I was born at Grandmother Reno's [Tabitha Ellen Fitz Jarrell Reno] house, in the same corner of the same room, delivered by the same doctor as my Mama [Fannie Reno Waters]. That place was 5 miles south and a bit east of Pattonsburg, Missouri in Decalb County. [Pattonsburg is now in Daviess County, where the notorious James-Younger Gang accomplished their first confirmed robbery in 1869. Ellen's grandparents lived in Daviess County when this robbery took place. Ellen's grandfather, Christopher Columbus Reno was also second cousins with the Reno brothers that were in the famous Reno Gang, so there's a bit of colorful history in Ellen's family.]
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| Ellen's parents and siblings in front of the house she was born in Photo source - Ellen Lovicy Waters Britton |
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I remember Doctor Hardinger real well. He was Mama's folks' doctor for many years and of course, was an old man when I remember him coming to see Grandmother Reno. He drove a pony hitched to a buggy. (He also delivered Violet, Lyman, and Myrtle [Ellen's siblings], there at Grandmother's.) [According to the History of Daviess and Gentry Counties, page 996-7 ➚, Dr. Samson L Hardinger (1855-1926) was a Maryland born resident of Civil Bend, Missouri, who served the Civil Bend and Pattonsburg areas as doctor and surgeon for many years.]
My folks [Harry Lee Waters and Fannie Reno] lived in part of Grandmother's house, as an apartment, until I was nearly 3 years old.
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| Henry Lyman Waters (1844-1935) Source - Ellen Waters Britton |
The spring of 1914, they moved to a 2 roomed house that Papa and Grandpa Waters [Henry Lyman Waters (1844-1935)] built for us, on land that Grandmother had given to Mama. (Grandfather [Christopher Columbus Reno (1834-1906)] had been dead a couple of years or so [1906] when Mama and Papa got married [1909]. He had given each of their “kids”, 40 acres of land and a team of horses when they got married and Grandmother gave them a dozen hens and a rooster and a feather bed and pair of pillows, when they got married, and Grandmother had continued that tradition.) At the time a couple could make a living on 40 acres of land in that part of the country. That place we moved to, that they built, we always called the “two roomed house”. It was about 1/2 mile from Grandmother's and Aunt Lucy's.
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| Harvey Nathan Reno (1877-1971) Source - Ellen Waters Britton |
After the sale, Lyman [Ellen's brother, Henry Lyman Waters (1910-2000)] and I spent the summer with Grandmother and Aunt Lucy, while Mama spent the summer in Kansas, living in the “cook shack” cooking for Pap, Uncle Vic and Grandpa [Henry Lyman Waters] while they did carpenter work.
The next move was to the Kim Country. We left Plains, Kansas area in August and onto the folks' homestead the first part of Sept., 1917. We had stayed at Uncle Vic's homestead a few days, then moved on down to the folks' homestead, where we lived in an overjet (set off wagon) and tent that Uncle Vic loaned us, until Papa and Uncle Vic got the dugout done.
The dugout was dug back into the hill, so we walked in on the level at the front. There was enough slope to the hill there, that the grownups could sit on the roof at the back, on the outside. There was a half window on each side and 2 half windows and Dutch style door in the front. (A dutch door is cut in two in the middles, Papa said, “to keep the kids in and the pigs out.”) The walls were double thickness rock with a tie rock occasionally to keep the two thickness from spreading apart, thick and warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
At first, the roof was gable type roof with rafters of 1/4's with the canvas over them that had been on the overjet, double thickness, when on overjet.
The walls were just rock and the floor was dirt, for years. Then one year, Grandpa and Grandma were out there, (us in Missouri), and Grandpa had walls and floor cemented. (They stayed there that summer.) He also built us a rock toilet, so we didn't have to go out the other side of the low bluff to get out of sight.
The first year or two, we lived on the homestead, we carried water for house use from a spring 1/2 mile away, and wash waters from a spring-fed pond 100 yards or so from the house, carrying it up a rather steep hill part of the way.
We had lived on the homestead a year or so, (maybe just one winter), when Uncle Charlie moved out there to homestead a mile from us. Then Uncle Vic, Papa and grandpa built him a nice rock house with a shingle roof, good matted flooring floor, nice big windows, etc. Soon as that was done, they dug him a well, right in his yard.
By the time they were digging the well, Guy Garland, one of Aunt Myrtle's boys, and his chum were there, to help with the well. When it was done, Guy said, “Now I think it is time Uncle Harry had a well”, sot hey dug us a well, too. It was 50 yards or so from the house, though, since some of them didn't think they could get water up near the house. Anyway, it was good water and not so far to carry it.
I think it was the second, third, fourth and fifth summers after we moved to the Kim Country, that Mama and us kids went back to Grandmother's for the summers, to help take care of her and for company for her. She was an invalid the last five years of her life.
We would go and come on the train, getting someone with a car to take us to La Junta or Lamar, to catch the train and going to Pattonsburg, where they would meet us with the team and buggy.
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| Tabitha Ellen FitzJarrell Reno (1842-1920) Source - Ellen Lovicy Waters Britton |
One move we made, one that I will never forget, was when we moved from the folks' homestead to Thompson dugout 1/2 mile from Kim, to be close to Papa's job at the printing office in Kim. Uncle Charlie and Lyman took most of the furniture over there from the homestead and were to come back for the rest, and Mama and us girls that afternoon.
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| Charles David "Charlie" Waters (1870-1947) Source - Ellen Lovicy Waters Britton |
Before we got there, Mam was plenty scared we had missed the house, there being no fence and very little road to follow.
