Memorials › Walter Jackson Patrick

Walter Jackson Patrick

12 Mar 1878 – 16 May 1959

Birth12 Mar 1878
Death16 May 1959
CemeterySand Springs Cemetery
Mineola , Wood County , Texas , USA
Added byM. J. Soto on 08 Oct 2002
FaGhttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5642458

Bio

* s/o John William Patrick & Matilda Jane Graves. * h/o Melinda Adeline Reese Patrick. ================ The history below was provided by contributor: Alford #46848279: Walter lived in Hunt County and Wood County in Texas most of his life. Melinda Adaline (Addie) Reese became his bride on November 4, 1897. They were married one week before Addie's nineteenth birthday. Walter was 19 years old at marriage. Addie was born November 11, 1878 to William J. C. Reese and Laura Melinda Griffin Reese in Fayette County, Alabama. She and her family moved to Wood County around 1892/93 with the family of Robert E. Lee Patrick's wife Norma Weeks. Walter and Addie were farmers. They did not own their own land in Wood County, Texas. They probably borrowed money each year to put in their crops. The two had six children to live. Several died in infancy and Walter Floyd died by fire at the age of 6 and a-half. The living children were Alfred Bruce, John Elbert, Noble Bryce, Ethel Matilda (called Sis or sometimes Sister by her family), Troy D. and Bernice Lee. All their children were tall and slender like their father. Bernice, the youngest, served in World War II. Elbert and Ethel were the only two that married twice. Addie was doing the laundry outside in the old black pots, she used the container of kerosene to get the fire started and to keep it ignited. Floyd was playing near by and went to the kerosene and poured it on the fire that was already ablaze. The fire burst out and caught his clothes on fire. Instead of rolling in the dirt or letting his mother smother the fire, he started running to his father that was working out in the Field. The child was burned to death. It is understandable that from that moment on, Addie would always remember this incident each time she had to do the family laundry on the open fire. Walter and Addie were real quiet and gentle people, and worked extremely hard. Not only did they raise their own, but helped raise Billie Ruth Klingaman, Ethel's daughter by her first husband, Reo. "Papa" (Walter Jackson Patrick) told the story that when he was a young man he was bit by a dog. Instead of locking up the dog for ten days to check him for rabies, they tied Papa to a tree during the day and to his bed at night. Sometimes he would growl and bark like a dog and would act like he was going mad. This action would scare his brothers to death. Walter would keep a bottle of booze in the barn and Addie would call it slop. Addie would keep the same thing in her cabinet but she called this medicine. One of Walter's favorite thing to do was to peel an apple without breaking the peel, making a continuous red curly apple peel. Walter bought a car but he had to leave the driving to his sons as he would steer towards whatever he was looking at, sometimes landing in a ditch. They used the mules and plow for tilling the soil but a picture depicts Bernice on a tractor in his army uniform in about 1943, making Walter 65 years old. Of course, he could have gotten the tractor when he was younger. Walter would take the white tissue paper from a small book-type packaging, hold it in his fingers a certain way, take out a cloth pouch and pour tobacco into the posed paper. With his teeth he would draw the string on the pouch and replace it in the bibb of his overalls. Then he would roll the paper with the tobacco enclosed and lick the edge to seal the home-made cigarette. When Addie died of cancer on April 10, 1945, the collie dog, Jack, started scratching on the screen door wanting in the house the moment she drew her last breath. Her youngest son, Bernice Lee, was in the military when he received word his mother was on her death bed. The American Red Cross managed to get him home. However, the Sabine River was flooded and blocked passage to their house. The Sabine River bridges were not like the ones constructed today. A boat was brought in to transport him across the flooded highway. Addie was 66 years and 5 months when she died. Her death certificate shows her age as 6 years old. Walter later married Metta Vaughn in October of 1945 and lived in her home in Oak Cliff (Dallas County, TX). They had known each other for years and years but did not live together as man and wife very long. Walter was so used to Addie's quiet nature that he could not adjust to Metta's out-going ways. I don't know about the desire to dance in his younger days, but he loved to "cut a rug" when he got older. Dominoes was the "old timers" favorite game. They played by the old kerosene lamps many, many times. Another treat was talking on the three to six party-line telephone. Their telephone ring was two shorts and a long. Walter lived with his daughter, Ethel, and her husband, M. C. Yarbrough, on Hollis Street in Dallas in 1958. But when he got real ill with hardening of the arteries, he moved in with Thelma Patrick (his daughter-in-law), and Betty June (grand-daughter) and her family in Irving, Texas. He died in a Dallas hospital on May 16, 1959 at the age of 81 years and 2 months. Walter out-lived Addie about 14 years. Addie and Walter are buried in Sand Springs Cemetery in Wood County, Texas, one of the prettiest cemeteries in the area with its silvery-white sand.

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