The McClure Family History

Because many of us have never seen southwestern Missouri, where the McClure family took root in 1856, I recently (October 2006) did a search of websites in the Seymour area, and located several nice landscape photos taken in the area. I wanted to give these pages a new look, and thought some photos of the area might be good to use. Seymour is located just 7 miles from the McClure family farm, and was not a town yet when Pleasant first bought the farm. It is still the nearest town, and is still small, boasting a population of only 1,864 in the 2000 census. So, I'm assuming this is what the area looks like. If I am wrong, I will not know it, so Dean, or anyone else who knows, check these photos on the McClure pages and let me know if they need to be changed. Thanks a bunch!

The McClure Clan, in the last photo taken of them all together. Front Row: The patriarch (William) Taylor, wife Mary Francis (Ferril), daughters Ardella (Della) and Callie Lee. Back Row: Lessie Edna, Wylie Wilson, John Wilburn, Frona Elizabeth, James Blaine, Samuel Everett, and Jessie Mae Note: I was told Sam was supposed to be 15 when this was taken, so that makes the date of the photo ca. 1909

"Our" McClure Family

Note: Even if you've read this page previously, some of it has changed (October 2006), and links to new pages for this family have been added in the text. Make sure you go over it carefully to not miss the "new" stuff!

Our search for the roots of our family take it to the state of Kentucky in the early years of the 19th Century, when William Pleasant McClure was born about 1805. We know little about his parents or siblings, but Pleasant is documented on the census records of Allen and Barren counties. In 1830 he married his first wife, Elisa (or Elizabeth, or Betsy) Cowden, and was listed on the next census as "head of household." Sometime before 1856 Betsy died, and Pleasant married his second wife Isabel. That year, he and Isabel loaded their family into a wagon and traveled to Webster County, Missouri. Here, Pleasant decided he would live his life, and six years later in 1864, he purchased a farm for the sum of $327.25. at auction (Note October 2006: I have transcribed the court document "documenting" this purchase and have it online now. You can read it Here). This was just at the end of the Civil War, and money must have been hard to come by. And although it seems mighty small now, at that time, it was a large sum of money for a farmer to lay his hands on, I'll bet!

Webster County had just been formed, and this was twenty-five years before Seymour became a townsite in Missouri. This farm was well situated with a large spring down below the house that comes from under a rock bluff that has never been known to go dry. It was also located near the head of the James River. Pleasant was a farmer, and he also operated a water-powered grist mill located on the James River below that big spring. During the 1935-37 drought years, the government put a small dam around the spring and people for miles around hauled water by the barrel for stock and household. This farm later became known as the McClure Home Place at Mountain Dale, and four generations of his family lived there before it was sold out of the family. Photo right: All the McClure ladies at a reunion at the old home place about 1936. At center front, just where the two women in back meet, is my grandmother Lola. Two places to the left, wearing white socks and shoes, is my mother Dora Frances. She was about 18 years old when this was taken.

Webster County is located in the southwestern corner of the state of Missouri, and Pleasant's farm was located not far from the Ozark mountains, where the McClure family, through all four generations, had outings and picnics, swam and fished, and had a love of the beauty of the Ozarks. Although Mountain Dale was never officially a community, it was a group of family places that sprang up around Pleasant's farm, and when it had grown and expressed a desire for a church to attend, Pleasant donated half the land for a church cemetery, which was built there for all the people living nearby.

Pleasant's family had grown to nine children: Mary J., Amanda, Wiley, Alcy, Elizabeth, (William) Taylor, Martha, and John E. William Taylor (called Taylor) was my great-grandfather. Of the nine children born to Pleasant and Betsey, Taylor was the seventh, born August 12, 1848. Although not the oldest son, there was only one older; that was Wiley, and he left home as a young man never to return. We don't know what happened to Pleasant's second wife Isabel, but on December 16, 1866 he married Malinda Middleton. On the 1870 census, Pleasant is shown as 65 years old, while Malinda is 32.

As Pleasant and Malinda grew too old to care for the farm and the mill, Taylor and his wife Mary Frances (Ferril) stayed there at the old McClure Home-place with them, and Taylor took over the work his father had previously done. He and Mary Frances eventually had a family of their own of nine children, all born at the McClure Home-place at Mountain Dale. They were all raised there, and none of them died as children. Sometime during this time, the milling business was dropped. Taylor was a farmer, a carpenter, and the local casket maker; and it is in his skills that you can first see the love of working with wood that he passed on to his youngest son - actually, to several of his sons.

