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Person Sheet
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| Comments Notes for Esther Mae LAWSON | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Comment: DNA testing has been done on this Lawson line, on several descendants of Travis Lawson (son of Wm. the Rebel) and at least one descendant of William Jr.'s son Jeremiah. There is a perfect 37-marker match for one of Travis's descendants and one of Wm. Jr's descendents as follows: R1b1c 13-24-14-10-11-14-12-12-13-12-29-17-9-10-11-11-25-14-19-31-14-15-17-17-10-11-19-23-16-15-17-17-35-37-13-10. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal Memoirs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Remarks by Laura Henderson-Franta,
Great-Granddaughter I remember my great-grandparents' house very clearly. It was quite a nice house in a hollow by the road in Dry Fork. The driveway passed over a small ravine through which ran a creek. On the other side there was a fishpond for Papaw Brooks's fish. I remember my cousin David Stone carrying me on his shoulders down the driveway when I was very little, and I was terrified because I seemed so terribly high above the drive and the water. The driveway seemed impossibly narrow to me, although it easily accomodated Papaw & Mamaw's car, but I was afraid David might take one false step away from the center and we'd both be off over the bank and into the pond. There were brick steps laid out in a semi-circle in the front of the house, but we didn't go in and out of the house through the front. We usually went in from the back porch, which, I remember, had a slick cement floor that was always cold under my bare feet. The kitchen was turquoise blue. The sink and counters were on the right as you went in from the porch, and the table was on the left. On the facing wall was a clock that I remember being, if not a cuckoo clock, some manner of Gothic clock with figures that came in and out of small doors. I think they had one of the fair and foul weather houses with the little man that came out if it was foul, and the woman if fair. Maybe the clock was some sort of variation on that. Papaw Brooks's collection of medicine was on the counter, and I was strictly warned away from it, although it never would have occurred to me to get into it. After you passed through the kitchen, you entered the dining room. There was a darkwood dining room set that seemed to me to be of nice quality. There was a bowl of ornamental fruit on the glossy table, and a sideboard to match the dining set, and patterned carpet of a dark wine color with roses and paisleys wove through. Just inside the door was a chair the type of which's name I can't recall, but it was one that you could hang your jacket on, and sit on to take your boots or shoes off (a Butler's chair, maybe?). Then you walked on through to the living room where there was a wonderful burgendy velvet-covered sofa and chair. The chair was by the fireplace, and Papaw Brooks sat mostly in it, while Granny Brooks sat in a recliner opposite. The soft-stiff texture of the velvet upholstery under my fingers reminded me of running my small hands across the top of Papaw B.'s white crew cut. The fireplace, Papaw B. told me, was where "Raw Hide and Bloody Bones" lived. Needless to say, I gave the home of that creature a wide berth. There was a red ceramic bull which sat atop the television set. I was fascinated with the bull and when Granny Brooks died, she specified that the bull should be left to me. I have it displayed in the condominium in Manassas today. There was some sort of sun room off of the living room at the front of the house, but I don't remember going out there except one maybe one occasion. There was outdoor style furniture, recliners and such on that sunporch. It was enclosed. I remember the bathroom being very small and dark, pink, I think. And I have very vague memories of Papaws bedroom, which faced the front of the house and had windows that made the room seem very bright to me, and Granny's the situation of which I cannot exactly recall. I do remember that in one downstairs bedroom hung a painting titled "The Lone Wolf". I was frightened of the painting and I would not sleep in that room by myself. Granny (Hazel) had to sleep with me -- if they could persuade me to spend the night there at all. I usually preferred to stay in Corder Town at Zell's, where I was dreadfully spoiled and denied nothing, and never made to bathe. Upstairs there were more rooms. For some reason I remember thinking that a pair of alligators lived upstairs, although I don't know why I thought that. I certainly never saw anything to indicate such. I think I was a bit much for Granny Brooks to handle. She would eventually get frazzled and go into the dining room and pull out an abstract plastic puzzle from the top drawer of the sideboard and give it to me to work. I was expected to sit on the living room floor when the puzzle came out, and fiddle quietly with it while she sat in her recliner to supervise. Sometimes she took me out on the back porch and opened up the large, freestanding freezer and pulled out "an ice cream" to keep me occupied. In my mind, "ice cream" meant a sugar cone with an acceptably flavoured scoop atop. In her mind, it meant a Brown Mule popsicle on a stick. I didn't care for chocolate, but I would accept the "ice cream" politely, wait for her to leave, and then slip the melting mess behind the freezer out of site. If she ever moved that freezer away from the wall she was no doubt perplexed by several petrified puddles of chocolate. Granny Brooks had a lot of costume jewelry - necklaces in particular - which I thought wonderful. Dulcie and I would load ourselves up, winding the long necklaces up our arms, around our necks, and about our heads like crowns. When Granny B. died, she left equal shares of her costume finery to both of us. I still have one or two strands today which I treasure, and I also have the prized amethyst necklace and earrings that belonged to Mamaw, although I think my mother's cousin, Kim, may have the matching bracelet. I wore the necklace and earrings at my wedding, and have recently painted a portrait of Granny B. in her youth wearing them, although I don't think she bought them until later in her life. |
