TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF:

SUZANNE BOYDSTUN (WILLIAMS)

AND MARILYN CRAWFORD BOYDSTUN (MADISON)

BY CHARLES BOYDSTUN, JR. IN APRIL OF 1998

LEGEND: Italics - This means that it sounded like this word.

^^^^^ - This means that I could not make out the words on the tape.

( ) - Parenthesis equals notes or additions to clarify a statement.

Note: Please write corrections or additions into the margins!

M: ....the house that Nanny and Paw lived in, that’s Granddad Boydstun and his wife, my Granddaddy - your Great-granddaddy C. M. Boydstun and Elizabeth Eugenia Sebastian Boydstun. They had a home there (Neddlton, Ark.) and they sold it and Mother didn’t want any of the furniture and neither did Daddy or aunt Helen who is your Granddad’s sister Helen Hale in Neddlton. The people bought it and the house with the furniture is still there.

S: And she (Elizabeth Eugenia Sebastian Boydstun) painted. There was a picture she had painted of a bust of Juelius Caesar that was exquisite. And there was another picture I can’t remember.

M: And she taught elocution.

S: She taught elocution at Sloan-Hendricks in Imboden, Ark. She went up one year and taught elocution.

M: While I’m sure Granddad partied.

S: That’s how Daddy met Mother, but he went with Aunt Olive first and then she married Uncle Edwin. He was a dentist. And then Mother married Daddy, because Daddy came up here who was Carrol, your Grandfather.

M: I didn’t even realize that Charles even resembled Dad till this. Boy, Dad had buckets....

S: But Nanny told me, that my Father when he was a little boy, had such big eyes that this little boy came over and Dad was sitting in the highchair and he said that he looks like an owl.

All right, her brother who never married, was a Sebastian. I just can’t remember his first name, but he died in that house. I had to sleep in that bed! It liked to have scared me to death! ...I was visiting.

M: He died in the house in Neddelton. His name was Will, Will Sebastian. That’s her brother and he died there.

S: And she had three sisters who never married. I don’t think any of them married except Granny.

M: I have a picture of her making her ...

S: My Grandmother. Your Great-great Grandmother, married Paw when she was 32 years old. That’s how late she married him.

M: But did you know that Paw had been married before, and that very few people knew it?

S: I didn’t know it. They were as opposite as daylight and dark.

M: They sure were.

C: Tell me about Nannaw (Eunice Boydstun) and Florida.

S: OK, Mother was 17, and she had gone to see her father who owned a Buster Brown Shoe Store. He also owned a ^^^ man in Alabama, but this time they were in Florida, Clearwater Florida.

M: Remind me to tell you the tale about that.

S: ....and he was Richmond Virginia Goss. Ma stayed in Imboden, OK, and Mother was helping him run the shoe store. He died, but the year before, when she was 17, she was chosen as “May Queen”. There is a picture of her with her court, and the court was about 40 people, with her in the center with flowers around her hair and wearing a long dress. That was their predecessor to the Miss America Contest.

C: What year do you think this might have taken place.

S: She was 17.

M: Born in 1917.

S: Lets see. She died in 1966. She would have been 66 in one month. She was 17 or 18. We would have to stop and figure that up later. Now I know that, but what I understand, I don’t know whether it was for the whole state of Florida or not.

M: I imagine just Clearwater.

S: Anyway, she was “May Queen” and I know there were at least 30 people in that photo.

M: It seems I remember that picture.

S: She was on a stand and she was in the middle of them.

S: Then she closed up the store when he died, and came back to Imboden. That’s when she met Daddy.

Grandmother, Nanny, who was C. M. Boydstun’s wife, your great-grandfather, she was married to him, and she came up to Imboden at that time, and that’s when Daddy and Mother met.

Mother, I don’t think graduated, but she was going to beauty school... she was going with Aunt Olive, her older sister. Like I said, Aunt Olive married Dr. Edwin Dunn, a dentist, and Mother married Daddy. That’s how all that came about.

C: What can you tell me about my Grandfather (Carrol Sebastian Boydstun)?

M: Daddy was in W.W.I. He was on the USS Michigan, a battleship.