Of Taylor's children (listed above under photo), the youngest of his sons was my grandfather, Samuel Everett McClure, born August 27, 1894. In my grandfather's generation his sister Lessie (far left) was the family historian, or family storyteller. She wrote quite a bit about family and things that mattered to them. I don't have those writings, but our cousin Dean McClure, son of my grandfather's brother Jim (James), who is one of the family historian/storytellers of that generation, has some of them and has put three of them into his book McClure Ancestors and Family. Dean put an incredible amount of work into researching our family's history, all before the Internet, and then took the time to put it all into a book to share with all of us. I believe the book is out of print now but if anyone's interested I can check with him on that. He may have had more printed, for all I know.

I have now (2006) transcribed the three documents from Lessie, and you can read them on this website; they are about the family church, the old Church at Mountain Dale.

Dean has come through for me again! I made a request of him, as he is the only person in the family raised in that area of Missouri, who I'm acquainted with. One of my grandmother's younger brothers wrote to me often, telling me about their family life in the town of Seymour, mostly, for that's where they lived when he was a child, but it's a good picture of family life in rural Missouri towns of that era. Since the McClure family mostly all lived on farms, I asked Dean if he could write up something about life on the farm when he was a boy, and he has done a wonderful job of it. He is 81 years old now, but his memory is extremely sharp. The experiences he had when young certainly left an indelible impression on his mind! You can now read about what it was like in the first half of the 20th century to be part of Rural Missouri Farm Life. I tell you, it is really interesting stuff! It gives you a real clear picture of what it was like. During most of this time it had not changed much from the last half of the previous century, because they did not have electricity, or use autos much, if at all, in that area.

Saying "I tell you" above brought my grandmother, Lola, or "Mamoo," to my mind. She would never say that, or "I declare." It was always "Well, Swan sake!" Or, it was "Well, Land's sake!" I've always thought those must be a regional colloquialism, or the regional "way" in which something is expressed. Now, if any of you out there know more about these two sayings, like where they come from, what they originally meant, etc., I would sure love to know it. I never thought to ask until after she was gone, of course.

Sam married my grandmother, Lola May Campbell, on November 30, 1915. A tall man, he had a stern face much of the time, but even the smallest of us knew that it was all a sham; if you looked carefully, you could see the bright twinkle that signified he was only teasing a great deal of the time. He liked to appear gruff, but was a great big softie at heart. I thought he was... wise and wonderful, warm and very caring. I loved to watch him work with wood. He was a general contractor, but in later years mostly did fine cabinet work in his shop, and I would perch on a tall stool to watch whatever project he was working on. As he would work, he would caress the fine grained woods he used, and the love he had for the wood, and his work, would be very evident. His hands... large, one missing the tip of a finger that got caught in a saw, were scarred and rough, but his gentle caress over a beautiful cabinet door gave it a beauty that I can still see in my mind's eye some fifty years later, and he helped me form a love for the beauty of woods.

When he was young, he loved to hunt. And he especially loved to hunt birds. Well, at least he loved to go hunting for birds. He loved his dogs, and he loved to go hunting. Since I was not there, I don't know how he actually did when he hunted. He loved animals, and hunting dogs. Well-trained hunting dogs were very special to him. When he was older, and would talk to me about those times, he had a faraway wistfulness on his face that made me wish I could give that to him once again. Photo left: My grandfather and his beloved dogs out hunting.

In even later years when he could not even get out for walks, I was blessed to be able to give something to him in return for just some of what he had given me. He, who had always had a very busy, productive life of work, needed something to do, but was unable to do anything physical. I had developed a love for woodburning, and had been working with it for several years at that time. I was beginning to sell some of them. helped him learn how to do this, and make pictures of the dogs and birds he had loved. He had drawn beautiful house plans, and had an artistic talent for painting that he seldom indulged while his life was so full of projects. He built his last home - one for him and Lola, when he was 82 years old, up on the high desert of southern California. He used his shop there to create beautiful cupboards and special projects for the other people who were building in that area.

Although his hands shook badly by the time he began woodburning, and that was very frustrating for him, he would take an image of hunting, or hunting dogs, and create woodburned plaques from wood that Sami's husband Bill prepared for him. That helped him retain some ties with woodworking and his love of dogs and hunting. It helped him feel useful, and that was important to him. He spent many hours working with these.

Sam and Lola were very different in size. Sam was over six feet tall, and Lola was four-foot eleven inches. They met in 1914; possibly, when Lola came to teach at the Star School, near where my grandfather's family farm was located. My grandmother was always very proud of being a teacher of a one-room schoolhouse in those days, and well she should have been. It was quite an adventurous thing to do! Not many young women went away to college in the first years of the 20th Century, and she thought of it with fond memories all the rest of her life. I still have postcards she kept that were sent to and from friends made while she was at college, that she treasured.

