Collected Stories

Some other family stories have been shared with me and I think you’ll enjoy them!

LIFE OF O. E. HOBACK as told to Edna Greet (Vernon’s grandmother).

     Uncle Oscar was born February 11, 1874, near Rogersville, Arkansas.  Bentonville was their county seat.  The family had moved there soon after the close of the Civil War, making the trip in a covered wagon.  His mother’s health was poor, and she became so homesick for Indiana that his father took the family back while Oscar was still quite young.  There she died on April 3rd, 1876, leaving a baby boy, Eli, two days old.  Eighteen year old Mary Electa had been working for a Mrs. Apperson in Kokomo, but had come home when her mother needed her.  Jennie was 15 and Rose was 14, and were probably home, too, but the care of the baby fell to Mary.  In July the baby became sick, and a neighbor told her to give him catnip tea.  Not knowing anything else to do, Mary gave the little one the tea, and he died the day he was four months old.  Just a weak (sic) later the little three year old sister, Ellen Augustine, died also.  Perhaps they had dysentery.  The death of the three loved ones must have been a severe shock to the young girl, Mary Electa, who had the care of them.  In 1880 she married Edgar Parker Pyle, and before the year 1888 was out she had given birth to six children and seen five of them die.  A siege of typhoid fever when she was a child had already weakened her nervous system, and it is  not to be wondered at if all these experiences left their mark on her.

     Not long after Oscar’s Mother’s death his father married a widow named, Mrs. Dickinson.  She had two boys quite a bit older than Oscar, and they dealt him a lot of misery.  His older brothers and sisters had all left home.  Anna had married Ed Bunker in 1874, and was living in Griggsville.  Mary went there and found work, and one day the father took Oscar and followed.  He bought a house and lot, and when Oscar was 7 years old he married again 1881.  The new wife had been a widow, too.  Her maiden name had been Jane Smith, and her first husband’s name was McCoy.  She had a sister, Alice, who married a Henry Collins.      

Oscar’s father had made a will, leaving the property to Oscar.  When the step-mother found it out she became very angry, and made life miserable for the boy.  Of course, he retaliated to the best of his ability.  The situation finally got to where life became almost unbearable for him.  One day the father told him he needn’t put up with it any longer, and that he would give him his choice of two alternatives.  One  was to go to the theological school in Decatur, the other was to go west to where his older brothers were.  Oscar went to the school for a while, but was unhappy there.  Perhaps he lacked the religious convictions necessary to become a Methodist preacher.  He was only fifteen years old.  He returned home, and just two weeks before Christmas (December, 1889) his father put him on a train, with a ticket to Denver and a few extra dollars in his pocket.

(to be continued)