The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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RECOLLECTIONS OF A WIDOW WOMAN
By S. C. Turnbo
Mrs. Mary Sanders widow of Hiram Sanders relates the following. "I was born on Finley Creek in Wright County, Mo. in 1837. My parents were Isaac and Prudie Medlock. My mother died on Finley Creek when I was 8 years old. My father died in Illinoise. All the early settlers that I have a distinct recollection of that lived on Finley Creek near where we lived was my grandfather Henry and Rachell Medlock and my uncle Bill Williams and my aunt Rhoda Williams. I came to Lick Creek below where Gainsville Mo. now is in 1847 and was married to Hiram Sanders in 1853. We were married on the old John Sanders land on Lick Creek. This place is near one mile below the Steve Sanders Place. Cage Foster was a justice of the peace then and he officiated. I remember the names of some of the citizens who lived on Lick Creek. There were Joe and Bob VanMeter who were brothers. Joe’s wife was named Sarah. Bob married Polly Turley daughter of Jake Turley. There was also Abe West and Rhoda West his wife. John Howell and Eliza his wife. Sole Workman, Jim Workman and Elizabeth Workman were children of Isaac Workman but were grown when I first saw them and there was Capt. Ben Bray who was killed or died a natural death at Springfield Mo. during the war. These all lived on Lick Creek in the early days of Ozark County. The first school I went to was taught on Lick Creek by Charles Goobey one half mile below where Steve Sanders lived. The first day of this school is very vivid in my mind from the reason that I cried all day. I was afraid that I would violate the rules of school and get a whipping. Steve Sanders wife was named Annie. She was a daughter of Cage Foster. Fosters wifes name was Sally. Grandfather Allin Sanders we always called him was my husbands father. His wife was named Annie, who one day picked a spot of ground where she said she desired to be buried. This is on what is now the Doctor Arnold Place one half a mile above the mouth of Possom Walk Creek, and when she passed over the dark river of death her remains received interment where she wished to rest. There are also two of Jake Foster’s little girls buried there, the names of which were Mary Elizabeth and Sarah Eliza. Mr. Thomas Guifford the first merchant at Gainsville formerly lived at Rock Bridge. When he came to where Gainsville now stands he hauled the logs of a log building and put them up and covered the wall and put his goods and groceries in it until he could construct a better house. Guifford’s wife was Sarah Ann daughter of John Sanders. Tom Lord the noted chimney builder built a number of stone chimneys in Ozark County before the war. Some of his work is standing to the present day. Soon after the close of the war in 1869 he built a black smith shop on Gooley’s Spring Creek and lived there several years and made horse shoes and shod horses and did much other work for the settlers. One day he went up on the hill near the black smith shop and selected a place to be buried which was near a post oak tree. He marked the spot by placing a stone on it and when the time arrived for him to quit shoeing horses and depart from this world his body was given burial where he requested to be laid. Mr. Lord’s son Bartlet is also buried there and his grandson Morgan Wood is buried there. Morgan was a son of Jim Wood and Sally Ann, daughter of Tom Lords. Millie a sister of Tom Lords married Jim Barnette another noted blacksmith.
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