These notes concerning my early childhood have been written for my children and grandchildren who may someday even as I do now wish that they knew more about what it was like in the “olden days.” When I was younger and my parents and grandparents were around so that I could have inquired about their lives as children, I was too busy or too disinterested to ask. Now that it is too late, I wish I knew more. With that in mind, I write these memoirs for those of you who may some day want to know. I dedicate this to all of you- with love and affection always.
By Kathleen Agee Goodwin
June 9, 1983
Family
I was born the third child and second daughter in a family of one boy and three girls. Our parents were James Thompson (Jim) Agee and Martha Louvenia (Mattie) Agee. My father was raised an only child, although I believe another boy was born and died after he was born. Mother was raised by her paternal grandparents because her mother died when she was very young. She told me that when her mother was very ill she asked her mother-in-law to raise her baby Martha Louvenia, who was named after her two grandmothers Louvenia Burnette Mount and Martha Ann Callis Agee. Mother and Daddy had a common ancestor their great-grandfather John Daniel Agee. Their grandfathers, William Tucker Agee and Daniel Thompson Agee, were brothers. I do not think my father cared one way or the other, but to Mother family was a very important matter. At least, their having a common ancestral background probably alleviated bickering since there was no “your family” or “my family”, just “our family.” Daddy was a very affable, good natured, fun-loving man with a wonderful sense of humor. He never seemed to worry about anything until the early 1930s when the price of cotton plummeted, many banks closed their doors and my father was forced to close his grocery business. I think he would have gone into politics because he was liked and respected by everyone, but he was not ambitious. He was the Police Judge for a while and was asked to run for the State Legislature, but he declined. He was, as far as I know, a completely open and honest person. My mother, on the other hand, was more complex, even somewhat devious at times. The old adage “the end justifies the means” was philosophy that she could go along with. In retrospect, I know that she manipulated all of us many times. Still, when we were children, I can remember no time when either of my parents did anything dishonest and we children knew instinctively that we would be swiftly and surely “set straight” if we deviated from the “paths of righteousness.”
Although I was never told and it never occurred to me to ask, I do not think my father had much formal schooling. His spelling was atrocious (he even had trouble spelling his children’s names sometimes); his penmanship, on the other hand, was beautiful. Mother graduated from Thompson’s Classical Institute (possibly the equivalent of a good high school education) with a certificate to teach school. This she did in a one-room country school until she met my father with his “beautiful blonde, curly hair and blue eyes” and she fell in love. She told me once that they never kissed before they were married but that once Daddy tried to kiss her and she ducked and he only brushed her forehead. So much for their courtship.
Mother and Daddy were married June 28, 1905. Daddy was almost 24 years old and Mother was six months younger.
More Family:
Mother’s mother, America Elizabeth Mount, was born on the 4th of July, 1856, which I assume explains why she was named America. After America died, Mother’s father, John Marion Wilkins Agee, married a girl named Ella Fraley who also died leaving no children. Then my grandfather married Zalena Taylor and to this union were born Ruth and Harry Lee and another child Fred who died in infancy. Mother was ten years older than her half-sister Ruth and twenty years older than Harry. She lived in Tennessee with her grandparents while her father and stepmother and their children lived in Arkansas. Still Mother felt very close to Ruth they called each other “Sister” and her little half-brother Harry. There are many stories about Harry’s escapades; he must have been the original “Dennis the Menace”. For instance, he enjoyed talking all the books out of the bookcases and throwing them out the window; he buried a cat alive once but his mother rescued it just in time; he turned the sorghum barrel over and let all the sticky sweet stuff run onto the smokehouse floor, then spread the dirty linens from the washhouse over the mess and walked around on it, loving the squishy feeling of the molasses oozing up between his toes. Harry married rather late in life. His wife, Forrest Anderson, had been married before and had a little boy about five years old. Harry adopted the boy who was allowed to choose a new name for himself, so he became James Dale Agee. Ruth married Everett Ensor. They both loved children and were very good to all of us. We called out aunt “Auntie” (pronounced ahn-tee). She played the piano very well and could really make our old piano dance. I particularly loved to hear her play “Kitten on the Keys” and “Turkey in the Straw.” Uncle Everett had a beautiful bass voice and when he sang his great Adam’s apple bobbed up and down on his long neck. He was tall and thin with black curly hair, not exactly a handsome man, I think he was too angular, but his long neck and prominent Adam’s apple always fascinated me. Auntie had black straight hair and brown eyes as did Harry. Mother, by contrast, had brown curly hair and blue eyes which must have come from her mother since Grandpa had black curly hair and brown eyes.
