Part 4: Sarah's House-to-House Stroll Through 1890s Carrollton, Kentucky; Meet the Wilsons, the Hanks, the Strattons, and Others Who Lived on Seminary and 6th

In Part 4 of Sarah Eva Howe's "Book of Recollections," Sarah recalls some families living on and around Seminary Street and Sixth Street. Sarah is writing to her daughter, so her references to "Dad" refer to her daughter's father and Sarah's husband, William Levi Salyers.

Again, you can follow Sarah using a modern map of Carrollton (maps.google.com) or the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Carrollton in 1898. As always, my own comments are in brackets. All parentheses are Sarah's own.

Going back to Seminary again, and taking the left side of the street, as you go out, the Wilsons lived on the corner (not in the house that Cora’s husband built that stands there now). R. J. Wilson was a strange man, a maker of tombstones, and I think his family too had a pretty hard time as they grew up.   ... There were five sisters and two brothers; Marion, the oldest, married Amy Lanham (kin to Edith, Anna’s mother, and also to the Lanham who married Dad’s cousin Mary Jane Tilley in Vevay). Cora was still single and worked with Mrs. Alice Smith Conn as assistant “trimmer” when they put in millinery at Howe Bros. in 1891. The younger girls were still in school. Nannie had a lovely voice; one of my early memories was hearing her sing. She married well —  Otto Oster from Eminence — and Julson[?] Oster was their son. And of course Cora married Mr. Sutton[?], a wealthy merchant from Ohio who then helped out the whole family.

Well, I clean forgot about the oldest sister, who married Mr. Calvert, then a druggist at Worthville; Marion’s mother (I think she had another child who was older and died.)

A segment of the Sanborn Fire Insurance map for Carrollton in 1898

Next to Wilsons, between them and the Salyers¹ house, and Mrs. Davis, the widowed daughter of “Uncle Dave” Bridges,  ... [who] moved in with her four sons.  Scott Wilson [Davis], the older boy, such a nice boy, too. (R.J. [Wilson] was born after we moved to Carrollton or just about that time.) ... Anyway, the in-between house belonged to John Davis.  ...  He lived there with his wife and daughter. They too belonged to the Christian Church. The Wilsons were strong Baptists; Mrs. Wilson was Aunt Prudy’s older sister, their name was Scott, of a good Carroll County family.

And just now it has come to me: The Hanks family, Mrs. Atha Gullion’s brother’s people, lived in the big house where Cay[?] Tandy lives now [the 1940s], opposite Forbes’s on 7th and Seminary. Uncle Tom Salyers² married a Hanks (the second time). I suppose she was kin, but I don’t know how close.

. . . The next houses to the C.D. Salyers home ...  were those of the two Renschler brothers, Gus and Billy, both good carpenters with happy-looking ... wives, excellent cooks, and several children apiece. Ida, one of the girls, afterwards married John Kuhlman, Harry’s son, and Clara, another girl, married Andy Westrick, I think. The Westricks were not in town when we came. They were still living in Hunters Bottom and farming. There was a big German colony down there, some Catholics, some Protestants; the Westricks and Fellers though were mixed with French, as it is easy to trace yet. Mrs. John Hill and Mrs. Henry Kuhlman were Westricks, I believe, and Mr. Pete Feller was kin some way, besides marrying a Westrick girl.

Across the street, on the left (on Sixth St.) from the Renschler’s was the Stratton house, a rambling big frame (corner of Clay Street). The two daughters were already grown, and Ida had married Norvin Green and moved to the farm out near Worthville. She had a boy and girl near my age who were often my companions in the early days as their mother used to let them visit at their grandmother’s. Norvin [Junior] and Cora were their older children.  ...  Of course she had others: Dan, Joe (who died in the World War, or rather after he came back from it), Bess, who taught school — you remember — at the Old College when it began to be used again as a Public School, and Francis. Her husband had a brother, Joe, who used to come in often to the Stratton’s during the eighties and in that way met Nannie King when she stayed at the Salyers home and went to school. They became very good friends, in fact sweethearts.  ...  But Mr. King bitterly opposed Nannie’s marriage to Joe and broke up the match.  ...  Miss Lou Stratton, the other sister of the house, taught school for some time, and it is said she loved to wear beautiful clothes, hats with plumes, a wine-colored satin dress, etc.  ...

A portion of the previous paragraph in Sarah's handwriting

Next door to Strattons (still on 6th between Clay and Polk) was the McElrath house — at least I suppose they lived there then, as they did in the nineties. Mr. McElrath was a lawyer, a very bright man, but peculiar looking, with small, bright eyes and bushy whiskers, quite tall.  ...  His wife had two daughters, one his, Helen (who married Fletcher Peters) ... and one older by her first husband (deceased), Ida.  ...  Miss Ida married first Harry Stringfellow, who died, leaving a tiny son, who at the time we went to Carrollton was almost 9 or 10; she had married again, a brother of the Pryor sisters; he went as consul to Cuba, and there his daughter was born and named “Catalina Cuba Pryor."  ...

On the corner of 6th and Polk, left side, was the low brick building. I am “hazy” about who lived there in 1890, but soon after George James and his wife went there to live, and he kept a store there for many years. The “James Brothers” (no kin to Jesse, I imagine, though they came from Indiana) were named Elmer and George. Both of them came to the Methodist Church. ...

Just across the street, where Miss Katie Vallandingham and her parents lived afterwards, I think her uncle the Baptist minister (at that time not preaching regularly, but in the business) with his wife and little Mary, their daughter, afterwards one of my friends when they kept the Vallandingham house in the Vance mansion on 5th Street, where Brother Williams lived, and where we had the nice parties at various times. And of course from the house to the corner of Taylor Street was the schoolhouse and the big yard, surrounded by a high fence.

Only three houses occupied the square on the right side — on the corner of Polk & 6th was the home of Mr. And Mrs. “Jule” Geier; she was the sister of the Gullions, Ed and Emmett, and a devout Methodist like the latter. (I imagine Ed had joined the Christian church with his wife, Miss Atha.) The Geier children, Florence and Frances (Frances was a little baby in 1890 or at least a small child; Florence about five), could slip right across to school (when they became of school age). Across a big, fine garden (vegetable) was the double house in one side of which lived Mr. & Mrs. Emmett Gullion and their two girls, Mildred and Louise.  ...  (Mildred married Joe Morris and was the mother of H.H. and Jo Campbell, and Louise of course married Mr. Harrison and had Emmett Hollis[?] and Tommy.  ... 

The other side of the house was occupied by “S.” Williams (whose mother was Miss Sue’s sister), the father of Paul Williams and Agnes, who was my schoolmate. (She married O. M. Hardesty.)

Across the street from the double house lived the Gaunt family, I believe families, for I think both of them lived in the same house, one on each side. They were attorneys (and their name was pronounced Gant). “John M.” was a pompous “large-tummied” man without children; his wife was named “Chella.”  . . . “Jim” Gaunt was another matter. He was “slick looking” tho he had a wife and a little girl, Kathleen, and a boy, Alfred. His wife was sickly.  ...   After his wife died, he married Eva Rice  ...  a very handsome girl, much younger than he, and they seemed to live very happily down in Tennessee.

                          ********************  To Be Continued  ********************

¹Charles David Salyers (1849-1926), Sarah's future father-in-law
²Thomas D. Salyers (abt 1858-?), brother of Charles David Salyers