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Earl S. Frost It’s said that my great-great-great-great-grandmother, Amelia Lonesome Patterson, had 24 children, though there is proof of only 17: Micajah, Elijah, William English, Thomas Simpson, Matthew, Nancy Ann, Mary Adeline, Elizabeth, Rhoda, Sevier, White, Snow, Winter, Young, Sarah and Hiram Joseph. Besides her own children, it’s said she was a midwife who helped bring every child in the county into the world. Amelia and her husband, Elijah Frost, were both born on the frontier side of the mountains in eastern Tennessee in the years after the Indian Wars, when that land was still Cherokee territory. Elijah’s father, Micajah Frost, had come from Virginia with his father and brother after the Revolutionary War,14 and settled on a piece of land set between two ridges along Poplar Creek right about the time Tennessee became the 16th state of the union in 1796. It’s said they were the first white settlers in the area. A few Frosts stayed put long enough to be buried in Tennessee, but most of the sons and grandsons kept moving west, pushing the frontier clear out to the Pacific Coast. One went by wagon, crossed the mountains six times, then settled outside Boise.15 One was shot and killed in the streets of a California town.16 Some fought in the Civil War, some homesteaded in Missouri and some left Oklahoma during the Great Depression. The place where Micajah Frost laid claim to land is still called Frost Bottom, but no Frosts live there anymore.
My great-great-great grandmother Mollie R. Peach was 19 when she got married to Sevier Frost on Christmas Day 1869, in Barry County, Missouri. She was widowed at 31, with six young children and another on the way. The railroad was expanding south into Texas at that time, and by 1890 the family settled in Denison, Texas, a bustling hub where the MKT Railroad — called the “Katy” — intersected with the Red River. Denison was called “The Gateway to Texas” and “Katy’s Baby.” Its proud founders built an opera house, a handsome brick public school and, at five stories, the tallest skyscraper in all of Texas. Main Street wasn’t paved, but it was built wide to accommodate big plans.5 Mollie’s sons went
to work for the railroad. Her second son, Hardy Late Frost, fell for a Texan girl as pale and delicate as a porcelain doll. Her name was Ethel Groom, and she wasn’t yet 18 when they got married in 1895. The first grandson arrived the following year: baby Earl, named for his uncle Early.
Earl S. Frost, known as "Jack", died on September 10, 1943, in the Spokane County Courthouse. He was leaving the Auditor’s Office for home after a long day, like many long days before, when a heart attack caught him in the stairwell; on that September evening, light would still have been coming through the five tall windows at every stair landing. The 1929 County Courthouse report is the first with his name listed — Jack Frost, Chief Accountant — and the last is 1942. He’d been born a Texan, 47 years earlier, in a railroad boom town along the Red River. Then times got harder. Ethel died without seeing the new century, the day after her only son’s third birthday. His mother died the day after his third birthday, and not a decade later his father was crushed between rail cars. So he was raised by his grandmother in a house of young uncles. 1900 Grayson Co.,
Texas Martha Frost
49 head Ohio (father - Germany, mother - Maryland) The boy was in the fifth grade at the city’s public school when the family received news that the railroad had claimed the first of Mollie’s sons. The brief newspaper account at the time said Hardy Late Frost “was killed in the yards at Mena, Ark., Wednesday night.” The train carried his body home. The family put a notice in the paper a few weeks later: 6 “We wish to thank
our friends and neighbors, and especially the O.R.C. lodges 7
at Mena, Ark., and Denison, Tex., for their kindness and many acts of
sympathy during our great bereavement in the loss of our son and
brother, H.L. Frost. 1910 census The first World War carried him to Alaska of all places, and to Spokane, where he met Miss Ruth Parrish (1 June 1897 WA - 27 Jan 1967 WA) and married her three months before Armistice. He worked his way through night school to become an accountant, and they raised four children on the north side of the growing Lilac City. 1915 Des Moine Idaho wed 19 Aug 1918 Spokane 1920 Spokane WA 1930 Spokane WA 1940 Spokane WA His death made front-page news in the Spokesman-Review, beneath headlines about Hitler and the Allied forces, and it was noted that he was “not only popular but an important figure in county affairs for the last 20 years.” It was also noted he left behind two daughters still living at home, the youngest of whom was my grandmother. SOURCE
: Lisa Waananen. "How We Got Here : The Search for Family
History
Is Getting Easier. But You May Not Always Find What You
Want."
The Pacific Northwest Inlander.
http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-19277-how-we-got-here.html.
8 May 2013 [24 August 2013].
 Biography Index Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson CountyTXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |
