Father may be John Matson, born 28 April 1851 in Asarum Blekinge Sweden, died 9 Nov 1935
Children of J
OHN SLOAN and CAROLINE MATSON are:7. i. G
EORGE4 SLOAN, b. October 04, 1881, Belmont, Illinois; d. 1939.8. ii. F
RANCES SLOAN, b. October 27, 1882, Belmont, Illinois; d. December 19, 1973.9. iii. N
ELLIE AGNES SLOAN, b. February 06, 1885; d. 1966.10. iv. W
ILLIAM SAMUEL SLOAN, b. February 06, 1887, Keithsburg, Illinois; d. 1944.11. v. J
OHN LESLIE SLOAN, b. December 06, 1889, Keithsburg, Illinois; d. 1980, Cocoa Beach, Florida.12. vi. N
ORA BELL SLOAN, b. July 25, 1892, Keithsburg, Illinois.13. vii. C
AROLINE MAUDE SLOAN, b. February 03, 1895, Keithsburg, Illinois; d. July 18, 1973.14. viii. C
HARLES THOMAS SLOAN, b. December 25, 1897, Oakville, Iowa; d. March 06, 1981, Missouri.ix. U
RSULA JOSEPHINE SLOAN, b. October 31, 1900, Oakville, Iowa; d. Yellville, Arkansas; m. (1) HARRY TRICKEY; b. October 25, 1906; d. Yellville, Arkansas; m. (2) FRANK SWAILS, 1917.Notes for U
RSULA JOSEPHINE SLOAN:Aunt Sula
15. x. F
RISBY STEWART SLOAN, b. January 08, 1903, Oakville, Iowa; d. September 1957.16. xi. H
ELEN WYOLA SLOAN, b. June 03, 1910, Oakville, Iowa; d. June 28, 1974, Pennsylvania.
EVI C.4 SLOAN (JOHN CALVIN3, ROBERT2, ROBERT1) He married CATHERINE SCHUNICK, daughter of JOHN SHUNICK and CATHERINE LEE.
Children of L
EVI SLOAN and CATHERINE SCHUNICK are:i. C
ATHERINE5 SLOAN, d. Infancy.ii. C
URTIS SLOAN, m. FRANCES BEARD.iii. F
RANCIS EDWARD SLOAN, m. VIOLET CARLSON.iv. H
ARRY SLOAN, m. MURIEL FERGUSON.v. R
ACHEL ALICE SLOAN, m. WAYNE LUTRELL.vi. W
ARREN L. SLOAN, m. DOROTHY GREEN.vii. J
OHN ROBERT SLOAN, b. 1899; m. ELVA PULLIUM.17. viii. M
ILTON DONOVAN SLOAN, b. March 21, 1904; d. March 07, 1953, Aledo, Illinois.7.
GEORGE4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born October 04, 1881 in Belmont, Illinois, and died 1939. He married MAGGIE WILLEY 1906.
Children of G
EORGE SLOAN and MAGGIE WILLEY are:i. F
AITH5 SLOAN, m. CUDD.ii. V
IRGIL SLOAN.iii. G
EORGIA SLOAN, m. CHARLES MOORE.iv. H
ARDY SLOAN.v. W
FRANCES4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born October 27, 1882 in Belmont, Illinois, and died December 19, 1973. She married (1) ARTHUR WILLEY. He died 1918. She married (2) EDD ABOLT.Notes for F
RANCES SLOAN:Aunt Frankie
Children of F
RANCES SLOAN and ARTHUR WILLEY are:i. E
CHO5 WILLEY, m. ADE HOLDERHOUSE.ii. G
ORDON WILLEY, b. Colorado; m. MILDRED.
Child of F
RANCES SLOAN and EDD ABOLT is:iii. C
ECIL5 ABOLT, m. MAURICE LAMB.9.
NELLIE AGNES4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born February 06, 1885, and died 1966. She married LUCAS ODELL in Fort Madison, IA.Notes for L
UCAS ODELL:Found in IGI (not confirmed):
Possibly born ABT 1881 in Keithsburg IL, parents John Odell & Lucy York
(Keithsburg seems to be the right place)
Children of N
ELLIE SLOAN and LUCAS ODELL are:i. Z
ELMA5 ODELL, b. Oakville, Iowa; m. JACK SHUTTE.ii. R
OY ODELL, b. Fort Madison, Iowa; m. HARRIET.iii. J
OHN ODELL, b. Colorado; m. EILEEN.iv. O
LIVER ODELL.v. E
DNA ODELL, m. FRANCIS MEAD.vi. L
UCY ODELL, m. CHARLES DWARTZ.vii. F
RANCIS ODELL, m. JEAN.10.
