• General Notes

  Charlie was born in Vinyard, Jack Co. TX, the youngest child of William and Etheldra Clement.
  
  The  family moved to IndianTerritory, now Oklahoma, when he was a small boy.
  
  He is listed on the 1900 Indian Territory Census in Burnett Township, Pottawatomie Co. with his parents, Wiliam and Etheldra Clement, brother Riley, and sister Lillie.
  
  He is also listed on the 1910 Pottawatomie Co. OK Census with his wife Stella and and 6 month old infant, William L., called "Little Lee".
  
  Charlie and Stella are also listed on the 1920 Pottawatomie Co. OK Census with four children, Church (Churchill) age 7, Arie age 5, Ellenage 2, and Bessie age 4 months.
  
  William Clement was a farmer and the children helped with the farm work.  As a result they attended school infrequently. Charlie only had a fourth grade education, but he was much wiser than many men who had much more education.  His humor and overall good nature endeared him to everyone who knew him.
  
  In the Lone Star and Mount Zion communities located near present day Macomb, OK, Saturday night would find most everyone around attending a community dance.  Music for the dances was usually provided by Lee Burden playing his fiddle or banjo, seconded on the piano by his daughter Stella.
  
  It was at these dances that Charlie courted Stella Burden, and it was also at one of these dances that seventeen year old Charlie Clement proposed to nineteen year old Stella Burden.  Stella, who had been teaching school for two years,  loved Charlie but she wanted to wait a year or two because she thought he was too young.  But Charlie insisted that he was old enough to know what he wanted and it was marriage now, or he was going to leave and find work somewhere else.  That convinced Stella, so she accepted his proposal of marriage.
  
  Charlie and Stella were married December18, 1907, just one month after Oklahoma had become a state.  Their marriage is recorded in Pottawatomie County, OK records in Marriage Book 11, page 7.   Recorded on the application for the marriage license is the infomation that written consent for the marriage was given by the groom's parents, because he was only 17 years old.  Other information recorded on the marriage license states that the marriage was performed at the residence of R. H. L. Burden by T. B. Albert, a Justice of the Peace, from McLoud, OK.  Witnesses whose names appear on the license are J.B. Moore, husband of the groom's sister, Lillie, and M.E. Ferree (Mary Ellen Ferree, also known as Aunt Sissie), sister of the bride'smother.
  
  Charlie and Stella lived in the Macomb area for about three years before moving to the area of Lexington in McClain Co. OK, where they would live for the next ten years.
  
  Tragedy struck the young family in 1913 when Charlie and Stella's firstborn child, William Lowell Lee Clement, became ill and died. They brought his body back to Pottawatomie County for burial in Mt. Zion Cemetery.  He was laid to rest near the graves of his great-grandparents, Richard and Prudence Burden.
  
  A double tragedy was suffered by Charlie and Stella in 1917 when both of their fathers died just three months apart.  William Clement died January 13, 1917 and Lee Burden died March 8, 1917.
  
  After William Clement's death, Charlie and Stella bought his father's farm and moved back to Pottawatomie County.  Charlie's mother, Etheldra, lived with Charlie and Stella until her death fifteen years later.
  
  Charlie farmed the land, raising peanuts, sweet potatoes, and feed for the livestock.  But he also worked for the railroad, working on the lines, replacing the ties and rails and such.  It was very difficul twork and took it toll on Charlie's health. The first railroad he worked for was the Rock Island called "Old Beck".  The main office was at Romulus.  The second line he worked on was the Santa Fe that ran just north of the town of Macomb.
  
  In 1927, Charlie and Stella bought a farm four miles east of Macomb, near the Eagle School community.  The house at the new home place consisted of a living room, one bedroom, and a kitchen.  Charlie and Stella slept in the living room and the children all slept in the one bedroom.  Charlie added one room onto the west side of the house that was Etheldra's room.
  
  After Etheldra died in 1932, Charlie moved her room to the north side of the house and it became the bedroom for the girls.  Sometime in the later years, Charlie bought a small house and moved it to the home site, setting it to the south of the existing house, then building a small connecting room to attach it to the living room.  The new addition became the living room with a bedroom on the east.  The living room in the original house then became the kitchen.  Those of us who were fortunate enough to remember the times spent with Charlie and Stella in their home can well remember the living room with its "one step down" from the living room to the small connecting room, then "one step down" into the kitchen.
  
  The Clement children attended school through the eighth grade at Eagle, then went to high school at Macomb.  Eagle School was one mile east of the Clement home and the children had to walk to school. Macomb was four miles west of their home, and the two oldest children, Churchill and Arie, had to walk to school there too, but by 1931, when Ellen started to high school, Macomb had a school bus to pick them up each day.
  
  Growing up in the Clement household was lots of fun but also lots of work.  Stella's health was bad, so a lot of the household chores were done by the three older girls.  When Ellen and Bessie were in high school they did the laundry for the entire family; and if the weather on Saturday did not permit them to get the laundry out, they had to stay out of school one day during the week and get it done.  Bessie said she always made good grades in school, but never got exempt from tests because she had too many absences.
  
  Wash day became a much easier chore when Charlie and Lelan made the girls a washing machine out of a barrel.  He had seen one that another man had made on one of the family trips to McClain County to pick cotton.  Lelan cut the top third off of a barrel and welded it to the bottom of the barrel, cut a hole in the newly welded section to stick wood into, and this bacame a firebox.  At the top of the barrel he bolted a rod across the barrel.  He took a 1x12 board, drilled holes in it, and bolted it onto the rod.  He then attached a handle. The girls would swing the board back and forth to agitate the clothes.  Bessie said it sure did get the clothes clean and was much easier than scrubbing them on a rub board. They still had to wring the clothes out by hand.
  
  The boys and Charlie would feed the livestock, milk the cows, and separate the milk.   In the evenings, after supper, the family would settle in for an evening of fun.  They would play dominos, fourty-two, or listen to Stella read "Shootum Ups" as Charlie called the western stories in "Wild West Weekly" that he loved so much.  The neighbors often came by to join in the fun.  In the summertime, the children worked in the field, hoeing peanuts, gathering fruit for canning, or helping in the garden.  In the evening they often played ball in the road beside the house.
  
  We always hear stories about the difficulty of living through the depression of the 1930s.  However, life for the Clements was pretty much the same as before the depression.  They raised most of their own food, so they never went hungry, as many did.
  
  World War II brought much anxiety to the family, when three of the four boys were called to duty.  Lelan went first in 1941, followed by Bill in 1943. Chief was called to report fo rservice the day Japan surrendered.
  
  In 1947 Charlie and Stella went to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where Charlie found work for a brief time, but they soon returned to the home place at Macomb.
  
  In 1951 they moved to Phoenix, Arizona for a year to try to improve Stella's health.  They returned home in 1952.
  
  In 1955, Charlie was diagnosed with diabetes.  His condition was pretty severe, requiring daily injections of insulin.  The disease took its toll on Charlie.  Poor circulation in his leg led to the amputation of his toe, then eventually his leg.  His eyesight slowly failed, leaving him virtually blind by the time of his death.
  
  Charlie died January 30, 1965.  It was a bitter cold day, the day of his funeral, which was held at Romulus Baptist Church. He was laid to rest in Prairie View Cemetery. His obituary which appeared in the Shawnee News Star reads as follows:
  
  CLEMENT --  Charlie Monroe Clement, 74, Rt. 2, Macomb, retired farmer, died at 1 a.m. Saturday in a Shawnee hospital following a two-year illness.  He was born Aug. 23, 1890 in Vinyard, Texas.  He moved to the Macomb area Jan. 1, 1894 from Vinyard. TX.  He was a member of the Church of Christ.
  
  Services will be at 2 p.m. Monday in the Romulus Baptist Church. Harold Popejoy, Jehovah Witness minister, will officiate.  Burial will be in Prairie View Cemetery.  Cooper Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
  
  Survivers are his wife, Mrs. Stella Clement of the home; four daughters, Mrs. Melford Scott, Cement, OK; Mrs. Earl Cope, Oklahoma City; Mrs. Elwood Cope and Mrs. Ray Hicks, both of Rt. 2, Macomb; four sons, Churchill Clement, Rt. 2, Macomb; Lelan Clement, Muskogee, OK; Billy Clement, Rt. 5, Shawnee, OK; and Lester Clement, Lawton, OK; a sister, Mrs.Lillie Moore, Shaster, California; a brother, Riley Clement, Wynnewood, OK; 30 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren.
  
  Bearers, all grandsons, will be Harold Dean Clement, Don Clement, Bobby Clement, Lester Lee Clement, Jerry Cope, and Melford Scott.

Details of Charlie Monroe's family with Stella Blackburn BURDEN