LuVella (Thurman) Dennis was my mother, a very loving and kind woman. Her parents did not give her a middle name. Sometimes as a young girl, she pretended to have the middle name of May, because she always wanted a middle name. I even found in one census record where she was listed as Luvella M. Thurman.
LuVella was the only child of Ira Dell Thurman (1883-1956) and Della Mamie (Wilson) Thurman (1885-1969), both natives of Macon County, Missouri.
During her childhood, LuVella's parents lived with her paternal grandmother, Paulina (Bennett) Thurman (1840-1928) on the Thurman family farm about 7 miles west of Atlanta, Missouri. LuVella learned many stories about her heritage and about the olden days from her Grandmother Thurman which she would relate over the years to me.
On Christmas Day, 1928, when Luvella was 13 years old, she watched her grandmother fall in their house between a wall and a small table, dead of heart trouble at 83. Her father then bought out the interest in the farm from his siblings and the rural Atlanta farm became theirs.
LuVella graduated from 8th grade at Atterberry County School located at the end of the road to their farm home. In order for her to go to high school, she would have had to board with someone in Atlanta, Missouri. Her parents thought her too young at 13 to board away from home, so her formal education ended, much to her disappointment. However, LuVella's thirst for knowledge led her to voluntarily repeat the 8th grade two more times, until she seemed to know more than the young teachers the district sent to Atterberry School.
Being isolated in a rural area, there were not a lot of ways to make an income. LuVella longed to go, as her first cousin, Ruth Seney, had done to Chillicothe, Missouri, Business College. But, this seemed financially out of reach for her. LuVella saw the ideal job as that of a secretary or office worker. On her family's shopping or business trips to the town of Macon City, she would always envy the girls she saw typing and working in the court house and in other offices.
Back on the farm, she began a business of raising turkeys to make a living. She bought baby turkeys from hatcheries and raised them to be large healthy birds, then sold them.
But, one endeavor was not enough. LuVella and her mother, Della, were also accomplished seamstresses who made or altered dresses for ladies in the community.
They were adept at planting and raising a large garden for canning. LuVella also helped her father and could do most anything around the farm.
LuVella loved to read, particularly stories about pioneers. One of her favorite books was "Glimpses of Pioneer Life." Later on, she loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She was also a writer. She wrote stories and recorded ancestral events. She and her mother for many years wrote news columns about Independence Township of Macon County, Missouri, which were published in the Macon Chronicle Herald and the LaPlata Home Press newspapers.
The Thurmans sold a variety of hand-made items as well as provided for themselves. LuVella's father made furniture out of small willow trees, mostly rocking chairs and tables. LuVella learned to quilt from her mother and grandmother, and made many beautiful quilts on a quilt frame made by her father. She also made rag rugs and woven rugs on a loom. They spun yarn on their spinning wheel, knitted, crocheted, and tatted. Her father was a whittler and made their knitting needles and crochet hooks as well as many other items. LuVella was left-handed and her mother learned that she could not teach her to knit and crochet in the traditional way. Rather than teach her to use the same hands as her while sitting beside her, her mother sat in front of her as she used the opposite hand to work with.
LuVella made knit or crocheted gloves, scarves, hats, jackets, houseshoes, and decorative items. She found that silk material made wonderful men's ties. In her young days, a time when fashion called for loud-colored ties, her handmade ones where a popular sale item at her church, by word of mouth, and on the streets of the small towns in her area.
LuVella went through the Great Depression when food and all items were rationed. She learned never to throw anything useful away, and to be frugle with every resource and every cent that came her way. She carried this phylosophy throughout her entire lifetime. When I, her daughter, was a young woman with income of my own, I went throught lots of clothes as styles came and went. My mother, who was the same size as me, would revamp my clothes to suit her tastes and she had quite a wardrobe from my cast-off clothing.
LuVella grew up knowing and adhering to a happy Christian life. Her family had both an organ and a piano in the parlor of their home. LuVella and her mother would play these instruments together and sing hymns at home and at church. LuVella's mother was a Methodist who had been saved in an old-time tent meeting. Her father, Ira, was not so keen on religion at first. He chewed tobacco and was a rather harsh, hot-tempered man. The family began attending the Assembly of God Church in Elmer, Missouri, which Ira's cousins were instrumental in establishing.
One day, God got ahold of Ira and he was saved and became a kinder man. He gave up his tobacco when they got a new car and because Luvella asked him to, so they wouldn't have spit lines down the side of the new car.
Down the road from the Thurman house lived one of the Thurman cousins who went to the Elmer Assembly of God Church. A young farmhand working for him, named Tom Dennis, often accompanied them to church. Tom's father had died when he was 10 years old and his mother had to farm him and his siblings out to work for their room and board with people in the community.
