--------- (Emma Ruark Rawlings)

(Emma Ruark Rawlings)

Biographical Note:

Emma Ruark Rawlings wrote a letter every year (1915-1919) for the non-resident letter edition. At the time of this letter when she describes “scaling the rocks after baby goats in the Colorado mountains, she is 63 years of age. (According to the US Dept of Health, the life expectancy in 1918 for men was 53 years and for women 54 years.)

“Trench and Camp” was a newspaper published by the YMCA during WWI. It circulated in thirty-two different camps and consisted of 8 pages, half of which was national army news, and the other half, local camp news.

Grand Junction, Colorado

January 17, 1919
Here we are again, we wanderers with a greeting to old friends and a kind thought to the editor of the Press for the privilege of again having another reunion through the columns of their paper. Good luck to you all and prosperity for this New Year.

We should all be much happier this year than last, to have peace declared and our boys, so many of them coming home.

Here's a welcome to all who fought there. How noble and manly they are, how true, those splendid boys who fought for me, for you. The stalwart and sturdy who spent their manhood's best, the maimed and crippled, too, are all coming to be our guests. Give jobs to those who left one, pay interest for their heroism, for deeds of courage, cheer for they are surely worthy. Remember what they've gone through for you, for me and while we greet our living heroes, we silently shed a tear and breathe a sigh for those who lost their previous lives Over There. We can never forget them our dead heroes left on a foreign soil. God bless and keep all mothers, wives and sweethearts of those heroic dead. And our boys who lost their lives in the training camps are heroes as well as the ones over there.

I have surely enjoyed reading all the soldier boys’ letters and the ones in Sumner Press seemed to me to be extra good ones.

I suppose a great many of you get the "Trench and Camp." We have always had them. A Chicago boy at Camp Kearney sends them to me now. We were all at the station when the Chicago boys, 300 of them, passed through. They were a jolly good-natured bunch. Met some of them who seemed like old friends. One of them writes to us every week. Poor boys in Camp Kearney and all other camps, who did not get to go over, they sure wanted to go bad enough, but they keep in good spirits even if they are so tired of nothing to do, as they say in "Trench and Camp."

I spent last summer in the mountains, cooking at a goat ranch, 25 miles from the Junction. Had one grand time. I do so love the mountains, but sometimes long to see the plains again. I had a fine war garden up there and I wish you could only see things grow in that soil! Well, I'll not say too much. You would perhaps call it a fish story. Then I would get out and herd the baby goats (kids) and try to keep the little things with the herd, for they were inclined to climb the mountain sides out of sight, then Mr. Coyote had a meal of goat.

You should see me (at my age too) scale those rocks after the little critters. Their mothers are out feeding, no dogs around, so it had to be done. And I am glad that I could climb. There were girls herding sheep, so lots of pleasure for all, as well as work. I heard the first whip-poor-will up there last summer at night that I have heard since I left old Illinois, and he seemed to come to the same tree every night for my own benefit. I would feel sad, for all loved to hear him. He made me think of days of long ago when a girl at home. It is strange, is it not, dear friends, that old times and old familiar faces will seem to come to us as plainly as if only yesterday?

I am thinking tonight again of Belle, Molly H., Millie D., Alice M., Gilla Turner, Lide "Bent." Lide Petty, Tiny McKenimish and lots of other dear old girls I used to know in Sumner and Calhoun.

I sometimes think of the boys, too, but they were not always in our fun (but as a general thing not on hand). Hello! To you Becky Sumner, Add Jones and her mother. Sister Dell and my dear mother. May God bless you all this year, and to all old friends, may you live long and be happy. Do not forget your western friend and wanderer.

Emma Raurk Rawlings

Daughter of Mrs. M. E. Klingler

---------

Edith Rawlings, Emma Rawlings, Eva Brown

Thomas Seed was born June 12, 1843 to Hugh and Sabilla (nee Ryan). He married Emma Pope March 31, 1871. On April 3, 1925 he died. His grandparents were Hugh Seed and Elizabeth Jane Seed.

---------

January 17, 1919

Little did I think 16 years ago when I removed from Sumner to this place I would be alive today. I was then in very poor health. This, with the fact that both my parents had died when they were 62 years of age, caused me to feel that asI was at that time about 60 years of age, the time was near at hand for my passing over the great divide, but I am still here and in the enjoyment of better general health than for many years, though not so strong as I find I tire easily.

My son is still publisher of the Daily and Weekly Register. I go to the office every day and attend to the mailing to out-of-town subscribers of both the daily and weekly issues. This, with the tableting, keeps me quite busy. Then I being quite handy with tools, am called on to fix anything out of order, so there is plenty to keep me busy, but I find I cannot be on my feet and do the amount of work I formerly could, but have to sit down, not to rest, but to work at something or other and there is always something to do about a newspaper office. My son has two lively daughters, who visit wife and I enough to keep us from being lonesome.