S: He went to France.

M: A senator, Caraway, got him out of the service, you know, early. He went to college for two years. It was a divinity school. Daddy was smart. There was no question. Sue can tell you. All right, tell him about the aviation fuel thing.

S: What happened, Daddy was working at the Navy Base (Millington, TN), and he was in charge of jet fuel which is highly flammable. They had it stored in these huge things underground. So Daddy would stay night after night in the kitchen doing something with paper which no one knew and didn’t pay any attention to really. And then they found out he had turned it in, and it was about how the fuel should be stored, where the planes should be, how the whole Naval Air Station in Millington should be laid out, and the present danger of it, the fuel with all the buildings immediately surrounding it, and the planes see. He had put it down on paper and turned it in and he got credit for it. All naval stations since then were either corrected or used his plan of where to put the fuel in opposition to where the airplanes were and where the surrounding buildings were. He was given a cash reward for it, but I can not remember the amount.

C: What year?

S: That would have been approximately 19.... he wanted me to go to work at Millington, and I went to work at Methodist Hospital instead, so that would be around 1949 or 50.

M: Yea, about 1950.

S: OK now Nanny, Nanny being C.M. Boydstun’s wife Elizabeth Eugenia Sebastian Boydstun, her father was a doctor. Her mother a school teacher. She had three sisters and one brother, none of them ever married. They were reclusive, they were absolutely reclusive.

M: She had two brothers. One in California and one that lived with C.M. and Elizabeth.

S: But they were very reclusive people. Nanny was. Nanny seldom left the house, she was a very bereaved woman. She went to the church and went to see Aunt Helen, who was her daughter, Daddy’s ^^^ Carrol Boydstun’s sister, she would go to see her. That’s about it. She died in her 80’s.

M: She was 72 when she died. I didn’t know the year, but I knew her age. She was 72 which surprised everybody because she was ^^^^.

S: She would do readings, elocution readings, speech. Elocution being just another word for what we call speech now. And she would tell stories to me.

M: She told stories to all of us.

S: She was a remarkable storyteller. And she could paint, man could she paint.

C: We kind of got sidetracked a bit. I wanted to go back to Carrol S. Boydstun.

S: He was born in Neddleton, Arkansas. When he met Mother he moved back to Neddleton and he lived just down the street from Grandmother, from Nanny and Paw.

M: What do you mean “He moved back to Neddleton”?

S: He went to school up there (Imboden?) at the same time Mother and them did. And when Daddy married Mother, Carrol married Eunice, they moved back to Neddleton and lived there. His Grandfather built a house for them there, and they lived there.

Then he was with the highway department. He helped build the Harahan Bridge across the Mississippi River (at Memphis), Daddy did, Carrol S. Boydstun. State of Arkansas Highway Department.

M: He worked for the State of Tennessee Highway Department.

S: Then, after he did that, about that time or in between, he went to work at Abraham Brothers Packing Company during the depression.

C: This was a Memphis based company?

S: Yes, he worked there for years, then he left there and went to work at Firestone.

M: During the war.

S: And he quit there and then he went Civil Service to the Naval Base (Millington, TN.) and that’s where he retired from.

M: And also he inspected food for the Department of Agriculture right before he went to Millington (Naval Base) during the war. And he would go all over the United States and they would have to guarantee that so much food was ^^^. And he did that.

S: Yes, he did that.

M: Now lets see. Dad was very well spoken. Everybody liked him. He was like your Father (Charles Richmond Boydstun).

S: He had a way with people. He was a charmer.

M: He was very well mannered and everything.

C: What year did he pass away and for what reason?

S: He died in 1974 of congestive heart failure.

M: At 75.

S: He had turned 75 on Groundhog’s Day Feb. 2. He died, April the 17th.

OK, Mother, I don’t think she graduated high school.

M: She didn’t.

S: She married Daddy.

C: She was raised in ...?

M: Imboden and Florida.

S: She moved to Neddleton, because Daddy’s Mother went from Neddleton to Imboden to teach school and took Daddy. He met Mother at Imboden, and when he married her, they moved to a house in Neddleton.

C: Is that the Boydstun House (on Boydstun Street) that I have been to as a child?

M: No, where Aunt Helen lived (on Boydstun Street).

S: Aunt Helen Hale’s house was Mother and Daddy’s original home when they were first married.

M: When Daddy and Mother married, they started out married life with a paid-for home, the one on Boydstun Street down from Granddad’s, C.M. Boydstun’s. They had a paid for home, a brand new car given to them by C. M. Boydstun, and her Mother gave her all the furniture and $10,000. That was back in about (1924).

S: Granddaddy got him a job with the highway department.

M: He was with the Arkansas Highway Department then. They let him go there. That is why they moved to Memphis to go to work with the Tennessee Highway Department.

S: When they built the Harahan Bridge, he (helped) build the Arkansas side, because I saw him go back and forth to work so many times.

M: He worked for the Tennessee Highway Department until the State of Tennessee, it was the depression you see, had no more money. They laid him off. Granddad, through his connections, had gotten him the job with the Tennessee Highway Department, because Granddaddy was very active in the Democratic Party, as he was until he died. When he died, this is C. M. Boydstun, when he died, Daddy was never in Arkansas (Democratic Party), his position within the Democratic Party kind of fell to Uncle Everet. Uncle Everet didn’t do a lot about it, but Gerald Watkins, who..^^^^

S: The Hales, who were Daddy’s sister’s children.

M: ...children really went into it. For instance, Betty Jean and Gerald (Hale) were invited into the whitehouse for the ball. You know that kind of politics. All these kids worked for the state. That kind of stuff.

Granddad, C. M., was a firm believer in the Democratic Party, but he didn’t believe in social security. It was years after he had retired before Aunt Helen made him take his social security. He thought it should be under private enterprise.

S: That is the reason he had the money he did, because he never had to pay all the taxes.

M: He worked for Keach, who made staves.

C: We are talking about Charles Mortimer Boydstun?

M: Yes. He worked for Keach Lumber Company, making barrel staves. Now your Dad (Charles Richmond Boydstun) knows more about that. It was based in Neddelton or Jonesboro (Note: They are right together). He worked for them a long long time.

He had extensive farm interests.

S: That was in Paragould (Arkansas). He owned a farm in Paragould and the Hale family still owns it.

M: It is not Paragould, but Black Oak, Arkansas. They are close to each other.

C: Do you remember the size of the farm?

S: I knew it was a large one.

M: After he retired, he was a gentleman farmer. First he farmed it for himself for a while, and then they rented it out when he got old. That is where his income came from.

C: Before he started to work for Keach, do you remember anything?

M: Your Daddy (CRB) would probably know more. It was always in the lumber business. Your Dad talked to a woman on the phone a few months ago, who said that she knew Granddaddy Boydstun (CMB), and asked if he had any connection to C. M. Boydstun.

S: OK, now I will tell you something else about C. M. Boydstun. He would take children, and no one knew, if they needed eye surgery, if they needed eyeglasses, if they had no money, he drove them to Memphis, got them fixed up, paid for everything, and drove them back. No telling how many people he did this for. He never said a word about it.

When I went to work in the record room at John-Gaston Hospital (Memphis), a woman, who had been the former record room librarian, came back to visit when I was working there. She said that she was from Neddleton at Jonesboro, Arkansas. So I asked her, “Did she know the Boydstuns?”. She said yes, she knew my Grandfather, Charles M. Boydstun. He had seen that she got educated and had gotten her a job. She told me the philanthropic thing that he did were unbelievable, and he never told anybody. She Said that he literally spent thousands of dollars on needy people who could not afford anything, and would drive them to the Memphis ^^^ Hospital.

M: I tell you also, if you borrowed money from him, he was your enemy. Ha, ha.

S: Grandpa would loan money, but he exacted it back which is perfectly right to do, because Daddy (CSB) had been raised spoiled rotten and so had Mother (Eunice). If they ran out of money, they just went and got more money. So then he started figuring it up and what he left, he deducted what Daddy owed from it.

M: He sure did!