WILLIAM SAMUEL4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born February 06, 1887 in Keithsburg, Illinois, and died 1944. He married MYRTLE THORTON 1907.
Children of W
ILLIAM SLOAN and MYRTLE THORTON are:i. V
IOLET5 SLOAN, m. RUSSELL KURVERS.ii. L
ESLIE SLOAN.iii. L
ILLIAN SLOAN, m. FRITZ HERR.11.
JOHN LESLIE4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born December 06, 1889 in Keithsburg, Illinois, and died 1980 in Cocoa Beach, Florida. He married ECHO JAREN March 1914. She was born September 27, 1895, and died Unknown in Cocoa Beach, Florida.
Children of J
OHN SLOAN and ECHO JAREN are:i. C
HESTER5 SLOAN.ii. M
AURICE SLOAN.iii. R
ICHARD SLOAN.iv. B
ETTY SLOAN, m. FRANK BERGTHOLD.12.
NORA BELL4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born July 25, 1892 in Keithsburg, Illinois. She married THOMAS WADDELL February 18, 1914 in Oakville, Iowa. He died April 18, 1962 in Davenport, IA.More About T
HOMAS WADDELL:Burial: Columbus Junction, IA
Children of N
ORA SLOAN and THOMAS WADDELL are:18. i. C
LARA ELIZABETH5 WADDELL, b. March 17, 1915; d. October 02, 1999, Iowa.19. ii. H
ELEN ARELIA WADDELL, b. September 07, 1916; d. December 18, 1966.20. iii. E
VELYN ERNA WADDELL, b. November 28, 1924, Taylor Ridge, Illinois.21. iv. T
HOMAS WILSON WADDELL, b. August 14, 1929; d. October 28, 1995, Fort Wayne, Indiana.v. J
OHN WESLEY WADDELL, b. February 04, 1931; d. February 04, 1931.13.
CAROLINE MAUDE4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born February 03, 1895 in Keithsburg, Illinois, and died July 18, 1973. She married (1) WALTER HENDRICKSON. He was born June 25, 1902, and died December 27, 1992 in Wapello, Iowa. She married (2) FRED TIMMERMAN September 1915.Notes for C
AROLINE MAUDE SLOAN:Aunt Carrie
Child of C
AROLINE SLOAN and FRED TIMMERMAN is:22. i. A
CHARLES THOMAS4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born December 25, 1897 in Oakville, Iowa, and died March 06, 1981 in Missouri. He married (1) RUTH. He married (2) JOYCE. He married (3) EDITH 1915.Notes for C
HARLES THOMAS SLOAN:Died when a tree fell on him.
Child of C
HARLES SLOAN and RUTH is:i. C
HARLENE5 SLOAN, m. WAYNE THOMAS.
Child of C
HARLES SLOAN and JOYCE is:ii. J
Child of C
HARLES SLOAN and EDITH is:iii. C
FRISBY STEWART4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born January 08, 1903 in Oakville, Iowa, and died September 1957. He married ALMA KING.