Our daughter, Rhoda, is happily married to J. R. Barclay, and is living at 39 North Emily Street, Crafton, a suburb of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Wife and I visited them for seven weeks last July and August and no preventing providence, would like to do so again next July and August.

Once in a while someone from Lawrence County, passing through, stops and says howdy to us, which we greatly appreciate, for as we grow old the old time friends seem nearer to us.

That there have been great changes in Sumner I realized when I look at a picture taken at 1902 reunion on the wall before me, containing 25 old soldiers and one son of a veteran, T. F. Hoopes. Of the 25, 13 that I know to have crossed the river and are resting under the trees on the other side, as follows: Comrades Carey, Bunn, Lett, Fyffe, Burnside, Smith, Webb, Westall, Petty, Umfleet, Clark, Travis, and McElfresh.

It is now 57 years since I, a boy of 18, enlisted in the Union Army for three years. I fully expected we would whip the Johnnies in a year at farthest, but after two years the end seemed farther off than ever. The government made a special appeal to the soldiers of 61 to reenlist for three years more and thereby show the South we were in earnest and offered, if we would do so, to give us 30 days furlough at home. That fetched us, or at least three fourths of us, who January 1864 reenlisted for three years more. Well, we did get them at last, though we who were in Sherman's army had to nearly wear ourselves out running after them, but suppose we had refused to re-enlist and come home and the south had gained their independence? We would be singing a different tune now, for Germany would also have triumphed and we would now be bowing to our German masters. But God did not manage it that way, for which let us give thanks.

Thomas H. Seed

---------

January 19, 1919

Editor Press:

I will endeavor to write a few lines for the Pink Press, to let my old friends and neighbors know that we are still in the land of the living.

We left Sumner 17 years ago, going from there to East St. Louis where we resided 12 years. In the spring of 1914 we came to this place, a little town 91 mile south of St. Louis, on the Iron Mountain Railroad. We have a nice little home here, all enjoying the best of health since coming here. I enjoy the outdoor life and exercise of the country and think it much better than living in the city.

Mr. Shick has been working for the railroad company for several years.

Our two oldest daughters, Pearl and Ruth, are married. Pearl lives in St. Louis, where her husband C. L. Napper, is a buyer in the Carlton D. G. Company. Ruth married Lawrence Hunt and lives near Farmington. Our other three children are still in school. Hazel and Carrol are in high school and Nellie in the sixth grade.

As nearly all our relatives live in Lawrence and Richland counties, we are always glad to get the press and hear of them and how they are getting along, as well as old friends and neighbors, whose letters in the Pink Press we are always glad to read.

Hoping that this issue of the Press will be a greater success than any before.

Sincerely yours,

Mrs. A. C. Shick

Farmington, Missouri

R.R. # 6, Box 80

---------

Knoxville, Tennessee

January 19, 1919

L.M. Wood and Sons: "hurry up call", I just realized that I was about to get left. No doubt some of the folks will be surprised to learn that I am writing from Tennessee instead of Terre Haute, where we have been located for 16 years. In fact, when I was informed in Chicago, in early December, that I was to be transferred to our Knoxville office, I knew it would be pretty hard to leave Terre Haute, which was our home, in fact having lived there so long and within two blocks of where we first located in the city, but our position with the company, is so much like a Methodist preacher, from the standpoint of migration, that we were not at all surprised (we don't move as often ask the preacher).

We left Terre Haute December 24, spent Christmas with Ralph, in Cincinnati, coming down here Friday, December 27, getting into Knoxville same day at 6:30 p.m. and took on hotel life for two weeks before our goods came.

There was one house vacant and we took it. It is in a recent addition to the city, named Park city, 2306 East Fifth Avenue, is about two miles from center of city, one block from Car line, two blocks from largest school and high school in the south, so we are very pleasantly located.

The country is vastly different from what we have been used to, as we are in the Cumberland Mountains, hence the country is very rugged. We also have the Blue Ridge Mountains in our territory. The people raise all crops in this country and the valleys are very productive.

Emma Louise Gubelman was born November 30, 1866 to Charles Edward and Sophia (nee Seitz) Gubelman. Edward Gubelman was born in Switzerland. On February 21, 1894 Emma was united in marriage Albert Clinton Shick. Albert was born April 28, 1859 the son of Daniel and Caroline (nee Jones) Shick. To this census records show the following children were born: Bell (b. abt. 1885); Ora (b. Oct. 1889); Inez Pearl (b. Dec. 1894); Lillian Ruth (Feb. 1896); Eula Mae (b. May 1898); Fern (b. May 1900); Hazel Pauline (b. abt. 1903), Albert Carroll (b. abt. 1905), Nellie Louise (b. abt. 1908). Emma died on December 26, 1947 in St. Louis Missouri. Albert died July 7, 1933. They are buried in the Sumner Cemetery.