Crockett's Bluff in the 1920s: Memories and Images

I'm indebted, once again, to James Prange, the son of one of the elder sons of Adolph and Edna Prange -- and, from his testimony, the unofficial Prange family historian -- for the following images and information.  In addition to a youthful image of his father, the elder James, he has "unearthed" an obviously priceless photograph of the rice chute and the Prange-Tindell warehouse above the Bluff itself, along with a delightful item of Crockett's Bluff news from the August 7, 1924 edition of the DeWitt Era Enterprise.

The River Boat "Lillian H" receiving bags of rice down the warehouse chute.

The Woodiel house where I and my younger siblings Neil and Maureen were born was located north along the river from what one would have called the center of The Bluff.  At the end of our lane stood the Lutheran Church and behind and beside it the Adolph Prange residence and the Prange Store that overlooked the White River. By the time I was old enough in the late nineteen thirties and early forties to venture alone as far afield from our house southward to where Rt. 153 made its turn toward DeWitt and St. Charles, scenes such as the one above were long gone.  But the warehouse remained, and I remember it vividly.

After the war years the landmark Prange Bros. Enterprises water tower remained and was visible from five or more miles away across the prairie.  The largely inactive August Prange company store remained during the post war decades along side Schwab's Store, that by the end of World War II had become the sole center of activity.  The Adolph Prange family had closed their store in 1944 and moved to California.  

By 1945, across the road but in the shadows of the water tower, "Doodle and Eddie"Schwab had developed a general store with a capital G --  the center of The Bluff.   To the east a few hundred yards resting in the oak trees beyond the "Ida Carolyn Park" picnic area lay the largely vacant warehouse.  To reach it one had to cross the bridge of the Prange Farm canal whose water was pumped from the river below the bluffs to drift southward along its banks to the vast rice fields that spread across the prairie beyond.

 I remember the warehouse as large and open and quiet, save for the constantly fluttering sparrows, and although it was rarely filled with grain of any sort, unlike the Prange Farm's smaller barns a mile or so away, it maintained a distinctive aroma that must have been retained from  years like the one pictured above when tons of rice and perhaps other grains, dried not yet from "dryers" but from having been left in shocks in the fields to dry in the sun, before being sacked and slid down the chute to be neatly stacked on a barge of the likes of The Lillian H.

Both the Adolph Prange store and the family residence were dismantled by the late 1950s; the water tower a decade or so later.  After the war when the Lutheran Church had lain vacant for years, its primary seating area, minus the bell tower, was moved westward down Rt. 153 six miles or so where it remains today the meeting house of the Poplar Creek Baptist congregation..

This image of the chute from the warehouse might well be the only remaining visual record of this activity.

James Prange early 1920s

Early 1900s?

"I recognize several faces in this photo as Crockett's Bluff people.  If my suspicion is correct that the young boy in the front kneeling down is my grandfather, then this photo was taken in the early 1900s." JP

Houseboat on the White River, perhaps John Johnson's

DEWITT ERA ENTERPRISE, August 7, 1924

     Judges for election in Crockett Township are Shelton Herring, Will Mason and Cecil Inman.  Clerks named were Adolph Prange, U.A. Rowe, Harmon Turner.

    

     Peaches are drying in the trees; corn is ruined; rice needs more water; pasturage is getting scarce, but still we wait for rain.

     Prange Bros will soon be able to increase pumping capacity of their plant to about 4,000 gallons per minute.  A third pump, driven by a large Fairbanks Engine, will be be put to work this week.

     While visiting with her daughter, Mrs. Adolph Prange, Mrs. Burroughs came very near being seriously injured.  A stray yearling attacked Mrs.  Burroughs, and before anyone could come to her rescue, it succeeded in knocking Mrs. Burroughs to the ground and butting her severely.

October 2, 1924:

     The thief who recently carried away two loads of bird shot from the Prange Mercantile Company, will be presented with buck shot at his next appearance.

     Crockett's Bluff School opened on September 15, with an enrollment of 30.

Wooddell, Woodell, Woodle, Woodiel

43rd Alabama Infantry Flag

What's in a Name?