In 1941, Tom was drafted into the Army. One Sunday, LuVella asked his sister for his military address. Thus began a casual friendship, by mail, which turned into romance. LuVella had been courted by at least two other suitors, but none were deemed good enough by her father. And, so was the case with Tom, also. When the relationship became serious and it became apparent that her father would not let them marry, LuVella and Tom decided to elope.
On Tom's next furlough home, LuVella enlisted the help of a cousin and his wife. They picked her up for church on this particular Friday night, and she told her parents she was spending the night with the cousin (which was true). She wore two dresses. The outer one was covering up her royal blue velvet wedding dress. After church, they went to the pastor's home and were married. When word reached her father of the marriage, he came with a gun. Some of his cousins from the church talked her father down by telling him his daughter was already married and he couldn't do anything about it now, so he finally went home.
Tom and LuVella had a short honeymoon at her cousin's home in Elmer, Missouri, then went to St. Joseph, Missouri, where LuVella was to live with another cousin Mary (Holman) Carlock while Tom returned to the Army. LuVella and her cousin Mary both got jobs in a candy factory in St. Joseph. However, the cold environment in the factory proved too much for LuVella who had a chronic respiratory condition.
LuVella finally returned home, but only after her father agreed to accept her new husband, and all eventually turned out well, although Ira never especially liked Tom. Tom was discharged from the Army and came home to farming with LuVella's parents. In 1945 Tom and LuVella lost a child to a miscarriage. In 1947 they had a baby girl whom they named Blytha Onetha Dennis (this writer). This was to be their only child. My mother always said she never wanted to have more children than she could afford to take care of properly; she had seen too many families in her day who had lots of children and they went hungry and poorly dressed. She never got to the point where she thought she could afford more than one child. She and Tom always wanted a place of their own, but were never able to afford this either, so they lived with LuVella's parents until their deaths, and they then inherited the family home.
In 1950, the Dennis and Thurman families moved to Kirksville, Adair County, Missouri, where there were better work opportunities. They were sad to sell the family farm, but Ira Thurman's health was poor. He could no longer keep up with the demands of a large farm, and Tom did not feel he could manage a large farm either. He was a very hard worker but preferred to do manual labor while someone else did the management.
The two families together purchased a small 5 acre farm at the south edge of Kirksville. Tom worked a variety of jobs, first on a section gang for the Wabash Railroad which ran near their home. As I child, I remember looking down the road and seeing my Dad walking home from the tracks, and my Mom and I would go to meet him. Later he helped clear land for a newly developing State Park near Kirksville, called Thousand Hills. He also worked on a crew clearing land for the REA electrical lines. For many years he worked for the Mitchell Dairy in Kirksville, then as a custodian for the Osteopathic College, and the Laughlin Hospital in Kirksville.
LuVella and her mother continued to do their part to provide income for the family. LuVella worked as a housekeeper for several families. Then, they realized they could make a better living taking in ironing in their home, particularly white shirts for businessmen (before the day of wrinkle-free fabrics). They charged 60 cents per hour, a penney a minute, and they were thrilled at such a wonderful income. They usually worked all day, every day but Sunday, at their dual ironing boards, and people were always coming and going from our house to pick up their ironing.
LuVella and her mother also raised a large garden, not only for themselves, but they learned that being near town provided an endless market for their produce. They bought a scales and sold most of their vegetables by the pound.
My family attended the First Assembly of God Church in Kirksville, Missouri, but also returned often to the Assembly of God Church in Elmer, Missouri, where they had many friends and relatives.
One of LuVella's greatest joys was pursuing activities with me, her daughter. We had no television, although this form of entertainment was just coming into popularity in the 1950s. But, we did listen to lots of gospel and country music on the radio. LuVella spent a lot of time teaching me her sewing skills, playing games with me, baking cookies together, reading, telling ancestor stories, and promoting learning. She was a wonderful mother, and I can't begin to list all the things she taught me. She lived to see me fulfill her own career dreams of becoming a secretary. Because of LuVella's encouragement, I learned typing and shorthand in school and became a secretary for the State of Missouri, a job I held for 35 years. LuVella lived to see me married to a loving hard-working man, but she only got to see two of her five grandchildren, four of whom my husband and I adopted. After outdoor work such as gardening became too much for her, she began babysitting just one child at a time in her home, first for a neighbor, and then for a friend and co-worker of mine. Then, she got to babysit her first two grandchildren for a time before her health completely failed.
Since her teen years, LuVella had a lung condition, bronchiectasis, which it is believed she inherited from her father who died from the same thing in 1956. It caused her to have chronic coughing and eventually acute shortness of breath, then death in 1980. I cared for my father Tom after she died, and helped him live on the 5 acres they loved in the south of Kirksville until he died of heart trouble and cancer in 1999. Both Tom and LuVella are buried at Maple Hills Cemetery, close to LuVella's parents.
