I was born in the old log house on the farm in Richland County between Richland City and Sextonville, Wisconsin, each about two miles distant, on December 3, 1883. I went to a nearby school a short distance from where we lived. I was the fourth child in a family of six. We three girls shared a room after the new house was built. My daily chores after school were either picking up potatoes in the fall or helping pile stove wood for the winter. I walked to school many times in winter on the snow as high as the fences as the crust froze hard. We had a few pleasures like going to a town church for a Christmas tree and out usual gift was an orange and stick of gum in our stocking. We left the farm when I was a small girl as Father [Issac William Carpenter] wanted to go South to a small town of St. James, Missouri: but he became dissatisfied in a short time and we moved back to Wisconsin near a small town of Loganville.

I do not remember how long we lived there but I remember graduating from elementary school when I was about twelve years old.

Father's sister, fairly well-to-do, lived in Reedsburg, Wisconsin and I stayed with Aunt Rinnie a part of one summer. She did many nice things for me.

Not too long after this, Father still wanted to go South. He had read of the wonderful apple orchards in Arkansas and so he sold the farm and live stock, put our belongings in a box car with my brother, Ray [Carpenter], and went to Gentry, Arkansas. He [Father] bought a small farm East of town, one of five acres and another across the road of twenty acres. I often walked a distance of a mile to milk the cow as we lived in town. I attended school there and everything was so different. We never had any graduating exercises and we just finished. Father was a very strict man in his way. He opened a grocery store in time. Everything came in barrels and boxes. Coffee was underground and mother often roasted great pans of it. You were sold the amount you wanted of sugar, meat, crackers, cheese, etc. Everyone used wood for heat.

Here I finally grew up. Mother worked hard and we all shared our part. I learned to make many of my clothes. In the years, I made friends. Many Northern people came South and great numbers were Seventh Day Baptists. I got acquainted with one my brother often brought home to dinner and in 1902 I married him - Joseph LaVerne Stillman. I guess I was fascinated with the thought of someone caring for me. I bought a piece of light gray wool material from the store and between Sister Margaret and a Mrs. Hood, they made it. It was lined throughout and had stays in the waist with a circular flounce on the skirt which was lined with blue sateen and stitched several times around the bottom as well as the waist. I bought a hat to match and high black laced shoes. He wore the same clothes he had always worn. I was a wee bit disappointed but [we went] on across the vacant lots nearby to the minister - a few of my family and his were present and we were married. I was sort of in a dream and we drove to his father's home a few miles distant. He had a small home under construction in town with four rooms. I had picked up and saved some things I had earned peeling apples in a dryer for apples my father owned. We made $3.50 a week. We wore calico dresses we made ourselves at ten cents a yard.

Well, we moved into the cozy home and I put my heart into it, treating the rest to him. Later, I found nothing was paid for. The furniture was bought on time and a loan was made to build the house. A year and a half later we had to move out. The furniture was taken back and the house for the loan. Our first child [Glen Carroll] was born there [Gentry, Arkansas] and I was pregnant for another [Lucile Marjorie]. We had to live with his father and sister. He left soon to find work in Springfield, Missouri, where a friend of mine had moved.

After our second child [Lucile] was born, we rented a small house from a Mrs. Stout for $8.00 a month. I mopped floors and kept things clean. He made a trundle bed for their children which I could roll under our bed, as we had only one bedroom. I had one rag carpet and some left-overs for the living room and the bottom part of a cabinet for table and flour. During these years I baked bread for my mother. I did make lovely bread and canned fruit and other things. We moved several times about town.

It was 1905, my father insisted we take a claim in the Oklahoma Panhandle. I guess it was 1906. We went [on] 1 May to live on this homestead to prove up for our rights to it. The children were small, three [years - Lucile] and five [years - Glen] and the 160 acres was forty-five miles from a railroad in Booker, Oklahoma. It was an all day trip those days, as his brother too was out there and met us. We stayed in a cheap hotel with no bathroom or toilet facilities and they charged for the use of a slop jar. The high altitude did not agree with me and he had to drive a pair of mules eight miles to a post-office. We dipped clear water from buffalo holes that had sodded over to wash and bathe. Besides, we had to have water to fill a cistern. We used cow chips for heating and cooking, with a drum in the stove pipe for baking. There were fleas, centipedes and tarantulas we lived in fear of. The clothes when hanging out, would flap in the wind and almost knock one down and by the time you got to the end of the line the first were dry. The wind wore the feathers off the old hens and blew everything in its way. Tumbleweeds as big as wagon wheels blew forty miles away. We stayed part of the time in my father's dugout to take care of his hogs and mules. It seldom rained. A tornado which left hail stones as big as eggs, lifted and struck forty-five miles away. Sandstorms looked like a fire and sweeping and dusting were impossible. We had pleasant memories with Dad's [Joseph Laverne Stillman's] brothers and families, and people we met.

