Basingers Travel Southwest to Virginia

Basingers Move West Within the State of Tennessee

Basingers Move West to Texas in the 19th Century and

West to Alaska in the 20th Century

My grandfather, Landon Peters (named after his mother's father), died before my father was ten years old and my father died when I was 10 years old. On August 10, 1882 my father, Landon Hillery Basinger, married Emma Armstrong in McMinn County, Tennessee. My father taught school for a while although his real desire was to become a minister. He grew up at the Mars Hill Presbyterian Church in Athens, Tennessee but as a teenager decided to ride his horse quite a distance to attend a Baptist Church.

The most popular and gifted preacher during my father's lifetime was Charles H. Spurgeon, the Victorian Baptist preacher. Every Sunday Spurgeon preached to a congregation of 6,000 in London, England, and on Monday his sermons were cabled to New York and reprinted in every leading newspaper in the country. Because he named me Charles Spurgeon and gave me a book titled BAPTIST PRINCIPLES LETTERS TO MY SON by Edgar Folk with the Rev. Charles Spurgeon's name underlined everywhere it appears, I assume I am named after the famous preacher whose sermons he could read each week in the newspaper. Edgar Folk was the editor of the "Baptist and Reflector", the publication of the Baptists of Tennessee from 1889. My father may have known him or at least read his articles. I distinctly remember my father reading his Bible every day.

Lillie Lee was born ten months after my mother and father married in the summer of 1882. Muncye was born in 1888, Horace Lawson in 1891, James Edgar in 1893, Mintie in 1897, and John Bolin in 1900. While teaching school, Landon Hillery was impressed with one of his students, Archie Coleman Bookout. He was the son of Robert Wesley Massengale Bookout and Emma Melton and the Bookout farm was "halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga." The Bookouts moved to McMinn County from Rutherford County, North Carolina sometime after 1840. Coleman had attended McMinn County Public Schools and a private school conducted by his grandmother when the public schools were not in session. He also attended Grant's University in Athens that was more like a high school than a university. My father thought Coleman would make a good husband for his oldest daughter, Lee. He made sure they got better acquainted and in 1902 Coleman and Lee were married.

In 1892 Coleman saw a telephone for the first time in the Railroad Depot in Athens, Tennessee. Passengers could talk with people in neighboring towns. A major sleet and ice storm hit East Tennessee and Kentucky the winter of 1900. The local telephone companies hired all available men to fix the lines and Coleman, a member of a local construction gang, began his first job of any importance. In January of 1902, L. C. Griffiths hired him to work at the Cumberland Telephone Company located in Athens. He swept and mopped the floor, carried coal, installed and repaired telephones, and operated the switchboards. At night he slept on a cot in front of the switchboard. Mr. Griffiths paid Coleman $15 a month for working around the clock! This was the beginning of Coleman's long career with Southwestern Bell and I suppose the beginning of my career as well!

By 1902 telephone companies had established plants in every major city in the country and telephone lines went up coast to coast. Coleman was transferred to Southwestern Bell in Dallas. Shortly after their June wedding, Lee and Coleman traveled by train to Dallas, Texas. I believe he already had family living in Sherman, Texas, not far from Gainesville.

Sometime after 1902, my parents moved their growing family to Cooke County, Texas and farmed on the outskirts of Gainesville. The first farm was east of town. I was born March 7, 1909 and a month later my older sister, Muncye, married Walter Jones. Truman Jones, Walter's brother, wrote this account;

The summer of 1912 was hot and dry and everyone in my family came down with typhoid fever. My father was too weak to harvest his crop. Men from all around came to help. I was so sick that I was not expected to live, but I finally pulled through. Mintie did not pull through and died that summer at the age of 15. She is buried in the Cooke County Cemetery in the northeast section of Gainesville.

We then moved to the Whaley Farm, west of town, across from the Girls' Training School. I wanted to help my brothers and sisters when it was time to pick cotton. My mother sewed a sack just my size to put over my head and drape on my shoulder. Two years after Mintie died, my mother died of typhoid fever. She was pregnant with her eighth child and the baby is buried in the same grave. I was five and remember the funeral service at our home. Everyone was in the house and I was outside on the big lawn under the oaks when I saw some men carry my father out of the house because he was spitting up blood. He was ill with tuberculosis but I was too young to understand what was going on.

Not long after my mother died my father gave up the farm because of poor health. We moved in with my sister and her husband (Muncye and Walter Jones) and two children (Ross Edwards and Gertrude). Muncye was the prettiest of my sisters, although she had a hard time keeping her weight down. We lived in Oklahoma and moved a few times. Changing schools was hard on me because each school had different expectations. I moved during first grade and was held back. When we moved to the next school I was accelerated!

