00:00:00
BM: This is a history affair with Mrs. Dewey
MM: Her name is--
RS: Well, I think you look like Gary Hall!
MM: --Ruth Stumpff. Go on, say Ruth Stumpff. This is Ruth Stumpff.
RS: Ruth Hailey Stumpff! (ph)
BM: Okay, this is an interview with Ruth Hailey Stumpff (ph) here in Cato,
Missouri on the morning of the 20th--21st day of September 1989.
MM: Seven!
BM: Or '87. We'll get this right, here directly. Now, Ruth, you said that you
have some history on William J. Whit Blythe (ph) family. So at this time will
you repeat the history that you have for me.
RS: Oh, they lived about this--Whit Blythe's (ph) family lived about two miles
00:01:00from my home at Cato, Missouri. Now, then, we were together a lot in those days
because families visited then. And the girls and we--how many, let's see, how
many were, there were seven--seven of those children who lived with us. Well, so
we were together quite often, we had good times. And we were country girls and
we knew what the country was like and we liked to do things that the country
did, so those girls'd come over to our house and we'd go down to their house and
we had to cross a creek and we'd ride a horse back down there or either go in a
buggy. And those girls'd come up here on horseback. Alright. And we would get
out and play and romp around in the woods a little, pastures. And one girl
that--we had real fences then, made out of trees that were split--and this one
girl, Emma Blythe, could--could jump over a rail fence without ever touching it.
00:02:00That was, that was one of my best things of remembering the Blythe girls, is
that she jumped over the fence without touching it. And now then,
MM: On that [inaudible]
BM: Now then, Mrs. Hailey, what was all those kids' names? What was all of Whit
Blythe's (ph) kids' names to the best that you remember?
RS: They were Martha, let's see, Martha, Emma, and Molly May (ph), and Mary
Ellen, Charles H. (ph), Laura I. (ph), James Bryce (ph), Carl B. (ph), and
Bertha E. (ph). That was the name of the Whit Blythe (ph) family. Now those
00:03:00girls and the Hailey, I was a Hailey before I married [indecipherable], and
those girls and we were together just any time, oh, every Sunday or every other
Sunday. Or more often than that. So we would go out into the wild woods and
enough wildflowers and listen to the birds sing and we had real fences then--
BM: What about, did you flirt with the boys?
RS: And count--
BM: Did you flirt with the boys?
RS: We, we claimed 'em!
BM: Oh, you claimed the boys!
RS: We just claimed 'em.
BM: Which one of the Blythe boys was your boyfriend?
RS: Cliff.
BM: Oh, Cliff. Cliff's a good one.
RS: I [indecipherable] about Cliff.
BM: Oh, okay.
RS: (laughs) And he was my boyfriend and my sister, younger than me, my baby
sister, she and Dewey (ph) went together. They were real sweet on each other.
And then my sister Celie (ph), older, married Whit Blythe's (ph) brother, Sam
00:04:00Blythe's son, oldest son, Clete (ph) Blythe. So the Blythes and the Haileys are
connected. And I now, my sister, Celie (ph) that married the Blythe is dead and
her husband Clete (ph) is dead. But they had three children and--two girls and a
boy that the girls are yet living, one lives in Haskell (ph), Missouri and her
name is Helen Blythe Neely (ph) and the other girl lives in Republic, Missouri
close to Springfield and her name is--well--Colleen (ph). I named her Haddock
(ph). Colleen Blythe Haddock (ph). She married a Haddock. And I named her
Colleen because I had a girlfriend in school that I liked and I called her--I
named this girl Colleen. Now then, the two girls are alive and the little boy
died in infancy. And now, that's the--Sam Blythe, he's a relative to Whit (ph)
00:05:00Blythe. And now then, Whit Blythe (ph)--these girls and the Hailey girls were
all very intimate. We, we loved each other well. And so then they, they finally
left the Ozark Hills and went down into Oklahoma country. And now then, I have
some of the offspring that are here today in my house in Cato, Missouri and in
the house I was born in. And this house here is, is 91 years old and it was
built by a Chicago carpenter and it's built like the houses down in Eureka
Springs, Arkansas.
MM: What about Aunt Sis (ph)?
RS: Oh yeah, I'm--Aunt Sis Wilson, she was a neighbor of ours and she was a
tall, hands--tall, beautiful lady and in her elderly days she lived alone right
00:06:00about a mile and a half from us and she--the way I remember her best is when I
would kick along to school when I was near the eighth grade, Sis would come
along now, what was her other name? Sis, or?
MM: Mary Jane.
RS: Or Mary Jane, but her--we kind of named her Sis and I just never did--Sis
Wilson. She married a Wilson and she lived there alone and I'd meet her on the
road and she had on a beautiful dress with cuff sleeves and long sleeves and the
way I remember most about her dressing--instead of having buttons down the front
of her dress she had just straight pins about an inch apart all along down the
front of her dress and that always attracted me. When I think of her I think of
those pins. And finally, she died and her son came and got her and took her to
00:07:00Oklahoma and gave her a very wonderful burial--a over $600 burial. And so that's
my way of remembering. And then they are tied up with one of our neighbors who
was called Absalom (ph) Stubblefield. And this is, this is the record as much as
I can tell about the [indecipherable] went to Oklahoma.
end interview
