• General Notes

  Stella was the third born child of Lee and Arie Burden.  She often talked about Clifty, Arkansas, her birthplace, even though she was only four years old, when her parents left Arkansas to move to IndianTerritory.
  
  In Indian Territory, Lee and Arie Burden settled first in the community of Mt. Zion, five miles northwest of Macomb in Pottawatomie County. Stella's father, Lee, was a farmer, but on weekends he played music for community dances on his fiddle and banjo.  Stella would second for him on the piano.  It was at these dances that Stella was courted by the handsome Charlie Clement.
  
  Lee Burden helped build a  schoolhouse near their home and named it Mt. Zion.  Stella and her older sister, Lizzie, attended school there.  Stella graduated from the 8th grade at Tecumseh School about 1901. This qualified her for a teaching certificate.  She had a brief teaching career.
  
  When she married Charlie, she became a homemaker and mother of nine children.  Stella had weak lungs, damaged perhaps by TB at one time, the doctor thought.  She was in ill health for a good many years, "as thin as a rail", but still managed to out live her husband by eleven years.
  
  After Charlie's death, Stella contintued to live at the home place as much as she could.  Her son Bill lived with her part of the time, and sometimes her son Churchill would live with her for a while. Sometimes she would go to Chickasha to stay a few weeks with her daughter Arie, and to Lawton to spend a few weeks with her son Chief.   If she was sick she would usually stay with her daughter Bessie or her daughter Annamae, both of whom lived close by.
  
  In 1973, Stella was extremely ill and she spent the entire winter with Bessie and her family.    In 1976, Stella's condition became such that she had to be placed in the Shawnee Sunset Estates Nursing Home. She died June 18, 1976.  The funeral was held at Romulus Baptist Church and she was laid to rest in Prarie View Cemetery beside her husband.
  
  There are many things about Stella that are memorable.  Perhaps most memorable was her "trademark" apron.  She always wore one and it had to have a pocket where she could keep her little container of snuff.  She even had "Sunday Aprons".  She had a love for "breast pins" and she often wore them pinned at the center front of her dress.  She had long black hair that slowly turned gray, which she kept in tight braids that were wound into a coronet and pinned to the back of her head with long plastic hair pins and combs.
  
  She had a fabulous memory and could tell you the birthday of almost every person she knew, neighbors as well as family.  One of her granddaughters-in-law was so impressed with Stella's memory of birthdays that she sent her a little red "birthday book" to write all of the birthdays down, because she said, "One of these days you will be gone and we need to preserve those dates."

Details of Stella Blackburn's family with Charlie Monroe CLEMENT