- Written by Blytha (Dennis) Ellis, daughter
LuVella was the only child of Ira Dell Thurman (1883-1956) and Della Mamie (Wilson) Thurman (1885-1969), both natives of Macon County, Missouri.
During her childhood, LuVella's parents lived with her paternal grandmother, Paulina (Bennett) Thurman (1840-1928) on the Thurman family farm about 7 miles west of Atlanta, Missouri. LuVella learned many stories about her heritage and about the olden days from her Grandmother Thurman which she would relate over the years to me.
On Christmas Day, 1928, when Luvella was 13 years old, she watched her grandmother fall in their house between a wall and a small table, dead of heart trouble at 83. Her father then bought out the interest in the farm from his siblings and the rural Atlanta farm became theirs.
LuVella graduated from 8th grade at Atterberry County School located at the end of the road to their farm home. In order for her to go to high school, she would have had to board with someone in Atlanta, Missouri. Her parents thought her too young at 13 to board away from home, so her formal education ended, much to her disappointment. However, LuVella's thirst for knowledge led her to voluntarily repeat the 8th grade two more times, until she seemed to know more than the young teachers the district sent to Atterberry School.
Being isolated in a rural area, there were not a lot of ways to make an income. LuVella longed to go, as her first cousin, Ruth Seney, had done to Chillicothe, Missouri, Business College. But, this seemed financially out of reach for her. LuVella saw the ideal job as that of a secretary or office worker. On her family's shopping or business trips to the town of Macon City, she would always envy the girls she saw typing and working in the court house and in other offices.
Back on the farm, she began a business of raising turkeys to make a living. She bought baby turkeys from hatcheries and raised them to be large healthy birds, then sold them.
But, one endeavor was not enough. LuVella and her mother, Della, were also accomplished seamstresses who made or altered dresses for ladies in the community.
They were adept at planting and raising a large garden for canning. LuVella also helped her father and could do most anything around the farm.
LuVella loved to read, particularly stories about pioneers. One of her favorite books was "Glimpses of Pioneer Life." Later on, she loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She was also a writer. She wrote stories and recorded ancestral events. She and her mother for many years wrote news columns about Independence Township of Macon County, Missouri, which were published in the Macon Chronicle Herald and the LaPlata Home Press newspapers.
The Thurmans sold a variety of hand-made items as well as provided for themselves. LuVella's father made furniture out of small willow trees, mostly rocking chairs and tables. LuVella learned to quilt from her mother and grandmother, and made many beautiful quilts on a quilt frame made by her father. She also made rag rugs and woven rugs on a loom. They spun yarn on their spinning wheel, knitted, crocheted, and tatted. Her father was a whittler and made their knitting needles and crochet hooks as well as many other items. LuVella was left-handed and her mother learned that she could not teach her to knit and crochet in the traditional way. Rather than teach her to use the same hands as her while sitting beside her, her mother sat in front of her as she used the opposite hand to work with.
LuVella made knit or crocheted gloves, scarves, hats, jackets, houseshoes, and decorative items. She found that silk material made wonderful men's ties. In her young days, a time when fashion called for loud-colored ties, her handmade ones where a popular sale item at her church, by word of mouth, and on the streets of the small towns in her area.
LuVella went through the Great Depression when food and all items were rationed. She learned never to throw anything useful away, and to be frugle with every resource and every cent that came her way. She carried this phylosophy throughout her entire lifetime. When I, her daughter, was a young woman with income of my own, I went throught lots of clothes as styles came and went. My mother, who was the same size as me, would revamp my clothes to suit her tastes and she had quite a wardrobe from my cast-off clothing.
LuVella grew up knowing and adhering to a happy Christian life. Her family had both an organ and a piano in the parlor of their home. LuVella and her mother would play these instruments together and sing hymns at home and at church. LuVella's mother was a Methodist who had been saved in an old-time tent meeting. Her father, Ira, was not so keen on religion at first. He chewed tobacco and was a rather harsh, hot-tempered man. The family began attending the Assembly of God Church in Elmer, Missouri, which Ira's cousins were instrumental in establishing.
One day, God got ahold of Ira and he was saved and became a kinder man. He gave up his tobacco when they got a new car and because Luvella asked him to, so they wouldn't have spit lines down the side of the new car.
Down the road from the Thurman house lived one of the Thurman cousins who went to the Elmer Assembly of God Church. A young farmhand working for him, named Tom Dennis, often accompanied them to church. Tom's father had died when he was 10 years old and his mother had to farm him and his siblings out to work for their room and board with people in the community.
