John Leonard Watlington

 

 		b. January 5, 1889

	 		bp. Madison Co., Tenn.

		m. February 11, 1912, Velma Idell Needham, in Delhi, La.

	 		b. ca. 1897, d. August 3, 1990)

		d. December 5, 1955

	 		pb. Forest Park Cem., Shreveport, La.

 

John L. Watlington was the fifth child, second son of Mack Rob and Eula Daniel Watlington. Three younger children were born to his parents but only Albert Edwin grew to adulthood. At an early age he was introduced to the tragedies of life as he was old enough to know and love his sister Nona Ethel (b. 1883) and brother James Paulin (b. 1890) who both died of typhoid fever in July 1897. The same epidemic greatly weakened his mother and father, and may have contributed to the death of a new born infant of his parents.    

At fourteen years of age he shared in the joy of the marriage of his two surviving sisters and witnessed the death of his mother as the family struggled to earn a living and survive in rural Madison Co., Tennessee at the turn of the century. A little later in 1903 his brother Ulrich got into a scrap with some neighbor boys and took off to visit his Aunt Wynona Rodgers in Texas to let tempers cool and injuries heal. This meant that John L. was the principal farm help in harvesting the crop in 1903 and raising a crop with his father in 1904.  

Being a younger brother, John L. had some advantages in his primary schooling, but rural schools were scarce at best. There was a school at Pinson and Bear Creek during these years but Mack Rob and Eula were not in shape financially to place their children in boarding schools. They had to help on the farm and then walk to the nearby schools as they were free to do so. Their parents were literate and so were Mable, Serena and Nona. This gave the younger sons some help at home with their studies, but not much formal studies. The family was of the Methodist persuasion, sparked by the Anderson-Chappell Methodist heritage, but church evidently did not get much priority in these early years.    

The following dateline of the Mack Rob Watlington family would indicate some of the difficulties of any rigorous school or church routines:  

1890-1891

When a year old John L. accompanied his parents on a train ride to Clarksville, Red River County, Texas where they farmed the Wynona Rodgers farm one year and a nearby farm another year. A brother, James Paulin was born September 26, 1890, while in Texas.

1892-1893

After two good crops in Texas the family returned to a sharecroppers life in Tennessee on the farm of cousin Billie Houston, west of Pinson.

1894-1895

They moved to the McHaney Place, toward Bear Creek from Pinson. An unnamed infant was born and died here in 1895, and was buried at Big Springs Cemetery.  

1896-1901

The family lived on Uncle Frank W. Watlington's Place, in the flatlands of Bear Creek and the Forked Deer River. Here a brother, Albert Edwin, was born June 28, 1896 and the next year typhoid fever took the lives of sister Nona Ethel (14) and James Paulin (6 1/2). In July 1897 typhoid so weakened Mack Rob and Eula that it was probably the major cause of her death some years later. After this bad summer, Mable Lee (18) became the major care-giver of the family as their mother was never strong again.        

1902

Seeking better water and a healthier place to live Mack Rob moved the family up creek to near the Bear Creek Methodist Church, on the Richard (Dick) Davis place for one year.      

1903

In this year they moved further up Bear Creek Valley on the Sam Davis place for one year. Mable Watlington (age twenty-four) married Will A. Stephens May 10th, 1903 and Eula Daniel died July 23rd. Some weeks later sister Serena Avenant Watlington married B. Sanders Davis, and soon left for Red River Co., Texas and the Rodgers family.  

1904-1905

Mack Rob moved with John L. and Albert to the Hubert Mays place for one crop, then to the McHaney place for another year. Sister Serena and husband and baby returned home in 1905, where she died in July of the same year. Ulrich came back home in the fall of 1904 after harvesting his crop in Red River Co., Texas, near Bonicord, with Aunt Nona.

1906

Mack Rob and the three boys moved to the farm of Widow Ella B. Swink Pacaud, who was a sister to Mrs. Hubert Mays (Sara J. Swink) where they farmed in 1904.