S: My father, your Grandfather, Carrol S. Boydstun, and your Grandmother, when Granddad (CMB) died he left money and he left the farm. Your Grandfather, Carrol, had to have the money, so he sold his part of the farm to his sister and her husband, Helen Hale and Edward Everet Hale, and took the money and blew it. They are still living off the farm. So that shows how that little story went! They were both rotten. They were strictly raised with money. They were given everything.

M: Well, its just like all that they were given, it was gone.

S: It was gone!

M: Aunt Helen got the house, bought the house. I’m sure they drove here (Memphis) in the car.

S: And lost it.

M: They still had their furniture.

S: Some of it on Ayers Street. ^^^^

C: So they lived on Ayers Street somewhere?

M&S: On Ayers, and Plummer, and Bellvue.

S: And they lived on Seventh street, I think, when they first moved to Memphis, which is a very poor section of town.

M: Now Daddy, my Daddy your granddaddy (CSB), (said that CMB) lived in Memphis for a while and I don’t know why, granddad Boydstun said he was here. But Daddy told me they built a house on either Second or Seventh Street.

S: I thought it was Seventh. That’s what is stuck in my mind.

M: I thought it was Second.

S: I may be thinking of Seventh ^^^^.

M: But they lived in just a sort of a little shotgun house. But that’s the way that ^^^, you know...

S: They didn’t have any money. They didn’t have a dime. (CSB)

M: Oh granddad always had money. (CMB)

S: I said Mother and Daddy. (CSB)

M: Well this was granddaddy Boydstun (CMB).

S: Oh excuse me, I’m sorry, but I remember Daddy did.

M: But I don’t know why granddad was in Memphis, unless you know, his father is buried here (JKPB) at Elmwood (Cemetery).

C: Right. I went to the grave here a few weeks ago.

M: Yea, I knew you did. Well I knew that your children had spotted it. I’ve never been out there.

C: They spotted it and I went out there and found it and I’ve got pictures of the grave marker.

S: Now let me tell you about the grave marker.

C: Just a second. Now this is the grave marker for James K. Polk Boydstun in Elmwood Cemetery (Memphis).

S: James K Polk Boydstun. C.M. Boydstun had always said he would put a marker on it, but he didn’t until almost before his death. He came to Memphis (CMB), he and your grandfather Carrol Boydstun, went and got the grave ^^^^ James K. Polk Boydstun’s grave. And that’s where the grave stone came. It must have been put on there about 20 years ago.

M: It’s more than that.

C: The name listed on the grave sight (ledger) is wrong. It doesn’t have it as James K, but it is something else. The middle initial is wrong.

S: James Polk Boydstun?

C: Its not either one.

S: But he was named, James K Polk Boydstun.

C: Right. James Knox Polk Boydstun, after the president.

S: But the way it was listed was always James K Polk Boydstun.

M: Tom Boydstun and granddad Boydstun (CMB) were brothers. For some reason there was a fuss or something in the family. I understood from my daddy, CS, that it was because Tom Boydstun had not participated at all when they (JKP & Sara) were dying you know, just sort of ignored his mother and father. But anyway, they hadn’t spoken until that reunion for I guess 40 years or more.

S: It was something to walk into the living room and see all these people over 80. Every one of them died in there 90s, every one of them. The sisters, now Aunt Irene was not there, the rest of them were there. Tom and granddaddy, they were sitting side by side in the living room when I opened the door. They were all over 80 at the time. I think Irene was dead.

M: Now Irene was the prettiest one of the bunch. I met her. I don’t know Irene’s last name, but I would know it if I heard it. Charles knows, because he knew the name of the man who owned the liquor store in Blythville (Arkansas) that I talked to. He was Irene’s son. She had two sons. But anyway, she was very pretty. She was kind of, I don’t know, all the ones in Memphis were real close, but Irene kind of stayed to herself. I didn’t even know Irene. She lived in Blythville. But of course back then, people were just starting with cars and stuff like that. I think Irene was the oldest or one of the oldest.

S: I think she was the oldest.

M: She was very pretty and her son was very successful.

S: He owned a pharmacy.

M: He owned a pharmacy and a liquor store, you know, a drugstore and a liquor store side by side.

S: And that is one son that never married. He played the piano.