In 1941, Tom was drafted into the Army. One Sunday, LuVella asked his sister for his military address. Thus began a casual friendship, by mail, which turned into romance. LuVella had been courted by at least two other suitors, but none were deemed good enough by her father. And, so was the case with Tom, also. When the relationship became serious and it became apparent that her father would not let them marry, LuVella and Tom decided to elope.
On Tom's next furlough home, LuVella enlisted the help of a cousin and his wife. They picked her up for church on this particular Friday night, and she told her parents she was spending the night with the cousin (which was true). She wore two dresses. The outer one was covering up her royal blue velvet wedding dress. After church, they went to the pastor's home and were married. When word reached her father of the marriage, he came with a gun. Some of his cousins from the church talked her father down by telling him his daughter was already married and he couldn't do anything about it now, so he finally went home.
Tom and LuVella had a short honeymoon at her cousin's home in Elmer, Missouri, then went to St. Joseph, Missouri, where LuVella was to live with another cousin Mary (Holman) Carlock while Tom returned to the Army. LuVella and her cousin Mary both got jobs in a candy factory in St. Joseph. However, the cold environment in the factory proved too much for LuVella who had a chronic respiratory condition.
LuVella finally returned home, but only after her father agreed to accept her new husband, and all eventually turned out well, although Ira never especially liked Tom. Tom was discharged from the Army and came home to farming with LuVella's parents. In 1945 Tom and LuVella lost a child to a miscarriage. In 1947 they had a baby girl whom they named Blytha Onetha Dennis (this writer). This was to be their only child. My mother always said she never wanted to have more children than she could afford to take care of properly; she had seen too many families in her day who had lots of children and they went hungry and poorly dressed. She never got to the point where she thought she could afford more than one child. She and Tom always wanted a place of their own, but were never able to afford this either, so they lived with LuVella's parents until their deaths, and they then inherited the family home.
In 1950, the Dennis and Thurman families moved to Kirksville, Adair County, Missouri, where there were better work opportunities. They were sad to sell the family farm, but Ira Thurman's health was poor. He could no longer keep up with the demands of a large farm, and Tom did not feel he could manage a large farm either. He was a very hard worker but preferred to do manual labor while someone else did the management.
The two families together purchased a small 5 acre farm at the south edge of Kirksville. Tom worked a variety of jobs, first on a section gang for the Wabash Railroad which ran near their home. As I child, I remember looking down the road and seeing my Dad walking home from the tracks, and my Mom and I would go to meet him. Later he helped clear land for a newly developing State Park near Kirksville, called Thousand Hills. He also worked on a crew clearing land for the REA electrical lines. For many years he worked for the Mitchell Dairy in Kirksville, then as a custodian for the Osteopathic College, and the Laughlin Hospital in Kirksville.
LuVella and her mother continued to do their part to provide income for the family. LuVella worked as a housekeeper for several families. Then, they realized they could make a better living taking in ironing in their home, particularly white shirts for businessmen (before the day of wrinkle-free fabrics). They charged 60 cents per hour, a penney a minute, and they were thrilled at such a wonderful income. They usually worked all day, every day but Sunday, at their dual ironing boards, and people were always coming and going from our house to pick up their ironing.
LuVella and her mother also raised a large garden, not only for themselves, but they learned that being near town provided an endless market for their produce. They bought a scales and sold most of their vegetables by the pound.
My family attended the First Assembly of God Church in Kirksville, Missouri, but also returned often to the Assembly of God Church in Elmer, Missouri, where they had many friends and relatives.
One of LuVella's greatest joys was pursuing activities with me, her daughter. We had no television, although this form of entertainment was just coming into popularity in the 1950s. But, we did listen to lots of gospel and country music on the radio. LuVella spent a lot of time teaching me her sewing skills, playing games with me, baking cookies together, reading, telling ancestor stories, and promoting learning. She was a wonderful mother, and I can't begin to list all the things she taught me. She lived to see me fulfill her own career dreams of becoming a secretary. Because of LuVella's encouragement, I learned typing and shorthand in school and became a secretary for the State of Missouri, a job I held for 35 years. LuVella lived to see me married to a loving hard-working man, but she only got to see two of her five grandchildren, four of whom my husband and I adopted. After outdoor work such as gardening became too much for her, she began babysitting just one child at a time in her home, first for a neighbor, and then for a friend and co-worker of mine. Then, she got to babysit her first two grandchildren for a time before her health completely failed.
Since her teen years, LuVella had a lung condition, bronchiectasis, which it is believed she inherited from her father who died from the same thing in 1956. It caused her to have chronic coughing and eventually acute shortness of breath, then death in 1980. I cared for my father Tom after she died, and helped him live on the 5 acres they loved in the south of Kirksville until he died of heart trouble and cancer in 1999. Both Tom and LuVella are buried at Maple Hills Cemetery, close to LuVella's parents.
- Written by Blytha (Dennis) Ellis, daughter
LuVella (Thurman) Dennis was my mother, a very loving and kind woman. Her parents did not give her a middle name. Sometimes as a young girl, she pretended to have the middle name of May, because she always wanted a middle name. I even found in one census record where she was listed as Luvella M. Thurman.
LuVella was the only child of Ira Dell Thurman (1883-1956) and Della Mamie (Wilson) Thurman (1885-1969), both natives of Macon County, Missouri.
During her childhood, LuVella's parents lived with her paternal grandmother, Paulina (Bennett) Thurman (1840-1928) on the Thurman family farm about 7 miles west of Atlanta, Missouri. LuVella learned many stories about her heritage and about the olden days from her Grandmother Thurman which she would relate over the years to me.
On Christmas Day, 1928, when Luvella was 13 years old, she watched her grandmother fall in their house between a wall and a small table, dead of heart trouble at 83. Her father then bought out the interest in the farm from his siblings and the rural Atlanta farm became theirs.
LuVella graduated from 8th grade at Atterberry County School located at the end of the road to their farm home. In order for her to go to high school, she would have had to board with someone in Atlanta, Missouri. Her parents thought her too young at 13 to board away from home, so her formal education ended, much to her disappointment. However, LuVella's thirst for knowledge led her to voluntarily repeat the 8th grade two more times, until she seemed to know more than the young teachers the district sent to Atterberry School.
Being isolated in a rural area, there were not a lot of ways to make an income. LuVella longed to go, as her first cousin, Ruth Seney, had done to Chillicothe, Missouri, Business College. But, this seemed financially out of reach for her. LuVella saw the ideal job as that of a secretary or office worker. On her family's shopping or business trips to the town of Macon City, she would always envy the girls she saw typing and working in the court house and in other offices.
Back on the farm, she began a business of raising turkeys to make a living. She bought baby turkeys from hatcheries and raised them to be large healthy birds, then sold them.
But, one endeavor was not enough. LuVella and her mother, Della, were also accomplished seamstresses who made or altered dresses for ladies in the community.
They were adept at planting and raising a large garden for canning. LuVella also helped her father and could do most anything around the farm.
LuVella loved to read, particularly stories about pioneers. One of her favorite books was "Glimpses of Pioneer Life." Later on, she loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She was also a writer. She wrote stories and recorded ancestral events. She and her mother for many years wrote news columns about Independence Township of Macon County, Missouri, which were published in the Macon Chronicle Herald and the LaPlata Home Press newspapers.
The Thurmans sold a variety of hand-made items as well as provided for themselves. LuVella's father made furniture out of small willow trees, mostly rocking chairs and tables. LuVella learned to quilt from her mother and grandmother, and made many beautiful quilts on a quilt frame made by her father. She also made rag rugs and woven rugs on a loom. They spun yarn on their spinning wheel, knitted, crocheted, and tatted. Her father was a whittler and made their knitting needles and crochet hooks as well as many other items. LuVella was left-handed and her mother learned that she could not teach her to knit and crochet in the traditional way. Rather than teach her to use the same hands as her while sitting beside her, her mother sat in front of her as she used the opposite hand to work with.
LuVella made knit or crocheted gloves, scarves, hats, jackets, houseshoes, and decorative items. She found that silk material made wonderful men's ties. In her young days, a time when fashion called for loud-colored ties, her handmade ones where a popular sale item at her church, by word of mouth, and on the streets of the small towns in her area.
LuVella went through the Great Depression when food and all items were rationed. She learned never to throw anything useful away, and to be frugle with every resource and every cent that came her way. She carried this phylosophy throughout her entire lifetime. When I, her daughter, was a young woman with income of my own, I went throught lots of clothes as styles came and went. My mother, who was the same size as me, would revamp my clothes to suit her tastes and she had quite a wardrobe from my cast-off clothing.
LuVella grew up knowing and adhering to a happy Christian life. Her family had both an organ and a piano in the parlor of their home. LuVella and her mother would play these instruments together and sing hymns at home and at church. LuVella's mother was a Methodist who had been saved in an old-time tent meeting. Her father, Ira, was not so keen on religion at first. He chewed tobacco and was a rather harsh, hot-tempered man. The family began attending the Assembly of God Church in Elmer, Missouri, which Ira's cousins were instrumental in establishing.
One day, God got ahold of Ira and he was saved and became a kinder man. He gave up his tobacco when they got a new car and because Luvella asked him to, so they wouldn't have spit lines down the side of the new car.
Down the road from the Thurman house lived one of the Thurman cousins who went to the Elmer Assembly of God Church. A young farmhand working for him, named Tom Dennis, often accompanied them to church. Tom's father had died when he was 10 years old and his mother had to farm him and his siblings out to work for their room and board with people in the community.