As I mentioned, Auntie and Uncle Everett loved children and I am sure they would have had many of their own if they could have. They took a little boy into their home when the boy, Joe Higgins, was about four years old. Joe’s mother had died leaving several children and his father allowed him to live with Auntie and Uncle Everett even though he would never give him up to be adopted legally. When Joe grew up, he had his name changed to Ensor.
Auntie gave birth to a little girl who lived only a few days. Later they had John Everett, named for our grandfather and Uncle Everett. John Everett died of pneumonia at the age of eight, a terrible tragedy for Auntie and Uncle Everett and for all of us. I was in college at the time of his death. Some years later, when Auntie was in her forties, she gave birth to a little girl, Lucy Margaret. Her parents were so delighted to have another child and they spoiled her terribly. When she became a young woman, her parents simply could not cope with her escapades although they never gave up trying and never stopped loving her with all their hearts.
Auntie died of cancer which I think started in her ovaries. Uncle Harry died of lung caner; he lived just three months after his cancer was diagnosed.
So much for aunts, uncles and cousins. As you see, we had one half-aunt, one half-uncle, each of whom had one living child. Although our parents had many first cousins, we never had an opportunity to know hem well since they all lived in Tennessee while we grew up in Arkansas.
When I was about 8 or 9 years old, the Agee families living in Tennessee and Arkansas decided to have a reunion. The date chosen was July 4th and the place was a spot on the Mississippi River. The Arkansas Agees drove to Cottonwood Point near Blytheville where there was a ferry that took us across the river to Tennessee. There were about 25 people attending that first picnic, but the following year when the reunion was repeated word had gotten around and a crowd of several hundred attended. In a way we enjoyed these reunions, although it was always hot and dusty and humid at that time of year. WE all agreed, however, that we hated listening to the relatives saying over and over “Well, well, so you’re Jim and Mattie’s youngun- my how you’ve grown” especially me, since I was such a slow “grower.”
For several summers following the reunions many long-lost relatives came to visit us. Poor mother was exhausted from cooking and cleaning and making “Baptist pallets” on the floor (that’s where the children slept, of course) for the constant stream of guests. It seemed that as soon as one group departed another group arrived. For so many years there had been practically no family communication and then suddenly all these cousins, aunts and uncles whom we did not know at all arrived to vacation with “Jim and Mattie.” Although Mother was happy to see the relatives, I know she was worn out with entertaining. For some reason we never returned their visits.
Daddy’s mother was born in Mississippi in 1858. She was one of the youngest children of James C. and Eliza J. (Farmer) Goodwin. She was named Martha Pamelia Eleanor but was called Mattie as many girls named Martha were in those days. Our name for her was “Massie” because when her first grandchild, my brother Guy Wilbur, was little he started to call her “Ma” as my father did but somehow the Ma turned into “Massie.” She lived with Mother and Daddy after her husband, William Preston Agee, died, which was probably soon after Mother and Daddy were married. Later she married her brother-in-law James Monroe Agee our “Uncle Jim.” William Preston, called Billie, died of tuberculosis (they called it consumption in that time) I believe. After his death, Mother and Daddy and Massie moved from Tennessee to Arkansas where Daddy worked for a while with his father-in-law, our grandfather John Marion Wilkins Agee, as a carpenter.
Massie’s second husband, Uncle Jim, had quite a number of children by his first wife but only two were still at home when Massie and Uncle Jim were married, Alpha who married York Mitchell and Eula who married Bearden Lloyd. It appears that my father took full responsibility for seeing to the needs of Massie and Uncle Jim. I know that he set Uncle Jim up in business with a little grocery several miles out in the country from Paragould and kept it stocked with groceries from his own store in town.
After Uncle Jim died of a stroke Massie came to live with us again. She was the warmest, dearest person in my life always loving and ready to listen but never interfering in our lives or decisions, never criticizing or trying to discipline us. Although she told me some stories about her childhood in Mississippi, I regret to say that I remember very little. She told me that she and her brother John, who was about a year older than she and whom we knew because he lived in Paragould also, made “loblollies” in the cotton fields. When I asked her what a loblolly was, she explained that they would jump up and down in one spot until water would ooze up through the sand and make a “fine puddle.” She spoke most often of her sister Caroline. I was under the impression that Caroline was the oldest and took over the care of the younger children when their mother died (when Massie was four years old) but in looking over some family records I find that Caroline was only six years older than Massie. Still, being ten years of age when their mother died, she very well may have been the one who took over the care of her little four-year old sister. A scrap of paper found among Massies’ things listed the children in her family as follows: William T. born in 1846; Sara A. K. (called Kizzie) 1848; James T 1849; Marian L. 1850; Caroline E. 1852; another child (I cannot make out the name) 1854; John W. 1856; M.P.E. (Massie) 1858; and infant son no name given so I presume he died at birth 1859; Leander (called Lannie) 1860; and George A 1862. Their mother died February 14, 1862, about three weeks after the birth of George, at the age of “40 years, 8 months and 11 days.” This same paper stated that James C. Goodwin (Massie’s father) died September 19, 1894 “aged 80 years, one month and 14 days.” Massie’s sister Kizzie married an Agee also and she gave birth to twin girls. I am sure that Massie told me that tow of the nieces married Agees as well.