The names above were used -- for just reasons -- as a title by our cousin Alice (Woodiel) Craft for Volume I [West Haven, Utah 2001] of  "A One Name Study," her history and record of the Woodiel family that we know today.

When I began my personal search for the genealogical trail back through my surname Woodiel in the late 1970s I quickly discovered there really wasn't a trail.  Of course there was no Google to consult in those days, nor were there extensive and elaborate ancestry sites anywhere, save it certain volumes to be found in certain libraries.  I found very quickly that just about every Woodiel mentioned in any of these books was probably directly related to me, and I probably knew them.  Where were my ancestors?  Obviously the name had been changed  -- from, one assumed, a similar name.  But what?  Woodward?  Woodson?

So, after mulling about for a lead in local libraries in Connecticut and finding little or nothing, I spent my school's spring vacation in 1979 in Washington, D.C. at the National Archives.  I had decided to go where, if it existed, what I wanted to know had to be.  It was there, thanks to the dedicated assistance of  a librarian in charge of what in those days were vast rooms of microfilm readers, that I found, among his Civil War records, my great grandfather, a man of many names indeed. 

I should note that the only potentially worthwhile lead I had was the story that had come down through my family, often repeated at family gatherings, that my father's grandfather Tom had grown up in Alabama and had been a Confederate soldier in the Civil War where he had had one of his ears shot away (or, in better versions, cut away).  This is all I had to offer the library assistant.

After following for several days a C.R.P Woodle and a James Woodell and a J.A. Woodel and others, all of various Alabama Infantry units, I returned to the Archives one morning to the microfilm room to find the kind assistant waving to me from across the room as I entered.  "I think," he said, "I've got your man." 

Copy of Tom's enlistment document 

There it was: Woodle, William, T.J., Co K, 43 Alabama Infantry (Confederate), Private. On the next page: W.T.J. Woodle , along with a notes verifying he had enlisted May 14, 1862 at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a period of "3 years or the war."

And on yet another record a note verifying that on May 16, 1864 T.J. Woodial of the 43rd Alabama had been admitted to the General Hospital, Howard's Grove, Richmond, Virginia:  Disease: "VS Right Ear neck (severe) shoulder."  Evidence enough for me that I had found my great grandfather Tom.

Tom's medical document.

But why all the different names?  The answer was there all the while in  a usually modest "x' where each of the documents required a signature.  In many later documents I was to locate underneath the "x" would be in parentheses (his mark).   Tom was, like his forefathers I would later discover, simply illiterate -- unable to spell or write his name.  I imagine him just muttering it in his Alabama twang, no doubt, and some sergeant writing down on his pay slip what he thought he heard.

The confusion of the varied spellings can be easily eliminated if one simply envisions the last three letters in a world before the typewriter.  What you actually have in written script are three loops.  Depending on the scribe, you have "iel" or "eel" or "ele" or "ell," etc.  Consequently, the various spellings.

Tom's great grandfather, John Waddell, was born in Donegal County, near Londonderry, Ireland, on or before 1736.  His parents were Scottish people who had settled in Northern Ireland and were what is known in this country as Scotch-Irish.  Stories vary as to why he left there for America.  However, it is generally believed he came to America in about 1750 probably as an indentured servant and settled in the Philadelphia area before eventually moving southward to northwestern North Carolina near where his older brother (according to some reports) had settled earlier.  What is clear is that John eventually crossed the Smoky Mountains to settle in what was then called Washington County North Carolina, later to become the state of Tennessee.

He was illiterate to his dying day, as were his son Jonathan, his son John, and Tom himself. The familiar "his mark" appears on his fascinating will.  William Lafayette, born in 1871 and his siblings were the first literate members of the Woodiel clan in America.  Most of us have become fairly literate since, I think it's fair to say!

First spelling of Woodiel:
Tom's furlough paper 

So, how did "Woodiel," of all the other options, rise to the top.  Well, as usual in such matters, apparently a combination of chance and circumstance.  Part of the credit goes to a Confederate Captain named (it appears)  J.S. Duerewall who signed furlough papers for Tom about a week after he was admitted to the hospital in Richmond.  He was paid forty-four dollars and apparently sent home.  He writes Tom's signature along with "his mark," but he clearly spells it Woodiel.

