COURTIN' IN THE GOOD, OLE DAYS: Frank and Ressie Vick Kendrick

I’ve had a request for more Early Settlers posts, so here’s one of my favorites about “Courtin’ in the Good Ole Days” from my Early Settlers of the K-Springs/Chelsea Area book. Frank and Ressie Vick Kendrick (both now deceased) told it to me around 1974 for a newspaper article I was writing. I’m not sure how old she was at the time, but Frank was close to 90 years old. (He was born July 1887.)

Ressie’s family was from Joiner Town between Columbiana and old East Saginaw, which is now part of Chelsea. But her father George Vick moved the family around a lot, she said, following his work with a timber-cutting operation. That’s how they came to live at East Saginaw where she met Frank Kendrick.

They didn’t actually play together as children, Ressie said, because they were both very bashful. But Frank found ways to get her attention.

She recounted with a smile, while Frank just listened and grinned, “One day I was out in the yard washing clothes for Mama’s twin babies, when directly something shined in my face, and it was him out on the porch with a mirror.”

“Do you remember the first letter I ever wrote you?” he asked her.

She did, of course, but he told the story anyway for my benefit -- and because he was enjoying their remembrances as much as Ressie and I were.

“It was when I was a teenager and worked for Saginaw Lumber Company. I would walk right past her house going to the railroad track where I rode on a hand car to the lumber company. Well, on this particular morning, I walked up close to the open front door and tossed a letter to her inside the house.”
Ressie confided that his first talk of marriage was also in a letter. But they later made wedding plans in person, sitting in the parlor at the Vick home. She told him that night, “You’ll have to ask Daddy.”

“Well, you’ll have to go in there with me to ask him,” he told her.

So Ressie agreed and together they headed for the room where Mr. Vick sat. But just as they reached his open doorway, Ressie slipped on by it, leaving Frank to face her father alone.

Sixty-plus years later, sitting under a shade tree with Frank and me, she still found amusement in the trick she’d played that day. “I went out and hid behind the house until the men folk finished their talking.” she laughed.

Frank Kendrick and Ressie Vick were married on July 26, 1908.

OLD K-SPRINGS SCHOOL PICTURES

SCHOOL HOUSE ABOVE THE SPRINGS

more K-Springs/Chelsea history........

In September of 1881, Elmira Kendrick's son Luther bought from her the property she had purchased at the 1873 tax sale, and on which Luther had built the family's log cabin. Elmira and youngest child Mary continued to live in the cabin with Luther and with his family after he married.
According to the recollections of Luther Kendrick’s son Clifton (now deceased) it was around 1896 that Luther donated land for a school building at K-Springs. The building was erected on the hill above the springs, where the old K-Springs Church building now stands along side County Road 39. Some thirty years ago, when I was putting together the K-Springs/Chelsea book, several older citizens of the community shared with me some stories about the school.
Clifton Kendrick started first grade there in 1899. “We had two classes of geography; one was an advanced geography class,” he said.
Mable Shirley Peters still had an old blue-back speller and a report card from the school. During the 1922-23 school term, she was in the eighth grade, her teacher was Cecile Prather and she studied arithmetic, grammar, state history, algebra and science.

Cecil Kendrick, son of Luther, said teacher, Judge Harper, told the students, “Always tell the truth if it takes the skin off your nose.”

Ressie Vick Kendrick (wife of O. Frank Kendrick) recalled walking to school at K-Springs from old East Saginaw. In the winter time they would get ice on their shoes walking on the muddy road. “When we get to Spencer’s house (the little house in the deep bend of Road 39 just before the intersection with Road 36) his wife would have the fireplace full and want us to stop and warm.”

A.P. Niven recalled that he “went under the hill and got a bucket of water and brought it up to the school. We made paper cups to drink from,” he said.  He recalled, too, “We had syrup buckets to take our lunch to school in. We had whatever we could carry from home in a bucket.”

