Thompson: Interview with Mary Burns, Bath Co The following is a transcript of an interview, conducted by Fred M. Thompson of Clarksboro, NJ, with Mary Williams Burns, granddaughter of George Washington Thompson. George Washington Thompson was born 5 Oct 1830 in Bath Co., KY and died 7 Aug 1915 near near Chalybeate Spring, also in Bath Co. We know now that he was the son of David Thompson and Jemima Smith. Mary was my great aunt. She was born in Montgomery Co., KY in 1897 and died there, at Windsor Care Nursing Home, in 1994, one month shy of her 97th birthday. (Her sister, Bettie, my grandmother, who is still living, will be 100 years old in October.) Mary was the daughter of Henry Lewis Williams and Lucy Thompson and a widow of Bill Burns of Montgomery Co. Aunt Mary was a school teacher. She was thoughtful, kind, and regarded well among students and parents. She had no children of her own, but was held in the highest consideration by her nieces and nephews. We all thought of her as another grandmother. I have added punctuation to Fred Thompson's original transcript, to improve readablility. Question marks (-???-) indicate places where Fred could not hear or understand from the tape of the interview. I have added clarifications in brackets. INTERVIEW WITH MARY BURNS Holt Ave. - Mt. Sterling, KY 40353 July 1981 George Washington Thompson walked from Olympia, where he lived, to Owingsville. One day he rode his horse to Owingsville and walked home and left his horse there. He'd forgotten about riding. Yes, that's where he lived [Olympia] when my mother married, and then he married and he lived over there [second marriage to Lucetta Mann from Cincinnati]. We used to go there. You ought to have seen that old house. We went in it a few years ago, but I kinda felt bad after. (Sister Bettie Smith interjects: Yeah, it makes you lonesome.) I remember once when we were children, we were there [Olympia neighborhood] and went -???-. Aunt Georgeanne sister [lived?] down below. She lived down through the field somewhere, in the back. I believe two of her [Georgeann's] girls went with us and we went up to Grandma's and Grandpa's. Went up there. Her [Lucetta's] two sons and their wives from Cincinnati were there. One of them had four children, the other one didn't have any at all. They were already there, and there were four little'n of us, and I know we thought we could go back down to Aunt Georgeann's, but Grandma wouldn't hear to it. She said, "No Grandpa, he wouldn't like it at all. No, youall goin' to stay. Aunt Georgeanne's girls went back, they said they'd go back home. She [Lucetta] managed for all of us to sleep and fix our meals and everything. And we got there one night, we were little and we got there after dark and they'd gone to bed. We came in a spring wagon. She got up and let us in, fixed us bread, made bread for us to eat. I taught out in the county, country schools, started in a one room school for years, and then I got a two room school. Then I came up here to Mapleton, that school up here at the end of the street [Holt Avenue-The school's gone now. They are building a Krogers.], and two years in the city school [Mt. Sterling Elementary, on Maysville Street]. Fifty years altogether. Started when I was eighteen, just barely was eighteen. Never did miss a year. Sometimes it was pretty hard to get through the year. Then I substituted five years. Most of the retired teachers do substitute. A lot of the teachers got laid off this year. Some of them are being hired back. The Federal Budget's being cut out on 'em, they say. Teaching, I enjoyed it too. Some days you'd go in, be awfully hard sometimes. You'd feel you couldn't take it, and then the next day it might be better. You'd be all enthused again. But I always looked forward to school. I just hated to miss a day's work. You say you and Ida Mae were here once? [Ida Mae Thompson Wright, wife of Clyde Wright, daughter of James William Lafayette Thompson, and granddaughter of George Wahington Thompson] (Answer from Fred: Yes) Well one of my neighbors down here told me one day that there had been two women here. She said that the name's Thompson. I said, well, I don't know what Thompson it'd be. So finally were were out to Olympia one day, to Lucy's--Lucy Thompson, Uncle Tommy Thompson's [Thomas Jefferson Thompson, son of G.W.] daughter-in-law. She married his son. 'Course he's dead now. She used to ---?????