My great-grandma Carrie was born April 22, 1869, in Sedalia, Pettis County, Mo. Her mother, Harriet Dumsday Allcorn died giving birth to Carrie – there were no death certificates at the time, so I can only assume she died of unsanitary childbirth conditions, since Carrie lived. It would be what Harriet's granddaughter, Edna, – Carrie's only child – would died of when my mother was 18 months old, along with the stillborn baby boy she bore.
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| My maternal grandmother, Edna Reed around age 10. She and my son were exact lookalikes (except for the braids!) at this age and my son still has some of her facial features. |
When I was pregnant with my son, I suffered from amniotic fluid problems and since we were near Boston, it was decided I would go to see a genetic counselor, have weekly ultrasounds by a woman who was top in her field and twice-weekly non-stress tests the last 4 months. I was informed, after presenting my maternal family history back to and including Harriet, that my problem was hereditary and it often skipped a generation, which was why my mother had no problems carrying three children to birth.
I'm glad I'm here and I'm also glad my son was born healthy and has remained so these 24 years. I'm blessed by his presence on this earth.
But, I digress, this story is about Carrie.
Carrie was the youngest of three children born to William Smiley Allcorn and Harriet Dumsday Allcorn. Harriet was William's second wife – the first died young too. Harriet was the last of my ancestors on both sides of my family to have emigrated from overseas. She arrived in America from England in 1831 with her parents, a brother who was born once they landed in New York, and two older sisters, as well as her paternal grandparents.
Land was free in parts of Missouri so they headed out here by way of New Orleans, Louisiana. Harriet's two older sisters, her father and her grandmother would die in New Orleans from yellow fever – never making it to Missouri. But William Dumsday, Sr., Harriet's grandfather, persevered and he arrived in Pettis County with his daughter-in-law, granddaughter and grandson and they made the a life for themselves.
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| My great-great grandparents William Smiley Allcorn and his wife, Harriet Dumsday Allcorn in a tintype photo taken before 1869. |
William remarried quickly to his last wife, Martha Paxton and they had at least three children, a son, and two daughters, Lizzie and Dorothy (Dollie), who became very close to my great-grandma Carrie and were to my mother as well.
Carrie grew into a lovely woman, and married William Sloan Reed on April 13, 1892, at her father's home just outside of Sedalia. It was a large property, that housed the small Allcorn Cemetery off the pasture behind the house, and several other homes on the same lane. Today, there is a road and other people's property between William's original house and Carrie's farmhouse – but at the time Carrie and Will Reed were given the property, there was no road and William Allcorn owned all that land.
Will Reed was a dark-haired, handsome man with a thick mustache in the few photos I have of him. Very little is known about him as there is zero correspondence and little history about his family – though I have tracked his paternal side back to one of the earliest known settlers of the Booneville area (William C. Reed), who came here to Missouri in 1813.
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| My great-grandfather William S. Reed in a photo dated around the time he died – 1906. I have no idea who cut his hair! He needed a better barber. |
In 1893, my grandmother Edna Vera Reed, was born. Sometime after 1900, Carrie, Will and Edna moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where they owned and operated a general store. I have a photo of the store with the three of them in the photo and when I blow up the photo, I can see on a wall calendar the amount of potatoes sold since 1900.
The Reeds were on the 1900 Pettis County census and by Dec. 27, 1906, Will Reed would be dead of what was called heart failure and he died in Pettis County. So their foray into Colorado took place somewhere in those years after 1900.
Photos of my grandmother Edna at the age of 10, show her to be the spitting image of my son at the same age – minus the pigtails of course. Even today at just one year younger than Edna was when she died, my son still very much resembles his great-grandmother.
It is unknown what made Carrie and Will head to Colorado. Pueblo was a young town at the turn of the last century. Mining was big in Colorado at the time and there was money to be had. For nearly the rest of her life, my great-grandmother corresponded with a few folks from Pueblo, whom I've never been able to identify – but it was proof that they made friends while there.
On Dec. 27, 1906, my great-grandfather, Will Reed, dropped dead while in the barn. He was 40 years old and I do know his father died at around 50, so heart trouble may have run in the family.
