Wallingford/Jarlov Family Trees

Taken from ancestry.com site of Gary Adams:

Transcript of April 1977 tape of Ruth Ogg Hall talking about her father, John M. Ogg. This transcript was in the possession of Mary Alyce Ogg Adams. She gave it to me in the fall of 1999. (Gary Adams)

I am the daughter of John MacDonald Ogg and Penelope Graham Ogg. My father was a motor man once. They had a motor that ran down to the bottoms. That was in Bryan, Texas. The bottoms was where they raised cotton and everything. He hauled people back and forth. It was not a train. It was a gasoline motor; one of the first ones that came out. At first it was the only one they were using like that; later on they used more of them. Oh, I thought it was so much fun to get a ride on it.

How did we get to Houston to visit Grandma Graham? Oh, we came by train, from Bryan, Texas. That was, oh, I am 67 years old and I was six years old then. (1916)

I was born in Rockland Texas. Pappa worked as a night watchman. That is the way that he got started with trains. And he had to fire them up and get them running for the engineers. He was working for the railroad. Later on, he began to take trains out.

And Papa also worked as an oil field worker. He was not a driller, but if he had stayed with it a little longer, they would have made a driller out of him. He was a driller's helper. It was hard work and awful long hours and he had to work at night. I can remember how grouchy he was. Lena was a baby at that time, and she had a real nice little buggy that Mama had managed to get someway; saved her money. And Papa came home early one morning and stumbled over that buggy! And boy, he just took it and stomped it. He was so angry. He had a terrible temper. I have seen Papa get mad and tell off on things.

One time he got mad at a cow cause she hooked at Lena. But there is a long story about that. We had Aunt Clara staying with us. She had teased the cow, that is why she was angry. And she had her first calf. She was protecting her young, you know. Lena was much smaller and she just went out into the cow lot and she just rolled up under the fence and got out of the way of being hooked just in time. But Papa saw the cow hook at Lena and he grabbed up a piece of stove wood, they called it pine knots in those days, and he just beat that cow's horns and one horn was split after that. And I really kind of felt sorry for the poor old cow. But he really had a terrible temper.

We went to the Baptist Church. This town we lived in at that time was called Wiergate. And it was a sawmill town. The church met in a house built for a family, but they did not have it partitioned so we held church in there. The mill allowed us to do that. Then they planned on building a church. Mama was a charter member and she was the church musician. At first she was the pianist, no, at first she played the organ; and then later insisted that I play it in church. I could not play very well, but the singing and all, kind of drowned it out. So it was not so bad. But she brought us up in the church and we did have good training.

Are any of our relatives buried in Wiergate? Well, George's twin brother is buried there. His name was Edgar Allen and Papa named him after Edgar Allen Poe. He was the largest and prettiest baby. Johnnie Mae was ill at the time of their birth, she had whooping cough. Mama had one baby on one side of her and one baby on the other side and Edgar was the prettiest and Papa wanted to show Johnnie Mae the baby. Of course, we did not know she had the whooping cough then at the time. So Papa brought her in and showed her the baby and held her up close. And it was so tiny. It was only about six weeks old when it died. Of course, it was sick about a week before it died.

Do I remember the doctor who tended the baby? It was Dr. McAlister, from Wiergate. Well, he did not know too much. There was no such thing as a funeral home at that time. We did not even have a church service. They just had a grave side funeral. They had to make his little coffin, but it was real pretty. The man who made it was really a craftsman. He lived in Newton. Papa had him make it and he brought it up on the engine.

During World War I, we moved to Newton and Papa built the railroad. He carried the ties and the rails so far on his train and then they unloaded them and then he backed the train back and they put the rails down. And that is the way he built the railroad all the way to Wiergate.