1907

When Mack Rob and Mrs. Ella B. Pacaud married Mable Lee and W. A. Stephens were operating a grocery store in Pinson, Tenn. and living in a large house on the Old Pinson Road, north of Pinson. By 1910 they were in Jackson, Tenn. Shortly after Mack Rob married, Mable asked to take the eleven year old Albert to live with them. She had helped ``mother'' him for some years already. John L. was already eighteen years of age and soon after the family moved to Jackson he found work in the street car barns of Jackson, repairing the street cars and tracks.   

The Journey Continues (1908-1910)

After some years experience in Jackson working with iron and rails, John Leonard found a job working with the timber industry around Dyersburg, Tenn. The Watlingtons had Daniel kinfolk in Crockett Co. from before 1888, which included Aunt Ada Cordelia Daniel who married Jim Strawn of near Bells, Tenn. and Uncle Charlie Daniel who lived near Cypress Methodist Church out between Bells and Gadsden. Grandmother America Tabitha Anderson Daniel had died while visiting them in 1888 and was buried near Charlie Daniel's first wife Betty Lowery in the Cypress Methodist Cemetery. Later Charlie Daniel moved to near Friendship, Tenn. which was on the border of Dyer Co. and Aunt Ludie Williams married Luther Williams of Dyer Co. and they lived at Tigrett Station, on the Crockett-Dyer Co. line. In visiting them Ulrich and John would have had opportunity to know people in Dyer Co., Tenn. He also visited Ulrich A. Watlington after he and Jennie set up housekeeping in Dyersburg, Tenn.      

John L. went to work with what appears to be the lumbering operation of Mingle Box Company, as an apprentice boilermaker in the maintenance and operation of their steam engines for sawing and planing lumber and their narrow gauge railroads and small engines for transporting timber. Now nineteen or twenty years of age, his experience in the shops of Jackson was put to use in the lumbering business. His manager was Marvin Marvel Needham of a prominent Gibson Co. family but whose work placed him now in the fine timber lands along the Obion and Forked Deer Rivers in Dyer County, Tennessee.     

John L. also developed an interest in one of the daughters of the bossman, Velma Idell Needham. He either liked the job or the daughter so well that when the company transferred the operation to northern Louisiana about 1911, John L. transferred there also. It seems that their early operations were in Richland Parish, La., with Rayville as the county seat. Their work at different times seemed to be around Delhi, Milltown, Rayville, and Pineville. Timber could be transported by water to Pineville.        

1911-1912

John L. Watlington and Velma Idell Needham were married in Delhi, Richland Parish, Feb. 11, 1912. Velma Idell was still quite young at the time of her marriage and kept the family guessing about her age then and later also. But the attraction outlasted the lumbering business and by 1913 the couple were living at Pineville where the steam engine and railroading experience of John L. helped him find work with the railroad there.

1913-1914

He worked with the Little Rock and Northern which became the Louisiana and Arkansas R.R.; the L & A R.R. later became the Kansas City Southern R.R. (1940-1955). This would be a total of thirty years with the railroad. In 1929, taking a leave of absence from the L.R. & N. R.R., John L. went to work at the Angola, Louisiana, State Penitentiary Machine Shop. The family continued to live at Pineville near the Needhams until 1935, when they too moved to Angola, on prison grounds.        

1940

When World War II became eminent and business for the railroads picked up dramatically, John Leonard moved his family from Angola to Baton Rouge and worked again on the R.R., this time as an engineer. The family lived on Park Blvd. for two or three years.  

1942-1943

John L. moved to Shreveport, Louisiana and to a change of runs on the K.C. Southern R.R. He became engineer on the fast passenger train from Shreveport to Baton Rouge and then back to Shreveport. They lived at 1201 Cresswell for a while, then about 1945-1947 bought the home at 633 Merrick where they lived the rest of their lives.    

A sudden heart attack at his home on Dec. 5, 1955 brought about his death at the age of sixty-six years, eleven months. Velma Idell continued to live at the home until her death in August 1990. They were both buried near Simmons relatives at the Forest Park Cemetery in Shreveport and the house and furnishings were donated to their local Methodist Church.