Clifton said that, since Luther’s children lived near the school, they would run home at noon “to get that buttermilk and potatoes.” He had an easy half-mile run home, down the long hill behind the building and up another short hill to their cabin, he said, but the uphill return to school after lunch was a little harder. Still, he would run back so he could meet friends before class “took up” for a quick game of ball. (The ball field was across the road from the school, where the K-Springs cemetery is now located.)



Story and photo taken from EARLY SETTLERS OF THE K-SPRINGS/CHELSEA AREA
by Shelba Shelton Nivens  (email for permission to quote or copy shelbasn@juno.com)

DISCOVERY AT K-SPRINGS

As undergrowth was cleared from the K-Springs property Elmira Kendrick had purchased at the 1873 tax sale, five springs were discovered.

Jemima Kendrick, my husband Ken’s grandmother told me, when I was researching for the K-Springs/Chelsea book, “Grandpa (Elmira Kendrick’s son Jud) told me this now. There was one spring of pure water. Further down the branch, nearer the cabin, was a spring of sulfur water, and one was a mixture of minerals. Grandpa told me that the water containing a mixture of minerals is called kalebrate.”

She could not recall the type of water in the other two springs. Other early visitors to the springs recalled that one of them had copper water.

Clifton Kendrick (grandson of Elmira, son of Luther) recalled that the family used water from the sulfur spring, except for washing clothes. It would stain clothing, he said, so “Aunt Mary” (Elmira’s youngest child) would take them to a spring “way over at Uncle Elbert’s.” (Elbert Kendrick lived along where there is now an empty lot east of the Edgar Smith family lives.

Clifton speculated, “The spring of free-stone water must not have been discovered until after the year 1900, because it was a big spring of pretty, clear water.”
After its discovery, people came from all around to wash clothes, bathe the kids and take home bucketsful the pretty, clear water for other household uses. For many years it provided water, not only for private homes, but for a church, parsonage and school.

It was from these springs on the Kendrick property that the community, school and church derived their name.

Story and photo taken from EARLY SETTLERS OF THE K-SPRINGS/CHELSEA AREA

by Shelba Shelton Nivens

(email for permission to quote or copy shelbasn@juno.com)

PLEASE PRAY FOR MY BROTHER TOM

I, my sister Nina, and brother Joe went to the doctor with our youngest sibling, Tommy, yesterday. His doctor is an Oncologist with Birmingham Hematology and Oncology Associates. L.L.C. at the Shelby Cancer Care Center next door to the hospital in Alabaster. We all liked her very much. She is kind, seems very caring, but straight-forward and tells it like it is.


He has primary liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).  The doctor says it is in Stage 3, at least. Tumors are all in the liver, both lobes. The don't know yet if it has gotten outside the liver, which would be a Stage 4, the hightest Stage number

He is to be treated with a new chemo durg, Nexavar (Sorafenib), in hopes it will shrink at least some of the tumors/lesions. She says it will be slow acting, gave him info on the cancer and the treatment and some other things to be working on while she gets the med approved for him.

I looked both up on the internet. Sounds really, really, serious, but she seems to think there is some hope that he will get some better. Said it's a team effort, she will do her part (as long as he stops drinking his beer), he'll have to do his part, then we'll just have to trust God to do His part. She seemed glad to see so many of his siblings with him. Said he is going to have to have a lot of support.

I talked to him late this evening, and he sounds good. He's been working on getting his disability set up like she told him to, and was gathering up his beer cans, the empty ones and the full ones, to get rid of them.



Please say a prayer for him. Thank you.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

Elmira Gilbert Kendrick, the woman who purchased the K-Springs property at the 1873 tax sale (in my June 19 Blog) was the widow of Isham H. Kendrick, son of the first Kendrick to this area. Isham had joined the Civil War in 1862, but was discharged less that three months later because of a “chronic hepatic disease.”


