Louise Gilbreath

After all the excavation, cultivation, refinement, learning, and knowledge activated by my amazing cousins and others who have devoted interminable hours into the unknown, uncharted history of our descent from ancestors, some distinguished, some less prominent, here am I, captivated, trying to amplify and add enlightenment because—I AM A PART OF THIS FAMILY HISTORY.

As I review history—world, American, state—I am reminded of great leaders and great events. But I also realize that without great followers, there would be no great leaders or great events. I suppose we will never know on this earth how many famous ancestors we may have, but we do know that a great majority have been commendable, influential, important, respected, and respectful.

I reflect about the integrity and courage, the experiences and the accomplishments of my great-grandparents, may own Mom and Dad, uncles, aunts, and cousins—what a Titanic role they have played and are playing in the history of our country and our world.

History and especially our family history didn’t stop with our grandparents nor does it stop with us—most of us. Therefore I have drawn up this autobiographical sketch; I have included information about the background of both my Mom and Dad because each is very important to the lineage of the other.

I feel the need to learn more about my contemporary relatives, childhood, teen years, growing up and growing older, offspring. I wonder what makes us all tick. I would be so very interested in having a copy and reading a biographical account-facts and memories-of my cousins and their progeny. Let us keep our family history alive and well for those who come after us.

Louise

November 2000

Colorado Field of Beans

My Dad, Clarence Winfred Bean, was born in southern Illinois on August 14, 1887. His mother passed away when he was about eight years old. He attended a country school. One day when he was a small boy he had some sort of “run-in” with the teacher and his shirt was torn. Older boys put him up to ask the teacher to pay for it. He asked the teacher for a dime; when the teacher asked him, “What for?” He replied, “For a new shirt.” I think he got his dime.

On July 23, 1909, Dad enlisted in the army; he served a three-year term and on July 22, 1909 at Ft. Leavenworth, KS, he was given honorable but he was working in St. Louis late in 1910 and April, 1911. He was an order clerk and packer for CAL HIRSCH AND SONS, an “engineer” on the Scenic Railway, and a street car conductor.

He was back in southern Illinois by early 1914. One day, Dad’s brother, Kenneth, asked him to go for the doctor. He wondered why and both young men had an awkward moment when Uncle Kenneth announced that he was to become a father. Dad said that he was “beat” – he had seen Aunt Inez around, but hadn’t guessed that she was “in the family way”. He did go for the doctor and Jackson Lester Bean was born, February 7, 1914. (Died in MS, October 21, 1993)

I don’t know when Dad became interested in music, but I have pictures of him and his guitar while he was in the army. He and friends, Arthur and Harry Williams, entertained southern Illinois neighbors with their instruments, guitar, banjo and mandolin; and Dad would sing. I’ve never learned just when Dad John Whitson, who later became his brother-in-law. They “made music” together – Uncle John’s violin and Dad’s guitar. They heard the call, “Go west, young man, go west” and left home working their way; they worked for a time in the Louisiana rice and/or cotton fields. They said they wore a pair of gloves out in a day and had to replace overalls so often, they were spending more than they were making. So they moved on arriving at the Sitter Ranch near McLean, TX. in October 1915. They worked there for Uncle George and Aunt Nannie until the headed for Colorado and homesteading in 1916.

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My Mom, Sarah Paralee Burchfiel, (Aunt Pearl to Bean Cousins) was born on February 8, 1894 in the Burchfiel Community near Anthony, KS (Harper Co.) the site settled by Burchfiel families from the Dandridge, TN. area. When Mom was a teen her family moved to Texas near Abernathy. There she and her sisters became “cowgirls” (no boys in the family); they rode their horses wearing long, heavy, divided shirts and big cowboy hats.

