Papa - The Preacher

 Papa is baptized c.1902

Photo courtesy of Carolita Jones Quillin 

Uncle Perry baptizing Papa. Papa is just to Perry's left. Mama is standing on the bank with a blanket. Perry King was Mama's (Ella Vermell King) brother. 

Photo courtesy of Carolita Jones Quillin

Frank McNair baptizing converts c.1920

In my blogpost date July 23, 2023, I give the recollections of Papa's granddaughter, my mother, Carolita Jones Quillin. She gives a full account of Charles Franklin McNair's ministry. Below, I will list the places and dates as given to me by Mother. As far as accuracy, I can only go on what was written by her. 

• 1902 - called by God to preach
• preached first sermon while visiting his father in Jones County, Texas
• began to pastor small churches that couldn't support a full time preacher
• pastored at Guion, 26 miles SW of Abilene
• served as Associational Missionary from Guion, traveling by horse and buggy
• 1920-1921 Thalia Baptist Church in Foard County, Texas
• Margaret, a small town north of Crowell for 10 months
• 1924- Locket, 10 miles west of Vernon, Texas. He organized the Lockett Baptist Church with 12 members. They met in the Lockett School facilities. The church was built under his leadership. He lived in Lockett for about 13 years.
• Moved to Electra, Texas and preached at a church outside of Delhi, Oklahoma. This was the largest church he pastored with a membership of 500. 
• moved to Hess, Oklahoma and retired from there in 1948 at the age of 70.
• 1948 - returned to Lockett and built his retirement home where he lived until 1968.
• 1968 - died at the age of 90

For any history buffs, I had never heard of Guion. I found it in the following website as a Texas ghost town. Quite interesting. 

Guion, Texas, Taylor County ghost town. (texasescapes.com)

Guion was formed in 1879 as a stage and mail stop. The Lemon's Gap Baptist church moved to Guion in 1883 and held its first service in the Union Church on September 12, 1886. When the railroad came through in 1910, the original settlement became known as Old Guion and the community was moved three miles to be near the railroad. 

http://texasescapes.com/Counties/Taylor-County-Texas.htm

The map is courtesy of the Texas General Land Office, Taylor County 1920

Frank McNair - The Teacher

 

Charles Franklin McNair (Papa) was born on 5 February 1878, at Saint Jo, Arkansas.  He was one of 10 children born to Mack Manilus McNair, who farmed 165 acres of land.  Seventy of those acres lay at the side of Boston Mountain, part of a mountain range in Arkansas.  Papa attended a rural school finishing formal schooling at an academy in Valley Springs.  He did not have a degree but was a certified schoolteacher.
 
Papa moved to Texas in 1900 at the age of 22. He worked in a General Store and taught school at Blevins.  Papa said that God called him to preach in 1902, but he continued to teach school.  He taught in McLellan County, and one of his pupils was Ella Vermell King.  He married her June 6, 1903. Ava Ella was born on April 21, 1904.  She was only 19 days old when Papa moved to Taylor County.  He continued teaching school and did some carpenter work.  He lost one of his eyes when he was struck by a flying nail.  He had one glass eye, but you really couldn't tell it was false.  He taught school in Shackelford County.  A son, Bernie was born sometime along in this time frame.  This child died in childhood 6-8 years old. He had some kind of kidney disease.

Papa's Education

 Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.   ~William Butler Yeats

Education for Charles Franklin McNair

Following a lead after I re-read Mother’s memories of Papa. I investigated her recollections of Papa’s training at a rural school. Mother recalled that Mack, his father, had farmed 165 acres near Boston Mountain in the vicinity of St. Joe. This all proves to be correct as I investigated a map. Mother mentioned that Frank had attended a finishing school at an academy in Valley Springs. I researched the history of Valley Springs and this is all correct. Boston Mountains are on the map nearby. The website mentions a Boat Mountain that I will investigate.  See the below information from the website:

https://valley.k12.ar.us/our-school-history/

Twin Springs, as Valley Springs was originally called, was so named because of the two springs that ran to the surface in this small Ozark valley. It may have been the source of fresh water that led the original families to settle here in the shadow of Boat Mountain. Not a great deal is known about the origin of the Valley Springs community, but what is clear is that the first citizens saw an important need for educating their young. It is apparent that the educational process has always been at the center of the community's interest. Soon after the Civil War, three learning academies were established in Boone County: Bellefonte, Rally Hill, and Valley Springs. Around the turn of the century, great improvements were noted in the academy at Valley Springs, and it emerged as the leader of the three. In 1912, the North Arkansas Conference of Methodist Churches felt a need to establish a high school in the Ozarks. Valley Springs, with its academic background, was selected, and it became Valley Springs Training School.

 There was much more history of the schools there, but only the early history applied to my research of my great-grandfather, Charles Franklin McNair…for me, he was Papa.

My Ancestry Page - Frank McNair & Daughter Ava

 I am so thankful for my earthly roots. Here is part of my humble beginnings.

My Grandmother - Ava Ella McNair Jones

aka: Ava, Mimi

My Great-Grandfather 

Charles Franklin McNair

aka: Frank, Papa

The Old Water Well

Old GEM Hand-Cranked Water Pump

I don't have a great picture of this old water well, so I went to the internet and was a little surprised how difficult it was to find the exact water pump that was used over Mimi and Pappy's water cistern. What I found is pictured below, and oddly it was found under the title "yesterday's tractor." I did find some old family photos that just happened to be taken near the cistern. 

