A lot of history behind one church photograph

T
hese ladies who attended the Assembly of God Church didn’t meet regularly, but when they did meet, it was at someone’s home. This particular meeting was held at the home of Irvin and Emma Copley. 
 
The Copley Family
The Copley family owned the two houses at the end of Birch Street and at this time, 1937-‘39, were living in the ‘big’ two-story house in front which was later occupied by the Fowler family.
Later on, the Copleys lived in the smaller two-story house at the back of the lot along the alley right along the Cambria Creek. Mrs. Copley had been married earlier and had three Garlinghouse kids. The son, Pvt. Thomas Garlinghouse, was taken as a prisoner of war. He was in the Baatan March and died. He is buried in the Copley plot at the Greenwood Cemetery, in Newcastle. As a playmate of the Copley kids, Howard and Jane, I can remember him going off to World War II. The Garlinghouse girls, Patty and Jeanie, moved to California. 
The Copley family had moved to Newcastle from Minnesota where relatives still lived. Mrs. Copley had warned me that Janie had epilepsy and since I was with her a lot of the time, she warned me what I should do if Janie should have a convulsion. And sure enough, one evening when some of us neighbor kids were sitting on a log in the back yard, Janie had a convulsion. I ran in the house for a spoon like I had been told. That was to hold her tongue down so she wouldn’t swallow it. Later on, when Jane was about 13/14, she ran away from home because she couldn’t get along with her mother. Jane hitch-hiked back to Minnesota. She got caught in a snow storm and was found dead along the road. The family buried her in Minnesota because that’s where she wanted to be. Mr. Copley had done carpenter work in this area for a number of years. Eventually, they moved back to Minnesota, later returning to Wyoming. He did some carpenter work for us after we bought our first house about 1955.
When the Copleys left here, and went back to Minnesota the first time, they had an auction sale in the alley just south of Birch Street along the creek. My mother took me to the sale. During the auction, a couple of dogs got to fighting and one of them happened to get my leg. The bite went clear through my leg. Ora Price put me in her car and rushed me up to Dr. Wells. He lived in the house south of the telephone office (later it was the Updike house). He ran his office out of his house but was actually retired. He poured iodine in the hole and put a large cotton swab in one side and pulled it out the other side with a lot of chewed up flesh. It took four people to hold me down. I still carry the scar to this day. The dogs in those days neither had rabies shots, nor a license. The dog belonged to an old man who lived on the west end of town in the trees, about where Dow Park is now.
Most all of the ladies in the picture here lived either on Pine, Birch, Maple or Warren streets. None of the streets were paved and there were no street signs. This was known as the Getchell addition.
 
The Delcamp Family
In the back row is Mrs. Peyton. She was a tiny little lady, short and plump. The Peytons lived just behind the Dare family and beyond that was the Delcamp family. They lived along a muddy little trail that went north off of Pine Street to the land where the senior center is now located in the old Gertrude Burns grade school property. It crossed the railroad tracks to the Greenwood addition. The Delcamps had a large family and raised chickens and goats, lots of goats. We kids loved to play with the baby goats because they would run and chase us. The Delcamps lived in an old box car, maybe two put together. He had plans to build a house so he had a large basement hole dugout and that’s usually where we played with the goats because we could jump off the bank and the goats would, too. I was invited one evening to eat with the family. A pail was set in the middle of the table with milk in it and Mr. Delcamp would fill our cups. They had a long table with benches to accommodate all the kids. When I got home, my Dad asked me how I liked the milk? I thought it was okay until he told me that I had drank goat’s milk. A few years later, my Dad had been told to drink goat’s milk for his stomach ulcer so we bought goats milk from Irene Doll. At that time she lived east of town and they raised goats.
 