M: Yea he was married. His name was Norman or .... No Sue, he had married and had the child and the guy that owned the liquor store raised her. Don’t you remember, Senator Collie.

S: The man here in Memphis who was the artist that was known so well throughout the United States, who went to California and he married his daughter. Remember?

M: I didn’t know about that. Wasn’t it Norman or something like that? From Memphis.

S: She did. ^^^^ artist ^^^. She was redheaded ^^^^^ . No he came to Memphis, he was Hungarian, and he came to Memphis and wound up in California. But he was known all over the world.

M: Well, I never knew about that.

S: And he married her and she was redheaded.

M: You’re talking about the daughter?

S: And it was Aunt Irene’s granddaughter that he married, but she didn’t stay married to him long, but he did marry her.

C: Aunt Irene....? Can I get a last name?

S: Aunt Irene’s grand-daughter of Blythville (Arkansas)?

C: I’m trying to get a last name.

S/M: We don’t know it. ^^^^^^

C: What relation?

M: Irene was C.M. Boydstun’s sister. Her grand-daughter married a ^^^^^^. But Charles (Boydstun) knows ....

C: Well then it would be Irene Boydstun.

M/S: No. Well Irene was a Boydstun but she married.

C: Oh yea I realize that.

M: Irene Boydstun something.

S: But I had forgotten that she married the artist and that he was Hungarian. But he was world famous.

M: Now that wasn’t Irene.

S: That was her (Irene’s) grand-daughter. The pharmacist’s daughter.

M: No, the pharmacist never married. Sue he never married, it was his brother.

S: OK, I just knew it was her grand-daughter.

M: The one that was kind of a nut that was a brilliant pianist. When I went to his house, their house, he ran upstairs and never came back down. And he liked to have killed himself trying to get upstairs! You know that sort of a ... He was a nut. Another nutty Boydstun.

C: Ah, before we run out of tape here, because I didn’t bring any extra, are there any tales about the family? You know, something from way back. Any stories in the history of the Boydstun family from say the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, or relations with a president of the United States, or anything of interest?

M: Well now, I have Aunt Louis’s letter if you want it.

C: I think I have Aunt Louis’s letter. I’ll check and see.

M: I’m sure you do, because I think I gave it to you.

S: She had a tape that she made.

C: I have a copy of the tape, but that’s mostly the Goss side.

M: What we need to do is go to Betty Jean’s. Why don’t I call her and you and I go up there sometime.

C: That would be great!

M: When things kind of calm down, we’ll just go up there. Betty will be just delighted.

C: I’ll just take my camera, and if she has photographs and stuff, I can just copy them.

M: I’m sure she has boocoodles of pictures and she would love to see your daddy. It is not but 75 miles.

C: And we really need to do it real soon.

M: Yea, because Betty is getting older too, and she just lost her husband last year (!997), Gerald. But anyway, we’ll do that, and she will have pictures that we don’t have. You know, and things, because she was the one that the attorney contacted because she was inquiring too, you know about the Boydstuns. And he’s the one that sent her all that stuff I gave you.

C: The Q. B. Boydstun book.

M: Yes, she gave it to me, so she has got a lot off stuff.

S: See, the ability to paint comes from both Grandmothers. Mom did that one, Nanny, C. M. Boydstun’s Wife, and I’ve tried to locate the pictures. This is Ma Goss.

C: I don’t want to keep getting ^^^^^

S: All right now, Nanny, Elizabeth Boydstun was an artist too.

M: You remember the picture at Nannaw’s (Eunice Boydstun’s) house on Plummer (St., Memphis). It was a canvas on the wall and had a little pond in it and a path and it was done kind of in brown.

S: It was the woods. It was of woods.

M: That was Nanny’s painting.

S: She gave that to Daddy (Carrol S. Boydstun) when he went into the service, and he carried it all over everywhere and brought it back.

M: I didn’t know that.

S: That’s what she painted it for, and Mother (Eunice Boydstun) threw it in the garage and when we left we didn’t bring it.

M: Mother, you would never have anything ^^^^^

S: I also remember your Daddy’s (Charles R. Boydstun’s) Lionel train set se threw out.

