CELEBRATING....
LAURA JOHNSON BAILEY
Photo by Clayton Carlson, Wyoming, NY
This is my favorite picture of her. Her shyly quiet pride in her children is evident. This photo tribute to her was on the front page of the Western New Yorker newspaper in celebration of Mother's Day in 1968, while her daughter Rhoda was a reporter there.
The more I learn about Laura Johnson Bailey, my maternal grandmother, the more qualities I see in her face in this photo where she looks at us from the center front: Her strength and courage, her devotion to her family. And her quiet relief. "Just look at my beautiful children!" she says to us, "They are tall and strong, handsome and smart. Now I can rest." I love how pleased she is in her quiet way with her results. Never more well-deserved.
Laura ( she was always called "Larie" to rhyme with "starry.") was orphaned by the time she was five we learn in the "outtake" chapter of Rhoda Bailey Warren's book, "Appalachian Mountain Girl," found in her files. Thankfully, Rhoda recorded for us the story her mother told about growing up in Breathitt County, Kentucky.
I warn you, this took me totally by surprise-it's one of the toughest childhoods I can even imagine--and it happened to our little grandmother-to-be. But knowing this story perhaps enables us to better understand what ideals drove her as an adult to work so hard, and with so much determination, to provide the best home for her own children.
Here is Laura Johnson Bailey's story as Rhoda typed it out for us on the dining room table on Sherman Avenue:
Well! We are struck silent by that story. As her son Isaac, my uncle, said when I talked to him recently, "We just wish we could have her back for one more hug."
What could we say about a child who at five has already lost both parents and been separated from her only sister? One who lives with people who ask a little girl to sit unprotected on their front steps in a dangerous town, to lead horses all by herself when their powerful legs are taller than she is? Was she just an expendable little human the sheriff's family felt good about "taking in"? It's hard not to judge.
And all these questions don't approach understanding what happened to her there: A man cried to her for help, then he is shot and killed in front of her. Her benefactor, the sheriff, was killed "somehow", so another adult caregiver disappears from her life. As a result she was sent to still another new home. Today we know what that kind of trauma can do to a child....
Once again, we turn to this this succinctly stated state sign to give us the florid facts. The years included are little Laura Johnson's childhood years which she faced pretty much on her own. "Officials", the sign tersely tells us ( we may interpret that as being the entire law enforcement community they're including there), were ambushed and killed routinely. She'd have heard tense adults talking about the killings, and we know she had seen the loss of life first hand.
In 1903 the very New York Times paid attention to the situation:
"It is evident that a republican form of government does not exist in Breathitt County, Ky. Civil authority, represented in the person of the sheriff, has broken down. Martial law was proclaimed and a company of militia went into camp at Jackson [the Breathitt County seat]. This, however, was an inadequate provision for the public peace and safety, as was demonstrated by the burning of Captain Ewen's hotel."
Three times between the 1870's and 1910's, Kentucky governors needed to send in the state militia to occupy the county courthouse and restore law and order from all the "feudin' and fightin, '" as the euphemistic common phrase described the chaos.
This story was quoted in total in the Lexington Herald-Leader in 2014. To read more:
https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article44504892.html#storylink=cpy
Whew! I suggest we take a break from this intense story right now and listen to Bing Crosby sing!
"That's so off-topic, Sue!" Not at all, dear friends. Just listen to the immortal 1948 hit song, "Feudin', Fussin' and a-Fightin" because it so belongs in our story. It came into my mind related to this "feuding" because I'm old enough to remember the catchy little ditty when it first came out. I hope you'll listen to the chuckling lyrics that view the feuding situation with an amused smile, a cheerful rhyme and a catchy tune. The words tell us with what a light-hearted view the rest of the world was seeing the decades-old lawless carnage in Kentucky and West Virginia and how patronizing outsiders were about the lives of the mountain residents.
Listen to Bing:
In this jolly song an elderly woman is shot in the back, which spurs plans for vendetta killings . We sing along our approval of poisoning our neighbors' food supply and arming a 4-year-old with a pistol. We wind it up by killing a law enforcement officer and hiding the body.
If somebody just read us the lyrics of that song without the music we could guess it was a hate-filled rap song by Judas Priest or NWA. We'd want it to stop blasting out of every radio. "What a terrible influence on children!', we'd say.
I grant you it would never hit the top of the Pop Charts nowadays (or whatever they're calling them now). But set to a happy tune in the '40's we were all gaily humming it and snapping our fingers.... I can still sing you the tune....without really thinking of what the words might mean to someone else.
My take-away is that lack of compassion and emotional involvement to tragic circumstances comes easy for me when it's happening to people far away geographically or who have a different way of doing things. I am guilty of that in 2019. Their pain doesn't hurt as much as mine since they are so different. I guess that probably somehow they've brought this disaster on themselves.
We don't think of ourselves as people who would diminish other humans' painful situations, but it seems maybe...sometimes we do? "Feudin', Fussin' and a-Fightin..."!!
So what happens now to Laura?