In 1979, I “interviewed” Mom – a lot – getting all the family history information that she could remember. I really thought I’d gone too far one day when she queried, “Wonder whatever happened to my pistol”. I knew she could handle a rifle with the best, but I had never seen or heard anything about a pistol. Later we were looking through old pictures and there she was – sitting tall in the saddle in her big hat and her long divided skirt and the pistol positioned firmly in the holster. Next step – a new theme song: Pistol Packin’ Mama. Mom was quick to expound – the pistol was for protection from snakes and varmints, not for shootouts or gunfights. I found out later that Mom, her sister, and a couple of brothers-in-law had ordered their pistols from Montgomery Ward through the catalog.

A newspaper carried a notice that certain land in Colorado was to be opened for homestead. In March 1916, Mom, her sister Isna, and their brother-in-law Jim Henderson formerly from Tennessee, and a neighbor, Bill, made the long drive in Uncle Jim’s old car. They brought comforters and slept on the ground at night; their food supply included eggs. Bill was the cook and would scramble all the eggs together and serve himself huge portions. Mom and Aunt Isna “got wise” and would carry their allotment of two eggs each around in their pockets, later doing their own cooking. They came through New Mexico, through the Toll Gate Canyon to Branson, CO. Yes, that’s Branson, Colorado.

In Branson they met “locaters” who knew available land and boundaries and would show it. Their locater took them about twenty-five miles north of Branson to Yachita (pronounced Wa-chee’ta); there was a little post office and probably a little store. When they were trying to locate boundary markers or stakes, they discovered that Uncle Jim’s speedometer did not register correctly. Fortunately they met another locater and asked for help. Their locater exchanges places with a passenger from the other car – BEAN meets BURCHFIEL. Clarence Bean and John Whitson were passengers in the other car. (Dad talked mostly to Aunt Isna but he admitted later that he was attracted to Mom.) After they found the boundaries, the two groups went their separate ways. The next day Mom and her party went to Trinidad to file at the Las Animas County Courthouse. They had chosen parcels of land near Yachita. Lo and behold! In walked Dad and Uncle John to file on their choices near Tobe, Co., a post office and country store. There was a quickening exchange of “Where’s your land?” type questions. As they were leaving, Dad asked Mom if she would write to him; she said she would. Then they all went their separate ways back to Texas – Mom and her group to Abernathy, and Dad and Uncle John back to McLean, TX. to work for Dad’s Uncle George and Aunt Nannie for a while.

I don’t know when Dad and Uncle John returned to Colorado to establish residence; but by October 22, 1916, they had built their half-dugout domiciles and were building a log barn. When they were ready to leave Texas with a team of mules and a wagon, and perhaps, a saddle horse, Aunt Nannie gave Dad a Bible saying, “Clarence, I just can’t stand to see you go way out there without a Bible.” (That became our “family Bible” and the foundation of our lives.) Dad and Uncle John had adjoining half sections, Uncle John’s to the south ran a little way up the north slope of Mesa de Maya. North of Dad’s place was a spring used by the people in the community until they could deg wells. Homesteaders were required to live on their land seven months each year for three years, make improvements and cultivate forty acres. Dad and Uncle John built half-dugouts, the upper being rock walls and the roof of big log beams covered with rough boards (slabs) and sod on top. (Open beam ceilings!) And when it rained, it leaked. They would go out and throw a few shovels of mud over the leaks. Water diversion!

When Mom and Aunt Isna moved to Colorado to “establish residence” their father, George Jackson Burchfiel (born near Dandridge, TN on January 8, 1857), came with them in a covered wagon, with the pipe of the little “topsy stove” sticking through the canvas. When they were near a railroad, Grandpa would pick up coal that had fallen off the cars, for them to burn. The road through the Toll Gate Canyon was so rough and steep that they would tie the wheels to help “brake” the wagon. They stayed at a rooming house in Branson, CO until their houses were ready. They were little “tar-paper shacks” about then by twelve feet with an almost flat roof; they were built on their adjoining half-sections, about six feet apart directly across the property line from each other. Mom’s little abode was used for the kitchen-living area and Aunt Isna’s was used for sleeping quarters. They had very little furniture but the kitchen boasted the topsy stove with a drum oven. Mom baked bread; they had brought their “everlasting yeast” with them. Once they stored a big sack of flour in the sleeping arena – somebody took it. They hauled their water from a spring. Grandpa cut posts for fence around both places. Later Grandma Burchfiel shipped a carload of cattle; shipping cattle via railroad across the state line was not allowed – anthrax and such. So the cattle were unloaded in New Mexico, probably at Folsom, and driven through the Toll Gate Canyon and Branson to the homesteads. Dad helped with the drive.

