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.

Charles Franklin McNair (1878-1968)

 

History Sheet

Charles Franklin McNair

            written by Carolita Quillin 1990

            taken from my 1st McNair Booklet

            

 Recollections from a Granddaughter

 

FRANK McNAIR

By Carolita Jones Quillin

Compiled by Nancy Quillin Long

Born February 5, 1878, at Saint Jo, Arkansas.  He was one of 10 children born to Mack Manilus McNair, who farmed 165 acres of land.  Seventy acres lay at the side of Boston Mountain, part of a mountain range in Arkansas.  Frank attended a rural school finishing formal schooling at an academy in Valley Springs.  He did not have a degree but was a certified schoolteacher.

 He 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 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.

 In 1909, seven years after his first call from God in 1902, Papa preached his first sermon while he was visiting his father in Jones County.  His family was of the Methodist religion.  One of Mama's brothers who was a Baptist preacher baptized Papa, and he started preaching as a Baptist.  He pastored small churches that could not support a full-time preacher.  He pastored at Guion, a town 26 miles southwest of Abilene.  He continued to support his family teaching school. He was my mother's teacher until she was in the third grade.

Papa served as Associational Missionary in Callahan County for four years.  Two more daughters were born in Abilene.  Ova Orene was born in 1913, and Lillian Frankie was born in 1914.  He moved to Tolbert, Texas, in Wilbarger County in 1919, a small town just a few miles north of Vernon.  He served as Associational Missionary there for two years.  A daughter, Ada Benona (Bennie) was born there March 19, 1919.  During the time Papa served as Associational Misssionary, he traveled by horse and buggy.  He would occupy these distances and times reading and studying the Bible. He moved to Thalia Baptist Church in Foard County in 1920-21. He then moved to Margaret, Texas, a small town a few miles north of Crowell in Foard County.  He was at this church for ten months.  In 1924 he went to Lockett, a small town 10 miles west of Vernon in Wilbarger County.  Lockett Baptist Church was organized with 12 members.  They met in the Lockett School Facilities.  The church was built under his leadership.  He was there for 12 years.  He moved to Electra, Texas, in Wichita County to a rural church outside of Delhi, Oklahoma.  This was the largest church he pastored with a membership of 500.  From there he moved to Hess, Oklahoma, and retired from there in 1948 at the age of 70.  He built his retirement home himself in Lockett. Texas, and lived there until his death December 9, 1968, at the age of 90.

I remember Papa as having reddish blonde hair and a fair, ruddy complexion and freckles.  He was not fat but had a little rotund belly.  He was rather a practical joker and somewhat of a clown.  I always took him seriously because I could never tell if he was joking.  He was stooped and crippled up pretty bad with arthritis, but he was active and alert and cared for himself as long as he lived.  He worked jigsaw and crossword puzzles and was a very well-read man. He was a great whittler of wood and carved wooden people and animals out of wood.  He always raised a large garden, working his ground with a homemade plow which he would hitch to himself. I wish I could have known him better.

The Master’s Hand

 When I was a young teacher, I acquired the position of being a coach of the oral readers. They competed with teams from other schools. After tryouts, I would spend days searching for the perfect piece to be read aloud, something that could be read with different voice inflections. When I found this poem by Myra Brooks Welch, I was blown away with her profound words. This would be a moving piece for the perfect person, Dana Slay. After coaching her, she TOTALLY embraced the meaning and the emotions of this poem. She was awarded the Blue Ribbon for her performance. Though I have lost track of Dana, I will never forget the impact of this poem on me and others. There are “many a man with life out of tune.” 

https://1.bp.blogspot.com

The Touch of the Master's Hand

'Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer

      Thought it scarcely worth his while

To waste much time on the old violin,

      But held it up with a smile.

"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,

    "Who'll start the bidding for me?"

"A dollar, a dollar. Then two! Only two?

      Two dollars, and who'll make it three?"

"Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;

      Going for three…" But no,

From the room, far back, a grey-haired man

      Came forward and picked up the bow;

Then wiping the dust from the old violin,

      And tightening the loosened strings,

He played a melody pure and sweet,

      As a caroling angel sings.

The music ceased, and the auctioneer,

      With a voice that was quiet and low,

Said: "What am I bid for the old violin?"

      And he held it up with the bow.

"A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two?

      Two thousand! And who'll make it three?

Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice,

    And going and gone," said he.

The people cheered, but some of them cried,

    "We do not quite understand.

What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:

    "The touch of the Master's hand."

And many a man with life out of tune,

      And battered and scarred with sin,

Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd

      Much like the old violin.

A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine,

    A game — and he travels on.

He is "going" once, and "going" twice,

    He's "going" and almost "gone."

But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd

    Never can quite understand

The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought

    By the touch of the Master's hand.

Myra Welch would say that she heard a speaker address a group of students on the power of God to bring out the best in people. She said she herself became filled with light and that “Touch of the Master’s Hand” was written in 30 minutes!.
The finished poem was sent anonymously to the editor of her local church news bulletin. She felt it was a gift from God and didn’t need her name on it.

http://www.barefootsworld.net/touch.html