I remember discussing this with my father and mother, and they concluded the current spelling of Woodiel stuck because his widow Winnie, after Tom's death, was entitled to a small "veteran's pension" which required her to sign the name on perhaps the last official paper he had, his furlough certificate.  Perhaps it was she who then decided it would be spelled as it is by her children as they (unlike their ancestors for who knows how long into the past) ventured off to school.

My timeline for establishing the sons of sons.

One final note re the Tom of many names:  There is a story apparently passed down in the family by my uncle and namesake Paul Woodiel who related he had heard that Tom returned home from the war and married very soon afterward and joined his brother and his bride heading westward as far as the Mississippi River where they separated, his brother and his wife waiting on the bank while Tim and his new wife Winnie somehow floated their ox team and wagon across to the western shore, after which there was an exchange of waves to one another before the brother's wagon ventured southward down the eastern bank as Tom and Winnie headed west to the Ozarks eventually to settle around Marshall, AR.  The two families would never see one another again.

I continue to wonder, as I reflect on this piece of family history, how Tom, recently wounded, got home.  There certainly was no train, the war being nearly over, or, for that matter, a horse.  I suspect he, like Inman, the protagonist in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, the best selling novel of a decade or so ago, simply walked home.  Of the details of that venture we can only speculate, but, unlike Inman, he survived.  He made it home, and he married Winnie who must have been a pretty hearty soul, or most of us wouldn't be around.

************************

To the Memory of W.T.J. Woodle (His Mark)

                                      I'm thinking of you Tom!  You've impressed me during 

                                         the past four days while I've searched for you.

                                     Your name is everywhere -- and nowhere -- in many forms: 

                                        Thomas,Tom, William T.J., W.T.C.

                                     I have searched for you from a sense of history and out of

                                        respect for your legend, and respect for you and my father

                                          and his father who have, in part, come from you.

                                    Your memory awakens in me a sense of history: the past, 

                                       my past, and yours!

                                    Since "your mark" was the sign for what you did not know 

                                       about writing (and reading, I suppose), how did you know 

                                          why you were at Chickamauga?

                                    How did you justify the pain and anguish of your wounds 

                                       at Drewry's Bluff?  

                                    What did you stand (and fall) for Tom?

                                     In the sun here near the shadow of the U.S. Capitol 

                                        (that symbol you were bent on putting down) 

                                           I sit and wonder what you stood for, and why.

                                     After the first for the prophet Levi, I know 

                                        you were to name your second son Lafayette!  

                       

                                     Was this your sense of history?

                                      I'm thinking of you Tom.  Your progenitor knows 

                                         you were here, cause you're on the record 

                                            in the U.S. Archives.

DPW

Washington, D.C.

April 26, 1977

Myrtle Elmer Image: 1929?

I owe Hallie (Gosnell) Keithley, pictured below, for this picture.

                       Back Row L/R: Abbie McGrew, Hallie Gosnell, Addie Pool, Dorothy Pool

                       Front Row L/R: Jewel Elmer, Bobby Pool, O.V. Gosnell, Riley Pool Jr.

     Image taken by Myrtle Elmer (Mrs. Tony), mother of Jewel, pictured above in the dark dress.

My Dad: the School Teacher

Throughout my childhood I met adults from time to time throughout Arkansas County who, regardless of the purpose of our encounter, would some time during our conversation insert the still memorable phrase: "I went to school to your father" or "I went to school to Mr. Woodiel." 

A remark that seemed to me a mixture of both pride and accomplishment.  During their childhood they had, along with a dozen or more of their neighbors, walked varying distances in all kinds of weather "to school" in a one or two room structure in rural Arkansas County to classes taught by my father, the school teacher.

The image below was sent to me in 2005 before I established this site by Lottie Mae (Vernor) Forrest, a high school classmate of mine of the class of 1953 at St. Charles.  It belonged to her mother-in-law, the lady in the polka dot dress near my father Allie Woodiel who stands, his hands behind him, at the right.