Life wasn’t easy but youth made it memorable, notable, remarkable. Hard work, drudgery, grind, adversity, calamity, catastrophe faced by courage, bravery, boldness and kindness, courtesy, chivalry, respect brought survival, satisfaction, gratification, pleasure, happiness, and friendship, fondness, love and devotion.

One time when Grandma Burchfiel was visiting her daughters, they all went in the wagon over to visit Daddy and Uncle John. It just so happened that Daddy’s Aunt Nannie and Uncle George were there; so family met family. The men all slept in the barn; the ladies slept inside the half-dugout. Grandma and Aunt Nannie share the bed and the girls slept on pallets on the “dirt floor”. A young woman with the Sitters said that her hip “just fit that hole in the floor”. Uncle John, a witty Irishman, automatically kept the entertainment funny and it seems that he did quite a lot of the cooking; it may have been this “house full of visitors” to whom he said, “If you find dirt in the food, call it pepper, if you find a hair, call it a string.”

The homesteading process made progress. Letter writing seems to have been beneficial in making acquaintance and leading to deeper interests. In a letter to his father, George W. Bean, Wolf Lake, IL, my Dad wrote, “I almost forgot to tell you. John and I have found us a pair of girlies out here, too. They are sisters and have a half-section each…..” Traveling by wagon from Dad’s place to Mom’s took several hours, but on horseback across the canyon was about ten miles. (That country, south, west, northwest of Dad’s place is rugged, quite mountainous – a part of the Rocky Mountain Range. The plains are located to the east. So traveling was pretty rough back then.) When Dad and Uncle John were courting Mom and Aunt Isna, they took turns riding the horse across the canyon to visit the girls on Sundays. So every other Sunday, Dad would serenade Mom with beautiful old songs like: Sweet Bunch of Daisies; Eileen, My Eileen; Daisies Won’t Tell, Dear; My Little Girl, You Know I Love You; I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad. One day Dad was watching Mom make bread (or maybe bisquits); he said he wanted to see if she was a good cook.

When the time came, Dad told Grandma Burchfiel that he wanted to marry Mom and asked for her consent. Mom said she way always proud of Dad for that. Grandma gave her consent by saying that she had never expected to raise a daughter smarter than she was – that she herself had married. In later years Dad would say that the reason they married was because Mom needed a manager and he needed a cook.

When Mom and Dad and Uncle John and Aunt Isna were discussing “double wedding” plans, they decided to be married on September 17, Grandma’s birthday. The young ladies bought their wedding dresses when they went to Trinidad on the day of their double wedding. There were no family members or friends there, so the couples witnessed for each other. According to their wedding certificate, Mom and Dad were married first by the Las Animas County Judge Robert R. Ross on September 17, 1917, in the presence of…..It is amusing to note that Aunt Isna had signed the certificate using her maiden name, even though she and Uncle John were married minutes later. At their “wedding” breakfast the next morning, Mom ordered eggs; they had been fried in burnt grease and were so bitter that she couldn’t eat them. There was light conversation and teasing, some directed at Uncle John; he said, “The next time I get married, I’m going by myself”.

There were arrangements whereby a couple of homesteaders wishing to be married could live where the husband chose. In this case it was decided that Mom and Dad would live on his place and take care of Uncle John’s property and Uncle John and Aunt Isna would reside on and care for the girls’ homesteads. The spring north of Dad’s homestead must have been a social site – neighbors often visited while there. One neighbor, Ed, would tease Dad by asking, “How’s the Missus?” One day shortly after they were married, Mom and Dad walked down to the spring when Ed was there, and Dad introduced “My wife”.

