"Also, I remember one day when we were at school and it was Election Day and the first time my mama got to vote...she passed the schoolhouse riding in an open t-model car waving, with streamers from her hat standing straight out as she passed the school. I was so proud of her. Could this have been when all the women got the vote?"
"Things was rough in Arkansas by 1925. My daddy and other men worked on the road to pay poll tax so they could vote, and we raised our food but had no money to buy anything else. It was a two day trip to Russellville by wagon before they fixed the road enough so cars could travel over it."
"Highway 16 from Sand Gap to Moore was completed in 1923 and Dad would go to Ben Hankins store at Sand Gap and buy gasoline in a 50 gal drum. Before we moved from there, my brother went to Vianne, Oklahoma where my aunt lived, and traded for an old Ford T-Model truck to move us to Oklahoma and we took our feather beds and our quilts and pans. Dad bought some furniture in Oklahoma at a sale and I still have a dresser from this."
"The Lurton picnic in 1925 was something we all enjoyed. We went in wagons and camped out overnight on the picnic grounds and everyone took food and visited. It was a two day affair. I remember a pretty girl I saw there dancing on the dance platform with a nice looking boy. She had black hair and a pretty voile dress with yellow flowers. I was only six years old but I've never forgot seeing this pretty lady. I often wondered if this was your mother."
My family always talked about friends and neighbors back in Newton County and my brothers and sisters went back many times before we got too old to travel back there Sometimes they have a picnic at Moore on the first Sunday in June and we went back for that so we could see everybody. My brothers all had travel trailers and Virgie Gregory would turn on the electricity for us at the old school house and we camped there in the yard and visited. Virgie was a Garrison and married a Gregory. She is my good friend to this day. Also, we went to Muskogee, Oklahoma to an Arkansas Reunion in the fifties.
"The Moore Picnic was really a dinner on the ground. They put table cloths clear across the school yard and it would be covered with food. Later on in the evening all would decorate graves with yard flowers and wild flowers. I remember the Dickey family, they were known for raising Honey Bees. You know, the bees would not sting any one of them. Bess Dickey was kin to my brother in law. Louisa Ford was Joe Fords daughter, Virgie Gregory was married to Jack Garrison. Buggy Shelton lived up on the hill from us. Minnie Osborne was mothers friend, and the Caseys. The Pattersons were good neighbors and they came to Arkansas from Kentucky in a covered wagon."
"I've misplaced the paper you wrote about a Mrs. Rosamond who had lost her arm from a gunshot wound. These people were friends to my parents. Mother always talked about her friend, Mrs Rosamond, like how Mrs Rosamond didn't like spinning wheels used around there so she ordered a fancy Swedish spinning wheel from way off somewhere. When my brother restored my spinning wheel, he remarked that Mrs Rosamond would not have liked this wheel as she liked the fancy wheel she ordered from where she came from. We think it was Sweden. My mother told me that after Mrs. Rosamond lost her arm, she would walk the floor and beg them to dig up her arm and straighten out the fingers as they hurt her. Mother felt so sorry for her."

Another Letter from Joyce Sissom Miller...March..1997..

Dear Colleen Haynes Rongey:
I want to let you know how much I am enjoying the articles you have had in the Newton County paper. I was born at Moore Arkansas December 1917 and left Newton County in November 1925. I will be eighty years old in December. I noticed the first article you wrote and meant to write you about this and how much we all loved Newton County
My parents come in a covered wagon from Dade County Missouri around 1900, may have been 1902 or 1904. There were just no roads. I think Moorewas called Quincy.
We attended the first picnic at Lurton, after they opened the highway on up from Sand Gap, now Pelsor. We attended another one before we moved. It was a long ride in a wagon ride from Moore to Lurton. We spent the night camping out on the picnic ground. They had those two day picnics to celebrate finishing the highway to open up that area. I remember how we would hear them set off dynamite in order to build it. We had a hairpin loop at one place on it.
My father worked with the county agent, a Mr. Flood, I think. They made the first terrace in Newton County. They laid off some and Dad built them on our farm. Mr & Mrs Flood would come and we would have children's programs at the schoolhouse (about the land and livestock) and the whole neighborhood would turn out.
The reason we came to move from Moore happened when one day a County Agent from Tennessee had checked in with Mr. Flood from Newton County to see if he could locate a farmer who had several boys who was willing to move to Pawnee County Oklahoma and farm for a doctor and his wife who had moved to Stilllwater, Oklahoma so her three college age children could get their degrees and the son could run the farm. The doctor had a sudden heart attack was why she needed us.
We left our three room house back in Newton County and moved to Oklahoma where we tended their place for nine years. When we got there we lived in a two story house with a balcony and an inside bath. In 1925 , I was really impressed, but we cried when we left Arkansas as we sure didn't want to move.
My father was a JP at Moore for twenty five years. He would marry couples and sometimes go to Jasper on horseback with papers, marriage records, etc I wonder if those records were destroyed in the Court House Fire in 1930?
Doctor James Blalock and family lived near us. Mother and Dad had two children in Missouri when they came to Arkansas in a wagon to our place near Moore. My grandparents had moved there first so they lived close. They went to church on Sunday afternoons at Moore Schoolhouse. John and Minnie Osborne had the store at Moore for a Mr. Casey. Dr Blalock was our doctor, of course. They had one boy, Charlie, one girl married Ben Hankins, one girl married Ray Lee and seems like one married a Gregory. Louisa Ford Yancy went to school with me. G. W. and Lizzie Ham were friends of our family. We have no kin folks at Moore anymore but a few old friends are still there.
When I was reading the story of you and your cousins trip back there last fall, I noticed you were looking for "Iceledo". My sister (Eunice Sissom Dickey) was the postmistress there at one time when they lived near there. She marriedBrian Dickey and I remember them talking of their neighbors, the Hills and Ketchersides, etc. They referred as living over on "Devils Fork". Was this a place, or a nickname? When I was small, we rode a horse in one place that had solid rock walls on each side. It was scary to me. That was a horseback road only. They told us panthers were around there. Did you ever hear a panther scream? I only heard one once and will never forget that.
Now we are old. I have lost four brothers and three sisters so don't get back like we used to. My twin brothers are still living. Calvin and Alvin Sissom. Calvin lives in California and Alvin in Oklahoma and I have a niece who tries to get back as the Sissoms are kin to her.
The last time I visited New Orleans , your home now, was when the King Tut Exhibit was held there. That was worth going to see. You live in a beautiful part of the US now.
Colleen, again I want to tell you I hope you will continue your "Voices of Newton County" articles. I have missed them this year. Hope this makes sense and I'll be looking forward to more of your articles in the Newton County Paper so keep writing them.
Sincerely, Joyce Sissom Miller

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