Better Times

John Baxter moved his family back to Success and farmed there for three years. Then they, again, moved to a farm west of Corning and farmed rented land until 1934. As the Great Depression slowly waned the family, now complete, was able to purchase a small farm in the Buncombe Community south of Naylor, Missouri. While there tragedy struck once more and thier oldest son, Marvin, only recently married, died of tuberculosis and sugar diabetes at the age of twenty-three.

Soon afterward John and his oldest surviving son, Johnie, purchased a small sawmill and began lumbering near Naylor, Missouri. They sold it a few years later and bought a larger sawmill west of Corning, Arkansas, and the two families moved to that town. The war years were passed at the sawmill and all their boys returned safely home.

Selling the sawmill in 1954 John retired from the sawmill life and with his wife and youngest son moved to Rockford, Illinois, where most of their children and grandchildren lived and worked. At the age of sixty-four John Baxter obtained a job there as a night watchman at a factory near his home. He retired in 1960 at the age of seventy and returned to Naylor, Missouri, and moved into a new house built for them by their oldest son, a local housing contractor at that time.

The life of John Baxter had not been an easy one. Circumstances beyond his control had dealt him stiff blows at times when he was unable to withstand them. But the tall, slender young man who had appeared so handsome with his blue eyes and dark brown hair framing his slim, well cut face managed to maintain an acceptable level of living for his family. He was a kind and generous man, always willing to come to the aid of a needy neighbor for he knew the pangs of defeat and how it felt to be left alone in a world to fend for oneself. He understood hardship.

John Baxter was sensitive to cutting remarks or actions and many times quietly accepted offence, inconsideration, and neglect. He was fun to be with at times; he could be playful. In his younger years he was said to have been the life of the party. However, he often carried with him the emotional scars of those defeats of earlier life by enemies against which he was no match. When he died on December 3, 1971, he left only a small house still partially mortgaged. One can only wonder what might have been accomplished by the man lying in the Naylor Masonic Cemetery had he been given a better chance with a fuller opportunity to use his many talents.

2011-03-26 16:41:33 RBaxter

See additional information on the Individual Data Info Page for John Faunzie Baxter.