Time came in October for me to go back home. Dad was left soon to pay the amount to prove up and receive our right to a homestead. With our savings gone I had to go back to the farm with his father. Dad came a cold wintry day and was nearly sick when he arrived, near pneumonia. Soon his father sold the farm and the sister [Phoebe] had gone South to teach and it was thought best for him to go with her. My parents had gone to Mena, Arkansas on a wild goose chase of Father's for another place and in this time we had built another house on three lots South of t own, which we had traded for the Homestead. We borrowed $800.00 from my brothers to build it. We lived there a little over two years. No -the money was from the bank for a loan of a year, but no payments were met and my brothers took the loan. Once more, an another child was born [Ralph Eugene - on 24 Dec] before Christmas; and, the year following, and after doing all able, they [my brothers] sold the property from under us and we had to leave before long to Iowa where a friend had promised Dad work with him as a carpenter which he was very efficient.

We moved in with them until we could find an empty house. I did part of the house work, baked the bread, and in a month we had found an old house with cracks in the floor. We covered them with cheap linoleum and bought chairs and stove from a mail order house, an old second hand range most impossible bought in Marshalltown. [On] July 30, our last child was born [Alfred William - in Garwin, Iowa], and I do say I was discouraged after all this. It was too much, but in a while we had friends. After some time, we found a place in the country, outside of town, where we could have a garden and raised most of the vegetables and stored them in a cellar for winter use. Dad went to help build a Camp near Des Moines, Camp Dodge. I tried hard to keep the home going and we attended church even though quite a walk. Later things went wrong and we got back on the rent, and we had to move. We lived over a noisy pool hall in town and I had to run up and down outside stairs to hang the wash. They kept the old family organ for rent but later we got it.

Then an old lady stopped by selling cosmetics and such and told us of an empty rambling old house in Beaman, Iowa, some few miles north up the railroad. Later Dad got a box-car and shipped our belongings there. A small town with the house in bad shape with the steps ready to fall down. So, a little at a time we made it livable. There was a consolidated school nearby. The children made lasting friends and the two oldest [Glen and Lucille] graduated there. Later the little boys went also. The big bay window I had full of plants and we enjoyed it. How many old houses we brought back to usefulness. The rent was $12.00. There I was able to have a lovely range I did not have to black. The chimney was almost a fire hazard in the living room. But with a hard coal burner it was safe, a thing that glowed through the night. I rented the large bedroom to three school teachers to help out. We filled the bed ticks with clean straw from Mr. Johnson's straw stack. A grand old couple to lean on. The children and I went there for Sabbath School in the PM.

I developed bronchial trouble and the doctor thought it best for me to go South to a warmer climate. So we sacrificed our belongings again with $85.00 in our pocket. With our secondhand Lizzie Ford we set out on November 2, election day, 1924. We stopped at Kansas City to visit a couple of days with my sister (Margaret Freeman), then on through Missouri. At Joplin where there were hard surfaced roads, the rest was gravel. We were told for direction "just follow the concrete". Son [Glen] held to the wheel all the way. He was 21 years and a good knowledge to drive. Some places were terrible and a bridge was out. I am sure as we all got out to lighten the load and walked that approach that God guided that boy up that hill - then at Vicksburg, a ferry with no protection and a poor runway to get on the ferry. I resolved never to go there until a bridge was built, which was later. A hilly place on the opposite side and car could not feed gas on seven gallons, so around and out the other way. We found overnight places to stay, four beds in a row and heavy fog mornings. [We] Stopped at Hammond, Louisiana to see dad's sister - Aunt Phoebe Mills, 500 E Merry Ave not seen in 18 years - spent Thanksgiving and on to Biloxi, Mississippi where another of Dad's sisters resided - Aunt Margaret Eggers. [We] Stayed a month and shared expenses, and it rained day after day hindering our destination to Tampa, Florida. Roads became impassable and so we found an apartment for $25.00 a month [608 East Howard Ave., with Captain & Mrs Bowen] with old beds and so forth, no shades/, shovels of dirt, but we made it livable. While there Dad got work soon in a sash & door factory [Breilmaire's]; son [Glen] at the bank at $35.00 a month; daughter [Lucille] got a job at Woolworth and later in a Gulfport bank. Six months later we found a house across town [508 Seal Ave] quite nice hoping to live by fireplace heat, but soon found out was needed a stove as it was damp and cold. Bronchitis most of the winter for me. The little boys (Ralph & Alfred) attended elementary [Lopez - originally Dukate - while at 608 E Howard] and later graduated from Biloxi High School. By 1929 the "Great Depression" was on and jobs were scarce - had to give up each place because of rent. Found an old worn down four room house which a few months or year later we bought [624 Seal Ave - now 276]. One son [Alfred] went to CCC Camp in Fort Barrancas, Fla; the other [Ralph] in the Marines; daughter [Lucille] married; and son [Glen] found hotel work.

The old house was in bad shape, but Dad fixed it up, put new floors, fixed the walls, built a kitchen that was part of a porch. Years passed and the three boys married, had homes of their own. We lived to see and celebrate our 25th and 50th wedding anniversaries and on to 62 years. Life began to wane and we grew older. Dad was a grand husband and loved his home, but the day came and he passed on. We miss him and I to am going down the sunset trail. Here it is 1968. End

Information on Issac William Carpenter and family provided by Pamela Sue "Susie" Carpenter Braden