Life wasn’t all sunshine and roses; there were many dark skies and weeds. But these two couples weathered the storms, and fifty years later, 1967, a big, big bunch of relatives and friends gathered in Loveland, CO to celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary. We celebrated all summer long every time any of the Beans or Burchfiels made an appearance.

Dad and Mom were happy being homesteaders; they worked hard and looked to the future. They had their home and an “adorable” baby daughter, and good neighbors. What more could they want? Neighbors gave a pressing invitation to attend revival services at the school house, and to please them, Dad and Mom went. They found the Lord and accepted Him into their hearts; then they realized that they did have everything.

Homesteaders, like the early prospectors, occasionally needed a grub-stake; Dad found a job in Wichita Falls, TX so we moved there. I’ve been told some interesting experiences. Presumably by 1922, we had returned to our (homestead) farm at Tobe, CO in the most “beat-up” looking old truck with solid rubber tires. (I think it was our first auto.)

I don’t remember our half-dugout not having plastered walls and a pine board floor; I don’t know when those improvements were made, but I do remember when we ordered “Calcimine” from Montgomery Ward. I can’t remember what color for sure, pink? Blue? I remember the “open-beamed” ceiling was sort of “splotchy”. This I do remember; every time Dad came in, he’d look around and say, “Ward’s Calcimine!” I was never sure if he was satisfied or badly disappointed.

The years, 1922-26, were full of long, hard days, day break to dark: plowing the fields, planting corn and beans with crude harrows and listers pulled by a team of horses; pulling weeds by hand and hoeing down the long, long rows and back; getting a drink of water from a fruit jar or vinegar jug wrapped in a wet gunnysack that was supposed to be sitting in the shade of plants, but the sun didn’t stand still; leaving the horseteam standing during a hurried dinner of bean and cornbread; working in the garden between times; about sundown bringing the horses in, unharnessing, watering, feeding them; walking a mile or three to gather the cows from the pasture, watering, feeding them, milking them by hand; slopping the hogs, feeding the chickens, hunting the eggs, getting in wood and chips for fire in the cookstove; beans and cornbread for supper with milk; don’t forget to shut up the chickens (to protect them from varmints). That was just spring and summer; come fall and winter: harvesting the crops by hand or crude implements – cutting, bundling, shooking corn, pulling, piling, threshing beans, hauling in a wagon; hauling a load or two of wood from the cedars to last through the winter; preserving produce from the garden for winter meals. When the weather got cold enough there was butchering day. Uncle Alvin got in on butchering when he was visiting us a few weeks in 1924.

When Uncle Alvin came to spend some time with us, he brought me a gift, a soft rectangular object; he would drop it on the floor and say, “See, it doesn’t make any noise.” (It didn’t make any sense to me, but I loved it because I loved Uncle Alvin.) He kept repeating this process while I kept losing interest. Finally he pulled out a canvas-type roll-up “blackboard” and some chalk. That made sense ! I enjoyed that gift for many years. Our mail carrier on occasion would get snowbound or trouble of some kine and he’d spend the night with us. (or other neighbors) He drew “stick figures” on my little blackboard and sometimes read to me. My cousin, Pat Henderson, and I would play cat and mouse or hangman; we had more spats over losing. I learned a lot of spelling and multiplication tables using that little blackboard.

Uncle Alvin played with me and I would pester him sometimes beyond endurance. He carried in his pocket a rubber band cut from an old auto innertube and once or twice he popped me with it. When we played and he’d had enough (and I didn’t stop—I had a lot of endurance), he would say, “Guess I’ll have to get out my rubber band.” I’d be long gone. Before we had dependable cars, people in our country would travel via the mail carrier to the railroad station and go by train. Thus Uncle Alvin made the trip to Trinidad, (our county seat) where he met Aunt Helen and they were married. Uncle Alvin brought his new bride to meet the family; shortly they were on their way—I think to Phoenix, eventually to California.