During the First World War Edgar and Lawson checked the newspapers every day to see if their numbers "came up". They were both old enough to be drafted into the war. At the end of World War I there was a major influenza outbreak. Muncies daughter, Gertrude, was four when Muncye became a victim of the Spanish Flu in 1918 that spread from Europe to our 46 states. She was one of the 500,000 Americans who died.

My father and I moved again when I was eight, this time to Fort Worth. We rented a house on the corner of Carter and Ward Streets. The house had a large porch and I can still see my father sitting on the porch every day reading his Bible. My oldest brother, Lawson (1891-1944), worked in west Texas. Edgar (1893-1960) lived in Oklahoma. He graduated from a Normal School (a school that trains school teachers) in Oklahoma and became a teacher and basketball coach at the school. About this time I remember President Wilson traveling around talking about the League of Nations and I remember the day Woodrow Wilson died in 1921.

I also remember the personal hygiene habits that my father taught me. He taught me how to brush my teeth each day and that I should go to the bathroom every morning. He also taught me how to make cornbread. Every night for dinner we had cornbread and buttermilk. He gave me six cents each day to buy lunch at the store across from the school. I remember buying delicious fried fruit pies. One day I used some of the money to buy candy instead and he told me NEVER to do that again.

Lawson got married on Christmas Eve of 1918 to Girlie Hastings and moved to Fort Worth to live with us for a while. Girlie was a good cook. She made delicious chocolate layer cakes. Sometimes I got to eat a slice for breakfast. Lawson later owned a few businesses, a battery repair shop in Abilene and a Bar B Q restaurant in Fort Worth.

I had lots of friends in the neighborhood and I remember loving MOTORS and AIRPLANES. Lawson brought motors home for me and I hung them on the wall and connected them with rubber bands. I hooked up a switch so you could turn the switch and make them all move. One time Girlie walked into the room and started to look at one of the motors on the floor. I flipped the switch and everything in the room began to move. Girlie jumped sky high!

I remember the thrill of seeing an airplane in the sky for the first time! My friends and I soon found some wood in the attic of the house we rented and decided to build an airplane that we could really fly. It was a large version of a toy plane with a rubber band propelled propeller. We got an old truck inner tube to use as the rubber band and carefully shaped the wood propeller. We climbed into a big box and "flew" for hours. I'm sad to say we never left the ground! About this time I also made a radio out of an oatmeal box.

One night a friend of my father's came to visit. When he walked home he was hit by a train and died. The next night my father died. I was ten, Charles' age today! That's the year that I knew I would attend Texas A&M! My father requested in his will that the insurance money pay for his burial and any money left over be used to send me to Texas A&M in College Station. He is buried in Gainesville next to my mother and $2,000 was set aside for my college education.

When my father died, Lee and Coleman came from Dallas to our home in Fort Worth. By this time Coleman had earned his Electrical Engineering Degree by correspondence school and had achieved the position of Division Plant Manager at Southwestern Bell. They had two children about my age, Amy (Emma Fay) and Alton. I sat on the porch while Lawson, Girlie, Lee, and Coleman held a conversation inside the house about what to do with me. Finally, Lee came out and said, "Spurgeon, how would you like to come to Dallas and live with Coleman and me?" I was thrilled! Their son, Alton, was my age and I loved going to Dallas to play with him.

It was March and I was in 5th grade. I moved in with the Bookouts at 4702 Live Oak Street in Dallas and didn't go back to school until the next September. When Alton came home from school we played in the backyard, made parallel bars, and practiced daring feats. In September Lee talked to the principal to make sure I would not have to repeat 5th grade. The principal offered extra help. The math was especially hard for me because I had missed so much. In 6th grade I came home from school each day and studied for hours. Alton didn't study at all! I also remember Lee sending me to the butcher with fifty cents to buy T-bone steaks for a family of five. Steak was quite a treat after years of cornbread and buttermilk!

Coleman told us that we would have to pay him a half-dollar for each low grade. But if we got good grades he would pay US a half-dollar! The first marking period I had to pay Coleman. But finally I got my grades up and Coleman started paying me! I soon was at the top of my class. Amy and Alton continued to pay their father long after he began paying me. Finally Coleman dropped that incentive when he realized it was not helping HIS children.

Coleman, Lee, Alton, Amy, and I attended Gaston Road Baptist Church every Sunday. Occasionally Coleman worked on Sundays. Coleman was still working for the telephone company and Lee bought AT&T stock as often as she could. She was frugal and smart when it came to money. Later Lee attended the First Baptist Church of Dallas. She and Coleman always belonged to the finest Country Club in the city where they lived.