Children of F
RISBY SLOAN and ALMA KING are:i. E
LIZABETH5 SLOAN.ii. B
ARBARA SLOAN.iii. S
HIRLEY SLOAN.iv. J
OHN SLOAN.v. F
RED SLOAN.vi. K
AREN SLOAN.vii. S
HELEN WYOLA4 SLOAN (JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born June 03, 1910 in Oakville, Iowa, and died June 28, 1974 in Pennsylvania. She married (1) RALPH HAWKINS. She married (2) WEYMA CAIN. He was born April 23, 1920, and died March 14, 1995 in Huntingdon, PA. She married (3) RUSSELL MURDOCK. He was born Unknown, and died Unknown.More About H
ELEN WYOLA SLOAN:Burial: July 1974, Moline, Illinois
Children of H
ELEN SLOAN and RALPH HAWKINS are:i. F
ORREST DEAN5 HAWKINS.ii. J
ILTON DONOVAN5 SLOAN (LEVI C.4, JOHN CALVIN3, ROBERT2, ROBERT1) was born March 21, 1904, and died March 07, 1953 in Aledo, Illinois. He married (1) OPAL NOBLE, daughter of GEORGE NOBLE and EFFIE. She was born June 14, 1919 in Eliza, Illinois, and died February 07, 1941 in Aledo, Illinois. He married (2) LULABEL EILEEN FORTNEY May 24, 1943 in Davenport, Iowa.Notes for O
PAL NOBLE:Newspaper Obituary Clipping
Life-Long Resident of Boston Community Succumbs in Hospital Feb. 7
Funeral services for Mrs. Milton Sloan, age 27, of near New Boston, were held in New Boston at 1:30 p.m. Monday and at the Eliza Creek church at 2:00 p.m. Rev. Prentiss Penticoff of the Methodist Church of Keithsburg and New Boston officiated.
Mrs. Sloan died at 11:15 Friday evening, February 7, 1941 at Stites hospital in Aledo.
Before her marriage she was Miss Opal Noble and was born June 14, 1919 in Eliza, daughter of George and Effie Noble, and had resided in the vicinity of New Boston all her life.
Surviving are the husband; three sons, Bernard LeMar, Roby Lee, and John Donovan, all at home; her mother in Joy; three sisters, Mrs. Dan Anderson of Eliza, Mrs. Amos McNeal of Muscatine and Mrs. Bert Bauguess of Rock Island, and four brothers Lee of Moline, Craig of Andalusia, Don of Illinois City, and Amos of Keithsburg.
Six nephews served as pallbearers, Martin Anderson of New Boston, Lyle and Donald McNeal of Muscatine, Chester and Edwin Bauguess of Rock Island. Interment was in the Eliza Creek cemetary.
Children of M
ILTON SLOAN and OPAL NOBLE are:i. B
ERNARD LEMAR6 SLOAN.ii. R
OBY LEE SLOAN.iii. J
CLARA ELIZABETH5 WADDELL (NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born March 17, 1915, and died October 02, 1999 in Iowa. She married GORDON TODD July 01, 1933. He was born April 21, 1912, and died August 1985 in Iowa City, IA.
Children of C
LARA WADDELL and GORDON TODD are:23. i. M
ARILYN JEAN6 TODD, b. February 28, 1934.24. ii. M
ONA DEANE TODD, b. January 07, 1938.iii. B
ABY BOY TODD, b. January 21, 1940; d. January 21, 1940.Notes for B
ABY BOY TODD:Died at birth
HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL (NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born September 07, 1916, and died December 18, 1966. She married (1) HARRY QUINN. She married (2) GLENN BENNET May 1934.
Children of H
ELEN WADDELL and HARRY QUINN are:i. P
ATRICIA ANN6 QUINN.Notes for P
ATRICIA ANN QUINN:Died at birth
25. ii. K
ATHLEEN ROBERTA QUINN, b. February 04, 1953.
Children of H
ELEN WADDELL and GLENN BENNET are:26. iii. B
ETTE JOANN6 BENNET, b. November 13, 1934.27. iv. M
ARY ELLEN BENNET, b. March 23, 1936.28. v. G
LENN HALL BENNET, b. May 27, 1938.29. vi. W
ILLIAM LEE BENNET, b. June 02, 1939.30. vii. K
AREN KAY BENNET, b. December 28, 1941.20.
EVELYN ERNA5 WADDELL (NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born November 28, 1924 in Taylor Ridge, Illinois. She married FORREST SNYDER May 17, 1941, son of RALPH SNYDER and DORIS. He died in Columbus Junction, Iowa.More About F
ORREST SNYDER:Burial: Columbus Junction, Iowa
Children of E
VELYN WADDELL and FORREST SNYDER are:31. i. B
EVERLY JUNE6 SNYDER, b. February 27, 1942.32. ii. R
ALPH THOMAS SNYDER, b. April 27, 1944.33. iii. J
OYCE ELAINE SNYDER, b. May 08, 1946.21.
