FRANK JONES and
ELIZABETH WILMOT (WORTH) JONES

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The stories that are created between the beginning and end of a person’s life but aren’t in official records are the most interesting ones. The stories of Frank and Lizzie come from memories of family members and also audio tapes of Lizzie and her daughter Grace (Jones) Ferguson Russell. I interviewed grandma in 1979 when she was 91 years old and I was 21. Other stories about their lives come from my brothers and sisters, Jerry Ferguson, Pat (Ferguson) Palu, and cousin Karolyn (Jones) Kovanda. Anyone with memories of Frank and Lizzie are invited to share them with us. See the Contact Me button at the bottom of the page.

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Grandma - Elizabeth Wilmot (Worth) Jones - was short and round with a round face. The summers I was probably 6 and 7 I stayed a few days with Grandma and Aunt Nellie in their little house in Sargent, Nebraska. I remember she liked her morning cup of coffee half filled with creamer, or maybe it was half and half, then topped off with coffee. She always wore a dress, never slacks or jeans. My sister Patricia (Ferguson) Palu says she sewed a lot of her own clothes throughout her life. By the time I remember her, she bought her dresses. At that time you could buy what was called half-sizes off the rack in Sears or JCPenneys or probably other stores I don't remember. Half-sizes were for short, round women. She always wore dark brown hose. Hose, not panty hose. They were the kind that were held up with garter hooks. Her shoes were black or brown leather with a small heel. She wore long flannel nightgowns to bed. She always went to church on Sunday and most other times there were services, including prayer meetings and revivals. She most likely read a devotional like Our Daily Bread every day. She was for many years a member of the W.C.T.U., the Women's Christian Temperance Union which opposed all consumption of alcohol. She was a faithful fan of a daytime soap opera, not to the point that she lived her life around it, but if she was home, she watched. I believe it was "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" until it was canceled, then "The Young and the Restless". She never learned to drive.

"Grandma and Aunt Nellie" was one name for the two women. I rarely said one without saying the other.  They were a matched set like bread and butter or, well, coffee and cream. Grandma and her younger sister Nellie seemed to live together in perfect harmony for what I as a kid assumed must have been forever. What kid doesn't think that their parent or grandparent has always been the way they knew them when they first reached that age of being aware of others and not so much being the center of their own universe.

Granddaughter Patricia (Ferguson) Palu remembers Grandpa Frank as a quiet, hard-working man. He was tall and thin.  She sees his posture and the way he walked in grandson and namesake Frank Ferguson. Grandson Jerry Ferguson remembers going out to the pasture to check on the cattle. Grandpa would hitch the horses to the wagon and Grandpa and Grandma would ride on the seat with Jerry in the box of the wagon with plenty of blankets to keep him warm. Pat remembers: “Grandma sewed. She was always tatting too. I have a dresser scarf that I am sure she tatted and the tatting tool with a little thread. Grandma had long hair when I was little and she braided or put it in a bun every day. I got to brush it in the evening. I only remember her with gray hair. Her dresses for everyday were “sack” dresses. She loved to work outside and was not a cook. Probably the reason mom didn’t learn. She was always going to “spank our butt” if we were bad. We had milk and crackers for bed time snack and in the winter she heated a brick in the kitchen for us to warm our feet at night. If we had a tummy ache she went out and picked some peppermint which she boiled in water and we drank. She had this pretty “flower” around the garden to keep rabbits out. It was marijuana!”

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Elizabeth Wilmot Worth was born in a two-room sod house on the western edge of Loup County, Nebraska, on the north bank of the North Loup river. Both of her names came from ancestors on the Worth side of the family tree. She was born 5 December 1888[1]. The great blizzard of '88 had happened the previous winter, beginning March 11. She likely grew up hearing first hand accounts of the tremendous amount of snowfall and the way if affected her family and neighbors.

Her parents were George Harry and Flora Lucinda (Swift) Worth. George was a farmer, rancher, hunter, trapper and homesteader. Flora Lucinda, known to her childhood friends and relatives by her middle name, gave birth to 13 children. They were Grace, Calista, Ralph, Walter, Samuel Edwin, known as Ed, Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, John, Freddie, Nellie, Robert, Lester, George Dewey, known as Dewey, and Harriet. By the time Lizzie was 24, she had lost seven of her brothers and sisters. John, Freddie, Robert, Lester and Harriet all died before age 3. It must have been hard on Lizzie see the deaths of so many siblings, and so many of them so young. She was only 2 when John and Freddie died, but she was 8 when Robert and Lester died, and 14 when Calista and Harriet died and would have had memories of them, their funerals and the long wagon ride to the Almeria cemetery 10 miles away where they were all laid to rest. Her oldest sister, Grace, died in childbirth. Lizzie was 23 and this surely had an effect on Lizzie's desire years later to have only two children. More about this story is - or will be - on George and Lucinda's page.

The two-room sod house was replaced in the early 1900s with the two-story house those of my generation knew as Uncle Walter's house. Lizzie thought they probably sold enough hogs to pay for the lumber for the new house.

Lizzie and most likely her siblings Grace, Calista, Ralph, Walter, Ed, Nellie, and Dewey, attended a one-room school called West End, District 12.  It was located at the corner of the roads now (in 2017) called Worth Road and Sawyer/West End Road. Lizzie's kids, Grace and Gerald, attended West End also, as did some of the next generation. Four of Grace's kids, Jerry, Patricia, Georgene Ferguson and I, as well as Gerald's daughters, Karolyn, Shirley, Judy, and Nancy. Gerald's oldest daughter, Karolyn (Jones) Kovanda has records that show that Aunt Nellie taught at West End in 1915-16, 1917-1918 and 1918-1919. Her mother, Doris (Helmkamp) Jones, taught there from 1946 to 1949. I didn't realize until I was grown and started working on the family stories that three generations attended school there. Rather remarkable, I think.

At the time of the 1900 census[2], Lizzie was 11. This census coincidentally lists all the siblings who would live to adulthood. Lizzie would have been about 13 years old when the youngest child, Harriet, was born. It is easy to imagine that she helped with the garden, given the large gardens she raised for her own family. There may have been chickens and hogs to feed and a cow to milk, although her older brothers likely did some of those chores.

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[1] Worth Bible Records, loose "Family Record, Deaths," pages from unknown Bible, photocopies; received in 1980s from unknown Worth family member.

[2] 1900 U.S. census, Loup County, Nebraska, population schedule, Newton Township, enumeration district 158, sheet 8A, dwelling 47, family 47, George Worth family; image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 1 May 2005); citing National Archives microfilm publication T623, Roll 934.