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Show CORA LEE JOHNSON MARCH 6, 2002 COR: Oh, my mother cried when she left; she was sixteen. And her grandmother that had lived with them all her life, she was a midwife, had lived with them-that was my grandfather's mother, Anna Dill Lee, and she said, "Hattie, when you get there if you can't stand it, let me know and we will send for you." But Mother said of course she couldn't leave her brothers and sisters. But she said, "Oh, it was hard." But they put these children into high school, these older ones, and Uncle Owen, of course, was at the Murdock, but I suppose by that time-he met a girl there, a Rowley girl, and they married and came into Canada and he was a farmer. But the farm, as we were children, used to go up, they were big ones. BEC: I was going to ask you, maybe thousands of acres, you're thinking? COR: I think so. We would go, Claudia and I would go with Grandpa, he'd hold each one of us, we couldn't even see through the wheat above, it was so high. And I remember when my grandmother, my step-grandmother, but it was grandmother to us, she had been a schoolteacher in Florida and had roomed and boarded with my grandfather and my own grandmother. They were cousins. So you know how-a long time ago if a wife would die, almost always the husband would marry a younger sister and she would raise those children. Well, Grandma Lee did the same. But they had twelve children of their own and my mother had seven in her family. So you can see what a family they did have. But he did have money. But, he was an old man when he came. He was fifty years old and Daddy said Grandfather Lee was old; he'd never worked. He was a plantation owner. But that's where my father met my mother. BEC: I'm curious, then, at some point did they divide the farm up? Or has that all been developed and sold off, or do you know? 8 |