THOMAS WILSON5 WADDELL (NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born August 14, 1929, and died October 28, 1995 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He married (1) JUDY DENNISON. He married (2) CAROL. He married (3) JANIS LEPTIEN April 29, 1952, daughter of BERNARD LEPTIEN and GLATHA HUSTON. She was born January 21, 1937 in Iowa City, Iowa.More About T
HOMAS WILSON WADDELL:Cremation: October 30, 1995, Fort Wayne, Indiana
More About J
ANIS LEPTIEN:Residence: April 1998, Davenport, Iowa
Retirement: April 1998, Pacific Bell
Children of T
HOMAS WADDELL and JUDY DENNISON are:i. T
HOMAS WILSON6 WADDELL, b. May 15, 1961.ii. K
ATHLEEN ANN WADDELL, b. March 27, 1964.iii. M
ICHAEL WILLIAM WADDELL, b. January 26, 1966.
Child of T
HOMAS WADDELL and JANIS LEPTIEN is:34. iv. A
NTHONY ALAN6 WADDELL, b. May 16, 1953, Davenport, Iowa.22.
ALDEN5 TIMMERMAN (CAROLINE MAUDE4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) He married DORA BROWN.
Children of A
LDEN TIMMERMAN and DORA BROWN are:i. R
ICHARD6 TIMMERMAN.ii. R
ARILYN JEAN6 TODD (CLARA ELIZABETH5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born February 28, 1934. She married (1) BROOKS FULTON July 02, 1949. He was born March 17, 1926, and died August 01, 1991. She married (2) CLAYTON BRADSHAW Not Married.
Children of M
ARILYN TODD and BROOKS FULTON are:35. i. S
COTT ALLEN7 FULTON, b. August 16, 1956.36. ii. T
ODD EUGENE FULTON, b. October 23, 1961.iii. K
ELLY LYNN FULTON, b. October 25, 1963.
Child of M
ARILYN TODD and CLAYTON BRADSHAW is:iv. J
ASON GENE7 BRADSHAW, b. July 31, 1970.24.
MONA DEANE6 TODD (CLARA ELIZABETH5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born January 07, 1938. She married CHARLES WILHELM February 26, 1954.
Children of M
ONA TODD and CHARLES WILHELM are:i. D
EWAYNE LEROY7 WILHELM, b. August 02, 1954.ii. D
EANNA RAE WILHELM, b. July 25, 1955.37. iii. D
EBRA LYNN WILHELM, b. July 02, 1956.iv. D
IONE LADONE WILHELM, b. October 18, 1968.Notes for D
IONE LADONE WILHELM:Dolly
KATHLEEN ROBERTA6 QUINN (HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born February 04, 1953. She married JACK GREER.
Children of K
ATHLEEN QUINN and JACK GREER are:i. M
ELISSA7 GREER.ii. S
TEVEN GREER, b. October 31, 1971.iii. D
ANIEL GREER, b. January 24, 1974.26.
BETTE JOANN6 BENNET (HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born November 13, 1934. She married WARREN MCQUILLEN July 25, 1956.
Children of B
ETTE BENNET and WARREN MCQUILLEN are:38. i. T
ERRY7 MCQUILLEN, b. July 01, 1955.ii. S
TEVEN MCQUILLEN, b. August 08, 1957.iii. M
ICHAEL MCQUILLEN, b. December 09, 1958.39. iv. C
ONSTANCE SUE MCQUILLEN, b. November 15, 1960.v. S
COTT MCQUILLEN, b. March 09, 1966.27.
MARY ELLEN6 BENNET (HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born March 23, 1936. She married KENNETH HAHN February 15, 1951.
Children of M
ARY BENNET and KENNETH HAHN are:40. i. K
ENNA JOANN7 HAHN, b. December 27, 1952.41. ii. R
ICKIE ALLEN HAHN, b. March 15, 1954.iii. W
ALTER ALLEN HAHN, b. July 02, 1955; d. July 02, 1955.42. iv. S
HERRI LEE HAHN, b. June 22, 1956.v. R
ONALD DEAN HAHN, b. July 05, 1957; d. July 05, 1957.vi. D
ONALD EUGENE HAHN, b. July 05, 1957; d. July 05, 1957.43. vii. D
IANA KAY HAHN, b. January 16, 1959.viii. K
ENNETH KEITH HAHN, b. May 17, 1960.44. ix. C
INDI SUE HAHN, b. August 23, 1962.x. T
HOMAS LEE HAHN, b. December 04, 1965.xi. T
IMOTHY ALLEN HAHN, b. December 04, 1965.28.
