Rufus Presley Northcut and Mary Missouri Jane Thornsberry
Rufus Presley Northcut and Mary Missouri Jane Thornsberry
On the family farm in Jackson County, Arkansas, 27 Nov. 1950
Left to Right - Rufus, Mary, daughter Opal Zepher Northcut Williams and son A. G. Northcutt
On the family farm in Jackson County, Arkansas, 27 Nov. 1950
Pictures courtesy of Guy Presley Northcutt, Heber Springs Arkansas
RUFUS PRESLEY NORTHCUT (WILLIAM ARCHABLE, TAYLOR, ARCHIBALD, JOHN, WILLIAM) was born March 11, 1887 in HUNT COUNTY, TEXAS, and died February 05, 1961 in NEWPORT, JACKSON COUNTY, ARKANSAS. He married MARY MISSOURI JANE THORNSBERRY August 29, 1907 in HUNT COUNTY, TEXAS. Buried: Walnut Grove Cemetery, NEWPORT, JACKSON COUNTY, ARKANSAS
MARY MISSOURI JANE THORNSBERRY was born March 11, 1886 in HUNT COUNTY, TEXAS, and died June 16, 1981 in HEBER SPRINGS, CLEBURNE COUNTY, ARKANSAS. She married RUFUS PRESLEY NORTHCUT August 29, 1907 in HUNT COUNTY, TEXAS, son of WILLIAM NORTHCUT and ELIZA ANDERSON. Buried: Walnut Grove Cemetery, NEWPORT, JACKSON COUNTY, ARKANSAS
Children of RUFUS NORTHCUT and MARY THORNSBERRY are:
Notes and Thoughts:
These excerpts are from an E-mail from my Dad, Guy Presley Northcutt:
Rufus Presley Northcut and Mary Missouri Jane Thornsberry were farmers in Hunt County, Texas when they married in 1907. Around 1910 they moved to Idabell, Oklahoma where they lived for a few years. They then moved to Arkansas County, Arkansas where he was a prominent rice farmer in the DeWitt, Arkansas area. At one time he and his son A. G. were farming their own land and managing several other large farms for a total in excess of over 1,000 acres. He was a very wealthy man by the standards of the day but the stock market crash of October, 1929 cost him his entire life savings. He lost in excess of $ 90,000 dollars when the banks all collapsed shortly after the crash. He then moved to St. Francis County, Arkansas where he farmed until about 1940. He then bought the farm in Jackson County, Arkansas where he farmed his own property and managed several other large farms in Jackson and Poinsett Counties, Arkansas. He was working and managing in excess of 1,000 acres of rice farms at the time.
These are my thoughts (Mike) as I saw the old pictures for the first time in many years:
This is the first time I have seen these picture in over thirty years. They bring back the memories of my visits to the old farm in Jackson County, Arkansas. The farm was located just outside of Newport, Arkansas in the Stegall Community. I was only 11 when my Great-Grandfather Rufus died. These memories may not be exact but they are what I see in my "minds eye".
I remember most of all the old oversize feather bed where I would sleep as a small boy when we would visit "Great Grand-Dad" and "Great Grandma". The mattress was so thick and fluffy that you would sink into it and have a hard time getting out of the bed. They owned a small farm where he raised cattle, hogs, chickens, and the usual farm animals. He had a big "Jack" mule in the barnyard that all of the Grand-kids were afraid to go near. The mule was gigantic in size and would come after you if you entered his barnyard. The farm also had an apple orchard where we could pick and eat all of the apples and pears that we wanted.
My Great-Grandfather Rufus Presley Northcut (1887-1961) was a large man with a head full of silver-gray hair, a dark weathered complexion and a large "roman" nose (he always wore a hat so I could be wrong about the hair). He drank Budweiser beer from the bottle and never refrigerated it. The beer was kept on the screened-in back porch that faced south. I can imagine that the beer was extremely warm in that Arkansas sun. He started out each morning with a "Bud" just as soon as his feet touched the floor. He started out the day with that bottle of hot beer every morning until about three years before his death. One day he just woke up and told my Great-Grandmother that he didn't want a beer to start out the day. It was the first time he had passed on the beer in years. He never drank again until the last week of his life when the doctor told him to sip a little whiskey each day as a blood thinner. He drank only a couple of ounces in that last week before he died.
My Great-Grandmother Mary Missouri Jane Thornsberry (1886-1981) was a full blooded Indian (half Cherokee and half Choctaw) who had all of the features that you see in the old history books of the American Indian women. She was dark skinned with high cheekbones and thick, dark hair that she wore in a single large braid. Her hair was extremely long because she never cut it throughout her adult life. My Dad says that her hair actually dragged on the floor. She lived to the ripe old age of 95 and was mentally sharp until she died. She drank the small 8 oz. bottles of Doctor Pepper soda's which were also stored on that hot back porch. No refrigeration and no ice. My Great-Grandfather called her "Zourie" which was a shortening of "Missouri".
The old farmhouse burned to the ground several years after Rufus died and my Great-Grandmother refused to leave the farm so my Grandfather A. G. bought a mobile home for her and placed it right on the site of the old farmhouse. She lived there alone until she was in her 80's. She fell from the porch and broke a hip and lived out the rest of her life in a nursing home in Heber Springs, Arkansas.
Walnut Grove Cemetery
Newport, Jackson County, Arkansas