A Family of Her Own

On October 13, 1912, Kate and John Baxter were married in a small ceremony attended by family members. They moved about the area following the lumbering work available and raising their family beginning with John's orphaned younger brother, Mart (Martin Van Buren Baxter), and their own first child which arrived in the middle of the next summer, Cona.

They managed quite well with the income of John as head sawyer supplemented by a small farming operation on the side. But the purchase of a large farm near Corning, Arkansas, was ill timed and was immediately beset by an agricultural depression which forced them in 1925 to give up the farm and all of their possessions which had been mortgaged to buy the farm.

For Kate this period was an especially hard time. She lost four babies, three in a row, about that time. The summer they lost the farm she was too sick to even do her housework. Her thirteen year old daughter, Cona, was unable to help much at home because the wages from her labor for other people was needed to help buy food for the family.

Financial conditions for this young family slowly improved although the nation was headed straight toward the pit of the Great Depression years. Nine years after the loss of the first farm, they were again able to purchase some land,this time a small farm in Missouri about 5 miles south of Naylor. From there her husband, again, entered the lumbering business. This time it was with a small sawmill of his own. Over time this operation was enlarged with a new larger mill about three miles west of Corning, Arkansas.

In 1954 John retired from the sawmill, sold it, and they moved with their one remaining son still at home to Rockford, Illinois. There they enjoyed living near most of their grandchildren and John worked as a night watchman at a nearby factory until he reached the age of seventy in 1960.

Kate and John returned to Naylor, Missouri, in 1960 and built a new home there to live near kinfolk and friends not far from the places they had lived most of their earlier lives. On December 3, 1971, her husband died. She continued to live there in their home alone for several years until Alzhimer's disease took away her ability to live on her own. Her last years were spent in the homes of her children in their loving care.

Katie Jane Adams Long Baxter was small in stature, but lively, good natured, and cheerful. Her neighborliness was infectious and reciprocated by those around her. The lives of her children testify to her abilities as a good and Godly mother just as her long marriage testified to her being a good wife. Although she never made headlines, she helped form good people and good citizens. The inner satisfaction which comes from knowing those things were her greatest reward this side of heaven.

2012-07-27 22:28:59 RBaxter

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