Oh! The grand things that intrigue a child's mind! For me, this old water well was one of them. Thing is...I couldn't play with this by myself for long. I was very small (small for my age) and it was difficult for me to crank this thing for long. The enjoyment we had, though, as cousins playing around this cistern created memories that have lasted a lifetime. 

Pappy pictured with the old cistern.

(88) Pinterest

Though this is not our cistern, it shows the crank.

old hand water pump - Yesterday's Tractors (yesterdaystractors.com)

This is the inner workings of the pump.

Mimi and Pappy had a lot of tolerance for their 10 grandchildren, but then again, we played outside. The well was a great source of intrigue for the minds of children. It reached into the dark recesses of the earth. This diagram shows the inner workings of the well. At each bar there would have been a small bucket. As we cranked the pulley, it would lower each bucket down and around the system, filling each bucket with water. Then as it came across the top, it would dump the water into a well-placed bucket. 

At some point, we numbered each bucket, and I believe the number was somewhere around 120. It was great fun to watch the buckets begin to show signs of wetness and then produce the water. Many hours of fun and laughter, and what I thought was labor, was spent around this old well. 

Mimi and Pappy

 Ava Ella McNair Jones (1904-1985)

Joe Carroll Jones (1902-1972)

Mimi and Pappy were very very special people. I often said that Mimi was the closest thing to an angel on earth. I knew her well, as I spent lots of time with her. It was through her that I learned to know and love my great-grandparents, Ella Vermell King McNair and Charles Franklin McNair. We called them Mama and Pappa. 

Mimi would come every Wednesday to Vernon to grocery shop. She would make that drive from Crowell to Vernon, and on her way, she would stop in Thalia to pick up her father, Frank McNair (Pappa). Then Mimi would come by our house, and most of the time, I opted to go to Piggly Wiggly with them. I'm thankful for that time together because through that, I knew Pappa. On occasion, I would go back to Crowell with Mimi to stay with her and Pappy until Sunday. On Sunday, Mother and Daddy would come after church to have lunch in Crowell with the family, and I would return home with them. These visits afforded me the opportunity to play with my closest first cousin, and probably at that time, my best friend, Bob Lynch. His mother was my mother's sister and they lived next door to Mimi and Pappy. Bob and I would play contently for hours, sometimes playing at the old well, sometimes going to the swimming pool or sometimes playing the board game Wahoo under the water vapor cooler. The wahoo board was handmade by Pappy. The old water well will deserve its own post. 

                                                 Bob Martin Lynch, Faye Lynch, Bill Lynch, Jr.

                    

Bob and me, the water well on the left, Bryan playing basketball in the background.

Busting Through The Rock

                         

As I continue to write this blog on family history, I realize that I'm probably making a terrible mess of it all. I have so much information: documents, pictures, reflections, census, birth-death-marriage records. The list goes on and on. It's daunting thinking about sharing it all. It's hard to keep track of it all. Anyone reading would need to go back to some of my first posts. I shared the lineage of each line before I began. The problem now is ... that I have so much information, I get bogged down and then wonder which direction to go; what do I share at this juncture; what do I cull out; how do I move forward; how do I not get stuck in one area.

With that said I went back to my original few posts. I was excited to share my Quillin history and my trip to Ireland where I made connection with my "way back" roots. But as any good genealogist will tell you, you have to get from point A to point B to point C....and it goes on and on. 

I decided to not start with my parents and all the recollections of them and their documentation, etc. It was just too raw and there is far too much information. I may have NEVER moved forward. I loved them both so much. So, my initial goal was to look at my pedigree and start at the top of the tree with my grandparents. I knew them all, except for one, and loved them all. My dad's dad passed the year before I was born. I realize now that I have so much information on each level that it would be hard to move forward unless I skip some of it. It also brought up the problem of organizing all of this information. I purchased an external hard drive, found a model of "how to" document and save. That's overwhelming in itself. Yet, it is the MOST important thing in order to "prove yourself". 

So today I went back to reflect on my journey. I don't know how well I'm doing, but I have decided to move on to the next tier of branches on the tree. That would be my great-grandparents. This is the level where I had to begin the REALLY hard digging. The place where you begin to hit ROCK....truly the bedrock of my foundation. 

I was lucky in that I knew 3 of my great-grandparents personally, but I was a child and didn't know them well. So....I began interviewing anyone alive who knew these people; I began to contact courthouses, pound the pavement, visit cemeteries and try to connect with as much history as I could before it was gone. My mother was my sidekick. She adored traversing this journey with me. (Daddy did his share as well, as is documented in my "Memory Lane" posts.) I adored the time that I spent with each of them, listening to their stories. But I digress...The problem is that I LOVE the research and am intrigued when I find a new opening. (Mother loved writing the stories and collecting the photographs.) And as you know, each set of parents opens the door to another line and more information that would connect it all. AND I found that as I put flesh on the bones (meaning learning more about the intricate details of each family and their children), I began to sweep off the dirt, crack the rock and discover a whole new world that I never knew existed. 

So....as much as I would like to leap forward to the NEXT good stuff, I will present a little of each level and keep moving forward, leaving out some of the information. It looks far different laying here in my lap, than what it does trying to present it to you here on this blog. Far too overwhelming. As I slog through this blog, I realize that I can't focus on ALL the details that I actually possess. For a perfectionist, this is going to be tough. LOL.

New philosophy, skip some, move onto the next...and hopefully when I return back to point A, point Z will still be connected. No wonder why the Indians viewed life in a circle and not a straight line.