In 1941, Tom was drafted into the Army. One Sunday, LuVella asked his sister for his military address. Thus began a casual friendship, by mail, which turned into romance. LuVella had been courted by at least two other suitors, but none were deemed good enough by her father. And, so was the case with Tom, also. When the relationship became serious and it became apparent that her father would not let them marry, LuVella and Tom decided to elope.
On Tom's next furlough home, LuVella enlisted the help of a cousin and his wife. They picked her up for church on this particular Friday night, and she told her parents she was spending the night with the cousin (which was true). She wore two dresses. The outer one was covering up her royal blue velvet wedding dress. After church, they went to the pastor's home and were married. When word reached her father of the marriage, he came with a gun. Some of his cousins from the church talked her father down by telling him his daughter was already married and he couldn't do anything about it now, so he finally went home.
Tom and LuVella had a short honeymoon at her cousin's home in Elmer, Missouri, then went to St. Joseph, Missouri, where LuVella was to live with another cousin Mary (Holman) Carlock while Tom returned to the Army. LuVella and her cousin Mary both got jobs in a candy factory in St. Joseph. However, the cold environment in the factory proved too much for LuVella who had a chronic respiratory condition.
LuVella finally returned home, but only after her father agreed to accept her new husband, and all eventually turned out well, although Ira never especially liked Tom. Tom was discharged from the Army and came home to farming with LuVella's parents. In 1945 Tom and LuVella lost a child to a miscarriage. In 1947 they had a baby girl whom they named Blytha Onetha Dennis (this writer). This was to be their only child. My mother always said she never wanted to have more children than she could afford to take care of properly; she had seen too many families in her day who had lots of children and they went hungry and poorly dressed. She never got to the point where she thought she could afford more than one child. She and Tom always wanted a place of their own, but were never able to afford this either, so they lived with LuVella's parents until their deaths, and they then inherited the family home.
In 1950, the Dennis and Thurman families moved to Kirksville, Adair County, Missouri, where there were better work opportunities. They were sad to sell the family farm, but Ira Thurman's health was poor. He could no longer keep up with the demands of a large farm, and Tom did not feel he could manage a large farm either. He was a very hard worker but preferred to do manual labor while someone else did the management.
The two families together purchased a small 5 acre farm at the south edge of Kirksville. Tom worked a variety of jobs, first on a section gang for the Wabash Railroad which ran near their home. As I child, I remember looking down the road and seeing my Dad walking home from the tracks, and my Mom and I would go to meet him. Later he helped clear land for a newly developing State Park near Kirksville, called Thousand Hills. He also worked on a crew clearing land for the REA electrical lines. For many years he worked for the Mitchell Dairy in Kirksville, then as a custodian for the Osteopathic College, and the Laughlin Hospital in Kirksville.
LuVella and her mother continued to do their part to provide income for the family. LuVella worked as a housekeeper for several families. Then, they realized they could make a better living taking in ironing in their home, particularly white shirts for businessmen (before the day of wrinkle-free fabrics). They charged 60 cents per hour, a penney a minute, and they were thrilled at such a wonderful income. They usually worked all day, every day but Sunday, at their dual ironing boards, and people were always coming and going from our house to pick up their ironing.
LuVella and her mother also raised a large garden, not only for themselves, but they learned that being near town provided an endless market for their produce. They bought a scales and sold most of their vegetables by the pound.
My family attended the First Assembly of God Church in Kirksville, Missouri, but also returned often to the Assembly of God Church in Elmer, Missouri, where they had many friends and relatives.
One of LuVella's greatest joys was pursuing activities with me, her daughter. We had no television, although this form of entertainment was just coming into popularity in the 1950s. But, we did listen to lots of gospel and country music on the radio. LuVella spent a lot of time teaching me her sewing skills, playing games with me, baking cookies together, reading, telling ancestor stories, and promoting learning. She was a wonderful mother, and I can't begin to list all the things she taught me. She lived to see me fulfill her own career dreams of becoming a secretary. Because of LuVella's encouragement, I learned typing and shorthand in school and became a secretary for the State of Missouri, a job I held for 35 years. LuVella lived to see me married to a loving hard-working man, but she only got to see two of her five grandchildren, four of whom my husband and I adopted. After outdoor work such as gardening became too much for her, she began babysitting just one child at a time in her home, first for a neighbor, and then for a friend and co-worker of mine. Then, she got to babysit her first two grandchildren for a time before her health completely failed.
Since her teen years, LuVella had a lung condition, bronchiectasis, which it is believed she inherited from her father who died from the same thing in 1956. It caused her to have chronic coughing and eventually acute shortness of breath, then death in 1980. I cared for my father Tom after she died, and helped him live on the 5 acres they loved in the south of Kirksville until he died of heart trouble and cancer in 1999. Both Tom and LuVella are buried at Maple Hills Cemetery, close to LuVella's parents.
