Notes for Helen Christine Martin: HELEN MARTIN KING
In 1933 the King family (Helen and Harry) bought a very old (past the century mark) house in Searcy, Arkansas. It was a great challenge to turn this crazy quilt of a house into the first real home of their own. The central hall had once been a long, slanting front porch, with two rooms added along the outer side later. With each new addition, floors and foundations had to be leveled and then steps added at new doorways. In the center of the house stood a two-story, very thick brick "cooling house" for milk and other refrigeration needs. A true relic of earlier times. Needing rugs to match the period of the old house, and to decorate the wide plank floors held together by wooden pins, Helen recalled the hooked rugs she had seen in pictures and uses of early American home furnishings. Those rugs had been made from scraps of wool, a fabric, which not only wore well, but held fast the dye colors. Old sewing scraps, worn out blankets and clothing could be salvaged for a second life: an appealing consideration in those mid-depression days. She decided to make and use hand-hooked rugs throughout the house. A base fabric for the rug had to be selected, a design decided on and drawn onto the base fabric (burlap). A quick-drying but permanent paint and one which would not smear onto the wool hooking material was necessary. A hooking tool had to be found or designed and made. Woolens must be dyed to the desired colors, as colors in hooking were to be blended as were paintings in oil or water color; shadings were to be delicate and graduated. They would be the palette of the artist. As these problems were worked out, friends and neighbors became interested in the project as an art exercise, a congenial pastime (hookers clubs and groups) and a means of self-expression in the production of something beautiful for their homes. The first rug pattern, drawn directly onto the burlap, went to an eager neighbor; the next to a friend, and a line of waiting "hookers" grabbed patterns, as they were ready. It was quickly evident that it would be necessary to use a stencil to reproduce the same pattern rather than transfer by tracing or free hand drawing. Stencil board the proper weight must be located, cutting tools for the stencils found, and skill acquired in using the cutting tools to reproduce enough of the pattern to be painted through the openings, but not so delicately cut that it could not withstand the heavy crushing on of paint without breaking. Eventually Helen was working on her own first rug for her new home but was also busy filling the growing demand for new pattern designs as well as the original ones. Groups of hooking artists were formed for fun and learning. She was asked to instruct, to show finished rugs, to share the hard-learned secrets of dying cloth to achieve gradations of color and shading, and to plan entire color schemes for rugs and the rooms they would decorate. Within two years, this newly discovered art occupied enthusiastic homemakers throughout Arkansas and into surrounding states. Four years later she was creating custom designs on 9' X 12' patterns, as well as hall runners. She was teaching technicians to help operate a full-time, stencil-stamping workshop. There were stencilers, burlap checkers-menders-hemmers, touch-up artists to connect the unfinished stencil lines, a secretary to help answer inquiries, a mail clerk to package and mail patterns ordered from a color brochure or price list. Making hooks was a full time local cottage industry by itself. She was dealing directly with importers to acquire the finest and best of burlap for patterns and buying in multi-bolt quantities. Putnam Dye Co. had their chemist work with her to analyze her dye formulas and achieve blends of color she had laboriously created from their basic dyes. Then they marketed "Mahogany Rose" and other new colors for home use. They worked with the Dor Woolen Mills in New England so six different shadings of that and other color groups could be vat dyed at the mills and shipped by bolts to Arkansas. Here they were cut into about 4" x 12" strips, and then the five to eight shades needed for a single flower, leaf or scroll would be bound together for a "swatch," ready for customer use. A refined version of turning an old pink robe into green for leaves, in the kitchen dye pot. By shaded drawings and numbered directions Helen compiled a book, How To Hook Rugs, for far-away rug makers needing instructions. Beginning hookers were becoming experts and forming classes (in which they were teachers) themselves; they also acted as representatives for the "Mrs. Harry King Hooked Rug Patterns," as well as for woolens, cutting machines (which cut the wool into multiple uniform strips), and hooking needles and her books. Bus was booming. LIFE magazine sent a writer and photographer to get material for the feature article they printed about Helen and her hooked rugs. National Geographic featured her in an article about Arkansas. This additional publicity