The Goodwins were living in Mississippi during the Civil War and Massie recalled that they always knew when the Yankees were coming because their chickens would run squawking into the woods. Obviously the vibrations in the earth caused by the horses’ hooves or the soldier’s marching feet would alert the chickens long before the family was able to hear them coming.
I seem to recall that she also told me that her father and mother were married in Virginia but moved to Tishomingo County, Mississippi soon after their marriage and that her mother’s parents insisted on giving her a young slave girl to care for her but that her father did not approve of slavery, so it is not clear how long the girl stayed with them.
I think Daddy’s parents, Martha Pamelia Eleanor Goodwin and William Preston Agee, must have had a very romantic courtship as I have copies of many poems and song ballads some of which I believe to have been composed by my grandfather and all of which are in his handwriting. They were mostly love ballads (although there was no music written down for them) and he signed them “Willie P Agee” and dated about 1877. Most carried some sort of symbolic signature as well I think it represented lover’s knots. My mother mentioned many times that her father-in-law had a beautiful tenor voice and that she remembered his coming home from town, riding his horse and singing at the top of his voice.
Daddy must have inherited musical talent from his father. He could sing harmony and could play any stringed instrument and loved to sing and listen to music.
My earliest recollection of being with Massie was when she and Uncle Jim were living on South Second Street in Paragould. I would go to visit and she would hold me on her good, warm, comfy lap and hug me. I never remember feeling so loved before or since, I think. She had a pet name for me “Miss Prissum Prossum.” I don’t know what she meant by that but I always thought that it meant I was special to her. I must have asked her a million questions because I remember her saying to me many times, “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies; if you’ll come to my house, I’ll bake you some pies.”
Although she suffered from diabetes in her later years, she was able to control it with diet. During all the time she lived with us, I never remember her being sick or going to the doctor. She died of a heart attack when she was 91.
My mother’s father, John Marion Wilkins Agee, and his third wife Zalena Taylor lived on a small cotton farm six miles east of Paragould near the St. Francis River (the boundary between Arkansas and Missouri). We called Mother’s stepmother “Mammie.” Mother was very fond of “Mama” as she called her; she called her father “Papa.” I remember visiting Grandpa and Mammie in the summer. It was the only time in my entire life to be on a real “working” farm with the smell of hay and barns and corn cribs, with a smokehouse where the hams hung, with a pump in the kitchen that had to be primed (water poured down into it and a handle pumped up an down vigorously) before you could get the water flowing, with chickens and ducks running loose in the yard, with a beautiful long grape arbor and a lovely tall hedge of crepe myrtle in the front yard, with smoky oil lamps in the kitchen and dining rooms and one bright Aladdin lamp in the living room, with the best chicken and dumplings in the whole world cooked by Mammie especially for us, with the outdoor toilet where we really did use Sears-Roebuck catalogs for toilet paper. One summer stands out especially in my mind because I picked cotton along with the hired pickers and when we went up to have our “pickings” weighed Grandpa put my little paper sack on the scale and promptly paid me in pennies the first money I ever earned and I loved it and was so proud. Incidentally, all the workers on Grandpa’s farm were white as there were no black people in that area.
Grandpa had cataracts on both eyes but he never had an operation to have them removed. I have been told that he was saying grace at the table one day and when he said “Amen” and raised his head he was completely blind. He remained active, however. According to Mother, he said he wanted “to wear out, not rust out,” a philosophy to which my mother also ascribed wholeheartedly.
I am not certain when Auntie and Uncle Everett and their children Joe and John Everett moved to the farm with Grandpa and Mammie, but I think John Everett was about four when Grandpa lost his eyesight and they were constant companions until Grandpa died. I loved my only grandfather very much and felt a deep sense of loss when he died of cancer. I remember him as a gentle, soft-spoken, generous and caring person. He always had a pipe in his mouth and always smelled of tobacco. He had a big gray moustache and had his own moustache cup for his coffee. I loved Mammie too and I know she loved all of us.
Contributed by: , daughter of Kathleen Agee Goodwin