A Lady Named William Thomas

Living Up to Her Name

Written By her son:
Jim Gazzaway

On July 5, 1886 John Bryant Jordan (pronounced Jur'-din) made a trip to the bank in Thornton, Limestone County, Texas and asked the cashier for a new five dollar gold piece. He wanted to give it to his newborn daughter. He must have been expecting a boy because he had named her William Thomas Jordan, a name that would cause her to have to do lots of explaining for the next seventy two years of her life. Miss Willie, as she became known to almost everyone, had three older half brothers and three older sisters living when she began life near Big Hill, Limestone County, Texas.

Her father John Bryant Jordan was born in Pike County, Alabama near Mobile Buck Horn Creek, on March 13, 1838 where he grew to manhood and became a slave master on a plantation. He had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, or as he preferred to call it, �the war between the States.� He was a Captain (Commanding Officer) in Company G of the 36th Alabama Regiment.

Captain Jordan and Julia Devon, (born on October 11, 1840 were married in Monroe County, Alabama) on January 12, 1865. And, from this union was born five children including three half brothers that were still living when Miss Willie was born. Iter Jordan was born January 14, 1867 and died October 9, 1869 in Limestone County, Texas. Wood Bridge Jordan was born January 29, 1871 and died October 31, 1874 in Limestone County, Texas. The three living half brothers were Felix Jordan (to became know as �B� Jordan) was born February 21, 1872. Burns Jordan was born on March 22, 1873 and Daniel Cornelious Jordan (Dick) November 22, 1874. Julia died on January 11, 1877 leaving her husband with three boys, Felix,, age 5, Burns age 4, and Daniel age 3.

Captain John was united in marriage with Mary Cathrine Whatley (born June 7, 1849 in Henry County, Alabama) in her father�s home in Limestone County, Texas on May 15, 1879 by Rev. G. L. Genning. Mary�s mother was a full blood Commanche Indian and all the children of this second marriage of John Jordan had the facial characteristics typical of American Indians. The coal black hair, the dark brown eyes and the high cheek bones would mark the next three generations. The strength of the Indians which Mary possessed would surely intermingle with the strong will of the Dutch which John bore and mold the character of the children and even some of the grand children of this union.

Five children were born to John and Mary. Nancy Catherine Jordan was born on April 23, 1880, Minnie Jordan on November 14, 1881, Winter Elinor Jordan on October 28, I882, William Thomas (Miss Willie) Jordan was born July 5, 1886, and Brewster Whitcomb Jordan on December 3, 1888.

Miss Willie lost her mother on June 30, 1901 just before her sixteenth birthday. Her three older sisters had married and left home. She became the woman of the house with her father to see after, and Bruce, her brother, who was two years younger than her, to care for. Dick had married and moved away. �B� and Burns had both gone to seek their fortunes elsewhere.

Miss Willie attended school in Big Hill until she was finished with grade school and her father, sent her to preparatory school at Tehuacana, Texas. The school was the equivalent of high school. The building stands to this day atop Tehuacana hill, the highest point in Limestone County and can be seen for miles around. Her education ended when tier mother died and she returned home to Big Hill where she was needed.

One spring morning there was a knock at the door and when she opened it there stood a tall dark complexioned man in his early forties. He inquired, �Does Captain John Jordan still live here?� Miss Willie�s reply was, �Yes, I am his daughter Willie.� To which he answered, �Oh no you�re not, she has long curly blonde hair and blue eyes. She is my sister and I should know.� It was �B� Jordan. He had left home when Miss Willie was about a year old and her hair and eyes had changed from the baby colors he remembered., He had traveled over most of the American Continent in search of his fortune, He had made that fortune and then lost it when Poncho Villa claimed all the lands in Mexico for the government and B lost his ten thousand acre ranch along with all his cattle and other possessions. He was lucky to get away with his life. After not being heard from for twenty five years, tie had come home.

