Family Stories page 3
Julia’s Simpson eye’s:
Julia (George)
Simpson had a lifetime of trouble with her eye’s. Ever since childhood, when she was about two she had whooping
cough and the measles. Her eyes were
very weak, which made her stay in the house with the blinds drawn, for quite
some time. After becoming a teenager,
Uncle John Driver pierced her ears, a common belief at the time was that
piercing the ears would strengthen the eyes and improve one’s sight. It seemed to help for some time but her
eyesight problems came back, when she and Noah lived in the house on the hill,
but got medicine from the Dr. that seemed cured it.
Alice remembered the
beautiful earrings that she wore when she was younger, they were pure gold, and
shaped like a mix of a fan and a wheel, crinkled like a fan but round like a
wheel. Alice thought they just wore
out, about the time the family moved form the hill to Gillham.
Julia’s eye’s were
never very strong which prevented her from doing much sewing, her cousin Mary
did all the sewing for her kids, until Alice got to be about twelve. Then Julia showed her daughter Alice how to
put patterns together, and sew for the family.
From Alice:
Julia’s oldest
sister, Emily, married Dr. John H. Driver and they had only one child, but as a
child, it’s head began growing out of
proportion to it’s body. If some of you
older remember the Martin family that lived in the Almond settlement when we
wee children: the baby brother to the girls that Johnny and Aaron Almond
married, had a head that grew almost the size of a bushel basket, and he lived
to be six years old, could talk but never could hold his head up. Aunt Emily and Uncle John’s baby’s head grew
like that, and the Dr. told me it was something he never saw before, but the
baby didn’t live long afterwards. Soon thereafter, Aunt Emily died and the Dr.
married again, but he didn’t like this woman, and they separated. The Dr. soon came back to Grandma’s and when
Aunt Alice was 16 he married her. He
told me he loved grandma’s family, because he married two of them, and he told Grandma she could always make her home
with them, and she did. He was good to
her. He told me he felt he owed grandma
a lot, because he was careless and let our granddad get caught. He felt awful about it, because he loved
Granddad so much.
Interesting story
told by Uncle John H. Driver:
When King Louis XIV of France was dethroned
and killed, he left two children, a son
and a daughter. Our grandfather John Cary
George, told Dr. Driver a secret which was kept guarded. The son of King Louis XIV fearing for his
life, ran away and hid from the authorities, and came to Louisiana with
settlers who came over from France. He
came as a commoner, or as one of them, signing his surname George. Uncle John Driver told Alice Lemons there
was positive proof it was true because the family showed royal breeding and so
many beauties were born into the family.
Dr. Driver told Alice he believed the story.