- Written by Blytha (Dennis) Ellis, daughter
LuVella was the only child of Ira Dell Thurman (1883-1956) and Della Mamie (Wilson) Thurman (1885-1969), both natives of Macon County, Missouri.
During her childhood, LuVella's parents lived with her paternal grandmother, Paulina (Bennett) Thurman (1840-1928) on the Thurman family farm about 7 miles west of Atlanta, Missouri. LuVella learned many stories about her heritage and about the olden days from her Grandmother Thurman which she would relate over the years to me.
On Christmas Day, 1928, when Luvella was 13 years old, she watched her grandmother fall in their house between a wall and a small table, dead of heart trouble at 83. Her father then bought out the interest in the farm from his siblings and the rural Atlanta farm became theirs.
LuVella graduated from 8th grade at Atterberry County School located at the end of the road to their farm home. In order for her to go to high school, she would have had to board with someone in Atlanta, Missouri. Her parents thought her too young at 13 to board away from home, so her formal education ended, much to her disappointment. However, LuVella's thirst for knowledge led her to voluntarily repeat the 8th grade two more times, until she seemed to know more than the young teachers the district sent to Atterberry School.
Being isolated in a rural area, there were not a lot of ways to make an income. LuVella longed to go, as her first cousin, Ruth Seney, had done to Chillicothe, Missouri, Business College. But, this seemed financially out of reach for her. LuVella saw the ideal job as that of a secretary or office worker. On her family's shopping or business trips to the town of Macon City, she would always envy the girls she saw typing and working in the court house and in other offices.
Back on the farm, she began a business of raising turkeys to make a living. She bought baby turkeys from hatcheries and raised them to be large healthy birds, then sold them.
But, one endeavor was not enough. LuVella and her mother, Della, were also accomplished seamstresses who made or altered dresses for ladies in the community.
They were adept at planting and raising a large garden for canning. LuVella also helped her father and could do most anything around the farm.
LuVella loved to read, particularly stories about pioneers. One of her favorite books was "Glimpses of Pioneer Life." Later on, she loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She was also a writer. She wrote stories and recorded ancestral events. She and her mother for many years wrote news columns about Independence Township of Macon County, Missouri, which were published in the Macon Chronicle Herald and the LaPlata Home Press newspapers.
The Thurmans sold a variety of hand-made items as well as provided for themselves. LuVella's father made furniture out of small willow trees, mostly rocking chairs and tables. LuVella learned to quilt from her mother and grandmother, and made many beautiful quilts on a quilt frame made by her father. She also made rag rugs and woven rugs on a loom. They spun yarn on their spinning wheel, knitted, crocheted, and tatted. Her father was a whittler and made their knitting needles and crochet hooks as well as many other items. LuVella was left-handed and her mother learned that she could not teach her to knit and crochet in the traditional way. Rather than teach her to use the same hands as her while sitting beside her, her mother sat in front of her as she used the opposite hand to work with.
LuVella made knit or crocheted gloves, scarves, hats, jackets, houseshoes, and decorative items. She found that silk material made wonderful men's ties. In her young days, a time when fashion called for loud-colored ties, her handmade ones where a popular sale item at her church, by word of mouth, and on the streets of the small towns in her area.
LuVella went through the Great Depression when food and all items were rationed. She learned never to throw anything useful away, and to be frugle with every resource and every cent that came her way. She carried this phylosophy throughout her entire lifetime. When I, her daughter, was a young woman with income of my own, I went throught lots of clothes as styles came and went. My mother, who was the same size as me, would revamp my clothes to suit her tastes and she had quite a wardrobe from my cast-off clothing.
LuVella grew up knowing and adhering to a happy Christian life. Her family had both an organ and a piano in the parlor of their home. LuVella and her mother would play these instruments together and sing hymns at home and at church. LuVella's mother was a Methodist who had been saved in an old-time tent meeting. Her father, Ira, was not so keen on religion at first. He chewed tobacco and was a rather harsh, hot-tempered man. The family began attending the Assembly of God Church in Elmer, Missouri, which Ira's cousins were instrumental in establishing.
One day, God got ahold of Ira and he was saved and became a kinder man. He gave up his tobacco when they got a new car and because Luvella asked him to, so they wouldn't have spit lines down the side of the new car.
Down the road from the Thurman house lived one of the Thurman cousins who went to the Elmer Assembly of God Church. A young farmhand working for him, named Tom Dennis, often accompanied them to church. Tom's father had died when he was 10 years old and his mother had to farm him and his siblings out to work for their room and board with people in the community.