In June, 1923, Dad was elected as a delegate from our church, The Plum Valley Church of the Nazarene, to the District Assembly at Denver. The District Superintendent was welcoming and introducing delegates: “Mr. Bean from Plum Valley! Do you raise plums out there?” Dad’s response, “No, Sir, we raise beans.” That brought the house down.

At Christmas time, the whole community attended the country school Christmas program; there would be a huge decorated tree and generous treats in brown paper bags. People brought gifts for Santa to give out to the children. One time I was sitting on Mom’s lap as Santa moved down the row asking children if they’d been good”. I don’t remember the conversation when he came to me, but when he’d gone on I asked Mom, “What’s Ol’ Santy made out of?” That “cruddy” old mask stumped me.

During 1926, our lives changed drastically. My little brother was stillborn; we nearly lost my Mom. We moved to Trinidad where Dad worked in a gas plant and nearly lost his health. But God took care of us and provided many happy times and opportunities that we wouldn’t have had on the farm. Then the depression hit and Dad was out of a job. The last of May 1931, we moved back to the farm. It was a little late to put in crops, but Dad and Mom were resourceful and managed to get a team of horses and a couple of cows; Mom always raised chickens. Dry weather seemed to compete with the depression. Crops were so meager that many people of our community including us, burned the thorns off cactus and fed it to our livestock. Life goes on. I took my seventh and eighth grades at the country school, and rode the school bus to Kim High School, Kim, CO, throughout my ninth grade term.

Webster’s dictionary defines: rural delivery—delivery of mail by carriers in rural areas, formerly RFD; star route—(such routes are marked with a star or asterisk in postal records) a route between on city or town and another over which mail is transported by a private carrier under contract. In 1934, Dad was awarded a four-year contract to be a star route mail carrier; this was the beginning of a career that lasted 22 years. By June, 1934, we had moved to Kim, CO. Dad’s first star route was between Kim and Tobe, CO, (our farm address) with two other post offices to be serviced in between; he carried this mail for 2 four-year contract terms. His third contract began July 1942, and was between Kim and Springfield, CO, with three other post offices to be serviced. In 1946, Dad and Mom moved to Granada, CO, where Dad started his next route between Granada and Springfield with two in-between post offices. He carried the mail on this route for two and a half 4-year terms until he retired in 1956; they sold his route contract and their home and moved to Loveland, CO.

To sum up: between July 1934, and July 1956, Dad fulfilled 5 ½ four-year contracts on three different routes, served 13 post offices, worked six days a week (the last few years he had major holidays off), delivered countless pieces of mail to many residents along the routes, did a lot of errands and favors for small town businesses and other people (especially during the “was” years), was exposed to every kind of weather, drove thousands of miles over every kind of road but “good”, experienced being snow-bound, had a few accidents (a couple of pretty scary ones), put “wear and tear”—deterioration on a dozen or so new cars, a couple of pick-ups, and a jeep. He took the Pony Express motto, “The mail must go through” literally and seriously. He truly was a “star” of the Star Route Carriers. And through it all Mom was his constant and reliable partner.

Riding the school bus in the 1930’s was not much fun; I appreciated living in the town Kim, CO, and attending high school. I received my diploma in May 1937, and that September I enrolled in what is now South Nazarene University at Bethany, OK. I met Ellis there in 1939; we fell for each other and planned for a future together. I began my teaching career in September of 1940 at Kim Grade School. It seemed wise to attend summer school to work toward my college degree and broaden my teaching field. Ellis and I both enrolled in what is now the University of

Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK, for the summer session of 1941. That fall, November 19, he was drafted into the US Army; then came Pearl Harbor, December 7.

Thereafter I found myself “juggling” my teaching job, summer school, and – Ellis. After my summer session in 1942, I traveled in rickety old buses to Miami, FL; Ellis met me there and we were married by the Nazarene pastor at the parsonage. We “honeymooned” at Key West, FL, where he was stationed. We knew he wouldn’t be there very long, so I returned to Kim and my teaching position. As I rode the bus up the “over-seas” highway through the Florida Keys, I’ll never forget the bereft, crushed, desperate feelings as I gazed through the bus window at the massive full moon gleaming, glowing, glittering across the Atlantic waters.

