Mam-ma's Southern Family

It is written down now, but this is oral history my grandmother, Pansy Louise Lancaster Johnston, told me while we discussed family history. [1] She was in her nineties when she told me these snippets of her life. I’m working on the story of her life and these are excerpts from the manuscript. Pansy thought life was fun. She played in the fields, picked violets, climbed trees, played with dolls, and played in the creek catching crawdads or minnows.  “I once put a live crawdad in a little match box and put it the barn. Well, I forgot all about it and when I found it later, it was all orange and dead. It was the first time I realized things can die.” She remembered living in a two-story house when about three or four. Her father was very ill with typhoid fever and she wasn’t allowed to see him. He nearly died. This was around 1917 and he did not serve in World War I like others in the area because of this. [2] School was three miles away and she had to walk through fields, o...

Olivia Jane Jones married Reuben Mack Johnston on 23 December 1879 in Comanche County, Texas. They took out the license the day before and were married the next day by Q. V. Crump, Justice of the Peace. [1] Census Records for Olivia The marriage in December was just in time to be enumerated in January 1880: Johnston, M. Reubin, w, m, self, 39 yrs, mar, farmer, Alabama, SC, SC J. Olivia , wife, mar, 21, keeping house, MS, VA, MS E. M. Martha, dau, female, 8, s, at home, TX, AL, TX D Lola, dau, 6, s, at home, TX, AL, TX C Ocia, dau, 2, s, at home, TX, AL, TX As we can see from the place of birth for the children’s mother in Alabama, that these three children were not Olivia’s, but rather the children from Reuben’s first marriage with Catharine. Oliva was born in Mississippi about 1859 to parents born in Virginia and Mississippi. [2] The neighbors of Reuben and Olivia included kin of Olivia: Thomas W. Jones, Bettie E. Knox, Laura E. Jones, Mattie M. Jones, and Mary F. Wright. ...