Members of the 4H Club, Forrest School, Ark. County, AR 1938

From Lottie's note dated May 7, 2005 that included the above image:

Dale,
   We were going through some old pictures that Johnnie's mother has last Thursday and came across this one.  If Mrs. Forrest lives 'til June 12, she will be 100.  Good mind -- just hard of hearing.  This picture was made at Forrest School in 1938.  It is a 4-H Club group and Mrs. Forrest doesn't remember why she is in the picture, but I'm thinking maybe she was a sponsor or leader.  She is the one in the polka dot dress with white collar.  She said Mr. Woodiel drew her name at Christmas and gave her a green pitcher which Johnnie's niece has.  I just thought you might enjoy having a copy.  Old pictures can certainly bring back lots of memories.

A friend,
Lottie

During the 1930s my father taught in several Arkansas county schools.  These rustic institutions served their purpose in ways that, no doubt still relevant, might well ring true to sensitive classroom teachers here in these beginning decades of a new century.

The image below is clearly my father with another group at perhaps another school.  Although I have no information about this image, other than its obviously him in one of his more dishevelled states, perhaps -- from the number of children wearing rubber boots -- a cold or perhaps rainy day.

Which brings to mind a story recently told to me by my sister Maureen -- she having heard it from man who had, as a young boy, "gone to school" to Mr. Woodiel.  He recalled a rainy day when my father's Model A Ford had become stuck in the mud on the dirt road leading to the school.  The older boys were enlisted to push the car out of the mud, and, though too young to participate in this effort, he joined in the effort and, in the process, caught the strap of his over-alls on the car's rear bumper just as it was releasing itself from the mud, dragging him along with it.  After being dragged through the very muck that had stuck the Ford, a rain of shouts from the muddied assistants brought my father's Ford to a stand still, releasing the youth muddy but unhurt.

Adolph Prange Memorabilia, cont.

The pictures were forwarded to this site by Jim Prange, son of James, one of the oldest children of Adolph and Edna Prange.  [Commentary to follow.]

The Prange Store circa 1913

There is obviously much history to be gleaned from the details of this oldest known picture of the Prange store and family home that rests in the background, its view largely blocked by the trees.



















A dapperly dressed James Prange in the 1940s seated on the eroding boardwalk with the Prange home in the background in front of which is parked what appears to be a slick white-walled sedan. A striking image that has a lot going for it. In addition to the house and car and the decaying boardwalk, there's the stark fence work behind him, what appears to be an oil slick of some sort in the road, and a classic leather jacket one can almost touch.  Since it would be somewhat out of character for his father to allow the boardwalk to fall into disrepair, I wonder if this might have been made after the family had closed the store and moved to California.

I can understand why Jim Prange, to whom I'm indebted for these pictures, says this image of his dad is "about his favorite photo."

The Prange sawmill that stood overlooking the White River a few yards south of the store.

This picture taken by James Prange, whose shadow is revealed in the foreground,  in the early 1950s captures what was clearly the finest dwelling in Crockett's Bluff perhaps to this very day -- depending of course on where one designates the city limits. The house appears to be under construction, a new extension in progress on its west side. There would later be white columns added. Jim Prange, pictured in front next to his sister Judy, his mother's arm on his shoulder, in from of their Aunt Cora Prange and her daughter Ida Carolyn.  Jim remembers this house in an overnight stay as "magnificent."

Adolph Prange Family Memorabilia: the Evolution of the Prange Store

Another post under construction:  

I'm indebted to Jim Prange, the son of James, among the oldest of the nine Prange children, for these fine prints of the A.R. Prange store during the early 1930s, Adolph and Edna during the late 1930s, and David, Charles and Hal in their youth.  The store -- literally overlooking the White River -- holds a key place in my earliest memories -- long before I was eventually old enough to venture southward up the gravel road on those hot summer days, along with every other kid in the area, to swim in the August Prange irrigation canal, just across from Schwab's Store.

The A.R. Prange Store, overlooking the White River: mid 1930?

Apparently the same shot as above but with a different frame that includes the Lutheran Church.

Note the Post Office sign in this frontal view from David's memoir.

Adolph and Edna Prange

David, Lynn (Hal) and Charles Prange

Members of Prange family with parents in back row and Charles with his mit.

The Esso pump and glimpse of Woodiel house in hose loop.

