1942
I have lived a lifetime since yesterday. I don’t know how it will all end. Nona & Leonard & June came over.
1943-No entry
1944-No entry
1945-No entry
1946-No entry
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Martha Marie Wright Tennant – Five Year Diary
Five Year Diary
I have Grama’s 5 year diary. I have felt like I have gotten to know Grama more after reading the diary so I thought it would be fun to post a page a day until we have all read the entire diary together. This is an insight into her life that we could not have had before, partly since it is before our time. Some entries are easier to read than others but they all add to our knowledge of who and where we came from.
If you don’t know how a 5 year diary works, it is very easy. Each page is one calendar day with 5 sections, one for each year. Grama started hers in 1942 but had no entries in 1946. Even for 1942 through 1945, she didn’t have an entry every day. I will start the posts tomorrow.
I hope that you enjoy knowing Grama more as we work through the year. As you read the entries, if they jog a memory of any stories you have heard from Grama or Grampa or another family member, leave a comment so we can all add to our knowledge of this wonderful woman and her life.
Coakley – Bullitt County, Kentucky
Map of Kentucky with Bullitt County highlighted
The first time I ever heard of Bullitt County was when I started researching my paternal grandmother, Georgia Mary Coakley Stevens. This is the county in which she lived during her childhood and where my father was born. Her family had been in Kentucky for several generations by that time. More on that in another post.
Bullitt County was founded in 1796 and is located in the far western Bluegrass region known as the Knobs.
European colonization of the Americas led to competing claims to the lands west of the Appalachians and east of the Mississippi river with France ultimately ceding control to Britain at the end of the French and Indian War in 1763. Veterans of the war were promised land and in 1773 Captain Thomas Bullitt was sent on a surveying expedition of the area around the Falls of the Ohio by the governor of Virginia. During his explorations of the land that would become Bullitt County, he came upon an unusually large salt lick subsequently named after him: Bullitt’s Lick. [6]
Bullitt’s Lick became an important saltwork to the region – supplying salt by pack train and flatboat as far off as Illinois. In fact, the Bullitt’s Lick saltwork was Kentucky’s first industry and in production until around 1830, when the steamboat and importation brought access to less expensive sources of salt.
The first settlement of the area and the first station on the Wilderness Road between Harrodsburg and the Falls of the Ohio was a fort called Brashear’s Station or the Salt River Garrison, built in 1779 at the mouth of Floyd’s Fork. Shepherdsville, named after Adam Shepherd – a prosperous business man who purchased the land near the Falls of Salt River in 1793, is the oldest town and became the county seat.
In December of 1796[1] the county of Bullitt – named after Thomas Bullitt’s nephew and Kentucky’s first Lieutenant Governor Alexander Scott Bullitt – was created from land given by Jefferson and Nelson counties through an act approved on December 13, 1796 by the Kentucky General Assembly. In 1811, the northwestern area of the county expanded to include land given by Jefferson County. In 1824, an eastern area of the county was given to help form Spencer County.[7]
Posted in Coakley
Tagged Bluegrass region, Bluegrass Region of Kentucky, Bullitt, Coakley, Knobs region, the knobs
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Stevens – Henry Burl Stevens Jr. and Patriotism
Patriotism has many faces. My father, Henry Burl Stevens Jr (1924 – 1997), served in World War II as did many men of his age and he carried his deep patriotism throughout his life. According to his sister, Barbara Mary Stevens McKay, he once refused to allow a woman to board his Greyhound bus (he was a driver) because she had an American flag sewn across her tush. I never knew that about him until she filled me in last year but I don’t have any trouble believing it.
Posted in Stevens
Tagged Henry Burl Stevens Jr, Patriotism, Rene Baron, World War II
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Stevens – Henry Burl Stevens Jr – Greyhound Bus
Proud to be a Greyhound bus driver
My dad, Henry Burl Stevens Jr (1924-1997) drove a Greyhound bus for much of his working life. He loved the job. He had many stories to tell us about his work. Some of them are as follows:
He drove charters quite often. Sometimes he drove charters to the Lawrence Welk show in Southern California. When he would take charters anywhere he always got into wherever they were going for free. So he took advantage of those opportunities to experience many new things. The charters to the Lawrence Welk show were mainly full of older ladies. If you are old enough to remember the show, you’ll remember that the audience danced to the orchestra of Lawrence Welk. My father was quite a good looking man and he loved to dance. And, he was one of the few men along on the trip so he always danced with the ladies from his charter. Once, we were watching the Lawrence Welk show at home and saw our father dancing past the camera, steering an older lady around the floor. They both looked like they were having fun. LOL Our family really teased him about that.
He liked to gamble and loved to take charters to Las Vegas, Nevada. He didn’t get rich but I don’t think he lost too much on those charters. He loved to see the nightclub acts.
He drove Bracero workers up to the US from Mexico many times. The Bracero Program was a program where contract workers would be brought up to the US to work the fields for a specific period of time and then bused back home again when the crops were done. He loved Mexico and enjoyed those trips. In those days, drivers used amphetamines to ensure that they would stay awake on long drives and my father was no exception. It was just something a lot of them did and they didn’t have any idea it might be harmful to their health. Scary, right? (Some housewives of the day took them as well when they needed extra energy to do a deep housecleaning.) If you know anything about amphetamines, you know that they give you super energy and you lose your appetite. He got so run down by working long hours at high energy without sleep and not eating right that he picked up tuberculosis on his runs to Mexico and had to be in a TB sanitarium for quite awhile. I’ll write more about that another time.
He also love his runs to Flagstaff, Arizona. He loved the area so much.
He often took groups to sporting events in California. He like those because he said that they drank so much, they tipped really well. LOL
For awhile he had a regular run from Santa Maria, CA where we lived to Santa Barbara, CA. But, he never enjoyed the routine as well as he did the charter jobs. I think he liked the change from his regular routine as well as the tips.
After he retired, I could see that he regretted going when he did. He missed the driving, the meeting new people, and seeing new areas.
Stevens – Mark, Tim, Dave, Don, and Jerry Stevens
Mark, Tim, Dave, Don, & Jerry Stevens taken in the 1950s in Indiana.
These are five of my thirteen cousins. They are the children of Bill and Patty Stevens. Bill is my father’s (Henry Burl Stevens Jr) brother. He and his family lived in Indiana and we lived in California. Every time we took our regular summer vacation to Indiana Aunt Patty was pregnant. After four pregnancies and five boys (Dave and Don are twins), Aunt Patty was asked if she was game to try again for a girl. She said no because when she had one more child then everyone would ask if she was going to keep going and try for an even dozen!
The note on the back of the photo says “Jerry wasn’t very happy about having to stand still long enough to get his picture taken.” Jerry is the baby and you can see that he is unhappy. Dave and Don are focused on someone other than the photographer. The only ones paying attention are Mark and Tim.
Wright – Resource
I am working my way through this book. It is invaluable for information about most of our Farmland, Indiana family. I’ll be posting many tidbits of information from this book in the next few weeks.
Wandering Through My Roots 