After a short time of living in Kansas after Sam and Lola were married in 1915, they returned to Seymour, Missouri, and lived there for a number of years. My mother, Dora Frances McClure, their first child, was born October 7, 1917, and another daughter, Diantha Vaughn was born October 23, 1919. Sam worked at a creamery, and they liked being near family. The end of 1924 brought tragedy to their lives when their youngest daughter, Diantha, was stricken with diphtheria and died December 31, 1924.

Struggling with their grief, they finally decided that a move to a new place would help, and after hearing tales of good work with the big oil boom, they moved to Oklahoma, finally settling in Ada. Another daughter, Sami Caroline followed in a few years, born March 9, 1932, and their last child, a long-awaited son, John Wesley, was born August 30, 1939, in Ada. . Sam used the carpentry skills learned from his father to first work in the oilfields building and working on the oil rigs, and then to build homes. To go further with it he took a correspondence course to become a building contractor, and those skills were what he used to forge out their future. He built some fine homes there. Photo above right: The beautiful home Sam built for his family in Ada, Oklahoma.

During World War II, when I was 4 years old (1942) they moved from Oklahoma to Arizona. First to Fort Huachuca, and then to Tucson, Arizona and my mother, father, and my sister and I all moved with my grandparents, also.

I don't remember much about that move, but if you've seen the old movie with Henry Fonda when he was young called The Grapes of Wrath, some of the old vehicles in that movie look awfully familiar! During the depression years much of Oklahoma was called America's Dust Bowl, and farms dried up and died by the hundreds. Times were very bad during those years, and work was practically non-existent. We didn't live on a farm, so it was hard for our family there, and there were tales of great amounts of money to be made out west.

My father was a carpenter. My mother and grandfather worked at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, while my father tried in vain to find work as a carpenter there, and finally took a job as a bus driver, then began to travel to find work. My mother was pregnant with my brother (Everett) during that time, and I won't go into the problems, but after my brother was born, my parents divorced.

By 1945 my mother had remarried and I had a stepfather, William Daniel McGill. When he was transferred near war's end to Riverside, California to be discharged, my mother boarded a train with all three of us children, our luggage, and a basket of food to eat on the way. I was six years old, Suzi was four, and Everett was just two years old. I don't remember how long that ride took, but it could have been two days. I remember soldiers... there were soldiers everywhere in that noisy, rocking, rough-riding train car. They were sleeping on seats, sleeping on duffle bags, sleeping atop one another. It was very exciting! It is the only train ride I remember... it is probably the only one there was!

In Riverside we rented a huge old Victorian home on second avenue, living there while we waited for the discharge to come. It must have been spring when we got there, because I remember walking to school. And the entire family would walk the few short blocks to Fairmont Park on warm weekend afternoons. The memories I have of that time could come from a movie made in the 40's. Young couples lying on blankets spread on the lush grass, he in a starched Army uniform and she in a short dress most likely with a large pin or embroidery near the shoulder, hair piled atop her head... palm trees moving in a soft breeze, soft talking and laughing. There were wooden swings with seats that glided back and forth at each side, placed in the shady areas. The entire family could sit on one swing! A wading pool for small children (in addition to a swimming pool we weren't allowed to use either), and a small lake with electric boats featuring gleaming wood hulls for rent (we LOVED riding in those boats in a small stream that circled the park). This was our amusement park. The boats were made of fine inlaid strips of wood, leather seats, with a switch on the side next to the driver that moved forward and back to control speed, and a steering wheel like an auto. You peered over a short, wide windshield, and could trail your hand in the water down each side. There were ducks, geese, and swans on the lake and in the stream. It remained as a magical place in my memory for many years, long after it had changed.

This was all located in the "old" area of Riverside (I still remember we lived on Second Avenue), and there were beautiful round frosted or white globed street lights, with intricate cast iron work, lining the curbs. Everett (at about two-three years old) thought they were magic... I can still see him sitting out on the curb, as he did each day, with his stuffed elephant (that he carried everywhere until it disintegrated), patiently waiting for what seemed like hours for the street lights to magically come alive (It was my job to watch him to make sure he didn't go into the street). It was here at this house, also, when I first remember getting into "trouble." This house seemed to have 20-foot ceilings to me... they were very tall, and in the kitchen was a big old pantry, with a curtain for a door. I don't remember why, but we (my little sister and I) took Everett in that pantry, put him on a tall stool, and proceeded to give him a haircut. And each time we got a spot that was shorter, why, we'd have to cut the rest shorter. When we began getting bald spots and could not figure out how to disguise them, we began getting upset, and Everett began crying, and... well, the jig was up, of course! Mother heard him and eventually investigated. I don't know what happened after that, it has faded from memory. Probably too horrible in my mind to remember. But the incident is indelibly imprinted in my memory up to that point. I didn't get into real trouble very often.