Two Childhood Memories for a Grandson

Here are two childhood memories written for my grandson Griffin Bliss for a project related to Lois Lowry's novel The Giver in his seventh grade English class at St. Andrews School at Savannah, Georgia. 

The first is about my first job at about his age plowing cotton for Mr. George Kline in his field out the Hill Road just west of Voss Lake.  The second is a recollection of the recurrent thrill of all Bluff children at the sound of the whistle of the Mary Woods No. 2

About Your Age 

When I was about your age, a sixth or seventh grader, I was offered my first real paying job.  Something more than the familiar string of unpaid chores assigned to all boys that age who lived on farms in rural Arkansas in the late 1940s.

It was a relatively simple job working on a small cotton farm owned by Mr. George Kline, one of our neighbors in Crockett’s Bluff, a small community at the bend of the White River where I was born and grew up. 

The downside of this job was that I was required to be at his house shortly after sunrise in the morning, not to return until the sun was setting in the evening, a long day.  But the upside was that I was paid what was to me a hefty sum of $2.50 per day.

Since the field where we worked was almost two miles from his house, we rode the horses back and forth each day we would be using in our labors.

 I was required simply to stabilize a plow, pulled by a great buckskin horse appropriately named “Buck,” up and down between the rows of cotton plants uprooting any grass or weeds that might be there.  Mr. Kline came along behind me down these rows with another smaller and more precise plow – pulled by his favorite horse “Lightning” -- that loosened the soil and “cultivated” the plants in their early stages of growth. 

Buck was an enormous so-called “draft” horse, bred for hard and heavy work, and his strength appeared to me to be unlimited.  So, any thought that I, at less than a hundred pounds, was supposed to control his starting, turning, and stopping movements with the reins I leaned into from time to time tied behind my back, was a joke.  Consequently, Buck stopped and turned whenever he pleased, much to my enormous frustration.  

Consequently, since I never gave up trying to control him, from time to time over those sweltering summer days I suffered the modest shame and embarrassment of being gently chastised by Mr. Kline about the quality of the language I addressed to poor old Buck. 

It was a long summer and the work was hard and long and generally hot.  But it was work of the sort one got paid for, and I spent the first twelve dollars I earned on a used red bike with characteristic balloon tires at the Western Auto Store in DeWitt, the county seat of Arkansas County Arkansas. 

 As I rode it for miles over the graveled roads leading in and out of Crockett’s Bluff I felt –what with a paying job – a new sense of what I would now call liberation. 

 *********

The image of an unknown photographer from a Woodiel family album and title image for this site.

The Mary Woods No. 2

The photograph of  the paddle-wheel steamboat pictured above was made from the bank of the White River no more than two hundred yards or so from where I was born in Crockett’s Bluff,  Arkansas, a village in the 1930s much smaller and even more “quiet” and “tired” than the Macomb that Harper Lee describes in To Kill a Mockingbird.  

So, when the steam-whistle of the Mary Woods No. 2 was sounded, everyone, particularly children, dropped everything and headed for the bluff banks overlooking the river. 

 Its sound could be heard long before its barge of logs nosed slowly around the bend beneath the red clay bluffs for which the village was named.  We knew we were in for a treat, something truly awesome to us.  She was majestic: grand and powerful enough to move upstream a barge stacked with logs larger than anyone ever viewed elsewhere.  And she made all the noise necessary to justify her presence, the sound of her engines, the splashing patter of her enormous rear wheel, and the usual additional whistle as a special treat to us from the pilot on the bridge who always returned our waves.

The experience was necessarily brief, since even though she moved slowly when compared with the familiar out-board powered fishing boats, a full view was limited to a panoramic minute or two, so it was necessary to run barefoot down along the bank for the next clear opening with a view.

Then, when she was gone from view and rounding the next bend near the familiar sandbar, her super gigantic waves having reached the shore making the house boats bounce like buoys, we were left with the image above, the Mary Woods with the steam from its twin stacks streaming along its back downstream as it forged upriver its massive barge of freshly cut timber.

A scene that is in memory almost as alive now as it was then – a lingering sensual feast in the midst of an otherwise long,  slow and quiet summer day in a “tired” little hamlet at the bend of the White River.

At the viewing site with my sister Maureen Shireman.