FRANK JONES AND
ELIZABETH WILMOT (WORTH) JONES

Page 6 of 7

FRANK AND LIZZIE

When I asked what they did on dates, Lizzie said,

"We went to ball games. We didn't go to church too much. The neighbors played baseball. Frank was a good runner. He just loved to play ball. He'd play ball and course when you're a good runner, you make a good ball player because you can make it to base. Years later they had a picnic of some kind and Finis Conger was kind of heading it up I guess. Anyway they was going to have a race of the older men and so Frank, he decided to run and pulled off his shoes. Conger didn't know he was a good runner. Anyhow Frank slipped right past him and looked back. Conger looked so dumbfounded he didn't know what to do. He had it all figured out he was going to win!"

 If my mother, Grace, ever told me why Frank and Lizzie got married in Burwell, I have forgotten it. (Yes, I should have written it down.) Frank and Lizzie were married[1] on 6 September 1922 in Burwell, Garfield county, Nebraska. Frank was 44 and Lizzie was 33. Lizzie was the last to leave home, with the exception of her brother Ed, who never married. Lizzie and Frank lived on Frank's 160. There was a barn that was built sturdy enough it is still standing today. The house they lived in was east of the barn and was in very poor condition. Later it was moved and part of it became a chicken house. Their daughter, Frances Grace, always called Grace, was born 22 May 1923 and Gerald Vesper was born 1 August 1925. (Gerald's name is pronounced with a hard "G", the same as in the word Grace.) They made their living raising cattle and crops. In about 1924 or so, Frank and Lizzie built a house, the one we knew as kids. Lizzie's daughter Grace remembers: "The lumber came from a sawmill that was just across the road to the west owned by Reynolds' at that time. I think they hired carpenters to do most of the work. My Dad did some of the finishing, I think. They never did finish the upstairs. The year he put in new flooring, I can remember that. I think that was probably when I was in high school. My mother said that cost him several years of his life, he worked so hard on those narrow hardwood floors. It was all varnished up nice."

Although Lizzie had attended Sunday School and church as a child, Frank and Lizzie made a public commitment to the Christian faith in the late 1920s and were baptized. Grace remembers[2]: "Church and Sunday School was a big part of our life. It was about the only place that we ever went, really. There wasn't too many activities to take up our time. We didn't have places to go like nowadays. I remember we would hitch up the team and wagon and go to Sunday school and church at Pleasant Valley. That was four miles, approximately. That is before we had car to go in."

The second economic depression that Lizzie witnessed and lived through was what we call The Great Depression of the late 1920s and 30s. Their daughter Grace said they didn't feel the effects because they were poor already, but they raised their own beef, probably the calf of the milk cow, and always had a vegetable garden so they didn't feel it the way others did.

One of the questions asked in the 1930 census was whether or not they owned a "radio set". They did not. Frank was 52, Lizzie was 41, Francis G. was 6 and Gerald was 4 3/12. They had a hired man named Arthur Osborne. Frank's older and only surviving brother, Will, came to live with Frank and Lizzie sometime after 1930. He had worked in the Missouri coal mines and maybe because he was in his early 60s, he decided to retire from mining and have a different adventure. He was separated from his wife Rose (Greathouse) Jones. (I will be linking to Uncle Will's story as told by Grace and her older children who remember him.)  According to Grace, Uncle Will was quite deaf. His chores including chopping wood. Grace remembers watching him chop the wood and stack it up in very neat piles. Will worked for Frank and for neighbors when Frank didn't need him. Frank's sister Jennie lived with her husband Jim Jackson in Alliance, Nebraska. She would occasionally come visit Frank and Lizzie and a few times they would visit Jennie, one time traveling in a Model T Ford.

Lizzie's dad, George Worth, lived the last part of his life with Lizzie and family. Lizzie took care of him with help from Uncle Ed Worth, who lived on the old Worth place, two miles to the west. George's life was winding down in a very hot August, 1934. There was no electricity in the house yet and so of course there were no fans. Grace remembers her mother pouring water on the cement steps outside the south door to try to cool the house down. She and Gerald were sent to the cellar to play because it was cool and out of the way of the adults. George died in their home on 10 August 1934.

The same irrigation ditch that Dewey waded into years before cut through Frank's place. Grace remembered her dad cutting a log to put across the ditch and use as a foot bridge. Lizzie's garden was south of the ditch because it was sub-irrigated. Uncle Will always had a big watermelon patch there. Lizzie and Frank most likely raised chickens, and fattened a steer to eat. Grace remembers her mother raised turkeys a few years. Frank had a horse but only rode it himself. Lizzie was nervous the kids would get hurt so they weren't allowed to ride it. Perhaps Lizzie was remembering all those funerals and trips to the cemetery when she was a child and young woman and she didn't want to repeat that with her children. Grace remembered her dad riding his horse out to the pasture in the winter carrying a sack of cotton cake for the cows. He had put up hay out in the pasture for their feed.

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[1] Garfield County, Nebraska, marriage license and certificate, book 3, p. 271, 6 Sept 1922, Jones-Worth; Office of County Judge, Burwell.

[2] Russell, F. Grace (Jones) Ferguson, Sargent, Nebraska. Audio recording (cassette tape) by Grace as gift to daughter Mary (Russell) Hollowell, December 25, 1983. Privately held by Mary (Russell) Hollowell, Grand Island, Nebraska. 2017.