The Shields Family
The next lady in the back is Grandma (Hannah) Williams, who lived next door to the Copleys on Birch Street. I have previously told Grandma’s family history as published in the News Letter Journal a few months back. The next lady peeking from behind is Mae Shields (Mrs. Orval). The only Shields child in the picture is Easter on the front row. She and I were life-long friends and we spent a lot of our early childhood playing. They lived at one time in a house down behind McIntosh garage, close to the creek just off of the South Pine alley. Later, when I was an eighth-grader, they lived in the Shell house on Birch Street. They later lived in the Osage Oil Fields and the kids went to school in Upton. The Shields had a large family of Charles, Esther, Betty, Ruth, John, Naoma, Lois, Jimmy, Martha and Sara. They lost Betty to an accident alongside of the McIntosh garage when she was about 8 years old. She got herself stuck in the opening of an oil tanker off the truck and leaning up against the garage. Apparently she kicked the side of the garage to try to free herself, and the oil tank fell over on the ground, crushing her. Six of us little girls her age were honorary pallbearers at her funeral. We all wore little white dresses and got to sit in the front row at the church. I didn’t own a white dress, so Thelma McCullough gave me a dress of JoAnn’s, her daughter, to wear. It was very pretty with pretty buttons down the front. The McCullough family lived across the alley from us. They were Earl and Thelma plus Bob, JoAnn, and Jimmy, who was in my class at school. This happened when I was a fourth-grader.
 
The Petty Family
Next to Mae Shields is Beckie (Rebecca) Petty. She is the mother of the four little Petty kids in the front row. Beckie Petty had been a Draper girl from Osage. She had married Lawrence Petty on Oct. 10. 1928, when she was only 17 and he was 33. He worked in a plumbing business with his father. The older Petty family lived in a house sitting where the Taco Johns was built next to the little Home Grocery Store. The first owners of the Home Grocery, that I can remember, were the Whitmans. They had the store during World War II and I can remember standing in line to get our quota of fresh meat when the train would come in to the depot about once a week. We also had coupon books to buy sugar, and canned fruits and vegetables and other rations. Shoes were also rationed. We couldn’t afford to buy shoes so we would sell our shoe coupon to Mrs. McAvoy. They lived on the corner of Pine and Mystic streets. Mr. McAvoy was the district attorney. When I was in high school, I occasionally worked for Mrs. McAvoy when she would have a club meeting. When their youngest daughter went off to college, she had to have a new wardrobe of clothes. I was the lucky one to get her hand-me-downs and I had some very nice things to wear. Even the teachers, especially Mrs. Slenker, the home economics teacher, would compliment me on my nice wardrobe.
 
The Cullum Family
The tall lady in the back row is Hazel Cullum. Hazel was a Morse girl. She had married at the age of 18 to Marshall Cullum, on March 2, 1930, at the Methodist-Episcopal Church. Marshall and his family had lived in Cambria and moved to their home on Maple Street when the mines closed. The parents of Marshall lived on Maple Street also. His dad was named John and I only knew the elderly lady as Grandma. They had a yard full of plum trees, which I can remember picking for jelly. She is the mother of Max, who is on the far left in the front row. Max and his sisters, Lorraine and Leone, all finished school in Newcastle. Max located to Colorado where he worked in the oil fields and ran a water truck. The two girls moved on east, Lorraine to South Carolina and Leone to South Dakota. Grandma Cullum was blind most of her adult life from huge cataracts on both eyes. She wouldn’t let anyone do the dishes because she wanted to put them away so she could find them. She did very well for not seeing.
The last lady in the back, wearing cap, was Mondelita Petty, a sister of Lawrence. She lived with her parents as long as I can remember. The large lady in front of her, row two, was her mother. They lived on Warren and the father ran the plumbing shop out of his house. Warren was the main street from town and ran west to the creamery. The creamery was owned by Charlie and Vi Mapes. They lived in a house they built across the creek. Later they built a little swinging walking bridge across the creek, as there was no road crossing the creek in those days. That was their way of getting to work. The kids liked to swing on the bridge as it hung by cables, but they were not allowed to because the cables might break.
 