This is part of the tale about his wife and the K-Springs property at Chelsea, Alabama as taken from my local history, EARLY SETTLERS OF THE K-SPRINGS/CHELSEA AREA:

“On December 29, 1866, in the bitter cold of winter, a tiny baby girl was born to Elmira Kendrick, widow of Isham H. Kendrick. Three years later, in the winter of 1869-70, Elmira was so deeply in debt that in order to pay creditors and make a crop in the spring, she mortgaged her land and “all the crop corn and cotton to be raised in the year 1870.

"She was to keep possession of the land until November 1, 1870 when the debt was to be paid in full with interest.  If in default, creditors (Duran and Nelson) were to take into possession the land and sell it to the highest bidder to pay the debt...." (Statements by descendants indicate where this land might have been.)

"It appears that Elmira, her children and daughter-in-law Carrie (Carrie Ann Davis Kendrick), worked together through the summer of 1870 to raise enough corn and cotton to pay off creditors and hold onto her land.  Furthermore, only a short time later, Elmira began to acquire additional land.  According to later deeds -- and to family members at K-Springs -- she owned a 'right smart of land' in this area.  (Statements by descendants attested to this fact)

"In 1873, at a public tax sale, Elmira bought for $8.75, the south half of the southwest quarter of Section 4, Township 20, Range One West, on which the old K-Springs Church of God building is located....

"(The late) Luther Kendrick... passed on to his children the information that he was but a boy, fifteen years of age, when he became head of the house (remember, his father had died in 1866) and built a cabin for the family on the K-Springs property...."

Around 1980, when I was compiling the book, some of the now-deceased children of Luther Kendrick described the cabin to me as follows:

Flora Kendrick Nivens: ""It was one room originally, I think, with additional rooms added later.  There was a kitchen built separately, just a little piece from the house with a walk going out to it."

Clifton Kendrick:  "It had a big room and a back room and two side rooms and a long kitchen out back with a fireplace.  My mother had a loom there (the kitchen) and I helped her make cloth.  ...There was not a lot of furniture in the house and that in one room.  My mother had rope cords in the bed for springs.

"The cabin was located about one quarter mile back in the woods behind where the old K-Springs Church of God building and (former) parsonage now stand on the south side of County Highway 39...."

Next installment:  A discovery near the cabin.

Story taken from EARLY SETTLERS OF THE K-SPRINGS/CHELSEA AREA

by Shelba Shelton Nivens
(email for permission to quote or copy shelbasn@juno.com)

Begetting a Community

“It was over a century and a half ago that James Lewis Kendrick, with his wife, children and several other relatives, left South Carolina to beat a path through the wilderness to the new Alabama Territory. Today, descendants of this little band of pioneers are scattered throughout Shelby County in the heart of the State of Alabama. There is, in fact, a thriving rural community along about the center of the county which was named for the Kendrick family.


“‘Kendrick Springs’ the place was first called when early settlers would meet at springs located on property purchased by a Kendrick widow at an 1873 tax sale, to do the family wash, bathe the kids, and carry home buckets of water for other household uses. (The springs were located down the hill behind the little white church building where St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church meets.) The name (of the community) has now been shortened to “K-Springs” but the Kendricks and their descendants still make up a large portion of the community’s population. It is the Kendricks of Kendrick Springs -- and other pioneers who helped to carve out of the wilderness a loving, caring community -- that we wish to share on these pages.”

*****

This is the beginning of a book of local history that I wrote around thirty years ago. Over 100 people came to the first book signing on the day it came off the press. Since then it has sold to people across the country and in Australia. It is now in its third printing.

Since there still seems to be an interest in the story of these early settlers, and since the woods, hills and hollows surrounding the community are now filled with sub-divisions full of people who may know nothing about the people who once lived where they live, I thought I would tell a little of their stories in future blogs. I’ll take most of the stories from the book, and maybe a few from a play script I wrote several years ago about the history of the K-Springs church and community people.

I hope you find their stories as interesting as I did as I wrote and put them together.

Story taken from EARLY SETTLERS OF THE K-SPRINGS/CHELSEA AREA

by Shelba Shelton Nivens
(email for permission to quote or copy shelbasn@juno.com)