In 1921 Edgar moved to Dallas so I moved in with him for a short time. In March of 1923, shortly after I entered high school, Coleman was transferred to St. Louis, Missouri as a Plant Superintendent. I moved with them and distinctly remember taking Latin twice in high school and failing both times. Finally, Coleman allowed me to take geometry and I did very well.

I entered Texas A&M in the fall of 1927. Back then every student was male and every student was in the Corps of Cadets. My goal was to be an electrical engineer. To earn money for college I worked at Walter Jones' cotton gin in Elk City, Oklahoma. Ross worked there as well. In my sophomore year of Texas A&M I got a D in Calculus and got discouraged enough not to go back for my junior year. Coleman and Lee were still in St. Louis and Edgar had moved to Oklahoma City where he owned a laundry equipment company. I lived with Edgar that summer and part of the next year and worked for him.

Alton was also discouraged with school. He attended Stephens College in __________ . Coleman wanted him to be an Electrical Engineer but Alton hated the courses and was failing. I encouraged him to be a doctor or a lawyer. He changed his major to pre-Med.

The next winter I realized that I really wanted to be back at A&M. I took extra courses to graduate with my class in 1931. The Depression was on. My first job was in Kansas City planting telephone poles and stringing lines for Southwestern Bell. I made fifty cents an hour.

In 1930 Coleman became a State Superintendent for Southwestern Bell and moved to Oklahoma City. He and Lee lived at 125 Northwest Tenth Street. It was the peak of the Depression and there weren't many jobs available. Coleman encouraged me to get my Masters in Electrical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. (Later AT&T paid my way to do some graduate work at Stanford University.) The only cost was room and board and that was $3.50 a week. I lived with Herbert Bonney.

Some people wanted me in their fraternity house. I joined, moved into the frat house, but didn't like getting dressed up in a coat and tie for meals...so I quit. I moved back in with Bonney who had already moved into a less expensive house, one that he could afford WITHOUT a roommate. He invited me to move back with him and we shared cramped quarters.

Lee's daughter, Amy Starr, died in an automobile crash in the 30's. Lee, Amy, and Amy's friend were driving east from California when the crash happened. Amy and her friend crashed through the front windshield. Lee must have been in the back seat. She was the only survivor.

Alton took my advice, became a doctor, and did very well. He married Peggy Clare Eberhart of Mankato, Minnesota and they had a daughter named Bonnie. When World War II began he decided to enlist with the Navy and wanted to get as far away from the action as possible. Ironically, he died in the Battle of the Coral Sea three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a medical officer on the Navy's destroyer U.S.S. Pillsbury when it was lost at sea. I went to Europe where all the fighting was taking place and SURVIVED.

Alton and Coleman were always at odds when Alton was growing up. By World War II they had reconciled. Because Alton was declared MISSING, Coleman made great efforts to find out from the Navy what happened to him. It was a very hard time for Lee and Coleman, but especially for Coleman. The U. S. S. Pillsbury was reported missing in the same battle in which the cruiser Houston was sunk. The U.S.S. Pillsbury was last seen as a companion ship to the Edsall, as the two fought their way to Australia on February 18, 1942. Cards from survivors of the Edsall were received by some of their next of kin. The survivors reported that they were Japanese prisoners of war. One newspaper carried a story that a member of the crew of the Pillsbury received a similar card. That small rumor was all that Lee and Coleman needed to convince them that Alton's ship had run aground on one of the shallows of the Bali strait and that their second child was not DEAD! From that moment on his total energy was focused on finding Alton. He requested early retirement from Southwestern Bell and accepted a position as Expert Safety Consultant in the Army Air Forces. As superintendent of the Southwestern Bell plant in Oklahoma City, Coleman achieved national fame for Safety Engineering. The headlines in the Oklahoma City Times for December 28, 1943 read "War Job Taken to Press Hunt for Lost Son". Alton was never found.

I served five years in Omar Bradley's headquarters' group that landed at Normandy Beach on D-Day plus ONE in June of 1944. The carnage of D-day made an enormous impression on me and I can not talk about it today without breaking down. I never undressed to sleep the first thirty days in France! As a Signal Corps officer, I established communications throughout France and then into Germany. For my efforts I was awarded the Legion of Merit. My brother Lawson shot himself June 11, 1944 about the time I was preparing to invade France. The word I got, whether or not it was true, was that he was worried sick about my safety.

While working for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company in St. Louis I met and married Mildred Mills. The ceremony was on October 9, 1937 in Annie Miller's home in Braymer, Missouri. On May 27th, 1939 our first daughter was born, Ann Starr. I was the construction foreman working out of Overland, Missouri. But it wasn't long before I was organizing the pole line construction course for the Signal Corps Training Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Ann was just a toddler when I left for the War and was six when she saw me again. I came to the door and Ann thought I was a salesman. She said to me, "I'll get my mother." I said to her, "BUT I'M YOUR FATHER!"