Captain John sent to Alabama for his sister, Nettie Owens, and her five sons shortly after his wife Mary died. Aunt Nett, as she became known had lost her husband in the Civil War but had managed to keep her head above water. She welcomed the opportunity to come to Texas and bring her sons. There was a shortage of workers there and John needed help with the farm and the home. She needed help with rearing the boys. As it turned out all five of the boys left the farm in later years to go into the lumber and oil business and each became a millionaire in his own right.

With Aunt Nett helping at the house, Miss Willie was able to go to the fields during cotton harvest time and usually kept the books and an account of what each of the cotton pickers gathered each day. The average picker would pick from three to four hundred pounds of cotton each day and received his pay according to how many pounds he had picked.

Bruce was about seventeen years old by this time and Captain John thought that he should be able to pick as much cotton each day as the Owens boys, so he came up with a plan to see just how much cotton Bruce could pick. At the breakfast table on this particular morning, he told Bruce, �Son, if you pick three hundred pounds of cotton today I�ll give you this new twenty dollar gold piece and you can spend it any way you want to.� Bruce took the bait. He hurried through his meal and couldn�t wait to get to the cotton patch and start stuffing the fluffy white stuff into his long white sack. At the first weigh up his sack was full and he was leading the pack. No rest, just back to the cotton row and fill that sack again. By the last weigh up of the afternoon he had picked over three hundred pounds. He had Miss Willie check her figures again to be sure before he headed for the house to tell �Papa� what he had done, and to claim that shinny new twenty dollar gold piece.

At the supper table, after saying the blessing, Captain John asked, �Well, Brewster, did you pick three hundred pounds of cotton today?� With a big smile on his face he replied, �Yes Sir, Papa, ask Willie. I picked three hundred and ten pounds.� Captain John was as good as his word; he handed Bruce the twenty dollar gold piece and then lowered the boom. He said, �all right, young man, I knew you could do it and here is your twenty dollar gold piece that you can spend any way you want to, but beginning tomorrow, now that I know you can do it, you will pick three hundred pounds of cotton every day or I will take twenty dollars worth of hide off your back side every night before supper.�

Captain John was known for his strict discipline and his overbearing nature, but his children profited from being brought up under his iron hand. They learned discipline and obedience; they learned to fiend for themselves and most of all they learned respect for other people and their feelings. He tested them in every way and passed the test. Poor Bruce was not as fortunate as the rest, he had to learn the hard way, but they all had patience with him.

Among the memorabilia that Miss Willie left when she passed from this life are some pictures of a young man and a ring that he gave to her. He had been her boy friend. No one knows just what happened that the friendship did not develop into a more lasting relationship, but Miss Willie remained with her father after Bruce married and moved away and after her cousins, the Owens brothers and Aunt Nett moved to Fort Worth where Aunt Nett died at the ripe old age of ninety nine.

She had a very close friend, Bertha Bell (Later Allison) when she was in school at Tehuacana and they would visit each other whenever it was possible. On one occasion they were walking down a country road which was really just two ruts in a narrow lane between two fences, when they heard a strange noise and looking down the road they could see a trail of dust behind what looked like a buggy. As it drew closer Bertha said, �Willie, that�s not a buggy! We better get out of the road.� As they clambered over the fence the thing went by spouting smoke and making all kinds of noise, even a sound like a trumpet as the man on the buggy seat squeezed a red bulb on an air horn. They had just seen their first car. In later years they would laugh about how scared they were and how silly it was to be afraid.

She remembered the first airplane she ever saw. It had swooped down over the big two story white house where she and her father had lived and turned toward Thornton. She learned later that the fellow was lost on his way from San Antonio to Dallas. Someone pointed out the railroad in Thornton to him and told him it went to Dallas and he was on his way.