The following year he was moved several times, finally to the New York City area, and I got to spend the summer of 1943 there with him (or waiting for him). We “painted the town” on three-day passes. Not long after I returned to Kim, he was shipped out and lost to me for several weeks. Nightmares! Late in January 1944, sketchy letters began to trickle in; he was in the Aleutian Islands. That summer I received my AB degree from UCO at Edmond, OK and got a better teaching job at Springfield, CO, and better still at Pritchett High School, Pritchett, CO in 1945-46; that’s where I was when Ellis was discharged in December 1945 – I met him in Denver and brought him HOME. HAPPY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

From then on our routines changed, but the pattern pretty much stayed in place. We took the good, the bad, the indifferent with a grain of salt and traveled onward and upward. We continued summer school through 1948 (my last); Ellis had attained his AB degree in 1947. The next three summers we spent in Greeley, CO where he earned his MA degree in 1951; he worked on a doctorate at DU, Denver, from 1952 through 1955 when his GI Bill ran out. Ellis continued to take summer courses, workshops and seminars throughout the rest of his teaching career. He retired in June, 1984.

Starting in 1946, we both taught in the same school system, it worked for us, but it might not for others; pressures and problems doubled—we carried each other’s burdens. Ellis “loved” sports and got into coaching, but the stress of taking a football team to state play-offs put him in the hospital, so he turned to administration. My aim was teaching in grades five and six, but circumstances (war years) put me into every grade 1-12 and nearly every field. I was sponsor of various extracurricular activities and classes. We went with seniors (12th grade) on trips to Mexico, California, Canada, and new York and did all the “tourist stuff” along the way. From 1946 through June, 1984, we taught school at Pritchett, Two Buttes, Wiley, Two Buttes, Prichett, Colbran, and Loveland, all in Colorado. We had many and all kinds of experiences, (some personal heartaches like losing our baby son in November 1950.) We learned a lot and did a lot of “growing-up” (and out); we loved our students, we loved our work, we loved our communities and made some incredible lasting friendships.

Ellis’s family lived in Denver, and Dad and Mom had bought a home in Loveland. We felt the magnetic pull so Ellis applied and was hired to fill the last available position in the Loveland school district. It was a brand new junior high school and he was librarian and audio-visual person—media specialist. But—he had to build up from scratch. I hadn’t planned to teach when we moved to Loveland, but I agreed to do substitute work; I soon realized that I didn’t want to do much of that, so when the homebound teaching job was offered I accepted and stayed with that until the fall of 1969 when Dad got sick.

After years of living in teacherages and rented apartments, it was fun to move into our own new home, and unpack and burn all those boxes that had held some of our things for eons. I’D LOVE TO LIVE IN LOVELAND became our new theme song. The four of us, Mom, Dad, Ellis and I, all felt like we had moved to the Garden of Eden, but, alas, Loveland is just another earthly city; albeit superlative, Loveland is only half love. However, the skies are just as blue, the sun is just as bright, the moon is just as romantic, the Rocky Mountains are just as rugged, the scenery is just as magnificent, and the people who reside here are just as good as any other place on earth. The four of us took great pleasure in all of our drives, outings, excursions throughout the region; Dad and Ellis delighted in fishing and small-game hunting. We appreciated our homes and the “settled-in” atmosphere with activities, duties, and pleasures of “just being at home.” We especially valued our trips to other states to get acquainted and visit with our myriad of relatives, enjoying the sight-seeing along the way. It has always been much fun to plan and prepare and for visitors and to show them around our part of the world.

Everyone knows life isn’t always a bed of roses or a bowl of cherries; we had our share of heavy-weight bouts with diverse problems. But our lives were crammed pretty full with good things and the blessings from our Heavenly Father. Now I can close this narrative with the same statement Dad made at their Golden Wedding Anniversary celebration, “Yes, there have been troubles and heartaches, but God had brought us through all with happiness in our homes, peace in our hearts, and victory in our souls.”