My great-grandmother Stonesifer was a Cherokee Indian I was told. There is the story that my Great-grandfather met her when the Cherokees passed through Arkansas on "The Trail of Tears " from Tennessee to Oklahoma.

She was blind and apparently stayed with my Dads parents before she died. She smoked a clay pipe which she would have Dad light for her. He said he would smoke some of it thinking since she was blind she wouldn’t know it. She would ask " Well 'Clarence' don’t you have it going yet?" He would say "No grandma the tobacco must be a little wet" He was about 8 at the time.

I do not know anything of my Great-grandfather Stonesifer, not even his name. I think he died before Dad was born. He is probably buried in the Woolsey Cemetery.

I have a pair of handmade scissors that was made by an Uncle Bill Stonesifer who was a blacksmith. It isn’t clear whether he was my Granddad Stonesifer’s brother or his Uncle.

Dad told of the time his Dad made him drown several kittens. He put them in a "toe sack" and weighted it with rocks and dropped them in the creek. He was about 7 or 8 years old. He said those kittens haunted his dreams for several nights. I can’t recall why his Dad made him kill the kittens.

They say that my Grandfather Stonesifer never turned a cold and hungry stranger from the door. The lived fairly near the Frisco Railroad tracks and back at that time there were a lot of men that walked the rails for various reasons. Hobos they were called. Some of them were looking for work and others homeless. Some were just bums by choice.

He would feed them and make them a bed by the fireplace if it was wintertime. Dad said one time they all got body lice from a bum that had stayed there. They had put some quilts down by the fire for him to sleep on. Most of the men that traveled the rails carried their own bedding but this man apparently had nothing. Dad said they washed all the quilts and sheets in kerosene to kill the lice. They even had to change the shucks. The padding for mattress back then was generally corn shucks or feathers. Theirs were shucks. They were called shuck ticks.

I understand Granddad Stonesifer sold Watkins Products door to door for a living. They had several acres of good bottom land and probably did some farming. I don’t know what the primary crop was. I can only recall my Dad making a garden one time. He hated farming. Mom always grew a garden after he died. It was necessary, she enjoyed it and was good at it.

Granddad rode a horse on his rounds and one time for some reason the horse got spooked and threw him off. He found the horse but the saddle was missing. He stopped at a place where Mom was working after he found the horse. She remembered him saying "Shukins alive I’ve lost my saddle." This was before she knew who he was. She learned later he was "Bud" Stonesifer. I believe that was the only time she saw him. He died in 1926.