Life on the farm without electricity, running water, indoor plumbing an such was not easy. She cooked on a wood stove which was in the kitchen out back of the house. They built the kitchens away from the house in case of fire so that the house did not burn down if the kitchen caught fire. She drew water from the hand dug well, washed clothes in a wooden tub, boiled the dirt out of work clothes in an iron pot over an open fire in the back yard, and scrubbed them on a rub board, wringing them as dry as she could with her hands and then hanging them on a clothes line strung between two trees, waited for, the sun and wind to dry them so that she could iron them wrinkle free with a smoothing iron heated on an open fire or on the cook: stove. Life like that tended to toughen one so that the challenges to come would not seem so hard to deal with.

Captain John became ill with cancer. It had started as a mole on his chest just above the breast bone and quickly spread. There was no cure for cancer then and there was nothing anyone could do. Oh, some people had gone to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for radium treatments for skin cancer but they did not live long, so Captain John just waited for his time to go.

About the time Captain John came down with cancer, Luther Gazzaway came by with a barrel of fish he was peddling renewed his acquaintance with the Captain and Miss Willie. He had lost his wife to cancer and was, living in Thornton with his youngest daughter. He had been Public cotton weigher, in Thornton and had done carpenter work off and on as well as farming. His father had been the Methodist preacher in Thornton until he died in 1919. His mother was still living in Thornton with his brother Henry. Captain John and Miss Willie had known Luther Gazzaway for a long time. He met the approval of Captain John to court Miss Willie.

On April 23, 1923 William Thomas Jordan became Mrs. Luther Gazzaway. Rev. J. G. Harwell, the Methodist minister in Thornton performed the ceremony. She remained �Miss Willie� to him and she addressed him as � Mr. Gazzaway � . No one ever heard either of them address each other by any other name except on rare occasion he would call her �Billie�. Luther was twelve years her senior. His Youngest daughter, Loraine had married and moved to California by the time of the wedding. Miss Willie never was really accepted by any of Luther�s children except Loraine. The others treated her with respect but only Loraine showed love for their father�s new wife. Loraine would be a great help in the years to come after her father passed away and left a six year old son to be reared in the height of the Great Depression of the 1930�s.

Luther moved in with Captain John and Miss Willie and helped to care for the Captain until his death on November 11, 1924. Captain John�s clock which had hung on the wall of the old white house for many years stopped running at 9:25 A.M. on that day. It would be running again many years later when Miss Willie died and would stop again as it had when the Captain died.

Luther and Miss Willie moved to Thornton and bought a house on the east side of -the tracks shortly after the Captain died and his estate was divided among his heirs. The old house went by lot to Dick and he moved into it. Miss Willie was administrator of the Captain�s estate arid received as her share 41 acres of unimproved land. She had no regrets, she had done her duty, She had honored her, father, and her mother.

On Monday February 23, 1925 at 7:15 P.M., at the age of 38 she gave birth to her first arid only child. James Kimbell Gazzaway, weighing in at 10 pounds, greeted the world with a strong pair of lungs. He was his father�s pride and joy. Like Jacob of the old Testament Luther had a son of his old age. Miss Willie was equally proud and set out from the beginning to nurture and bring up young Kimbell to be like his father.

Miss Willie and Luther opened a cafe on main street in Thornton in 1926. She worked along side of her husband at the cafe and cared for their one year old at the cafe. He would later be just too much for the two of them to keep up with at work, even though they put a turkey bell on his ankle and would go looking for him when the bell became silent. He was usually found among a group of men smoking a cigarette or sipping out of their bottle of moonshine. Luther hired a live-in housekeeper and baby sitter. Kate Gour, stayed with them until they had to give up the cafe when Luther became ill with pellagra, a nerve disease that would claim his life on March 4, 1931

The Great Depression of the 1930�s was hard on everyone. Work was scarce and many men with large families found themselves in bread lines. Wives took in laundry from their neighbors. Watkins Products and Christy Products were sold house to house by ladies fortunate enough to be distributors for neighborhood. Miss Willie was one of those fortunate enough to get a Christy Products line. She was able to sell enough to buy those staple groceries she needed, but as times became harder that endeavor soon became unprofitable and she gave up the franchise. She had to depend on help from the families of her two sisters, Nancy and Minnie. She received corn from leasing her 41 acre farm out to share croppers Kimbell would help her shell the dried corn and haul it to the grist mill in his little Red Wagon to be ground into meal. Anything over and above what could raised in the garden was a luxury. When winter arrived it was customary to kill hogs and she was usually assisted with this chore by Nancy and Minnie�s husbands, Jim Patterson and Will Childress.

