She could spit watermelon seeds like a champ.

      Sunday dinners: grandmother at the head of the table, taking such a long time to eat that no one thought dessert would ever be served. A generous-sized monogrammed linen napkin spread across her lap, Mrs. Horne "patted her food," never took too much into her mouth, chewed with her mouth closed, and covered her plate with her hand as she shook a liberal amount of salt onto everything. Never did she make a clinking sound with her spoon against the glass as she stirred plenty of sugar into her iced tea. She sipped soup from the side of the spoon's bowl without slurping.


This same lady ate squirrel brains with scrambled eggs for breakfast and could spit watermelon seeds like a champ.

The House on Harrison Street will be available at the Camden Daffodil Festival on Friday and Saturday, March 11-12, 2016. The cost of the 8 x 10 size paperback of is $20. The 208 page saga contains a full bibliography, end notes by chapter, and an index. A CD to accompany the book will be available. It contains more pictures and a few documents. Cost of the CD is $10.

I'll be at the Great Hall Friday and Saturday afternoons and at the Ramsey House and the Gordon House in the mornings; that's the plan, anyway.
Friday evening 6-8PM, I'm hosting a drop-by at the Holiday Inn.

Meet the Gordon Sisters: Alice, Susie, Janie, Frances, and Mildred

Susie Gordon Ritchie

Alice Gordon Lide

Janie Gordon (upper left). Mildred with Margaret, Charlotte and Elinor

Frances Gordon Usrey

Mildred Gordon Horne

Mamie's Eyes

"What you see stays with you...and, well, with me. You know too much."

"I know alcohol, Frank.  I know trouble when I see it."

"Well, then, Mamie, close your eyes."

The eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, a billboard advertisement for an optometrist, served as a symbol and recurring motif in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

In our household, Mamie did not have need of an optometrist. Trouble was being painted with a bold stroke. Mamie saw it all.

The Spider, The Fly, and Ritchie Grocer

Ritchie Grocer opened in 1886, according the OCHS Quarterly, Dec.2015. It was incorporated in 1903, per Morrison/Eppinette book (OCHS Quarterly) - Thank you to Teresa Harris.

This business was founded by John C. Ritchie and his business partner Abe Lazarus. It became a wide-spread grocery empire and headquarters eventually relocated to El Dorado and had operations in Texarkana and north Louisiana.

Ritchie Grocer in El Dorado.

Thomas Goss Dansby, Sr. was a wholesale grocery salesman who found employment with this enterprise after the Depression and moved his family to El Dorado from Ft. Smith. The family lived there until Betty graduated and moved to Little Rock for nursing school. The rest of the family moved to Camden and Goss, Sr. continued in his employment with this firm. Goss, Jr. (Buddy) enrolled as a junior in Camden High School.

Goss, Jr. and his mom and dad had an apartment in the Elliott House on Washington Street. He quickly became one of the most popular boys in the school. His good looks and charm were not lost on Margaret Horne, though she was a year older.

As fortune played out with the 1941 Camden Lumber Company fire, Margaret and family were displaced, living with Aunt Alice Gordon Lide on Washington Street. Their home was being refurbished, repaired, remodeled after it and others were damaged when sparks fell all over the Jackson Street houses and on those in close proximity. Luckily, the Court House was spared.

The story goes like this: Goss walked home from working at Patrick's Drug Store one day; the Spider lured the Fly onto the front porch.
As they say, the rest is history.

The House on Harrison Street is the family saga and launches during the Camden Daffodil Festival, March 11-12-13, 2016.

Historic Homes of Camden, No. 4

           The year is 1854. Col. James Brooks built the original House on Harrison Street. It was occupied by various members of his extended family and ultimately purchased by George Louis Ritchie in 1882.

            George Louis Ritchie gave this house to "Sister Ella." She and her family, including Professor Charles Thomas Gordon and Alice Gordon, Susie Gordon, George Gordon, Janie Gordon, and Frances Gordon moved into Camden from the Gordon Plantation (I use the word historically and loosely) between 1888 and 1890. My grandmother Mildred Gordon was the only child born in Camden, in the colonial home on Harrison Street.

                        The house is noted as Historic Homes of Camden,No. 4.                           

In 1912, the house was demolished and a modern "stacked shoe box" two story structure was built, finished in 1913. The House at 103 Harrison, later 134 Harrison, the one across the street from the court house, diagonal from the Methodist Church.
From the upstairs bedroom, I watched the Hotel Camden at Harrison and Jackson being built.
Mother and I walked down to the Ingham Library to check out books before the new Public Library was built across the street from The House on Harrison Street and across from the Methodist Church.
We experienced so much history from that corner.