--- [Fred could not understand this part.]And I wrote her a letter, and she called me just as soon as she got the letter. [The letter was about where the graves of George Washington and Louisa Leach Thompson were.] She said she'd been over there and she says, "I can't find it." And she said she and her daughter were the ones who'd been here. (Question from Fred: Did he leave a will, do you know?) No, poor fellow, he didn't have anything. He sold his little place there, he said they just got too feeble to take care of it, you know, he just sold it and just went around among his children. He died out there, at Uncle Tommy's right there at Betty's house. Tommy lived there. I think that's where he died. He died out there and they buried him up there in the Stull graveyard. [Note by Fred Thompson: Mary Burns told me that there was no marker on George Washington's grave and she had ordered one. The graveyard is to the right of the old house at Olympia. The grandmother mentioned was George's second wife, not a blood relation. Mary has a clock that belonged to her grandfather. He paid $1.00 for it. She also has a photograph of her grandfather. [The interview continues with Mary talking about the photograph.] George Washington Thompson...his wife Louisa Harrison Leach...Lucy is in between, that is my mother, and she married a Williams, and Aunt Edith, she married a Shropshire. She's gone now and so is her husband. [They had] two sons and two daughters. They visited us two years ago. One of them lives in Illinois, and one in Texas...Louisiana. That is Aunt Eddie, Edith, in between [in the photo]. My mother says she was mad. [Edith appears to be pouting in the photo.] Didn't want her picture taken. She was the youngest one. [In the photo, Edith's dress is hiked up, and her long underwear is showing.] He [G.W. Thompson] used to come when we were children, ride horeseback, bring us apples. He lived to be 85. The grandma [Louisa Leach] died at 56. I think he taught school about 53 years [his obituaries say 57 years]. I don't know where he came from, he just lived around up there [Olympia]. He said one year he taught thirteen months. He'd finished one term and there'd be another school over there with no teacher and he'd go over and teach that, he just had a twelve week's term, and sent to another one and he taught three in one year. One room school. Just went by readers. The children, relatives, dreaded him. I know my mother said she and Uncle Tommy, her brother, always hoped he wouldn't get the school where they had to go. Said he was so hard on them. He was harder on them than he was on any other children, or they thought he was. Now, Uncle Jimmy Meems(?) went to school to him. [Fred had thought this was a brother of G. W.'s second wife. I think he is probably the James Monroe Leach, the brother of G. W.'s first wife, Louisa Leach. James was quite a bit younger than Louisa, and would have been of age to attend school under G. W.] He [Jimmy] said y'all goin' to see it, if he lived to be grown, he was going to whip Grandpa. He [G.W.] whipped him once. Well, maybe he whipped him more than once. Said one morning, him and some other boy got there early, and...they heated the room, a big fireplace...he said they put a lot of chestnuts in there. He said after school started off, all of them begin poppin' over the place. He said grandpa didn't ask no questions, he just called him up and took a big switch and whaled him out. Aunt Eddie [Edith] just thought he was awful. Aunt Eddie used to say, "If I had my time to go over, I'd run off. I wouldn't stay with 'im. He was so hard on us." He wasn't mean. He had a half brother, Uncle Jack, they called him. He lived there. [Jack lived in the Stepstone/Howard's Mill area of Bath and Montgomery Counties.] His name was Thompson, too. I don't know which was older. Well, he had three sons, Walter, Lee, and Richard and one of Walter's sons lives here in town, I guess. The oldest one. His name's Austin Thompson. [Austin Thompson died in 1982.] I'd often thought I'd ask him sometime if he knew anything about the Thompson family, but I don't expect he does. Well, Bettie's [Mary's sister] son, Elgin [Smith], lives up in Indiana. He'd like to have a family history, he said. (Question from Fred: Where did George Washington Thompson come from?) I don't know -????- or where he came from. He never did say, and I never did hear him say about where he grew up, or -????