resulted in immediate invitations to New York, Chicago and other cities of the South, East and Central United States to put on rug shows, sell patterns, and to give instructions. Museums, department store needlework departments, ladies' clubs, church groups and other associations vied for a place on her calendar. Helen's older daughter Carol King Reid was a skilled, artistic and capable partner in all these developing events. A silk screening process she had seen at the Art Department of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville led to the application of this method in stamping patterns. It was much faster and better than hand-stenciled stamping, but required that every stencil had to be redrawn on a different material, and the new stencils cut on a special machine, the cutting lines guided by hand. Billy Hill of Pine Bluff, who had used silk screening in his advertising business, was soon turning out patterns for her in 100-count lots of each design, and the number of different patterns regularly produced had grown to 50 or more. Special orders were continuously arriving for custom designs, which she created. The mother of a Naval Academy student wanted the Naval Academy seal drawn on a round rug into which she planned to hook the materials of his Midshipman uniforms. Rug designing turned from roses to eagle feathers. The director of one of the United States armed forces bands (Navy or Marine) wanted a runner for a long stairway with a different musical instrument on each upright section. Nor was rug hooking restricted to ladies only; her most frequent orders for 8' x 10' or 9' x 12' room-sized rugs came from an active surgeon who found pleasure in the hand work and felt that the exercise helped hone the agility and skill of his hands. Throughout this period of explosive growth in the hooked rug world, Carol continued to be her talented right hand, and her husband Harry was her loving strength, support, anchor, and bookkeeper! All this, while he still gave full time to his job as pastor in a community or dean of Arkansas College. Helen's scrapbooks contain hundreds of pictures and articles reporting her rug exhibits, newspaper interviews, radio talk and show reviews which announced her arrival and activities in different cities. The full blossoming and bloom of her artistic talent and ability had, during these years, been shared with thousands as they, too, found satisfaction and beauty in the creation of lovely and loved objects for their homes and families; it provided a happy communion with friends who worked and learned together. She was a Cinderella who had overcome great personal grief and tragedy, later emotional and physical hardships; she had mastered technicalities, and other seemingly impossible barriers to find, to give, to share the joy of creating beauty. Helen Martin was born September 20, 1895 in Powatan, Arkansas, a small community in Lawrence County on the Black River where lumbering, mill work and fertile farm land formed the hub of business. Her father was a successful businessman who manufactured wagons and wagon parts from the fine hardwoods along the river at nearby Black Rock. He had invested wisely and heavily in farm lands and later in other real estate-a long leap from his penniless departure from home at age 16 to be a "man on his own." He had a fine tenor voice and loved to sing shaped-note harmony; he had a devilish sense of humor, yet a deep and ever-present, active concern for his family and anyone who was in need in any way. In about 1903 he brought his family to Batesville to live. Their household goods, his wife "Belle" and daughter Helen made the move in two covered wagons, two days to make the 80-mile trek. By 1905 their new home was completed at 225 North 8th Street in Batesville, though he kept expanding for the next few years. The only child of "Belle and Johnny" (Isabell Norment Martin and John William Martin) was Helen. She was adored and indulged by a generous father but kept in line by a stern, firm, sensible mother. After a paddling in the public school administered as punishment in grade for talking out of turn, her father indignantly withdrew her from the vulgarities of public school, and she thereafter attended the academy of Arkansas College. His break with the public school system was not permanent, as he served on the board in later years. The 1916 edition of the school yearbook was dedicated to him. The day in 1905 the Martins moved into their new home on 8th Street across from the Hail family one of the Hail sons, Fitzhugh, fell in love with the little 10-year-old Helen. He was then 27 years old but vowed to wait for a wife until she was grown and could become his wife. Seven years later they were married. He built her a lovely cottage home next door to her parents, took her to St. Louis to select everything beautiful her heart desired to furnish their home. She was loved and adored and lavishly provided for in every way possible. A full-time housekeeper was hired to care for the couple's needs so no