Volume 2, Number 4 - Summer 1965
Goblers Knob and Happy Hollow
by Jessie E. Yarnell Cox
(Mrs. Jessie Cox of Mt. Vernon sent two poems, both are long and we cannot find space for them, but we can tell the story of them and give to you the letters she wrote about her family. jrm)
One poem tells about Gobler’s Knob School which she and her husband attended.
"Sometimes you’d scribble a note or verse
A blue ribbon I gave you one day
Which you showed the boys with evident pride
While I blushed behind my geography
Gone is the spreading oak tree
Gone also are the girls and boys
There remains but you and me
In place of blue ribbons, I’ve made you a wife
Instead of trinkets you gave me land and cows
My burdens you bear now, not only my books,
For a romance was budding in that old school house."
In the poem entitled "Happy Hollow," Mrs. Cox describes the farm where she was reared, with its row of walnut trees and big orchard.
She writes to Mrs. Albert Cummings to say how much she enjoys the Historical Quarterly, "For we find so many articles about people we know. The Gaylors were my husband’s people. His mother was Laura Gaylor. They owned the land where Branson now is. They had some thrilling experiences during the Civil War. Two of her brothers were shot down by guerillas. Their mother’s house and all her belongings were burned. Even a new side saddle, which their mother begged them not to burn. They threatened to put the baby (my mother-in-law) on the fire. The husband was a gun smith and hid in a cave on Branson Heights. His wife carried food to him after dark.
In 1902 when my husband, Gaylor Cox’s son, and I were married we rented bottom land, now Branson, and put in a crop. As he plowed the rich acres, I picked dewberries near by. What luscious berries they were. So industriously I worked that at night when I closed my eyes I could still see dewberries. Later we bought the place of the Widow Maddux. It was our first home. It was all very primitive. Sometimes we cooked on the fireplace.
Of course I canned the dewberries ‘open kettle, some of them in small tin buckets, sealed with sealing wax. They all kept. Miraculously we, too, survived. They say what you don’t know won’t hurt you. What we didn’t know would fill a book. But we learned. Experience is a good teacher. And there must be a special Providence that watches over newlyweds and children, for here we are two old octogenarians, going on ninety, still canning dewberries when I can get them, but not with sealing wax."
Happy Hollow, my childhood home, was located about three miles west of Kirbyville. My father, Joseph Yarnell, purchased this homestead from Sam King about 75 years ago, in the 1890’s. The house was of hewn logs. It was said to have been built by counterfeiters, with double doors and window shutters.
The fireplace had many places built into the back of it (of stone) where money could be hid. My father soon had all of this torn out and a regular fireplace built. He could not bear the thought of rearing his family in a house that still had the same fireplace and hiding places that counterfeiters used.
Father planted black walnuts from which grew the row of big trees. The trees are yet standing or were the last time I was there 15 years ago. The owners gave us permission to pick some of the nuts to bring home. I believe the place now belongs to the Brittain family, descendants of our former neighbors.
My sister and I attended Gobler’s Knob School, some 2½ or 3 miles (long ones) distant. I have a picture of this school when Jack Brazeal was the teacher. Very few of us are living who were in that picture. I love Taney County. The happiest years of my life were spent there.
[9]
This volume: Next Article | Table of Contents | Other Issues
Other Volumes | Keyword Search | White River Valley Quarterly Home | Local History Home
Copyright © White River Valley Historical Quarterly