In 1941, Tom was drafted into the Army. One Sunday, LuVella asked his sister for his military address. Thus began a casual friendship, by mail, which turned into romance. LuVella had been courted by at least two other suitors, but none were deemed good enough by her father. And, so was the case with Tom, also. When the relationship became serious and it became apparent that her father would not let them marry, LuVella and Tom decided to elope.
On Tom's next furlough home, LuVella enlisted the help of a cousin and his wife. They picked her up for church on this particular Friday night, and she told her parents she was spending the night with the cousin (which was true). She wore two dresses. The outer one was covering up her royal blue velvet wedding dress. After church, they went to the pastor's home and were married. When word reached her father of the marriage, he came with a gun. Some of his cousins from the church talked her father down by telling him his daughter was already married and he couldn't do anything about it now, so he finally went home.
Tom and LuVella had a short honeymoon at her cousin's home in Elmer, Missouri, then went to St. Joseph, Missouri, where LuVella was to live with another cousin Mary (Holman) Carlock while Tom returned to the Army. LuVella and her cousin Mary both got jobs in a candy factory in St. Joseph. However, the cold environment in the factory proved too much for LuVella who had a chronic respiratory condition.
LuVella finally returned home, but only after her father agreed to accept her new husband, and all eventually turned out well, although Ira never especially liked Tom. Tom was discharged from the Army and came home to farming with LuVella's parents. In 1945 Tom and LuVella lost a child to a miscarriage. In 1947 they had a baby girl whom they named Blytha Onetha Dennis (this writer). This was to be their only child. My mother always said she never wanted to have more children than she could afford to take care of properly; she had seen too many families in her day who had lots of children and they went hungry and poorly dressed. She never got to the point where she thought she could afford more than one child. She and Tom always wanted a place of their own, but were never able to afford this either, so they lived with LuVella's parents until their deaths, and they then inherited the family home.
In 1950, the Dennis and Thurman families moved to Kirksville, Adair County, Missouri, where there were better work opportunities. They were sad to sell the family farm, but Ira Thurman's health was poor. He could no longer keep up with the demands of a large farm, and Tom did not feel he could manage a large farm either. He was a very hard worker but preferred to do manual labor while someone else did the management.
The two families together purchased a small 5 acre farm at the south edge of Kirksville. Tom worked a variety of jobs, first on a section gang for the Wabash Railroad which ran near their home. As I child, I remember looking down the road and seeing my Dad walking home from the tracks, and my Mom and I would go to meet him. Later he helped clear land for a newly developing State Park near Kirksville, called Thousand Hills. He also worked on a crew clearing land for the REA electrical lines. For many years he worked for the Mitchell Dairy in Kirksville, then as a custodian for the Osteopathic College, and the Laughlin Hospital in Kirksville.
LuVella and her mother continued to do their part to provide income for the family. LuVella worked as a housekeeper for several families. Then, they realized they could make a better living taking in ironing in their home, particularly white shirts for businessmen (before the day of wrinkle-free fabrics). They charged 60 cents per hour, a penney a minute, and they were thrilled at such a wonderful income. They usually worked all day, every day but Sunday, at their dual ironing boards, and people were always coming and going from our house to pick up their ironing.
LuVella and her mother also raised a large garden, not only for themselves, but they learned that being near town provided an endless market for their produce. They bought a scales and sold most of their vegetables by the pound.
My family attended the First Assembly of God Church in Kirksville, Missouri, but also returned often to the Assembly of God Church in Elmer, Missouri, where they had many friends and relatives.
One of LuVella's greatest joys was pursuing activities with me, her daughter. We had no television, although this form of entertainment was just coming into popularity in the 1950s. But, we did listen to lots of gospel and country music on the radio. LuVella spent a lot of time teaching me her sewing skills, playing games with me, baking cookies together, reading, telling ancestor stories, and promoting learning. She was a wonderful mother, and I can't begin to list all the things she taught me. She lived to see me fulfill her own career dreams of becoming a secretary. Because of LuVella's encouragement, I learned typing and shorthand in school and became a secretary for the State of Missouri, a job I held for 35 years. LuVella lived to see me married to a loving hard-working man, but she only got to see two of her five grandchildren, four of whom my husband and I adopted. After outdoor work such as gardening became too much for her, she began babysitting just one child at a time in her home, first for a neighbor, and then for a friend and co-worker of mine. Then, she got to babysit her first two grandchildren for a time before her health completely failed.
Since her teen years, LuVella had a lung condition, bronchiectasis, which it is believed she inherited from her father who died from the same thing in 1956. It caused her to have chronic coughing and eventually acute shortness of breath, then death in 1980. I cared for my father Tom after she died, and helped him live on the 5 acres they loved in the south of Kirksville until he died of heart trouble and cancer in 1999. Both Tom and LuVella are buried at Maple Hills Cemetery, close to LuVella's parents.
- Written by Blytha (Dennis) Ellis, daughter