The Beal Family
On the left, second row, is Ruby Beal (Mrs. Ezra Beal). Her daughter, Irene is the fourth one down in that row. Ruby was a Johnson and had been raised in the Lead area. They lived for a time in Sundance where Irene was born. When they came to Newcastle, they lived in a small two story house on Birch Street, just west of the Shell house and Combs on the corner. Later their daughter married Lawrence Doll, and they lived east of town. Then the Dolls built their home on the lot adjoining the Beals. Irene was 19 when she married Lawrence on May 21, 1942, at the Assembly of God Church. Lawrence had come to this area from Kansas. Ezra Beal had also come to this area from Kansas. Ezra Beal was killed at the railroad crossing on Main Street when he walked out in front of the train. Supposedly he was coming from the grocery store and oranges were scattered all over the ground. Lawrence Doll was killed in an oil field accident. A brother of his encouraged Irene and kids to move to Washington where he could help with the kids. Ruby moved with them. When Ruby was a teenager and living in Sundance, she was a friend of my Aunt Mable Good, who also lived at Sundance for a time. They kept in contact and in later years, about the late 1950s, my cousin Mae brought her mother Mable, and father Paul, to Newcastle to visit me. Mable got to see Ruby and they had a wonderful visit after all those years. You would have thought it was Christmas for them.
The Cullum Family
Next is Goldie (Cullum) Stevens holding her son Johnny. Goldie Cullum, age 18, had married Roy Stevens, age 20, on August 13, 1927 at the Methodist-Episcopal Church. They were both residents of Weston County. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. John Cullum who lived on Maple Street. Roy and Goldie lived in a small house next door to them. They also had a daughter, Lois who married Bill Murray on Feb. 16, 1946. Bill had been living in Osage. They built a little house on Birch Street where they raised their 2 boys, Ronnie and Teddy. Ronnie made his home in Missouri, but Ted recently retired from the local refinery. Bills parents were Charles and Fern Murray, also of Newcastle. Johnny was born Nov. 23, 1935. He married Myrna McMahan on June 7, 1957, at the Episcopal Church in Newcastle. At the time of their marriage, John was working in the oil fields and she was a beautician. John was killed in an accident in the southern part of the State.
Mrs. Delcamp was mentioned earlier in this article. That family moved to Colorado. A few years ago, Ray Dare told me that he had kept in contact with one of the Delcamp boys who was his age. They had both lived near the bend in the road (Pine Street).
 
The Walker Family
Next to Irene Doll is Patty Garlinghouse, a daughter of Emma Copley, who lived on Birch Street. Patty moved to California, where or what she did I do not know. Next to Patty is Anna Walker (Mrs. Fred Walker). The Walkers lived in a house belonging to his brother, Albert Bouts. Fred and Alberts mother, Emma Bouts, lived in that house before the Walkers. I think that house was moved down from Cambria. There was no foundation under it. Mr. Copley helped put up wall board on the walls. In the late ‘30s we finally got electricity and running water in the kitchen. During the war, my Dad had a little round radio. The Avon Procuniers lived in a house across the creek from where Decker’s Market is now, and they would come up to our house in the evenings to hear the war reports on the radio. It had an antenna on a long board, the wire attached to the board and thru the window. The radio reception was better at night. Their son George had gone to the Army about the same time as Bill, the son of Anna Walker and they were both stationed somewhere near Scofield Barracks. Another local boy, Charles Roy, was stationed there also. So the war news was always anticipated. Letters from the soldiers couldn’t give their location in case their mail was intercepted by the enemy.
 
That’s me, Irene, second from the right in the front row, between my two best friends, Janie Copley and Esther Shields. None of us had any fancy dolls then, but we sure enjoyed the ones we had. You can see Janie’s flower sack bloomers. We all wore flower sacks in one form or another, or hand-me-downs. Many a kitchen curtains were of the pretty flower sacks.