She is waiting on the front steps of the sheriff's house to hear what's going to happen to her next. This death was anything but an amusing event for our little Laura. Her sheriff was killed suddenly and the decision has been made that she can't stay with the rest of the family any longer. We don't know what year this was or even where she went. But eventually, Rhoda tells us, she ended up in War Creek with "Aunt Lissy", her mother's sister.
Now, people, I am not the family genealogist. Dave Bailey and Kandie Browning Parker have both put in hours of work to write our Bailey history down for us. But I did open one door to Laura's past before she married, since Rhoda told us War Creek was where she lived some of the time as a child. In the 1910 federal census we find two little girls, Laura Johnson, four years old and Maggie (Margaret?) Johnson, seven, listed as living with the Isaac Johnson family in War Creek, KY. Poignantly, the space where their relationship to the head of the family should be entered is empty for them. There is a "Merry Johnson" right above them. It says she is Isaac's daughter and she is a widow. She might be Laura and Maggie's mother. Further searching located a married older son of that family, Isaac Johnson, jr, who also lived in War Creek...and his wife is Malissa, and in other places it's spelled "Malissie"! She has to be the "Aunt Lissy" who was so kind when they took Laura to live with them. This was confirmed by my Uncle Isaac who remembers his mother talking about a boy in her family named "Shug"...and right there he is, Aunt Lissy's son with that name. Thank you Aunt Lissy for the happy year(s) you gave our Laura.
(P.S. Uncle Ike: I'm sure Grandma named you after this Isaac Johnson, Malissie's husband, aren't you? And, while "Shug" is a pretty sassy name for a guy, a name like that could get a guy into some trouble it seems to me. I'm glad she went with Isaac for you. 😋 )
Laura is the last entry you see here in the 1910 US Census for War Creek, KY. Her sister Maggie (Margaret) is just above her. It tells us Laura is 4 and Maggie is 7 in 1910. They have no entry in the “Relationship” box but it seems they might be this Isaac’s granddaughters.
Here is the entry for Isaac Johnson, jr’s family for 1920. It includes his wife Malissa and a son named Shug. Laura was living with Isaac, sr’s family in 1910 as we saw above, but I believe later, perhaps after the sheriff was killed, she came here to live with “Aunt Lissy” and the cousin Shug that she told her own son Isaac about. She is not listed here, married Frank Bailey in 1920.
This is the earliest picture I have of Laura Johnson, now Bailey. Dated around 1927 when she had been married for seven years, we see her on the right here with her husband, Frank, his sister and brother-in-law, and her first 3.5 children, Rhoda, James, Frank and Irene on the way.
It makes us very happy to see her now in this photo taken on a peaceful hillside with her own new family when she was in her early twenties. She has married Frank Bailey in 1920, moved 8 miles to Frozen Creek where they live near his family and their family farm. A look at their faces gives us a glimpse into the future: Frank looks a little worried--the farmland may be "worked out" and he's seeing no future for them there. His years of coal mine work are still ahead. On Laura's face there's a confident smile beginning. She stands tall and squarely faces us. Now she has the peace and security of her husband's strong family around her and a little home of her own that she will order in a structured way to care for her children and keep them safe.
The rest of her life we will see that she worked so hard to protect her own children that she occasionally made a mother bear look like a neglectful candidate for a social services intervention.
There's a story, in fact. One of the family stories that lives on, the story of when Laura, my Grandma Bailey, shot the heel right off a lady's shoe. Growing up I could say that to a friend in western New York for a guaranteed effect of shock and disbelief. (Certainly THEIR Grandmother would do NO such thing!) ....but it's true, she did. What on earth caused her to take such an action?
Now that I've thought about all this, I think I can see clearly, the "why". My Aunt Irene and Uncle Isaac, Laura's children, have told me the story:
There was a family of bullies living down the road the Bailey kids walked to go to school. When they passed their house these mean kids came out to torment them. They teased, hit, tripped, threw things. Laura paid a stern visit to tell the mother it needed to stop. It was without result. The bullying and teasing continued, little Baileys coming home to her in fear and tears, no doubt reluctant to go to school.
Now, it was routine in her past in Breathitt to settle disputes with a gun. In her anger and strong will to protect her children, she turned to the familiar solution. She took an accurate shot at the ground by the neighbor woman's feet. It was subsequently reported that the ensuing damage required extensive repair to the neighbor lady's footwear so she must have been a good shot. When we put this in context of when, where and how Laura Bailey Johnson grew to adulthood, it makes perfect sense. Not to mention--it surely must have been effective in solving the problem.
Laura and Frank Bailey had thirteen children, a commensurate number of grand-children (I'm the oldest), all of whom who remember her with love and respect. We admire the person she was and the courage and strength with which she met every problem of life. In her childhood she could certainly have gone either way given the circumstances she was handed--either the "I give up and can't cope with this mean and unpredictable life." track or the "Watch out life, this is Laura Johnson Bailey you are dealing with!!" track. We know which one she chose, we thank her...and you know, I think when we look around at each other carefully we can see a little of that trait was passed along to her family. Here and there.
Please leave a comment.
Particularly if you remember Laura Bailey and/or have memory to share. Do you have facts about her childhood to add to this? Did I get something wrong somewhere?
Please let me know if these family stories are interesting to you. I will receive each comment, but it does take a while for them to show up on the Blog.