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| Personal Memoirs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Remarks by Hazel Brooks Corder, Daughter Esther made a trip to California. Daughter Hazel asserts that she took her mother to "every state in the union", and to Canada and Mexico. "She never got to go hardly anywhere," Hazel stated, "so I thought it was important for Mom to be able to travel." Bud and Isabel were living in California, and Hazel had lived there for a while and knew the way, so she packed her mother up in her mother's car, a brand new Chevrolet Impala, "and away we went". "I was thrilled to death to get to drive it," she remembers, "it was so pretty." They stopped at all of the points of interest; the Badlands, the Grand Canyon, Yosimite, as they wove their way from state to state. They stayed in motels along the way and stopped whenever they came to a restaurant that looked like it had "home cooked food". When asked if there was any part of the country that Esther didn't like, Hazel replied, "We didn't care too much about New York City." Their encompassing tour took about a month to complete. She also recalls... I remember Mom quilting. Those quilting frames were hooked to the ceiling. They'd get through for the day and roll it up, plumb to the ceiling. Mom washed, ironed, cooked, cleaned the house, made the beds, stripped and changed them, mopped the linoleum floors, canned, hoed the garden, planted the garden, fertilized it. Mom dug the rows with a hoe and we'd take the fertilizer and drop in the rows. We'd hoe it all summer, can it all fall, and eat it all winter. Mom had it rough when we were little. When Daddy got to making money, she sent all the laundry out so she wouldn't have all that to do. That was when the laundry man ran once a week. There's no such thing as that now. Esther sang in the church choir." [As told to Laura Henderson, by Hazel Brooks Corder, 2003] |
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| When Claude was fifteen years old he went
to work in the mines and saved enough money to buy a pump organ for his
family. Although the organ was ostensibly for his mother, his sister Elizabeth
was the one who played. It was a grand tall thing, ornately carved with
mirrors, shelves, and filigreed woodwork. The organ is now in the posession
of daughter Hazel Brooks Corder, to be passed to Claudes' granddaughter
Susan Corder Vollmuth. On November 16, 1919, he married Esther Mae Lawson (of Crab Orchard, Wise County) in Bristol, TN. Around 1925 he caught pneumonia while working in the mines By 1925 the couple had three small children, Margie, Hazel, and Claude Jr. (Bud). Soon after Claude recovered, he went back into the mines to work and almost immediately developed tuberculosis. His doctors recommended a dry climate, and he was sent to spend two years in a New Mexico sanatorium. This must have been a difficult time for him as it was clear he could no longer work in the mines when he returned to his family. When he returned to Wise County his daughter Hazel remembers, he brought gifts for his children. "Daddy brought me a little sage hen. I kept it for the longest time." The "sage hen" was white with coloring around the wings and a red comb, and she believes it was made of clay. Hazel was about four when her father returned. She recalls that his first job after coming back to Wise County was as a door-to-door salesman. Back then, the doors could be some distance apart. He sold Xanal products (items such as flavoring, powdered puddings, and detergents). Granny often went with him on these ventures, and recalls that he was very successful. He bought a piece of land in Crab Orchard and opened a small mine which was not very successful. He then opened a grocery store with his brother, Vernon. They called it Brooks Brothers Grocery. He had inherited his mother's business and management sense; after Grandpa Warren Brooks died, Claude paid off the balance on his mother's land. In about 1940 he sold his share of "Brooks Brothers" to his brother Vernon, and bought a coal mine formerly owned by Silas Holbrook. The property also had a store, and Claude made his second foray into the grocering business with Midway Grocery. Many thought the mine had played out but Claude took a chance, and the mine was indeed rich. He made his brother, Charlie, mine foreman, and he took care of selling, and the business end of things. This happened prior to World War II, when the government needed fossil fuel, and with the war, Claude was able to make his fortune. His daughter Hazel, who kept the books and weighed the coal for several years, recalls many train land truck loads of coal leaving Claude's mines every day, to be carried to factories supporting the war effort. Claude also owned the Crystal Water Corporation of Russell County, which supplied water to Castlewood. Eventually the county bought out small water companies and he was able to realize a good profit from the sale. In 1965 Claude turned Brooks Coal Company over to his children. Shortly afterwards, Federal Regulations shut down small, independantly owned mining operations. In the middle of his life, Claude developed an unknown malady which caused his big toe to hurt him severely. He took an abundance of pain killers in order to alleviate the pain, but nothing helped. He had an initial stroke around 1975, and in 1976, about six months after his wife's death from a heart attack, he overdosed on pain killers and suffered a fatal stroke. What is left of the mines is a few decaying boards and beams from the tipple. Claude and Esther's land was sold by their children, and the homeplace was remodeled by the new buyers. |