From there we moved to Costa Mesa, where my grandparents were living. This place only remains in my memory for two very important things. The first indirectly involves school. I had to walk two blocks to catch the school bus. And the second block I had to walk passed by what I thought, when small, was a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Most of you will be too young to know the fear that was instilled by what we heard of the Japanese during that time of war, and as a small child, I probably magnified it a great deal. I was in the second grade by this time, and John, my grandmother's youngest child (and my uncle) who was a year younger than I, went to the same school. Sami would have been in junior high school by that time. John and I just knew that a Japanese soldier, in full war regalia, complete with bayonet held between his teeth (hmmmm, could that be where the phrase "armed to the teeth" came from???), crossed bandoliers of bullets across the chest, guns of every kind, had climbed the wire and barbed wire fence, and was hiding behind every tree just waiting for us to come along walking to school so he could jump out and cut us into bits. I can still remember the fear that clutched my heart as we held hands and ran just as fast as our little feet would carry us past this terrible place.

It was many years later when I learned that in truth, this was not a prisoner camp. It was in fact a Japanese internment camp, and that American citizens of Japanese heritage were interred here and in other like camps during the war. I doubt that anyone told us it was a prisoner camp. I think that we just assumed it, and since no one realized that was what we thought, no one corrected that notion.

The other important thing that happened here was that Everett stuck his arm between the wringers of a wringer washing machine... while it was running. He had moved a stool in place to climb up (he loved anything mechanical), and someone must have been called away from it, but however it happened, it pulled his arm through until it got to the top, and then it chewed it up something fierce as it continued to go round and round and round, until someone got there to the back porch to shut it off. I think he was in the hospital quite some time. They eventually had to graft some skin from his stomach to cover it all, it had chewed up the skin so badly underneath the arm. The only way Mother could get him to willingly stay at the hospital was with a flashlight so he could play tent "under the covers" and not be in the dark, of course, but it kept her broke keeping him in flashlight batteries.

One other memory of that time was that out in a big field somewhere near town there, was a huge "blimp" or dirigible airport, with gigantic hangers to store them in. A couple of times we saw one coming in to land, which was quite spectacular, to us.

After leaving Costa Mesa the entire family moved to a small town near San Bernardino (Fontana), about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, an area that was beginning to grow. At this time it was very small, surrounded by orange groves, grape vineyards, and boysenberry ranches (farms?). Small enough at that time that an occasional bear still came down from the San Bernardino Mountains for the berries in summer. If you know Fontana now, think of it with no businesses on Sierra Ave. below Merrill Avenue. On that corner was a Signal gas station, and that was the southern edge of town. The drug store there in town had a great soda fountain that was still in operation long after I married. It was here, when I first started school in Fontana, where my hands were smacked over and over and over with a ruler by the teacher because I would not write with my right hand. I didn't do it because I couldn't, and everyone laughed when I tried. It was horrible. I had moved constantly since starting school, and changed schools I don't know how many times, but a lot, and was growing very shy and quiet from the experience. I remained that way all through school.

Here my grandparents and their family remained. And my family did, too, except for a two-year period about three years later, when we returned to Tucson, Arizona, seeking work for my stepfather. Near the end of the year I was in the 8th grade we moved back to Fontana, and stayed there. I had declared that if they moved away again I wanted to stay there and live with my grandparents - I had even talked to them about it, so I was serious.

Some final thoughts on my grandparents: These two people were loved by everyone who ever knew them. They both worked hard, were strong Christians, each had a great sense of humor, and they had a love for one another that is very hard to find. They each lived long lives. Sam living until he was 94, and Lola living until she was 97. They were married 73 years when Sam died, still very much in love with one another. Sam had been a building contractor for 58 years. Lola held on to life, I believe, so that the rest of us could get used to it, before she finally left us to follow Sam to their waiting home in Heaven. It was so very much like her to do something like that.

Beyond all else that Sam and Lola McClure were, they were the "glue" that held our family together, and it has not been the same since they left us. They were loved and cherished by all of us, and they held each of us very dear. No one could have been more fortunate than we, to have had them in our lives for so long. We were truly blessed by the Lord. For more about them, visit Mamoo's page (still under construction) and My Grandfather.

For more on me and my family's life, you can look at About Marcie. When I pick this up again, I will go backward, not forward, and begin filling in more of the history of the McClure family. I am still on the trail of Pleasant's parents and the rest of his family, but I am closing in!

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page updated November 1, 2006