7th generation

Fred McClure

(1882-1951)

Photo:

  Fred McClure and Grandson Homer

Emma Miller McClure

(1884-1968)

          Fred McClure was born September 10, 1882, in Mt. Zion, Grant County, Kentucky,[1] the oldest of five children of Stephen Douglas McClure and Henreatta Sturgeon McClure.  He had a brother John T. McClure and a sister Maude (who married John Cook).[2]  Another younger sister and brother, Daisy and Tommy, died at very early ages.

            Fred married Emma Dee Miller on March 9, 1904[3], and they had four children:

                        Clarice May McClure (1906-1966)  never married

                        Pricie L. McClure (1909-2000)  never married

                        Archie Coleman McClure (1914-1988) married Eileen Setters (1921-2002) 6 children

                        Homer[4] McClure  (1919-1988) m. 1938 Callie Beach

            This family appears in the 1910 Grant Co., KY census as follows:  Frederic McClure 28, Emma 25, Clara M. 3, and Pricie (no age given).

            They appear in the 1920 Grant Co., KY census as follows:  Fred McClure 36, Emmie 33, Clarice M. 10, Pricie 8, Coleman 5, and Omer, 4 months.

            Fred farmed in Grant County all his life.  He sharecropped for a few years until he had enough money to buy his own farm, 100 acres, more or less, divided between the "upper place" and the "lower place" on Arnolds Creek Road in Elliston, and he lived there until he died.   His daughter Pricie lived in the old farmhouse until shortly before her death in 2000 at age 90, though most of the land had been sold.[5]

            Fred and Emma's grandson Homer (Mac) McClure remembered the farm and the local custom of getting the neighbors together to harvest the tobacco each year.  In Fred's case the neighbors were mostly relatives--his brother John T. McClure lived at the top of the steep hill on Arnold's Creek Road, and on the other side of the road were the farms of Emma's bachelor brothers Harve and Early.  Harold, one of John T's sons, lived at the top of the hill on the right as you made the turn to enter Arnold's Creek Road.  Then there were Fred's sons Coleman and Homer (called Jack) and their young sons.  It was hard work, beginning at sunrise and going all day, and everyone had to pitch in.  The smaller boys, including Mac, were hoisted into the upper rafters of the barn, tied there so they wouldn't fall, and the harvested tobacco leaves were handed up to them.

            The wives and daughters set out long tables in the yard and loaded them down with food.  At mid-day work stopped so the men could eat, and the women made sure their plates and glasses stayed full until they couldn't hold another bite.  Then, and only then, did the women sit down to eat.

            Mac also remembers that his "Grandpap" bought his first and only car--a brand new one--sometime in the '40s, but mostly he kept it in the barn, rarely driving it.  The car remained there, unused, for many years after Fred's death in 1951.

            (It was Fred McClure who gave his grandson Homer Clifton (Mac) McClure the nickname of "Bunny," which his whole family called him, and most still do to this day.) 

Fred died February 11, 1951, at the age of 68, and is buried in the Hillcrest Cemetery, Dry Ridge, Grant County, Kentucky.[6]

Photos: 

Clarice, Homer, Pricie, and Coleman McClure 1937

Coleman, Pricie, and Homer McClure 1984

Other sources of information:

His daughter Pricie McClure (1909-2000)

His son Homer McClure (1919-1988)

His grandson Homer C. (Mac) McClure

J. B. Pettit (granddaughter of Fred's sister Maude Cook).

Emma Miller McClure

(1884-1968)

 Photos: 

Emma Miller and brother Arch 1903

Emma McClure, Homer, Callie and family  1946

Emma McClure, son Homer, grandson Homer C., Great-grandson Mike 1964

            Emma Dee Miller was born December 10, 1884, in Elliston, Grant County, Kentucky[7], the only daughter of Richard Coleman Miller and Laura Speagle Miller.  (See MILLER family and SPEAGLE family).  She had three older brothers, Ben, Harvey, and Earl, and a younger brother Archie.[8]

            When Emma was three years old, her father was killed in a logging accident, and her mother had to support her five children by doing washing and housework for other people.  When Emma was 15 years old, she went to live with another family to work for them for $11 a week, which she gave to her mother.  Emma stayed with that family until her marriage at the age of 19.

            Emma married Fred McClure on March 9, 1904, in Grant County, Kentucky.  They had four children:

                        Clarice (1906-1966)  never married[9]

                        Pricie (1909- 2000)  never married[10]

                        Archie Coleman (1914-1988)  married Eileen Setters, 6 children[11]

                        Homer (l9l9-1988) m. Callie Beach

            Emma for some reason was absolutely against her children marrying, and she prevented her daughters from ever doing so.  She was not able to keep her sons from marrying, but it wasn’t because she didn’t try.

            Her husband died in 1951, and she vowed then never again to leave her farm -- she said she intended to die there.  She remained true to her word as long as she had a choice, refusing to leave to go anywhere, even to her grandchildren’s weddings. 

Fred had died six years before I came into the family as their grandson Mac's girlfriend, but Mac took me to the country to visit Emma, his Granny McClure, many times.  We drove to a place where, as Mac described it, the only way you could see out was straight up, through the trees.  Winding dirt roads, steep hills, a little creek, and we were there.  We got out of the car and had to run a gauntlet of squawking chickens and howling penned-up hunting dogs to get to the house.

