Family Tree Maker's Genealogy Site: Genealogy Report: Ancestors of Ruffus Odell McCullough

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Ancestors of Ruffus Odell McCullough

Generation No. 1

1. Ruffus Odell McCullough, born June 26, 1921 in Mt. Calm, Tx; died January 09, 1993 in Wichita Falls, Tx. He was the son of 2. Rufus R. McCullough and 3. Exa Olivette Emmons. He married (1) Floyce Bussey August 25, 1943 in Holiday, Tx.

Notes for Ruffus Odell McCullough:
The following was written by R. O. McCullough about his recollections of his early childhood. The original is in the possession of his daughter, Ruth Ferry. He entitled it simply "Home".
I don't remember anything about our earlier homes until I was about 6 years old. But my mother told me about the little farm house (or shack, as it was called), where I was born near Mt. Calm, Texas, and the other places we lived while Dad was following the oil booms just trying to earn us a living. There was Wortham, Texas, Smackover, Ark., and then back to Corsicana, Texas where Dad worked on what was called a tank farm, building those huge 55,000 bbl. tanks for oil storage.
Then on Jan. 28, 1926 we moved from Corsicana to Dads Corner, Tx. We rode the train to Wichita Falls, Tx. One of my mother's brothers, (Uncle Lee) met us at the train and drove us approximately 25 miles through snow, ice, and mud in an open touring car to his house about three miles west of Dads Corner.
Dads Corner was a small oil field town of probably less than 100 people. It had a blacksmith shop, a grocery store, a drygoods store, a two-story building with a drug store on the first floor, with a dance hall over the drug store, and about half a mile south on a little hill was a one-room school house.
Dad found a little "shotgun house" ( K BR LR ) about 1/4 mile west of Dads Corner that was for rent, so we moved in it. A "shotgun house" was a little oil field shack that was only one room wide and was usually two or three rooms long. I think this one had three rooms. Anyway, we lived there about a year and I spent my first year of school in that little one room school house. There were six classes in that one room and our teacher's name was Miss Self. That year Dad went to work for Texaco Inc. oil company as a roustabout and sometime during the summer he got a pumping job and we moved 4 miles east of Holliday, Tx. into a company house on the Griffith lease.
In the fall of 1928, I started to school at Holliday, Tx. and graduated from high school there in 1938.
But getting back to our homes: In the winter of 1928 or early spring of 1929, the company sold the oil lease that we were living on and transferred Dad to another lease 2 1/2 miles west of Holliday.
We lived there until shortly after Jesse started to school in 1930. Then in the late spring of 1931, Dad was offered a better job as a pumper of the L. F. Wilson "A" lease. This lease was located about 9 miles southwest of Holliday in the middle of a thousand acre pasture on the Lavell Ranch and the company house that we would be living in was a larger house and Dad was told that if he needed a still larger house, the company owned another house on one of their abandoned leases about 6 miles west of Holliday and if he wanted to tear it down that the company would haul the lumber over to the Wilson "A" and he could use it to build another room on the house that we were moving into. The house originally had 2 - 14'x 16' rooms and a 12' x 16' room on the back and it had a long poarch(sic) across the front.
Dad built a 10' x 14' room in the corner of that L for Jesse and me a bedroom. And that's where we lived until I left home in 1940 and they continued to live there until 1953.
The room where Jesse and I slept had a window on the north side and on the west side (back of the house) was the back door and a long screened opening that had a canvas (or tarp) cover that rolled up in the summer and was fastened down in the winter and some mornings we would wake up and there would be snow on top of our covers that had drifted in around the canvas cover.
Now this house was our home but it wasn't like most homes today. The only heat that we had was Mom's gas cookstove and one gas heater in the living room. The floors were bare wood in the bedrooms but the living room and kitchen had linoleum on the floor. The only lights we had were gas. We had no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no phone and the only communication we had with the outside was a battery powered radio and all the hot water we had Mom heated in a teakettle on the cookstove.
Dad used some of the lumber from the house to build a garage, and outhouse (toilet) and Mom a wash house and a chicken house.
The wash house was about 8' x 10' and Mom had an old Maytag washing machine, with a gasoline engine and 3 galvanized wash tubs for rinse water. We had an old cast iron kettle and Dad put a gas burner under it. It was located about 6 feet outside the wash house door and this is where we heated the water of the washing machine and to take a bath. One of the galvanized tubs was our bath tub.
Our water was hauled in a tank truck from Archer City, Tx. (about 25 miles south) and was pumped into a 30 barrel corrigated galvanized tank that was placed on some 8" x 10' sills close to our back door. In the summer, we got the water from a valve located near the bottom of the tank, but in winter, the water in the tank would freeze and then we would have to climb up on a ladder, break the ice and dip the water out with a pan or bucket.
Now I realize that by today's standards we would have been considered poor people but everyone who lived in the country, lived about the same way and we were used to that way of life and I guess we were happy.

Marriage Notes for Ruffus McCullough and Floyce Bussey:
They were married at his parents home.

Children of Ruffus McCullough and Floyce Bussey are:

		i.		Bobby Andrew McCullough, born June 18, 1946; married Brenda Sharon Adkins September 02, 1972.
		ii.		Tommy Lee McCullough, born Abt. 1947.
		iii.		Billy Ray McCullough, born Abt. 1948.
		iv.		Ruth Elaine McCullough, born September 15, 1949 in Wichita Falls, TX; married Harlan Michael Ferry June 12, 1970 in Electra, TX.
		v.		Etta Mae McCullough, born August 07, 1952; married Michael Trantham September 03, 1977 in Electra, TX.
		vi.		Jesse Dale McCullough, born February 10, 1957; married Tracy Connley August 20, 1983 in Kermit, TX.

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