However ... when I began my interest in genealogy, my mother had already passed, so I as unable to ply her with questions, though my Dad more than made up for that lack I had. He told me, with a great chuckle, that it was rumored that Great-grandma Carrie had poisoned old Will because he was having an affair with the sheriff's wife.
Well, vengeance would have been a trait I am sure Carrie had – she was a pistol after all. Just one week before Will died, Carrie's father's brother, Thomas Jefferson Allcorn, had taken an accidental dose of arsenic (something they kept around in those days to kill rats in the barn) and died. His death made the papers. So, if it is true that Will cheated on Carrie and she knew it and she was mad, she got rid of the rat living under her roof.
There is no proof of this, but the coincidence of the uncle's death, the prevalence of arsenic in the home, the lack of anything other than a couple of photos of Will, leads me to believe there was something amiss about him.
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| My great-grandmother, Carrie Jane Allcorn before she married. She was 20 in this photo, taken in 1889. Note the bustle! |
Carrie never remarried – she was too independent for it I guess. She ran that farm by herself until my mother decided she was too old to do it anymore, sold it for her and brought her out to Fredericksburg, Virginia to live with us in 1954.
Throughout those years after 1906, however, couldn't have been easy. My grandmother Edna married her sweetheart, Harry Smalley Carson in 1916, gave birth to my mother on Feb. 2, 1917, and then died from septicemia (unsanitary childbirth conditions) after giving birth to a stillborn boy on July 25, 1918.
My great-grandma Carrie never forgave my grandfather for not calling the doctor back soon enough and she was apparently good at being a shrew.
Sometime during those 50 years after Will died, Carrie invited Will's much older sister, Josie, who was also widowed – to live with her on the farm. The two old ladies kept the farm up for many years. At one point, Carrie caused a scandal for hiring an ex-convict to work her fields.
My brother and sister remembered her well. They spent their childhoods with frequent visits to Carrie's farm, often staying with her for several weeks.
My sister loved to tell of how Carrie was full of mischief and they would share Grandma's old feather bed and giggle well into the night. Pris would arise the next morning to find Grandma in her kitchen frying up chicken and serving it up with mashed potatoes or steak and potatoes. Lard was Carrie's cooking tool and yet she lived to see her 93rd birthday.
Pris said Carrie alway smelled of horse liniment and had knobby feet from the cows stepping on her feet all those years. She hobbled when she walked and cackled when she laughed - which was often.
Once Pris threw a hammer down the well at grandma's and refused to tell Mom where it was – Grandma knew but never gave Pris up. They were kindred spirits.
Grandma was not afraid of anything. She had an old roller laundry tub on her front porch and a big old black snake loved to lie in it. When she'd get ready to wash clothes, she'd reach in, grab that big snake and throw him over her shoulder into the yard and proceed to do the laundry.
When she moved in with us in Fredericksburg, it was the first house in her life – 85 years – that had running water, indoor plumbing and electricity, AND a television.
Grandma spent hours watching westerns on TV and yelling at the box because she was sure the horses were not fed or watered enough – never understanding that it was actors she was watching.
She would sit by her window and watch the comings and goings at the church next door. If there was a funeral, she'd sob for hours over the deceased – whether she knew him or not.
Even at her ripe old age, she was full of mischief and loved to push my mother's buttons. She would mess up the dinner table after it was set, and tease my mother unmercifully.
When my mother conceived me in early 1956, she blamed Grandma on the accidental event ... seemed Grandma's unannounced entrances into my parent's bedroom at any time she pleased messed up their rhythm method of contraception.
Thanks to Grandma Carrie – I'm here today.
During Carrie's lifetime, she saw the industrial age, women's suffrage, race riots, television, movies, records, space travel, planes, two world wars and then some, numerous presidents, cars, motorcycles, dresses that went from having corsets and bustles to bras and panties, hosiery and hemlines that went from dragging on the ground to above the knee. She saw high-buttoned shoes and go go boots.
Carrie saw a lot happen in her lifetime. She lived and loved and lost and still put a gnarled foot forward each and every day. A true Missouri pioneer woman I am proud to call my Great-grandma.
Carrie Jane Allcorn Reed died in Sedalia on July 19, 1962.
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