Although she had defended her name on many occasions there was no doubt that bearing a man�s name caused her problems on one occasion. One case in particular comes to mind. She had agreed to lease the mineral rights of the land which she had inherited from her father to a major, oil company and when the lease hound asked her to sign her to sign her name he admonished her to sign her name and not her husband�s name to the document. When he saw the signature, �William Thomas Gazzaway� he became upset and remarked, �Well now we will have to do the whole thing over. I asked you to sign your name and not your husband�s, but you signed his name anyway.� To which she replied, �Don�t You think- I know my own name? William Thomas is my name.�

Kimbell was able to contribute to the family income with his shoeshine box., and by doing odd jobs around town. Miss Willie learned to manage with what she had and nothing ever went to waste. Without refrigeration the meat was kept by salt curing and smoking in a smoke house. There were times when all. they had to eat was cornbread and black eyed peas, but they managed until she was able to get a job in the WPA sewing room. The job paid $24.00 dollars a month and with clothing and canned food coming via government truck to town once a month she was able to make ends meet.

Without radio, television, electricity, or any of the other conveniences that we have grown used to and take for granted -today, there was nothing to do in the long summer evenings and the cold winter nights but to sit before the fire in winter or in the porch swing in summer and talk. She and Kimbell. would sit for hours as she told him stories that she had heard from her father in the very same manner. She and Kimbell became real friends. They enjoyed doing things together. They even climbed a mountain together in Arizona years later, just because it was there. She seemed to have an inner strength that warded off despair and taught Kimbell that to aim at a star and get only half way was far better than not to aim at the star at all. She genuinely felt that the best was always yet to come.

Her strength to care for her father until his death, to endure the many hardships she suffered after her husband�s death during the height of the depression and to :always keep her head high, came no doubt from her heritage. Added strength could have come from having to live up to a name given to her, but meant for a man.

In June of 1942 Kimbell went to work for the U.S. Government Civil Service in San Antonio and she moved there with him. They rented an apartment near Breckenridge Park and she kept house for him. He was transferred to De Ridder, Louisiana in September of t942 and she followed him there where they once again rented an apartment and she stayed with him until he entered the U.S. Army Air Corps in September, of 1943, then she moved to Teague and rented an apartment from her old childhood friend, Bertha Bell Allison.

Kimbell was married to Lois Cooper on May 8, 1944 in Teague and when he was discharged from the Air Corps in December of 1945, he and Lois moved to Teague where they bought a house and Miss Willie moved in With them to care for house and do the cooking while they ran a photographic studio. In 1952 she moved into an apartment in Teague with her brother, Bruce and she cared for him in his sickness until he died in 1954.

Probably one of the highlights of her life was the birth of her, only grand child, Lois Loraine Gazzaway on March 10, 1953. She had always predicted she would be the grand mother of twins, but it was not to be, so she gave a double portion of love to the one grand child she did have. Like any grand parent she was proud of every thing that Loraine did and was always ready to do anything to entertain her.

Kimbell. and Lois moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1955 and she moved to Mart to be near her sisters, Nancy and Minnie. She remain there until she became ill with cancer and moved to live with Kimbell and Lois in Independence, Kansas.

In 1957 Kimbell was transferred from Independence, Kansas to Houston and Miss Willie moved with him, Lois and Loraine. As the days went by she became weaker and endured more and more pain. The old clock which was running in the hallway at 511 Roper in Houston stopped at 8:00 P.M. on Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1958. A lady named William Thomas had gone to meet her maker.

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