Today I attended the family reunion of the descendants of Mae Augusta Jeane Cryer. My neices and nephews use to call her little grannie. This woman was a pioneer woman in the strictest sense. She was born on what is today training lands of Ft. Polk and she had the misfortune of losing her husband (Grampa Cryer) when she was five months pregnant with her 8th child. When this child was only five years old the Great Depression hit and Mae reared her children alone on a farm near Birds Creek at Ft. Polk. There was nothing like government assistance so Mae was truly a manager of her familys affairs teaching them all how to work on the farm raising the food for their dinner table and having a surplus to trade for other goods needed for the family to survive. Mae was the oldest daughter of Dr. Jeane and many times he pitched in to help Mae with her eight children (two boys and six girls.) - Holland, Thelma, Edith, J. T, Etta, Ruby, Odessa, and Lucille. They lived in a modest log home constructed from trees from her land and in 1941 when the government decided this land would be a great place for an Army installation, Mae was given 60 days to disassemble the log house and move it. Today it still sits out on Haymon Road north of Leesville and for most of us in attendance today this little place is where we remember drinking water from a dipper from a bucket that was always available on the front porch. We also remember her strong cajun coffee that stained her cups and some of us remember her biscuits cooked on her wood stove. If you remember this you are definitely a member of the senior club! It was nice to see the great attendance today. Family ties and roots are so important and if we dont know where we came from we may not know where we are going. I remember best my grannie as loving for us to visit and never wanting us to leave. That was back when we had very little material things but an abundance of family wealth.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 20:48:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015