The house was built 1912-1913 at the corner of Harrison and Jefferson.

It is this larger house whose secrets are revealed. Well, some of them.

The House on Harrison Street will be launched during the Camden Daffodil Festival March 11-12-13, 2016.

The Pen is Mightier: Family Connections

The connection in the mid-1800's was through sisters, land, and a place of presumed safety. Life was shared through letters; connections maintained through lengthy correspondence. These letters became living history.

Autauga, Alabama - street scene

The year 1843 must have been some type of watershed year because many pioneers from Dallas County and Autauga County, Alabama, headed for Arkansas.The first tombstone in Oakland Cemetery is for a man from Autauga County. Thomas Stone  who"had relocated to Camden in 1843 and died two years later. The obelisk that surmounts his grave was shipped from New Orleans by steamboat." (encyclopediaofarkansas.net) (Ouachita County Historical Society Quarterly, December 2015.)

Born in Tennessee - not Alabama

Sisters, Seeds, and Cedars by the late Sarah Moseley Fountain contains letters that offer "an intimate view of family life from antebellum worlds to the twentieth century." Her book became a tremendous resource for The House on Harrison Street. Mother had given me her copy of the book that contains references to Charlie Gordon, Ella Ritchie Gordon, Mahala Campbell Moseley, and Jane Campbell Ritchie.

Ouachita County/Camden/Harmony Grove families included in Sarah's annotated volume: Boddie, Brodnax, Campbell/Ritchie, Dickson, Dunlap, Gaughan, Lide, Love, Martin, Morgan, Moseley, Patterson/Proctor, Rumph, Stone/Newton.

Born in Tennessee - not Alabama

The area north of the Ouachita River, now called Harmony Grove, was the primary settlement area after Moro Bay and Bradley County area. Only Jane Campbell Ritchie and family lived "in town." Her sister Mahala and family lived in Harmony Grove.

I love the descriptions of Camden contained in those letters: the proliferation of saloons, the fashion-forward ladies, and the grim reality of illness, the need for religious revival. S, S, and C shares some insight into daily life and contains letters that sisters wrote to each other over an extended period of time. One sister had moved to south Arkansas-the other remained in Alabama.

Don't you miss a good hand-written letter?

The House on Harrison Street utilizes some of the portraits from S,S,and C to provide depth for the  new stories. The book will be launched March 11-12-13, 2016 during the Camden Daffodil Festival.

Some Scary Stuff

Ritchie-Crawford House in Camden

Fear set up shop in Camden one particular spring. Mrs. Maud Crawford, prominent attorney and friend of my grandmother, disappeared and was later presumed dead in March of 1957.

The adults whispered and  I checked under my bed and inside my closet for years. My grandmother kept looking for Mrs. Maud in the audience of the Lawrence Welk Show.

How could Mrs. Maud be in the audience listening to champagne music when she was cut into pieces and buried in the Safeway parking lot, or thrown down a dirty, abandoned well. All speculation, of course. To a child, it was the stuff of nightmares. Though everyone associated with the crime is long dead, legends and lore linger. My age group was at a vulnerable age and most of us acknowledge that the disappearance and stories of what happened to Mrs. Maud scared us "spitless."

Some scary stuff was going on in Camden and it was my first real-life encounter with a world where bad things could and did happen to good people.

The House on Harrison Street acknowledges the time frame and the fear the disappearance held for a child. It notes the Ritchie connection to the house on Greening Street, the one from which Mrs.Maud disappeared, the one that was built by and long occupied by Walter P Ritchie. His family enjoyed the grandeur of that house until the fallout from the Great Depression landed on this branch of the family, also.
The House on Harrison Street does not dig up old bones, though it does rattle a few skeletons.

The House on Harrison Street will be available at the Camden Daffodil Festival on Friday and Saturday, March 11- 12, 2016.
I'll be at the Great Hall at UMC (Harrison/Jefferson Streets) and will be at the Ramsey House and the Gordon House some, also.
Friday evening 6-8 PM, I'm hosting a drop-by at the Holiday Inn.
The cost of the 8 x 10 size paperback of is $20. The 208 page saga contains a full bibliography, end notes by chapter, and an index.
A CD to accompany the book is available. It contains more pictures. Cost of the CD is $10.