After the war a job was waiting for me with the Telephone Company. We lived in St. Louis and on July 8,1946 James Alton was born. I then served in the Korean War, primarily training others. On October 24, 1951 John Spurgeon was born. I remained in the Army Reserves and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Occasionally we traveled to Dallas to visit Lee and Coleman and to Oklahoma City to visit Edgar and Irene. Every summer Bonnie, Alton's daughter, stayed with Lee in Dallas. Lee and Bonnie were very close but we've lost all contact with her as an adult.

We moved to Short Hills, New Jersey in January of 1956 and I commuted by train to AT&T Headquarters in Manhattan. I was in charge of all the outdoor equipment for the nation. Everyone in Short Hills who was Protestant attended Christ Church, an Episcopal Church in the center of Short Hills. Mid, Jim, and I attended confirmation classes and were confirmed on the same day.

Two years after we moved to New Jersey, Coleman died at the age of 78. Irene and Edgar separated and Irene chose to live and work in Dallas. When Coleman died Edgar decided to leave Oklahoma City, move into a home that Lee owned at 4710 Live Oak, and mend his relationship with Irene. Unfortunately, Edgar died mowing Lee's lawn on June 20, 1960, before the relationship was mended. Herbert Bonney, my apartment mate, was a pallbearer at Ed's funeral.

A year later Ann graduated from the University of Missouri. She taught school for a year in Kansas City and for a year in New Jersey. In August of 1963 Ann married John Wilkins, a '61 graduate of Dartmouth. They moved to Rutgers so John could complete his Ph.D. in Economics. Ann continued her teaching career.

It was a proud moment when I sent Jim off to Texas A&M in 1964. I loved returning for the football games. Jim played his saxophone in the Aggie Band. He graduated in 1968 with a degree in Journalism and went right in to the army. He was one of the few officers that never went to Vietnam.

In 1973 I retired from Bell Telephone and AT&T after 40 good years, just before the telephone business became computerized. Mid and I moved back 'home' to Dallas and then Fort Worth where my only relatives lived. Lee still lived in one of her homes on Live Oak St. and rented rooms to Alonzo Greer, her ex husband. Gertrude Jones Smith, Muncye's daughter, lived in Fort Worth and sold real estate. Ross also lived in Texas and sold real estate, specializing in appraisals.

Ann and John settled in Falls Church, Virginia, a block from Lake Barcroft. Mid's closest friend and former roommate, Norma Cheney, and her family lived on the lake. When Jim left the army and graduate school he attended Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia and was able to spend a lot of time with Ann and John and James and Amy. John attended college in Michigan and then Texas so we saw a good bit of him. At least twice a year we drove to Ann's and enjoyed visiting Rex and Norma Cheney as well as Jim and the Wilkins.

Jim was ordained to the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church in May of 1975. He was a curate at Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring, Maryland. Because the Bishop of Washington refused to ordain any to the priesthood until women could be ordained, Jim was ordained by Bishop Rath at the Cathedral in Newark, New Jersey. (Bishop Rath was the Bishop that sent Jim to Seminary.) My father was never able to realize his dream of entering the ministry but his grandson became a minister one hundred years later!

On November 15, 1975 Jim and Donna Null were married at Church of the Ascension in Silver Spring, Maryland. Donna's parents attended the ordination in Newark in May, driving to New Jersey from their Long Island home. Alonzo Greer took advantage of our week away from Texas to remarry Lee who was suffering from dementia at the age of 92. Her real estate holdings and AT&T stock made her a wealthy woman. Alonzo cared for her at home until she died on October 31, 1983 at 100 years of age.

Mid and I decided it was time to relocate to the east coast. John was a Captain in the Army and lived in Augusta, Georgia. Jim was the rector of Christ Church, Chaptico, Maryland and Ann still lived in Virginia. We decided to build a house in Pinehurst, North Carolina. I drew the plans and was involved in the construction. To find relief from the summer heat and humidity we spent time in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. We made a few trips to London to go to the theater and see the sights. In 1984 I returned to Normandy, France with Mid for the 40th anniversary of D-Day.

In 1991 Jim accepted a call to be rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Anchorage, Alaska and Mid and I began plans to visit his family. Those plans changed in 1992 when my failing health required that we move to a Retirement Center, The Fairfax , in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. That was the first move of my life that I could not MANAGE. Ann and John Wilkins graciously took care of the details and the move.

I have slowed down physically but I remain Command Central for the BASINGER FAMILY!