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| Personal Memoirs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Claude Thurston Brooks, through
my eyes... [Laura Henderson-Franta, 2003] I was only six when my great grandfather died, but I have very vivid memories of him. He seemed big to me, but I suppose that was just because I was small. I think he wore glasses, the thick black kind fashionable in the 1960's, but I can't be sure. One thing I can be sure of is that he had a headfull of thick, snowy white hair that he wore in a crew cut which fascinated me. I remember him usually dressed one of two ways. He was either wearing a dark suit and a fedora, or he was wearing striped pajamas and slippers with a space cut out to accomodate his great toe. I remember he complained frequently of his toe hurting him. I think he had gout or something like it, but nobody I've asked can tell me what exactly was wrong. He and my great-grandmother lived in a nice white two-story house with brick steps which spread out from the front door in a semi-circle. I remember the house well. You entered from the back by a mudroom with a smooth, cool cement floor. (The freezer lived in the mud room, and popsicles and "Brown Mules" lived in the freezer.) From the mudroom you passed into the kitchen. The walls were painted with an aqua paint and I think there was a cuckoo or some type of novelty clock on the wall by the dining room door. The table was on the left as you passed through the kitchen, and on the right side of the room was a window, and the sink was beneath it, and on the cabinets by the sink were bottles and bottles of "toe medicine" (at least I thought it was toe medicine), which I was warned never to touch. Through the kitchen was the dining room. There were windows on the right wall, and the front wall (which faced the front lawn). Immediately inside the door to the right was a chair that I think is called a "butler's chair", where people sit to take off their shoes and coat. There was a nice dining table (in the center there was an arrangement of soft plastic fruit in a bowl) and matching chairs and a china cabinet in the dining room (where my gr. grandmother kept a puzzle that she would bring out for me to work when she had no energy left to deal with me). The carpet in the living and dining rooms was burgendy with a black and floral paisley pattern. The entrance to the living room was off the left side of the dining room. There was a fireplace in the living room (where I was told "Raw Hide and Bloody Bones" lived), and a suite of living room furniture covered in a soft burgendy velvet. The sensation of stroking the thick red velvet was similar to pushing my small fingers back and forth across my great grandfather's short, soft crew cut hair, and I liked to do both. There was a television in the living room on the far wall, and I remember my great grandmother had a red porcelain bull with gold horns, which I believe sat on the television (she willed this bull to me because of my childhood fascination with it, and it now sits on top of my living room cabinet). There was a recliner in one corner where my great grandmother sat. My great grandfather sat in the red armchair by the hearth. Off of the living room was a sunroom, which I rarely went into, and off the left side of the living room was the hallway that led to the bedrooms and the bathroom. The bathroom was always dimly lit and I belive it was done in pink and black. I always remember the overwhelming sensation of pink in the bathroom. I rarely went into my great grandfather's bedroom but I remember it was masculine, but light and airy, and faced the front of the house. I remember one bedroom in particular, though I don't know who's it was, was painted blue and had a picture called "The Lone Wolf" hanging on the wall. I've had that same picture in my own house ever since I've been out on my own. There was a staircase up to the second floor (which I called "the attic") where I think there were more bedrooms (or at least one more) and for some completely inexplicable reason, I was certain that it was inhabited by alligators. I have a few snatches of memories of Papaw Brooks, most of them involve him sitting in his velvet armchair in his pajamas bemoaning his toe and cautioning me about "Raw Hide and Bloody Bones" (what a thing to tell a child!) who lived in the fireplace. One of the clearest memories I have is of him taking me to feed the fish. He had a small fishpond by the house and we would walk down with a loaf of bread and sit on a cement bench, stripping each slice of its crust and rolling the soft center part of the bread into little balls which we tossed to the fish. On one occasion he took me for a walk up the mountain, following the path of the creek which fed the pond. He was wearing a brown suit and hat, and I remember he used a stick to push brush from the path to clear our way. I am told he thought me very clever because once when I was very small (long before I started to school) he gave me a one-dollar bill and asked me who's picture was on the front. To his astonishment and delight, I replied immediately and emphatically, "George Washington!" I was made forever after. Little did he know, earlier that same day, my great uncle Fred Corder had given me another dollar and pointed out the portrait of our first president. |
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| Last Modified 26 Aug 2006 | Created 8 Feb 2007 Laura K. Henderson |
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