work could disturb the throne, the loving pedestal upon which Fitzhugh had placed his bride. And only powers beyond those of man could and did leave heartbreaking disaster and a crumbled life and dream in its path. A ruptured appendix claimed the life of the new husband, Fitzhugh, within the year, and a son was stillborn, thought to have been caused by the anesthetic. Again, an indulgent father and loving mother nurtured Helen's strengths and talents to lead her toward a new life. She had had her grand piano for several years and played and sang well (she never knew whether her father or Fitzhugh had bought it, as it was just announced as "paid in full" when she went to make a second payment on it). It was agreed that she should pursue musical studies at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where she could also have access to the fine musical productions of opera, concert and theater that the city offered. She did this to the fullest. And a little more, perhaps. At 93, it still brings a spirited twinkle to her eye to tell of some of the girlish skylarks she indulged in while a student away from parental eye and hand for the first time, and in concert with her young girl roommates at the dormitory. The following year she determined to go southward toward the part of the country where her mother had grown up and her forbears had lived in Louisiana -- to Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans for the study of art. This experience provided great growth, satisfaction and inspiration, which would be more fully developed in years to come. Soon after her year at Newcomb, a second great love entered her life--a recently graduated divinity student from Vanderbilt University where he had prepared himself for the ministry and led the entire school in grades for which he had received the Founders Medal, a highly coveted award. This followed his undergraduate degree earned at the University of Arkansas where he had been prepared as a teacher and had graduated as valedictorian of his class. Harry King's career would follow both of these directions, teaching and the ministry. However, both were delayed by World War I, during which he served as Christian advisor and recreational director for the YMCA at Camp Seville near Greenville, South Carolina. Helen and Harry King were married December 31, 1916. Helen was a willing camp follower, bearing her first daughter Carol at Atlanta, Georgia. Later she was the popular and able pianist and song leader for the troops at the YMCA recreational hall where Harry was assigned. Her thick portfolio of popular sheet music of the time remains a favorite family heirloom from which great granddaughter Katie (age 6 in 1988) has learned to sing "K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy, you're the g-g-g-girl that I adore . . . " And from which, the week of September 20th, 1988, Helen sang, at the end of a happy celebration of her 93rd birthday, "When you come to the end of a perfect day . . . " A faculty position at Galloway Methodist College for Women in Searcy, Arkansas followed the end of the war and the YMCA work. Harry had the title there of "Dean," but he also held chapel every day, taught one course in history, was scholastic advisor and acting parental advisor for all students. Part of his duties might now be entitled father-confessor, psychological counseling and Christian leadership director. Helen, again, entered school as a Galloway student, taking all the Home Economics courses offered and becoming an excellent seamstress for her two little girls (Cecilia being born at Galloway)-and a splendid home manager. In the role of Dean's wife she also gave "little teas" frequently to demonstrate to the young lady students the finer points of preparation, table setting, and serving as a cordial, refined and gracious hostess. Next she entered the college art department, where she took every course offered, covering oil and water color painting, drawing and design, china painting, interior design and others. And all of these came into full play eventually enriching her ever-changing life and the lives of those she touched. Returning to the --Hooked Rug designed by Mrs. Harry King" theme, as well as the rugs she not only designed for others but made into beautiful finished rugs of her own . . . With the termination of World War II in the 1940s and the return of our armed forces from all around the globe, the country's population went through an entirely new mixing, mingling, moving, shifting, resettling of homes. She and Harry had spent two of the war years (as had many Americans) harboring children and grandchildren while young husbands and fathers were serving overseas. Both daughters, each with a baby boy, were added to the King household at Batesville. Their home then was again at 255 North 8th Street as Helen's had been in 1905, in the very same home, and Harry was dean at Arkansas College. By the late fifties and early sixties, the hooked rug venture had almost come to a halt, though Helen still held classes