Person:Claudia Vest (1)

Claudia's obituary in "The Spectator", Ozark Arkansas, states that Claudia was born at Lowe's Creek, in Franklin County. According to the Sallie DeWitt 1981Genealogy, she was born at Sub Rosa, on the Old Vest Farm. Sub Rosa is evidently near Charleston, Arkansas. The S. DeWitt Genealogy also points out that Claudia was born close to the nation's centennial, 100 years after the Declaration of Independance.

According to the Sallie DeWitt 1981 Genealogy, Claudia's family nick-named her 'Penny' as she was growing up in Arkansas. Her middle name 'Cordelia' came from her mother's sister, Cordelia (Simpson) Crews. Claudia attended school at Lowe's Creek, Arkansas. As in most small country schools, her education went through the eighth grade, but her "storehouse of knowledge" belied her modest education. She was very perceptive. In fact her husband Lee claimed "she always knew what was going to happen before the time came." Claudia's mother, Amanda Simpson Vest, died five weeks after giving birth to Montie Paul Vest in 1901. Her mother was 42, Claudia was 15 years old. Her father Richard Columbus Vest (Pa Dick) expected her to stay home and care for young Montie. To her father's dismay, Claudia would make sure she was outside sweeping the porch each day as young Lee DeWitt walked home from his teaching job at Lowe's Creek School each day. Later as they courted, she would hide in the school's bell tower and surprise him when he came to ring the bell for classes to start or end.

After Claudia's sister Lizzie married Nathan Sparks and moved to Durant, Oklahoma, Claudia was the 'woman of the house' with her father and remaining brothers John, George, Ben and baby Montie. One traveling salesman told Pa Dick that he would like to marry young Claudia. Pa Dick told him to come back in a few years, and Claudia was home the day he finally did come back. Her father and brothers were in the fields working when she saw him coming and she recognized him as the one that wanted to marry her. She took the baby to the attic and told him not to cry or sister would have to go off and leave him. The salesman finally left, finding no one at home, and never returned.

Claudia was 18 years old when she eloped with Lee DeWitt, who was 21 years old. She left 3 year old Montie with his brothers and took her suitcase, which she had hidden away, to the preacher's house at Branch, Arkansas. After the ceremony, her and Lee took a wagon ride to Booneville and then Paris, Arkansas. The couple then took a train ride to Oklahoma. Claudia had a lifelong desire to work outside of the home. Her children remember her and husband Lee running the post office (Roscoe Jennings Gammil, Postmaster) and general store in Sub Rosa for a short time after their marriage. Other than that experience, she was a mother and homemaker during her life. A few years after Claudia and Lee were married, Lee bought his first automobile (horseless carriage?). The automobile was kept in the barn and Claudia wanted to surprise Lee by learning how to drive it while he was out working. Not knowing how to put it in reverse to get it out of the barn, Claudia went forward, through the side of the barn. Lee's children were not there to witness this event, but they are sure he probably started 'ducking' his head and chewing his Cotton Bowl tobacco very slowly, while he tried to regain his composure.

Decoration Day (precursor to Memorial Day) at Lowe's Creek Cemetery was an event that Claudia always looked forward to. Everyone in the community brought flowers to decorate the graves of loved ones and enjoyed visiting with each other. Food was placed on quilts on the ground picnic-style, or on community tables for all to enjoy. In Arkansas, Claudia's flower garden was planted as regularly as the vegetable garden. She tended roses, petunias, canna (calla?) lilies, sweet peas, honeysuckle, bachelor buttons, zinnias and four o'clocks, to name a few. At Easter, she would tie the tops of Narcissus with ribbons and 'The Bunny' would place eggs in the nest at the bottom of the plants (eggs she had colored with Crayons).

Claudia Vest DeWitt told her children, Sallie Lee DeWitt in particular, about her grandparents (parents of Richard Columbus Vest), who came from Tingy, Georgia. The grandfather (Francis P. Vest) had 11 brothers. Six of the brothers fought for the North in the Civil War, and six fought for the South. Richard Columbus was about 8 years old during the war, and he told Claudia stories about hiding in the fields from Yankee soldiers as they passed through the family farm.

Claudia combed many wet strands of hair around her strong fingers for 30 years - starting with red-haired Lucille in Arkansas, on to Louella, then Nellie, then curly-haired Ruth, and ending in 1937 with Sallie in San Perlita, Texas. She was proud that she could take her children into anyone's home and they knew how to act because she had trained them properly. Rural life was hard in the early 1900's with no refridgeration or electric lights, no bakeries, few rural telephones, few battery radios, no electric washing machines or dryers. The rural farm wife had milking to do, manual clothes washing and ironing, dressmaking and quilting, gardening, baking the daily bread, cooking three meals a day without convenience foods, canning, killing chickens, even helping out in the fields at certain times of the year. Claudia did all of this and still found time to raise her children, pop corn, and make taffy candy. Her children remember Claudia making lye soap in an iron kettle, rendering lard and making cracklins, fixing kraut in a large crock, making hominy and dill pickles, milking the cows, separating the cream to sell, churning butter, taking eggs and butter to the grocer to exchange for sugar and flour, canning fruit, making jams and jellies, going to Manus' store to get ice for the refridgerator, making pork sausage with sage and putting it in cotton sacks she had made for that purpose, cooking thin, delicious biscuits, making fruit pies out of piecrust to place into lard-can lunch pails (the kids at school would trade anything for those pies!), sewing aprons and lovely school dresses, going to the bank for money to make change and pay the farm hands, and seeing to every whim of her beloved Lee. They also remember her singing songs while she worked such as, "Old Rugged Cross", "Will the Circle Be Unbroken", "There's a Land that is Fairer", and "Amazing Grace" - all in a voice that could be heard for 'a country mile'.

