Will (as he was called) was my father, but we never met, and I am trying to write about him. The trouble is, I didn’t ask the right people about him, or they didn’t want to talk, until it was too late. Mother said he drank, a cousin of hers said he gambled, so he was probably an alcoholic and maybe a gambler.
He was born in Bienville Parish, Louisiana, in July 1870, and he served as a corporal in the Spanish American War. This is all the information the National Archives in Washington, D.C. has on him – except he was living in Denison, Texas when he was mustered out, and he was 28 years old at that time. Wellington Simmons, Mother’s brother, was also in the Spanish American War and had to be the one who introduced Will to Mother. He probably brought him home on a weekend pass.
The Simmons farm was a prosperous one at that time, and Fannie was pretty, naïve, and ready to fall in love, especially with at handsome man in uniform. (Aunt Annie Simmons Fine said he was handsome, and she also said he was good to Mother.) Will was nine years older than Mother.
William David Stewart and Fannie Matilda Simmons were married November 24, 1898 in Grayson County, Texas. I had trouble getting a copy of their marriage license from the county courthouse in Sherman, the county seat. They kept telling me it was probably destroyed in a fire at the courthouse [about 1920].
Once, when I was visiting in Denison, Atlee [Simmons, a cousin], Dorothy [Atlee’s wife], Ruth [Richardson, Atlee’s sister] and I went to Sherman. We split up. Atlee and Ruth went to the courthouse. Dorothy and I went to the library, where we did not find anything. When we got in the car to go back to Denison, Atlee handed me a copy of Will’s and Fannie’s marriage license he had found on his own.
Ernest Guy Stewart was born January 16, 1900 in Denison, Texas. James Lewis Stewart was born in July 1901 and died May 8, 1902, age ten months. Baby Stewart was born December 2, 1902 and died the same day. Both babies were buried in Coffman-Layne Cemetery, Denison, Texas.
Sometime in 1903, my mother, father and Ernest moved to Roswell, New Mexico, where I was born November 29, 1903, in an adobe house (so Mother said). [This is a link to an interesting history of Roswell that suggests that everything in the early days of Roswell was made of adobe, including horse corrals: http://www.cleananpress.com/roswell/maincentral.htm. Yesterday's post revealed that the family lived on Main Street, where the first buildings in town were made of adobe.] My father had left Mother and Ernest. I don’t know how long before I was born he left. I don’t know if he provided money for them to live. He didn’t seem to have trouble making a living. Anyway, when I was three weeks old, Grandfather Simmons sent sons John and Wellington in a covered wagon to bring us home to the Simmons farm near Denison. That must have been a hard trip for Mother.
[Yesterday, I said I did not have a photo of Mabel as an infant, but I forgot that my sister had provided me one. Here it is.]
From the time I can remember, Mother worked hard on the farm, helping with all the chores and in the fields. Wellington and Ike (I called him “Ikey”) were still at home. All the others were married and living away.
Mother would not get a divorce. Nor would she sue for child support, because she would have to let Will see us. She was afraid his bad habits might rub off on Ernest. I’ve thought a lot about that. I’m pretty sure that decision was made with the help of Ike and Wellington. They both had good jobs for those days, they were young and mad at Will, and probably said, “We’ll take care of you,” which is easy to say and hard to do.
In 1910, Ike and Wellington both married. That took care of their support. I knew nothing of this, of course. I was seven years old. Ikey moved to Dallas, and I didn’t want to lose him. Uncle Wellington stayed in Denison. Fannie did get a divorce on August 21, 1911, before she married John Wilson Smith. I have a copy of the papers.
When Mother died [in 1959], Uncle Ikey told me how sorry he was that he wasn’t able to help us after he married. I told him I was sure Mother didn’t feel that way. He said, all the same, he should have. That, and the fact that when the Katy Railroad bought twenty acres of the Simmons farm Ikey sent me his part of the money (I was going to East Central Oklahoma Teacher’s College at the time), makes me believe both had something to do with not getting help from our father.
As far as I know, Will did not marry again. He visited the Roulains in San Antonio. He and Luther must have been friends. The last time I saw Aunt Minnie Simmons Roulain, was when John [Adams Walker, Jr., Mabel’s first child born December 10, 1928] was a few months old. Grannie [Louisa Pounds Simmons] was sick and living with Mother and Jack Smith.
[This is one of my favorite photographs. Four Generations in March 1929: The woman sitting in the rocking chair (which I now have) is Louisa Edna Pounds (Jackson) Simmons, born January 1, 1841, died July 12, 1929. The woman on the left is Louisa's daughter, Fannie Matilda Simmons (Stewart) Smith, born February 26, 1879, died November 12, 1959. The woman on the right is Fannie's daughter, Mabel Claire Stewart Walker, born November 29, 1903, died December 28, 1998. The baby that Louisa is holding is Mabel's son, and my father, John Adams Walker, Jr., born December 10, 1928, died August 17, 1998.]
I saw Aunt Min in 1924 when we had the big reunion on the farm. She had recently seen my father, and he said he would like to do something for me, send me away to school if I wanted to go, and my reply was, “I’ve already been to school.” In other words, where was he when I was working my way through school? I liked Aunt Min, she was lots of fun. Of course, now I wish I had asked about my father, or at least let her tell me about him.