C: Oh no!

S: Can you imagine what it would be worth? Because I can remember it being in the bottom of the closet. And that is where we put our shoes and I would have to move the trains to find things. I remember it was orange and it was so heavy. It was old original Lionel trains made out of steel.

M: You mean Charles’s?

S: Charles’s.

C: Those are the most valuable.

M: I didn’t know that Charles ever had one. Are you sure they were ....

S: There was a car...there were two. I think one was a passenger, what would be a Pullman, and seems like I could remember a caboose. But there were just two, that was all. They were in the bottom and they were so heavy. They couldn’t have been yours. Know way they could have been yours. I’m sure they were you Daddy’s.

M: I can’t believe they would have been Charles’s, because Charles and I went through everything they had and tore it up. Ha, we didn’t leave nothing!

S: I mean in the bottom of the closet on Plummer.

M: There wasn’t anything that passed Ayers Street (Memphis). We were starved kids for toys.

S: I have a pretty good memory, and I remember it well. There was also a painting rolled up inside what Mother (Eunice) would call a bureau. You opened it up, you hung cloths in it, and it had drawers that pulled out. There was a big spot on the top, and there was a canvas rolled up, and it was a woman in a long dress with her hair rolled up on her head. I asked Mother who did it, and she said Charles, your Father. I can’t remember, I may have mixed it up, it could have been Nanny that did it or it could have been Ma that did it.

M: I can’t foresee Charles as doing it.

S: But if you can remember Charles doing it, but I ... but you have to realize, that Charles had graduated and everything. He could have easily done it. I remember the canvas being rolled up.

M: But remember all those, the shoe book? All that stuff Betsy (Boydstun) threw away. We don’t know where it is. It’s gone. It’s been gone.

C: Let me ask a question here. Dad moved to Imboden (Arkansas) and was raised there. What was the reason for that?

S: We were talking about that on the way home today. No one knows. Charles didn’t know. We don’t know.

M: Well, I’m sure it was for money reasons.

C: I’m sure that was part of it. Maybe also because you were all girls or there was some kind of trouble or something?

M/S: Oh no, I don’t think that. No. Charlie was in the first grade.

S: I didn’t know anything about it until at Marilyn’s (Boydstun), right before she married John, Charles came over and told about it and I had never heard it.

M: Well, I knew about it of course, he was my brother.

S: I was six years younger. And he came back and graduated Humes (High School, Memphis) in his senior year.

C: Really quick, just a quick side step here. Everyone went to Humes, right?

M: Yes.

C: Of course there is the Elvis (Presley) connection. Somebody went to school and was in classes with, the same grade as, or something with Elvis.

S: I was two years ahead of him, Betsy was two years behind him.

M: Nancy sat in the desk that he had used. Betsy was taken home by Elvis Presley from school one day.

S: Then she came in and said guess who brought me home? I said who? And she said Elvis Presley! And I said, “Who is he?”

OK, I had Miss Sbrivener at Humes for study hall. Miss Sbrivener was the one who helped Elvis with his guitars, she helped him with everything he did. She had a sister too. Her name’s ^^^^ at Guthrey (School), but she was at Humes and she helped Elvis. I had her for study hall, and Marylin had brought home some... you didn’t have such a thing as color film then, and Marylin had a job coloring photographs, and she gave me the paints. I would use a match stick split to make a paintbrush and I had the little thing and I was drawing a picture and Miss Sbrivener came in the door. It liked to have scared me to death, because it was study hall. She called the art teacher up, and they took me out of study Hall and put me in art class. So you see, everybody she helped. Elvis gave her a car every year, bought them a home, and paid for the rest of their lives, because of what she did for him. But she was the type of a person, no one could stand her, but she was marvelous.

C: About what year was this Elvis business of taking Betsy home?

S: Well let’s see, I was working for Dr. Max and I was taking her to school... It would be best to ask Bet, but I knew that she did that for Elvis Presley.

C: Does anyone know anything at all about the war and Charles Mortimer (Boydstun)?

S: He was with Teddy Roosevelt in the at the beginning. I don’t think he did all that much.

C: World war....?

