Recently one of my nieces asked me to write about my father. She was very young when he died and she had no memories of him. In the picture to the right he was probably around the age of twenty six. Before this photo was made he went to live in Nebraska for his health. He had been diagnosed with a lung ailment, I believe it was tuberculosis. That was a common illness around the turn of the 20th century and was called "Consumption".
He was born in Upton Kentucky on January 11, 1883, the youngest child of Jemima Stuart Matthis and Charles Wesley Matthis I. As a young boy he had a job as a paper carrier. He had to get up early in the morning to meet the train as it came through the little town. The train did not stop, but someone pitched the newspapers out of the side of the train. I am pretty sure that one of those papers was taken to his own home for his father, who was a well educated man, and always subscribed to a newspaper. His father was known as "Professor" and taught, Greek, Latin and Higher Mathematics. He had some students living in his home and although I do not know exactly how it all worked out, he did help to establish Gilead Baptist College near Elizabethtown, Kentucky. On a Genealogy hunt we found what was left of this college. It was a church and we found the tombstones of one of his brothers who died in infancy and also one of Barbara Matthis, his sister. She died from lockjaw after stepping on a rusty nail. Jemima grieved for this little girl for the rest of her life.
My father did not formally attend the Gilead college, he said that he would sometimes help his father by tutoring some of his students. Chester had a knack for numbers and could add four column numbers by going up the column and adding four to the four before. He did this before the adding machine was in use. I remember as a little girl seeing him use the adding machine and remember him putting in numbers then pulling down a "handle" as he went along. He earned his living as a bookkeeper for a coal company in south eastern Kentucky. He also handled any tax accounting that was needed. His office was on the second floor of a building which had other offices on the second floor. Underneath on the first floor was the post office and the commissary where goods could be purchased using "script". Script was the coins that replace actual money. It does not sound quite legal to me now, but the coal miners had to exchange money for script to be used in the commissary.
My oldest sister taught school on a hill near the mines and I was her student there for the first and second grade. One thing I remember about the school was that the floors were actually oiled and then swept. I suppose it kept down dust, but the school had a peculiar odor which came from the oil. Many years later I too taught in that school. I recall have a pair of shoes which had "crape" soles and the oil caused the soles to disintegrate. They were very comfortable to wear but did not last long on those floors. The school had a bathroom for both girls and boys but those mountain children did not know how to properly use indoor plumbing and it was always out of order. Away from the school, at a decent distance was an "outhouse" for both teachers and children. It all sounds so primitive now, and it was! We had a playground for the children and the equipment consisted of swings only. The children played a lot of games outdoors during recess.
To get back to stories about my father, some of the things I remember were at Christmas when my dad went all out seeing that my mother had some special gift. One year he got a secretary for you. It was made of cherry wood and that was a good gift for her as she had no desk but did a lot of writing and studying - mainly of the Bible. On another Christmas he got her a new car, though she did not drive, nor did she ever learn to drive.
Both of my parents were heavily invested in their local church. In the summers when they only had two teen age children- Gene and me), they took vacations at Montreat, N.C. in order to hear visiting preachers. One year they heard Peter Marshall and my mother especially was impressed by his descriptions of a sunset. He said it was baby bottom pink.
When the older children were still at home they took a cabin at Lake Herrington in central Kentucky and though it was not much of a vacation for my mother, my father enjoyed fishing. The other members of the family enjoyed the lake and I loved being in the pool. It was a fenced in area in the lake with a wooden walkway on the sides. There was a slide which I used to learn to swim. My father would stand in the water and catch me as I came down the slide. We were usually there for two weeks. I remember one Sunday I had a terrible sunburn on my shoulders. I was around ten and could not wear anything on my shoulders due to the blisters. My father wanted his Sunday paper, so I was selected to go to the little store nearby and buy a paper for him. I protested as I thought it was immodest for me to go up in only my underwear. My mother assured me that it was perfectly all right as I was such a little girl. I had to go anyway, for my dad had to have his Sunday paper. I do not remember why one of my brothers was not enlisted for this chore.
As a little boy my father always wanted a red wagon, but he never had one. Teachers were not financially compensated commensurate with their abilities or efforts. So a red wagon was not in the family budget. My father was always very generous with his children and with my mother as well. I recall him telling about how his own father would buy oysters for himself but never offered them to anyone else. My dad said he always wondered what oysters tasted like.
My father did play baseball when he was a young man. He always enjoyed listening to baseball on the radio, and I remember seeing him stretched out on the bed for a mid day rest with the radio on and a ball game being described play by play. That was when I was in my twenties so he never lost his interest in the game.
My father was an elder in the Presbyterian Church in Harlan. It was on Clover street and when I was big enough to sit in a chair my mother had me in her class. She was also superintendent of the Sunday School. I have a certificate signed by her, promoting me to the four year old class.
Communion was a solemn sacrament and I remember my father serving communion, carrying the silver tray with a silver top full of holes and in each hole was a small glass with "grape juice" in it to serve as wine. I do not know how they serve communion there now, but in my present church we take communion by intinction , walking up to the altar, as is done in Catholic churches.
I recall one Sunday when our whole family was trying to get ready for S.S. and church. We only had one bathroom and my brother and I were fighting about who got it next. My father could not abide quarreling so he entered the hallway with his belt in hand and that ended the quarreling. We knew that we had to settle differences peacefully but his actions served as a reminder.
With a house full of kids ( 8 ), peace and quiet was a necessity for adults. On Sundays after church we came home and while our mother got the Sunday roast on the table ( it had been cooking in her drip drop roaster) we would read the Sunday funnies as my dad read the rest of the paper. After lunch and a rest for my parents, we all got in the car for a Sunday afternoon drive. Somewhere along the way my dad would stop at a road side store and buy drinks for us all. I always wanted orange crush. As we grew older, we had other activities involving our friends on a Sunday afternoon. And my parents liked to play a card game called Rook. Often they would play with my older brothers and it was played for blood. Once when a game was in full swing a knock came at the front door. When they saw it was the preacher out there, that card table disappeared like magic. They saw no harm in playing Rook on a Sunday but I suppose they knew the preacher would not agree, so the fun for the day was over.
I will resume stories of my father at a later time. There is much more to tell.
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