GLENN HALL6 BENNET (HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born May 27, 1938. He married BARBARA DAVIS August 15, 1959.
Children of G
LENN BENNET and BARBARA DAVIS are:i. J
AMES PAUL7 BENNET, b. June 14, 1960; m. GAIL GREEN, September 06, 1980.ii. J
EANNIE MAE BENNET, b. June 14, 1961.iii. J
ULIE ANN BENNET, b. May 13, 1972.29.
WILLIAM LEE6 BENNET (HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born June 02, 1939. He married (1) WILMA. He married (2) SUE BOVEE 1968.
Child of W
ILLIAM BENNET and WILMA is:45. i. V
ICKIE LEE7 BENNET, b. December 17, 1956.
Child of W
ILLIAM BENNET and SUE BOVEE is:ii. A
NN MARIE7 BENNET, b. October 26, 1968.30.
KAREN KAY6 BENNET (HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born December 28, 1941. She married DANIEL SEXTON April 24, 1959.
Children of K
AREN BENNET and DANIEL SEXTON are:46. i. A
ARON PATRICK7 SEXTON, b. October 10, 1959.ii. C
HRISTINA JO SEXTON, b. January 28, 1961.iii. J
ON ROBERT SEXTON, b. October 16, 1962.iv. D
AVID WILLIAM SEXTON, b. March 30, 1968.v. E
RIC MARTIN SEXTON, b. June 13, 1970.31.
BEVERLY JUNE6 SNYDER (EVELYN ERNA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born February 27, 1942. She married EDGAR JOHNSON March 03, 1962.
Children of B
EVERLY SNYDER and EDGAR JOHNSON are:i. D
AWN MARIE7 JOHNSON, b. June 25, 1962.ii. K
EVIN ALLEN JOHNSON, b. August 06, 1963.32.
RALPH THOMAS6 SNYDER (EVELYN ERNA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born April 27, 1944. He married CAROL BLACK August 04, 1962.
Children of R
ALPH SNYDER and CAROL BLACK are:i. C
HRISTOPHER JAMES7 SNYDER, b. February 19, 1963.ii. T
IMOTHY JOHN SNYDER, b. December 09, 1964.iii. A
NDREW JOEL SNYDER, b. July 06, 1967.iv. R
OBIN ELIZABETH SNYDER, b. February 01, 1972.33.
JOYCE ELAINE6 SNYDER (EVELYN ERNA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born May 08, 1946. She married THOMAS YOKE March 04, 1967.More About J
OYCE ELAINE SNYDER:Graduation: June 1964, Davenport High School, Davenport, Iowa
Children of J
OYCE SNYDER and THOMAS YOKE are:i. M
ICHELE JODENE7 YOKE, b. February 26, 1966.ii. T
HOMAS GILBERT YOKE, b. September 15, 1968.34.
ANTHONY ALAN6 WADDELL (THOMAS WILSON5, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born May 16, 1953 in Davenport, Iowa. He married (1) KATHY ARPY August 1973 in Davenport, Iowa, daughter of JAMES ARPY and EDITH BEAM. She was born November 04, 1953. He married (2) MARIA ELENA PONCE October 05, 1985 in Reno, Nevada. She was born September 04, 1947 in San Jose, Costa RIca.More About A
NTHONY ALAN WADDELL:Graduation: June 1971, Central High School, Davenport, Iowa
Residence: San Jose, Costa Rica
Retirement: 1997, Pacific Bell, 23 years
Child of A
NTHONY WADDELL and KATHY ARPY is:47. i. A
MBER DAWN7 WADDELL, b. April 13, 1975, Santa Clara, California.
COTT ALLEN7 FULTON (MARILYN JEAN6 TODD, CLARA ELIZABETH5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born August 16, 1956. He married LAURIE May 19, 1978.
Child of S
COTT FULTON and LAURIE is:i. C
AMERON RYAN8 FULTON, b. April 29, 1981.36.
TODD EUGENE7 FULTON (MARILYN JEAN6 TODD, CLARA ELIZABETH5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born October 23, 1961. He married THERESA REYNOLDS November 01, 1979.