S: No, it was before the world war, which would be the Spanish American War. How long he was in and where he went, I don’t know. Teddy Roosevelt led the charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War.

C: But in what capacity was Charles Mortimer (Boydstun)?

S: I don’t know to what extent, where he went, or anything.

C: And nobody seems to know anything about James K. Polk (Boydstun)?

S: I just remember Daddy (Carrol S. Boydstun) saying that he (CMB) was in the Spanish American War.

M: You had the letters from James K. Polk (Boydstun) didn’t you? Like, “I’m proud your boy... or “I heard Carrol had a boy...”?

C: No. I don’t have that.

S: You know about the letters from C. M. Boydstun to Daddy, C. S. Boydstun?

M: It was a letter from Granddad Boydstun, my great-granddaddy, to your granddaddy congratulating him on having a boy, a letter from James K. Polk Boydstun to my dad, congratulating him.

C: (Note: I did find this letter.)

S: Also a letter from Grandfather Goss written on the stationary of his coal mine in Alabama stating ... like there is a charge made to somebody and the heading of it is the coal mine he had in Alabama. That sheet of paper is somewhere, stating how much coal he sold to the customer.

M: Boydstuns from Ripley (Tennessee), which is (where our family came from) some kinfolk back, they were coming to Memphis for something, a play or shopping or something, and on the way here a whole car of them got killed. They owned a laundry and cleaning business in Ripley. I do know one of them did. I don’t know what the others did, but they were from, the Boydstuns are from Martin and Ripley, Tennessee, all right in that area. Now there is a county in Tennessee, that I understand, Sebastian County, was named for the Sebastians. I don’t know what connection or anything. That’s just here so, it isn’t anything ....

C: There are some Boydstuns, I would have to look it up to see just which ones, that came from Chattanooga. I believe it was from North Carolina, to the Chattanooga area, up to the Ripley area, and the spread out from there.

M: Now I imagine Granddad Boydstun was probably born in Tennessee, C. M. Boydstun. I know Elizabeth Eugina Sebastian (Boydstun) was. She was born in Tennessee. Now the Sebastians were from Georgia. Elizabeth Sebastian’s family were the Kings and Sebastians, her mother’s maiden name and her father’s name. Now the Kings were from Georgia and I guess the Sebastians were from Tennessee. I really don’t really know, but she had three brothers. Your Grandfather, Carrol Boydstun, when he was little broke a rib and her brother set it. But that’s all. I just didn’t know any others.

S: My father, Carrol Boydstun, had something wrong with him. He wasn’t fed the correct food when he was a child and they sent Carrol to his Mother’s Doctor Sebastian who treated him and sent him back home. Daddy told me about that ^^^^^^. And I remember Dad telling us that he would swing his arms when he walked. It was a muscle thing caused from improper food.

M: Kind of like Uncle Edwin as ^^^^^ as Dad. But it was from improper food.

M: Mother and Daddy went up to Martin, Carrol and “June” (Eunice), and saw the Sebastian family. It was two of them left in Martin, it was Ripley or Martin, and saw the old home place. Now I do remember that, and Mother was talking about how elegant everything was.

C: Do you remember what decade that that car accident took place with all the Boydstuns?

M: I would say it was in the sixties (proved to be in the late forties or early fifties).

C: So was it like in the Memphis Commercial Appeal?

M: Yea, it was on the front page of the Commercial Appeal, because it was such a tragic accident.

C: Early or late sixties?

M: I was living on Plummer, so I wasn’t married when they died, so it was in the fifties or in the late forties.

C: It was after the war?

M: Yea, right after the war I think. Because I remember being home. I still lived on Plummer.

C: When Betsy moved out with Jerome (Durant), I remember that. That was in the fifties, you were already gone then, so it would have to before the Korean War but after World War II.

M: Yea, it would be in the late forties.

S: I was twenty-one or twenty-two when Betsy married. Let’s see, that would be about 1952 probably when Betsy married. She married when she had just turned 18 and Jerome was 18.

M: The Goss Mother, Eunice Goss (Boydstun’s) grandparents, one of them fought for the North and on fought for the South, and each of them had their thumbs shot off!