for a new generation of rug makers until 1977. It had been a magnificent experience, but with Harry's illness and many more new, growing grandchildren begging for time with them, it was perhaps a good time to wind down. Even so, in the summer of 1988, I received two orders for her rug patterns, 44 years after the first one was conceived and created. There was somewhat of a continuation of the business with Ann Lacey of Searcy still supplying existing patterns but doing no designing. However, Helen's eye and appreciation of beauty and her ability to create beauty continue to remind all who have known her of her touch as an artist as she has advised, approved, and taught. Each who entered her sphere has experienced the gift and joy of art, which she has so generously shared. Harry died in 1971, and Carol in 1972. These losses took away her drive and desire to continue the hooked rug work in any way. A door had closed on a vast and beautiful segment of her life. Though it would never close on the continued ties of family and friends and her ever-giving love and the sharing of herself with them. Her own rugs, which she considered her most beautiful, she gave to two state museums: the Daisy Scroll to the Arkansas Arts Center and the Broken Wreath to the Powatan Court House (now a state park) and another to the Arkansas College museum. In 1988 she is at Butterfield Trail Village in Fayetteville, a retirement community where she first had an apartment and later moved into the Health Care Center where she has the good care that her increased immobility requires. Her daughter Cecilia Butt and a grandson Jack Butt live in the same town with their families. 1990 Addendum: Helen Martin King died December 12, 1988 at Fayetteville. She is buried in Oaklawn Cemetery in Batesville, Arkansas. Her own grandsons and the "boys" (students who stayed at her house after Harry's death) were there to serve as pallbearers. She would have been so proud of the two former college boys who are now ministers who shared in her funeral service with music and prayer.
Cecilia King Butt 1988; 1990 addendum
Life Magazine, January 29, 1940 National Geographic, 1944
This was written in answer to Nancy Britton's request for information about how the hooked rug business started and for a bit of biographical information on Helen King.
PART 2
Summers at Batesville from 1946 on were to be shared with and devoted to the three grandsons and one granddaughter. Each child had his own special time with Murt and Ha-Ha (the family names for Helen and Harry). There were daily outings in the family jeep -- a thrilling ride for small children, and the same vehicle in which they all had their first driving lesson later. Now, in the autumn of 1990, the same jeep is being restored to pristine original condition, a joint effort of two of those grandsons, Thomas King Butt and William Jackson Butt II. On early visits to the jeep and its family in Batesville, there were caves to be explored, woods to walk through, fishing and swimming expeditions, and picnics were frequent affairs. Storytelling during quiet hours was a special time. Ha-Ha effortlessly spun tales for hours from the world of "Mr. Coon," "Sly Fox," and all their friends and enemies from the woods, though all the seemingly bad guys finally become good. Murt was ever ready with tales of her childhood and family lore that went back generations into Louisiana and Mississippi. The stories were repeated joyfully for all who shared those happy hours. The devotion of the grandchildren to grandparents grew into mature and deep understanding, admiration and lave as they became older. And ties became strengthened with each passing year. Nor was the sharing of home and love limited only to family and close friends. Both sad and happy times were part of later, newer friendships and experiences. For 16 years after Harry's death in 1971, Helen gave a room to a college boy, or sometimes two, from Arkansas College. They prepared, planned, and served the evening meal together or turned about as chef and dishwasher. However, a constant standard was dictated that the dining room table was prettily and properly set for every meal; that the requirement of good etiquette be practiced at mealtime (and that sometimes needed to be first taught and then learned); and that a beginning blessing of the occasion was to be given. Many boys learned proper eating habits and the use of eating tools they had never seen before. They all experienced a gracious way of life frequently strange and new to them at the time, but it became a continuing part of their lives when they left. They often had fraternity
More About Helen Christine Martin and Harry King: Marriage: December 31, 1916, Batesville, AR.
Children of Helen Christine Martin and Harry King are:
+Cecilia King, b. March 06, 1922, Searcy County, Arkansas3099, 3100, 3101, d. November 08, 1991, Fayetteville, Washington County, Arkansas3102, 3103, 3104.
Helen Christine Martin (b. September 20, 1895, d. December 11, 1988)
Notes for Helen Christine Martin: