• General Notes

  [pitts.FTW]
  
  [Br²derbund WFT Vol. 5, Ed. 1, Tree #0725, Date of Import: Apr 16, 2002]
  
  "Samuel Combest and His Descendants" book
  Christina was a strong, God-fearing pioneer woman. A midwife, she was
  well respected in the community and was affectionately called "Granny
  Chris."
  
  Christina Ann Combest Russell by Ethel Thomas Russell as told to her by her father-in-law, John Welby Russell, using his own words as much as possible.
  My parents were Bird and Christina Ann Combest Russell. We lived in Adair County, Kentucky, at Plum Point, near Green river. There were seven of us kids, but Mattie got burned to death when she was four years old. Pa went to build a fire at the wash place and Mattie tagged along. He turned his back a minute and heard her scream. When he whirled around, he saw she was a-fire. He burnt his hands something terrible trying to save her, but she died two days later. That was in 1883. Pa was a hard worker and died a few months later, of a rupture, leaving Ma with six kids, ranging in age from eight months to twelve years old.
  We were renting at the time. Come time to move, our uncle helped us move to his farm in Casey County, up the valley from Teddy, Kentucky. There wasn't a building on it. He and the neighbors cut logs, snaked them up with steers, and put us up a large one room cabin. We moved in and made our own stick-and-clay chimney. I was only six years old at the time, but I helped. Old man Luttrell rived the boards and Ma used them to make a form to run the mud in for the jams. Us kids mixed the mud and helped all we could. the forms stayed on the jams until they dried out and got settled. When cold weather came, Ma lit a fire in the fireplace and burned the forms off. That made the jams nearly as hard as brick. They were over eight inches thick, and the chimney drawed real well. Ma made a hearth out of mud and smoothed it off nice and pretty.
  Money was very scarce around our house, but Ma made do. Our hogs ran wild in the woods and got fat on beech mast and acorns. Come winter, she and Frank killed the hogs and she took care of her meat. Frank and Wealtha were the oldest, and large enough to work a right smart. She always had enough lard to last from one hog-killing time to the next. Frank would blow up the hog bladders for us kids, and we'd play with'em like kids play today with balloons. We had no toys to speak of. With the meat scraps, she took lye and made enough soap to do us the year around. She often told us, "It's nos disgrace to wear patched clothes, but it's a disgrace to go dirty." We were scrubbed as clean as lye soap and water could make us. Us kids dug gensang and may apple root in the woods to buy things we needed and help pay our debts. Ma took in washing, and ironed for neighbors, and Wealth hired out for fifty cents a week when neighbors needed help. We had a hard time making ends meet, but we were happy and had a lot of fun too.
  I remember the big snow that covered everything and kept coming. We had some wood, but not enough for a time like this. But Ma was resourceful. She and Frank had built a yard fence of good stout poles and not it came in handy. They started cutting the yard poles into fire wood. The snow kept coming, Ma and Frank kept cutting, and us kids kept carrying. We filled the wood corner high as it could go, then let it overlow to other corners until we hardly had room to walk in the house. George Shaw, a neighbor who became uneasy about us, rode his big horse through the snow drifts to check on us. he saw all that wood, and us a snug as a bug in a rug by the good warm fire and exclaimed, "Chris, I come all this distance to see how you and the young'uns are faring - and you have more wood thant I have at home! I'd better get back home and start cuttin'!"
  Our garden was on an island near the creek where the ground was rich and loose. that first year, Frank took a crooked dogwood branch, fixed handles on it and made us a plow that lasted for a time and a time. Frnk did the plowing and Jim and I pulled it. It was hot work. We raised all the beans we needed and hulled them out when the winter nights were long and quiet. There were no bean beetles then.
  Later we had a corn field. I recollect one fall we'd worked hard and got all our corn gathered, when a neighbor's old steer broke into our corn crib. We'd run it off several times before. This mad Ma so mad, she up with a rock and shelled that steer 's horn off as pretty as you please. The blood poured and the steer bellered as it headed for home on the run. It never came back. Ma was lefthanded. Unlike most women, she always hit where she aimed. She chopped wood like a man too.
  When there was meeting at Dry Fork or Bethany Church of Christ, Ma always dropped everything and we went. After services, which lasted two or three hours, the repentant believers would confess their faith in Christ, and were taken down to the creek nearby to be baptized. The Christians would gather on the bank and sing, "Oh happy day when Jesus washed my sins away", Frank and Weatha obeyed the gospel first, then the rest of us when we were old enough to understand. When there was sickness at home and we couldn't go to church, Ma would gather her brood around her and read to us from the Bible. We'd sing hymns and have prayer. We were all good singers and we made that little cabin ring. I've often thought, kids would be a lot better off if more of that was done today, and a lot of other things left off.
  I never thought much about it when I was growing up, but by the time I raised a family of my own, I realized that Ma had been a very wise woman. She had faith and courage and grit and backbone. I recollect when Frank was sixteen years old, he decided he was a man, and old enough to mak his own decisions. Frank had got with some neighbor boys and they planned to go to a dance about three miles away. I'll never forget it as long as I live. Ma warned Frank it wasn't a decent place to got to, but Frank thought he was old enough to make his own mind about that, and kept walking toward the gate. But he kept an eye on Ma, who was following him with a big switch under her apron.
  She said, "Frank, you've had no Pa to guide you all these years, I've done the best I could. I've taught you to be honest and straight and to stay away from places like that. You don't know what your're getting into. I'm not about to turn you loose at sixteeen years old to run around with trashy boys and get into all kinds o' devilment". The rest of us kids held our breath. None of us had defied Ma before, and we were skeered stiff. Ma spoke again, "Frank, I know more about that place than you do. They dance and drink whiskey, and it's a hang-out for bad women. I tell you, it's not a fitten place for a Christian boy to be. Now you combe back here." But Frank figured he was a grown man and it was time to break the apron strings. He kept walking.
  Ma was through talking. Quick as a wink, she bent and picked up a good-sized rock and let fly. It struck Frank center and knocked him flat. By the time he could get to his feet. Ma had him by the arm and gave him the thrashing of his life. When she turned him loose, he was glad to stagger back into the house. He was mad at first, but two weeks had hardly passed until a man was shot and killed in a drunken brawl over a woman at the very place Frank had been itching to go to that night. Frank could now see that Ma was far wiser than he was. He never tried to outdo her again. We accepted and respected her authority, and she exercised it as long as she felt we needed it.
  Ma left us no worldly goods to speak of, but she left us rich in the things that really matter. She taught us to be honest, truthflu, hard-working and God-fearing, and none of us was ever in any trouble. We all made decent, respectable Christian men and women,a nd Ma was proud of us.

Details of Christina Ann's family with Bird Russell

Details of Christina Ann's family with William Turner