They were building this big sawmill there at Wiergate. Oh, it was a huge thing. And they had what they called niggers that were iron things. When the big old logs that would come up the ramp with chains you see, these niggers would clamp down on those logs and flip them over, and that is where they got their names; they were workers you know. It was machinery though. It was interesting. A lot of people would come to Wiergate just to look over that mill. They had a big planer too. They also made the lumber. That was during World War I and they shipped a lot of lumber out of there. Papa just worked day and night; made several trips hauling that lumber. They used it to build ships and things like that.

Papa was a great hunter. From the time he was little boy even. They used to go and hunt deer in the days when they had all kinds of wild animals. And Papa was a great story teller. You know today people watch television and listen to radio but then they had to depend on people to tell stories. And he could tell some horrifying stories abut narrow escapes, that he had and people that he knew. There was one woman... His uncle and he were out hunting and they heard a woman screaming. So they went to investigate and they saw a panther on top of a little old log cabin roof and this woman was burning up her feather beds and the pillows every time that panther would want to come down that chimney. Of course it was a great chimney where they would cook in big iron pots. So his uncle shot this panther and killed it. But she had just about burned everything and she had a little baby and she had the baby tied up in the cabin loft. That was one of the stories and he could tell it, not like I did, but in degrees. And he would get you so excited to the point where you were just holding your breath. And we lived out on a farm. We had bought a farm. Lena and I had to wash dishes at night. It would be cold weather, and Papa would start telling the kids about different things like that and Lena and I would get scared. We would look out the window and imagine we could see all kind of bears and wildcats out there. We would be creeping in there, and Papa would say, "get back in there and wash those dishes"!

Papa was very romantic and was a very handsome man. Dark brown hair looked almost black, with a wave in the front part and he had big old blue eyes. He had a good personality. When he smiled his eyes would squint up and he just smiled all over. When he was in a good humor he was in a good humor, and everybody liked him. But when he was mad, he was mad.

Mama was dating (I guess that was what they called it in those days) Will Powell. He and a friend were in business. They owned a livery stable. They rented carriages out. Carriages with beautiful horses. This was in Nacogdoches. I do not know how they met, but I think Mama worked in a store. They might have met there, I do not know. But any way, Will was going with Mama. Oh he would come to see her and he would bring the prettiest horses and the best carriage. Mama said she was so proud. She loved to ride in that carriage and watch those horses prance. They were so pretty.

But there was a dance or ball, I believe they called it in those days. Mama was invited and Will Powell took her. They were engaged. Mama said Will had asked her to marry. She had been going with him for five years. He was taking care of his mother. I think he was waiting to marry on account of taking care of his mother. During this dance, Papa was there too, and he spotted Mama. He happened to know Will Powell. So he went over to Will, and Will had to introduce him to Mama. He asked for a dance. So they began to dance. He made up his mind that very night that he was going take Mama away from Will Powell. He fell in love with her right off the reel. She liked him too. There was little bit - they all liked Will Powell. Her mother always felt like she was safe with Will Powell. She did not know about this John Ogg. He was a fast one.

The one that Mama loved, really loved deeply, died. His name was Lawrence. He was a beautiful man the way Mama talked about him. He was tall, nice, just handsome. Grandma told her never to let a man kiss her or he would not like her anymore. It was a disgrace to do things like that. He wanted to kiss her and she would not let him. He took pneumonia I believe and you know they did not have any cure for pneumonia in this time. If a person got well, it was just their own body resistance that pulled them through. He died and she grieved over that. She liked...she thought she would marry Will Powell. She figured she would not love anybody else. But then she met Papa and he was so persistent. He broke down all her defenses. They did not tarry long. They got married.

They had rough times together. The sickness, and children that they had. They lost their firstborn. He lived to be eleven years old and he died of blood poisoning in Sour Lake. He is buried in Sour Lake.

They were living in Sour Lake. Papa was doing oil field work. What I do remember about Uncle Jim Ogg was that he had a livery stable. He was pretty well off when we lived there. We were poor you know. We lived in a little old shack. Uncle Jim lived in a fine home. Uncle Lon did too. Uncle Lon was with Uncle Jim in the business.