The storm was getting so bad, we couldn't see far or see what few land-marks there might have been. After we passed the end of Stinson's bluff, there was just prairie and snow storm. When we got there, there wasn't much wood cut and in. We soon went to keep warm, and it was evening anyway. Next morning, Mama kept us in bed till we got so restless, even with her telling stories, etc., so she got up and built a fire.
We dressed and wrapped up and run around in the house to keep warm while Mama fixed breakfast. (Myrtle was a baby and Mama had pulled her in the baby buggy, going down there.)
Uncle Charles and Lyman got there before noon a while, and he cut more wood. Mama cooked us some dinner. Then they took us to the Thompson dugout, where we spent part of the winter. (That dugout, was dug into the ground far enough, that there was just walls above the ground, high enough for half windows. The walls and roof were single thickness lumber with ruberoid over it. The rest of the winter we spent in a two-roomed shack that Uncle Vic had built in Kim.
A lot of our schooling was sort of hit-or-miss, with part of a year at Mesa Vies, rest at Kim; or part of it at Kim, rest at Archie, Missouri, where Papa's folks lived, etc.
I think I only went to the whole year at one place 2 years. The first was the year I was 12 and Mama taught at Lowery and us girls with her. That year, I took the sixth and seventh grades. I was the only one in my class so went at my own rate, finishing the sixth grade work by Christmas, so just went on with seventh grade after Christmas.
The next year I went to whole year in Kim, in eighth grade. That was the last of my formal schooling. After that, I did take a correspondence course in dressmaking and tailoring.
The first year we lived on the homestead, Lyman should have been in school, but there was no school close enough. By the next year, they had gotten district organized and school house built. It was a nice rock building, built with donation work and money.
The Nicholson brothers did a nice job on the rock work. Papa and Uncle Vic did the carpentering part. We started school as soon as the building was finished, using any school books and of the patrons had, until new books could be ordered and received.
Desks were on order, too. Ones living farther away, sat on boards laying across rocks that were left from the building, but ones who lived close, like us, only 1 1/2 miles away, carried small wooden boxes to sit on.
When the new desks and books came, Lyman an I were so proud of our new books, that we carried them back and forth.
We had had a couple of months of school, when a couple of big, ornery boys piled new desks, books and everything up in a corner of the school house and burned it. (One of the boys had wanted to go to school and his mother wouldn't let him and the other boy didn't want to go and his mother made him go. So the mother of the one who wanted to go, put the boys up to burning it. She had wanted the teaching joy, but wasn't qualified, so she was mad.) But Lyman and I had our books so Mama taught us first grade at home. [Ellen and Lyman's mother had once been a teacher.] By the next year, they built a dug our school house, not nearly as nice, but cheaper and quicker to build.
Later, there was another nice rock building there, and Violet and Myrtle went to school in it some.
The year Lyman and I were in the fourth grade, I had pneumonia and missed so much school, that I had to take the fourth grade for the second time and Lyman in fifth grade, we went to school at Archie and stayed at Grandma and Grandpa Waters [Henry Lyman Waters and Lovicy Elizabeth Coulter].
I quit school with the eight grade. We lived within 2 blocks of the high school, but Papa didn't want me to go to high school, said that a girl didn't need high school to keep house and raise kids, that I would learn more meanness there than anything that would help me. (His confidence in Violet and I seemed to be nil. He told Violet after we were married that he would have given us to the first one that asked for us, before we got pregnant. Now how's that for confidence in us?)
After I finished school, I took the correspondence course in dressmaking and tailoring. (I had learned from Mama and done the family sewing since I was 13.) I used to love to sew, though never did like tailoring. The way things turned out, with us getting married during the depression, with nothing but a kick in the pants, I guess the sewing and tailoring courses were good, because I sewed miles of seams and hems. (Cub was a hard worker, but times were hard, so much of my sewing for our family was making over hand-me-downs.) I had made the boys pants til Philip started school. After that, we bought overalls for the boys, later wranglers or levis. Boys shirts and mine and girls blouses and dresses, slips and panties were mostly made-overs or made from colored flour or feed sacks, undergarments of white flour sacks. Making coats was the hardest, I thought. They were made-overs, too like the jackets that Philip and Clifford wore the fall Clifford was in the second grade and Philip in the first grade.
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| Cub and Ellen courting Source - Ellen Lovicy Waters Britton |
That was a stormy day, starting with rain, turning to snow, and into quite a blizzard. That delayed us getting back to Springfield, where we had gone for our marriage licence. Mama had cooked a nice dinner for all of us, but with the delay, Cub and I ate it cold. Papa wasn't interested in waiting, so they and Uncle Vic had eaten.
The next morning, we loaded up my “hope chest”, bedding I had made, sort of a batching outfit of dishes and cooking utensils and my clothes in the little chevi that belonged to Cub [this was Clarence Custer Britton's nickname] and Homer, and took off. We spent that night at Nora's (Cub's oldest sister) place in Trinidad, then on to Therma, New Mexico, now called Eagle Nest. In Therma, we lived in a log cabin for the first 6 weeks we were married. [An interesting detail Ellen told later about the consummation of their marriage is that soon afterwards she got her monthly period and, seeing the blood, Cub was very much afraid he had damaged her internally during the act and made her hemorrhage! Undoubtedly he had not been told much of such things prior to their marriage. As kind-hearted as he was, one can only imagine how bad he felt, thinking he had injured her.]
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