After the family moved from Arkansas to San Perlita, Texas in 1935, husband Lee expanded his farming operation by renting the "Orr Place", in addition to "The Negro Place" where he had first started his Texas farming operation. The Orr's (Dewey and Edith Orr Alderson), and many other "snow digger" families from the North, came down to the South for several months each winter. The DeWitt's and the Orr's established a friendship that spanned 40 years. Many times the DeWitt's would travel north to Tipton, Indiana and the big horse farms to watch Edith ride in parades and drive in Surrey races that were popular at the time. Bud (Dewey?) Alderson became a horse show judge and his career took him throughout the country. While in San Perlita, Claudia enjoyed the Sewing Club, the Garden Club, and the Home Demonstration Club. She was an active member of the San Perlita Church of Christ. Lee and Claudia bought a five acre home place in Raymondville in 1941, while son John stayed at the San Perlita farm site. The address of the home was at 610 East Hidalgo, in Raymondville, and this home was eventually passed on to Daughter Sallie in 1977. Good neighbors at this home were Frank Wilson, Margie Wilson, Otto and Millie Becka and Oscar Peterson. The 1940's and 1950's were happy years at this home site, with their children coming from Corpus Christi on Sundays and the two 'boys' (John and A.T.) stopping by daily for a cup of coffee with their parents.

Claudia's husband Lee retired from farming in 1947, turning the San Perlita farming operation over to his son Amos Thompson II (A.T.). She and her husband then embarked on travels within the U.S. and Canada first by car, and then later by travel trailer. They traveled together for nearly ten years until Claudia developed pneumonia in Florida, from which she never regained her former good health. She loved God (member of the Raymondville Chuch of Christ), her husband, her family, her brother and sister, Pa Dick, and her neighbors and friends. She would sing "That Silver-haired Daddy of Mine" when thinking about her father, and she would sniff her nose a bit. She kept many small mementos around the house that she treasured, that reminded her of her children.

Claudia had a fall in the bedroom of her home at 610 East Hidalgo, in Raymondville, in about 1969 at about age 83. She was unable to return home, and she resided at the Retama Manor, in Raymondville, from about 1961 until her death from pnuemonia in 1971. Her funeral service was at the Raymondville Church of Christ on Monday, March 29, 1971, with Rev. Charles Burk officiating. She was interred at the Raymondville Cemetery. According to the obituaries in the Raymondville Chronicle/News, The Valley Morning Star (Harlingen, TX), the Charleston Express (Ozark, Arkansas) and the Spectator (Charleston, Arkansas), those attending the funeral were Mrs. A.S. (Ellen) Baker of Albuquerque N.M., Christene (Mrs. A.T.) DeWitt of San Antonio, Texas, Mr. and Mrs. Keith Kanipe, Mrs. W.E. Hodgens and two children, Mr. and Mrs. Lee Hodgens and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. John Hodgens, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Saenz, all of Corpus Christi, Texas, Mr. and Mrs. Cuin Vest of Waldron (Ark.), Mr. and Mrs Rex Flanagan of Edinburg, Texas, Webb Beachum of Corpus Christi, Texas, Miss. Sallie DeWitt, Mr. and Mrs. Amos Thompson DeWitt all of Houston, Texas, Mike DeWitt of Huntsville, Texas, Mr. and Mrs. Jesse B. Roth, Portland (Texas?), Mrs. Andy Cayce of Laredo, Texas, and G.C. Barnhill of Woodsboro, Texas. Copies of these obituaries are contained in the Jerry D. Abshier Genealogical papers.

1. ↑ Sallie Lee DeWitt. Research by Sallie DeWitt. (1981)
   ppg. 21, 76F, 77B, 78A, 82.
2. ↑ 1900 U.S. Census, Franklin Co., Hurricane Twp., Arkansas
   T623, 58, pg. 2B.
3. ↑ Ellen DeWitt Baker. Family Bible - Barbara (Beachum) Kanipe. (Presented as a gift on 5/25/1956).
4. ↑ Sallie Lee DeWitt. Research by Sallie DeWitt. (1981)
   pg. 21, 78A, 82.
5. ↑ Sallie Lee DeWitt. Research by Sallie DeWitt. (1981)
   pg. 19, 21, 78A, 82.
6. ↑ Sallie Lee DeWitt. Research by Sallie DeWitt. (1981)
   pg. 21.
7. ↑ Sallie Lee DeWitt. Research by Sallie DeWitt. (1981)
   pg. 82.
8. ↑ Ellen DeWitt Baker. Family Bible - Barbara (Beachum) Kanipe. (Presented as a gift on 5/25/1956).
9. ↑ 1900 U.S. Census, Franklin Co., Hurricane Twp., Arkansas
   T623, R58, P56, Sheet 3, line 1.
10. ↑ 1910 U.S. Census, Franklin Co., Hurricane Twp., Arkansas
    Series T624, Roll 50, Part 1, Sheet 2A.
11. ↑ 1920 U.S. Census Sebastian Co., Beverly Twp., Arkansas
    Roll T625_81, Sheet 2B.
12. ↑ Sallie Lee DeWitt. Research by Sallie DeWitt. (1981).
13. ↑ Sallie Lee DeWitt. Research by Sallie DeWitt. (1981)
    pg. 24, 82.
14. ↑ Sallie Lee DeWitt. Research by Sallie DeWitt. (1981)
    pg. 21, 82.