Mac's middle-aged maiden aunts Pricie and Clarice had seen or heard the car coming, and would run out to greet us.  Mac was obviously a favorite of theirs and Granny's, and even though we never called before we went to visit, just showed up on their doorstep, the welcome we received was warm and genuine.   They were purely country folks, speaking a dialect I sometimes found hard to understand. (Pricie and Clarice called their mother "Mam" and referred to their father as "Pap," Irish terms, and maybe some of their other usage was also vestiges of their Scots-Irish heritage.) Granny was in poor health, unable to get around much at all, but Clarice and Pricie bustled around the old farm kitchen and put a huge meal on the table.  "Come on and have a bite," they'd urge.  A bite!  Ham, fried chicken, cornbread, potatoes, several vegetables, salads, pitchers of iced tea, cakes and pies.  I don't know where it all came from, but there it was, laid out for us as if they had been preparing for a week. 

Entering the house was like stepping back into the last century for a city girl like me. Hanging on a hook by the door were old-fashioned sunbonnets that Pricie and Clarice wore when they went out to work in the sun.  It was the late 1950s but that farmhouse had no running water, no indoor bathroom.  They had a pump on the kitchen sink with which they pumped cold water, then heated it on the stove for dishwashing.  A big old wood stove in the sitting room next to the kitchen provided heat, and in cold weather we'd all gather close to it to stay cozy while we visited.  There was a room at the front of the house that was never used--the parlor.  In the past it had been used only when someone died and was "laid out" there for people to come by and pay their respects.  Funeral homes were the custom, and probably the law, by then, so the parlor was simply untouched.

They did have a telephone and electricity, even a TV set, although Mac remembered when those amenities were added, not so long ago.  When he was a young boy, they lit the place with coal oil lanterns and cooked on a wood stove.

Behind the house was a shed they called the "smokehouse" which also served as the "wash house."  Water was heated on the stove in the house and carried to the wash house, poured into tubs for Saturday night baths or Monday laundry.  Clothes were scrubbed on a washboard in one tub of soapy water, then run through a mechanical wringer, rinsed in another tub of clear water, and finally through the wringer once again.  Mac said when he was a small boy living with his grandparents while his dad was in the service, and later when he visited, he wouldn't bother to wait for the bath water to be heated.  He'd just jump into a tub of cold water.  No wonder he now likes to stand under a hot shower as long as possible.

Mac's uncle Coleman lived in the next house down the road "a piece," and he and his wife Eileen and at least some of their five kids would usually come over to greet us.  Coleman was always in bib overalls, and when he lifted his cap, he revealed a milky white forehead while the rest of his face was a leathery red-brown--the classic farmer tan.

Coleman McClure, 1942

Clarice and Pricie never married, but the story was told that Pricie had once had a fellow and wanted to marry him, but her mother wouldn't hear of it. Pricie had actually left the farm during World War II, intending to find a job and her own apartment, but her mother went after her and brought her back home, and there she remained.  She and Clarice sewed the covers on baseballs to make a little money for themselves, working at home, getting the supplies by mail and mailing the finished balls back.  A trip to Dry Ridge to the post office and the beauty shop was a big deal--the big city!

The day Mac and I got married in November 1960, he drove down to the country, determined to bring Granny, Pricie, and Clarice to our wedding.  He was sure he could sweet-talk Granny into coming, but he was wrong.  Pricie and Clarice gladly came back with him, but Granny wouldn't be budged.  When our first son Mike was born in 1964, we took him to visit her, and we have a good photograph of the four generations, Granny smiling happily at her great-grandson.  But by the time our second son Dan was born in 1965, Granny had suffered a stroke and wasn't well enough to have visitors.

In 1966 Clarice died of colon cancer at the age of 60.  While the others went to her funeral, I stayed at the farmhouse with Granny and my two little boys.  She couldn't talk and I wasn't sure she understood what I was saying, but when the family returned from the funeral, tears were running down her cheeks as she thought of losing her oldest daughter.

 Pricie cared for her mother for another year or so, and finally, it was necessary for her to go to a nursing home.

            Emma died June 10, 1968, at the age of 83 in the Dry Ridge Nursing Home, and is buried beside Fred in the Hillcrest Cemetery in Dry Ridge, Kentucky.[12]

Fred & Emma Miller McClure Tombstone

            After Emma's death, her son Coleman whose home was just down the road, bought the farm from her other heirs, and he and his wife Eileen moved into the house with Pricie.

            Through the years as we were moving around the country, we seldom got back down to the old farm, but I wrote to Pricie now and then and sent her our boys' school pictures, and she always wrote back to let me know how much she appreciated being remembered, and asking us to come and see her sometime.  She also never failed to mention that she wasn't feeling well, that she was poorly, that she might have some sort of tumor and would probably have to have an operation soon.

            Emma's sons Coleman and Homer died in 1988 within a few months of each other, also of colon cancer.

            After Coleman's death his daughter Emily and her family moved into the house and she cared for her mother and Pricie as they grew older and increasingly frail.

            Pricie, despite all her many ailments, lived to the age of 90, dying in the year 2000.  Her second cousin June wrote that she had gone to the visitation and "Pricie looked like she did when I was a little child, wearing her good sweater to keep warm."

Sources of information:

Her daughter Pricie McClure (1909-2000)

Her grandson Homer (Mac) McClure

Her daughter-in-law Callie McClure

Personal recollections

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