-. Democrat, Grandpa was. Oh, he was a strong Democrat. Seems like the Republican Party, seems like they are just the opposite from what they were. (Question from Fred: If he was a schoolteacher, he had to be educated somewhere?) Well, 'course he didn't have too much education. I heard him say something about going to school at Hazel Green. 'Course Hazel Green's up here in Wolfe County. It's a church school, run by the Christian Church. Well, it's just now a high school...I don't know what it's always been...and it's been a big help to the children in that region up in there, you know, mountainous region. Our Church down here...we go to down to the First Christian here,...they take clothing up there. We send clothing up there to help. The churches all over send clothing there. It's supposed to be a good school. [Note: In a letter to me, Fred stated that the Hazel Green Academy had no record of G. W. Thompson. Hazel Green Academy was founded in 1880. G. W. was teaching before that date.] Louisa Leach...I know [of] her mother...Grandma's mother...my mother's grandmother [Mahala Montjoy Leach, wife of James C. Leach, and daughter of Jared Montjoy and Hannah Prichard] lived with them. She was a widow and she was supposed to live around among her children. She stayed at their house, at Grandpa's, alot. Now here's something you might be interested in. [Shows old, engraved funeral cards.] Now this was my mother's grandmother, Mahala was her name, and this'n, Grandma Louise. I've had them a long time. Mamma had them. They used to make out those, you know -????- dead[?] people. That's how, well, and I know...I've heard my mother -????-, my grandmother, her age and everything [are printed on the cards.] Have you ever been to the Stull Graveyard, out there to the other side of Olympia? (Answer from Fred: Yes) There's no marker there, but I have one ordered. It's here right now, a marker for Grandpa's grave. They're [G. W. and first wife, Louisa] buried side by side, out there, and there used to be a little marker there at their graves, and...I remember seeing that...and the last few years we've been going there, we can't find it. It's gone. I don't know exactly the spot, but when Bettie's son [Mary's nephew, Elgin Smith] was here, back in the summer, we went up there one day and we looked all over -????-. And Uncle Tommy Thompson and his wife and some of his children are buried there too, but there's not a sign of a marker at any of their graves. But Uncle John Thompson's wife [Maggie], and Uncle...Uncle Green [Greenberry]...Uncle Green's wife [Addie B. McCarty] wife are buried there, and they each [the wives] have a stone and their name's on it, so I figured that they were buried somewhere near Grandpa and Grandma's graves. And we found a family out there, Becraft, and his wife that live on out and beyond the graveyard, and we went there and talked to them. And they see to keeping that up and it's kept in good shape, the graveyard is. And they have a good road, now, that leads back to it from the pike. And we looked and looked and we couldn't find the exact spot [location of the graves], but we know about where it is. There's a cedar tree, you can tell it by that...a cedar tree you can see from the road...it's just beyound where Grandpa lived. And we used to go there when we were children, at Grandpa's, and 'course he married again, after Grandma [Louise] died. We remember...no children from the second marriage...-????-. And she visited us, even after Grandpa died, she used to come and visit us, and she went back then to her family. And she'd been married before in Cincinnati and she died and was buried - -????- and so I said to -????-. And so I ordered a marker, and it's here. The man that ordered it has it and he'll get Bettie's son [Elgin Smith], since he wants to -????-., and go out there with him and show him about where. Then the graveyard is kept up and they just take donations form the family, anybody, to keep it up, take care of it, have it mowed. [The last time I visited the graveyard with my grandmother, Bettie Williams Smith, Uncle Elgin Smith, and my father, Gerald Smith, the area around the cemetery had been built up. A nice drive had replaced the dirt road leading to the cemetery, and it was fenced and still well maintained.] Grandmother Leach, she had TB, Grandmother did. Grandpa said that's how she got it, from waiting on her mother [Mahala Montjoy Leach], my mother did [say]. Grandma Leach lived with them. And they all thought they would all have it, my mother told me. She waited on her mother. She was just eighteen when Grandma died [1892]. From: "Smith, Elizabeth" Date: 15 Aug 1998