The Ancestors: Final Chapter

Neither the children nor I had been near a railroad nor a store since we went out in April of 1914.  When Clyde got home he felt somewhat better.

Clyde's uncle and aunt, both dentist in Sioux City had urged me to come to them to have my dental work done.  Aunt Clara did children.  I was all ready when Clyde got home, so he took Mildred and me to the train right away.  Uncle Will did my work and I spent two or three hours every day in his dental chair.  They were taking care of their two little grandchildren, so had a good baby sitter who also took care of Mildred while I had to leave for my appointments.  It was very hot in the city, but after dinner Uncle Will took us all for a ride in his big Cadillac to cool off.  Both he and Aunt Clara were just wonderful to me and my baby, but as soon as my work was finished I felt that I must go down to Kansas and get Ruth and Richard and take them home.

The children were so glad to see me -- they had never been away from us for so long and seemed to me to have grown in the month that they had been with their grandparents.

Grandpa Decided to go home with me, which was a pleasant surprise.  Clyde had been lonesome while we were gone and didn't seem at all well.  He and his father did a lot of talking and I knew they were discussing perhaps selling our home, cattle and all.  It had taken so much work and planning to get where we were that I could hardly bear to think of leaving it now.  But our country was into the war, and beef cattle were higher now than they ever had been.  We had several offers for our section as soon as people heard that we were thinking of selling.

That fall is kind of a blur to me.  I think that when one survives something that hurts badly, he or she tends to try to forget.  That place had meant our own home and independence to me and I loved it.  First we sold the cattle, then the horses.  I so hated to see the little grey team that Clyde bought the year before we were married, leave the place.  They seemed to know they were leaving when I went out to tell them good-bye.  Clyde hated to part with Chap, his good saddle horse.  We even sold our house goods.   But we did keep Beauty.  Clyde crated her and shipped her, express, to his father, who was to care for her until we got back home.  I don't like to remember how I felt, leaving that place in the Grant car that Clyde had bought.  We stopped at Grand Island for a day or so to visit the Corls and Rosses, who were busy with their new "Basket Grocery Stores."  I bought a few clothes while there and we went to our first good picture show -- "The Birth of a Nation."

I had decided to go back to Illinois to visit my parents and sister who had recently moved back there.  It was really like going home to me, for I had spent my grade school years in a suburb of Peoria, Illinois.  My folks were on a farm across the Illinois river from Peoria and my sister and her family in the little town of Washington, 10 miles east.

The Breakup of the Family

Clyde was tired and thin when we got back to Kansas, but seemed happy to be home where he was born and raised.  I went to visit my family very soon after returning to Kansas; Ruth went to the country school for a few weeks and got sort of regulated.  The teacher put her in the fifth grade and she did very well.  Her teacher thought she was a very bright little girl -- she was so interested in everything.

The new home in Marysville

Clyde came back at Christmas time to take us back home.  Oscar (Tara's note: my great grandfather) and his family had moved to Marysville so there was an empty house for us. We had left the best of our furniture stored in the barn loft when we went out to the homestead so we didn't have to buy everything.  Clyde was much better and had promised his father that he would stay to him until they got the new house built that Grandma had wanted for so long.  It hadn't been very noticeable but as spring came on and the work on the new house was begun, Grandpa didn't seem as well as usual.  He tried to cover it up -- a mean cough had developed and he got tired so easily.  He was only 60 years old and had never been sick and wouldn't acknowledge that he was sick until the middle of the summer.  Clyde's sister had come home from her music teaching in Chicago to help plan the house and influenced her parents to build a much more elaborate house than they needed.  When it was finished Grandpa was much too ill to enjoy it.  He died two weeks after they moved in.  It was a hard blow to the family.  Pearle had a floral piece made for the funeral that symbolized the effect it had on the family.  It was in the form of a wheel with spokes but no hub in the center.

First Grandma decided to go home with Myra, the older half-sister of the other three.  Then Pearle went down to Kansas University to take a years work that she expected to use.  Oscar hadn't done too well with his garage in Marysville and decided to go to California where Ada's parents and sister had settled.  It left us to take care of the home and stock until the family members had time to decide what they wanted to do.  It really took two years, but they finally made up their minds to sell everything and each go his own way.

Clyde also had the automobile bug and wanted to try his hand at working on them.  I have always thought the the automobile ruined two well-trained farmers and stock men.  Neither one of them were geared to the tough competition of the city.  They had grown up in a sharing, uncompetitive life among relatives and friends.

We moved to Sioux City, Iowa, and Clyde went to work for a big Dodge dealer.  He handled men well and always was made foreman wherever he worked.

********
Clyde Ray Tilley
Graveside service for Clyde Ray Tilley, a resident of Portland for the past 40 years, will be at 1 p.m. Monday in Lincoln Memorial Park.  Mr. Tilley, born October 8, 1884, in Frankfort, and died June 17 in a local hospital.  He was retired from Billingsley Pontiac Co., where he had been body shop manager.

Lois Elizabeth Tilley
Born January 20, 1890 in Peoria, Illinois, was one of four children of Arthur and Nellie Patee.  The family moved to a farm in Kansas about 1896.  At 17 years of age Lois attended Teacher's Institute and for a year taught in a one room school house before marrying Cyde Tilley, the son of a neighboring farmer.

In 1914 they set out with two small children for a great and challenging adventure as homesteaders -- a rich source of many stories she wrote in later years.  They stayed for four years, one year more than required to prove their claim.

By 1922 there were four children, Ruth, Richard, Mildred and Frances.  They moved to Iowa, New Mexico, and finally to the Pacific Northwest where they remained.

Lois died January 10, 1987 and is survived by a son, Richard, and a daughter, Francis.  She was a loving grandmother of nine, great grandmother of thirteen and great-great grandmother of two.