Child of T
ODD FULTON and THERESA REYNOLDS is:i. M
ANDY LYNN8 FULTON, b. March 21, 1980.37.
DEBRA LYNN7 WILHELM (MONA DEANE6 TODD, CLARA ELIZABETH5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born July 02, 1956. She married (1) WILLIAM GILBERT 1971. She married (2) JOE LINCOLN 1976.
Child of D
EBRA WILHELM and WILLIAM GILBERT is:i. B
RANT8 GILBERT, b. May 16, 1971.
Child of D
EBRA WILHELM and JOE LINCOLN is:ii. J
TERRY7 MCQUILLEN (BETTE JOANN6 BENNET, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born July 01, 1955. He married UNKNOWN.
Child of T
ERRY MCQUILLEN and UNKNOWN is:i. J
ESSIE RODRIGUES8 MCQUILLEN, b. November 10, 1971.39.
CONSTANCE SUE7 MCQUILLEN (BETTE JOANN6 BENNET, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born November 15, 1960. She married DAVID YARHAM September 15, 1978.
Children of C
ONSTANCE MCQUILLEN and DAVID YARHAM are:i. J
OSHUA DAVID8 YARHAM, b. February 07, 1979.ii. A
NTHONY WAYNE YARHAM, b. March 06, 1981.40.
KENNA JOANN7 HAHN (MARY ELLEN6 BENNET, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born December 27, 1952. She married WILLIAM CLIFTON August 08, 1970.
Children of K
ENNA HAHN and WILLIAM CLIFTON are:i. B
RIAN JOSEPH8 CLIFTON, b. March 30, 1971.ii. C
ARI JOANN CLIFTON, b. December 05, 1973.41.
RICKIE ALLEN7 HAHN (MARY ELLEN6 BENNET, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born March 15, 1954. He married BRENDA GORDON June 26, 1976.
Child of R
ICKIE HAHN and BRENDA GORDON is:i. T
ERRY JO8 HAHN, b. February 07, 1978.42.
SHERRI LEE7 HAHN (MARY ELLEN6 BENNET, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born June 22, 1956. She married JACK LORENZEN January 25, 1976.
Children of S
HERRI HAHN and JACK LORENZEN are:i. J
ENNIFER8 LORENZEN, b. July 14, 1976.ii. M
ICHELLE LORENZEN, b. June 24, 1979.iii. M
ELISSA LORENZEN, b. June 24, 1979.43.
DIANA KAY7 HAHN (MARY ELLEN6 BENNET, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born January 16, 1959. She married DAVID SCHMIDT July 08, 1974.
Children of D
IANA HAHN and DAVID SCHMIDT are:i. S
ANDY8 SCHMIDT, b. November 25, 1974.ii. S
EBRINA SCHMIDT, b. December 01, 1977.44.
CINDI SUE7 HAHN (MARY ELLEN6 BENNET, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born August 23, 1962. She married UNKNOWN.
Child of C
INDI HAHN and UNKNOWN is:i. A
MY8 HAHN, b. November 15, 1979.45.
VICKIE LEE7 BENNET (WILLIAM LEE6, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born December 17, 1956. She married NATHAN RICHARDS.
Child of V
ICKIE BENNET and NATHAN RICHARDS is:i. B
RANDI8 RICHARDS, b. September 17, 1977.46.
AARON PATRICK7 SEXTON (KAREN KAY6 BENNET, HELEN ARELIA5 WADDELL, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born October 10, 1959. He married CARRIE ROTENBURGER December 06, 1980.
Child of A
ARON SEXTON and CARRIE ROTENBURGER is:i. C
OURTNEY LEIGH8 SEXTON, b. April 28, 1981.47.
AMBER DAWN7 WADDELL (ANTHONY ALAN6, THOMAS WILSON5, NORA BELL4 SLOAN, JOHN WESLEY3, GEORGE2, ROBERT1) was born April 13, 1975 in Santa Clara, California. She married JASON PIETROWSKI September 07, 1994. He was born December 19, 1976.
Children of A
MBER WADDELL and JASON PIETROWSKI are:i. S
AMANTHA8 PIETROWSKI, b. November 21, 1997.ii. B
RITTANY ELIZABETH PIETROWSKI, b. July 18, 1999.