Remembering My First Home with Tom & Tina

I am looking back at some of the homes we owned over the year and found the first house we bought. It was only 1,400 square feet of living area, plus a basement but it seemed big to us when we first bought it. I think our house payment was $88.00 a month when we bought it in 1972. This picture was taken in January 1973. I could not find a front view in the summer. We spent five wonderful years there, and I remember watching Tina walk to the bus her first day of high school. It was sad, and I shed a tear, to know she was growing up so quickly. Thank you, God, for allowing me to retain my memories. The house was located at 13 Gloria Lane, St. Peters, Missouri. The house was active with our daughter Tina and her friends going and coming. My parents came up to visit every eight to ten weeks. Our friends from St. Charles visited often and I remember our New Years Eve party we gave in 1975! That is a story of its own.

I began researching my family in this house.  I had no idea how important genealogy would become in my life.  It led to my presiding over Scott County Historical and Genealogy Society, writing the Scott County Newsletter for five years, and serving on the MissouriState Genealogical Association in Columbia, Missouri for several years.

My father, Curtis H. Cline, planted a tree in front of the house.  We drove by the house in 2006 while we were in the area, and the tree was as tall as the house.  I wish my  Dad could have seen it before he died in 2002.  Tom and I built the house and the three of use visited it every few days until we signed the papers and moved in.  I enjoyed sharing my life with Tom and Tina in this house.  I hope the owners that followed us enjoyed it too.

1916 Killer Tornado Remembered

    My thoughts this spring, are on the 1916 Tornado that hit four states, including southeast Missouri. After they cared for the injured and recorded the dead, the headline read:

Tornado Killed 30 and Injured 75 in Missouri.

    My great grandmother, a great aunt, and five field hands were among those counted in the dead. My Grandfather, Henry Price, was reported as injured but he died nineteen days later from injuries received that sad, dark day.

     Related tornadoes reportedly killed 83 people in four states, but the number used to report Missouri's lost in that early report was only 14. The other three states experiencing the death and destruction from the storm were Arkansas, Mississippi, and Illinois. I wonder what the final total was after a week of recovery?

     The path of the tornado reportedly started near Jackson and traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi.  It was next reported as capsizing the Mississippi River Packet Eleanore along the Arkansas banks of the Mississippi River. It then lifted up from the Mississippi River and followed the path of the river a few miles to the west in Arkansas. 

     The deadly tornado happened a century ago, June 5, 1916. One of the results from the storm was that my Mother always felt the loss of not knowing her father who died from injuries received the day the tornado swept the Prices' two-story home off its foundation and into a thousand pieces.  

     After the storm passed, Carrie Rettig Price first checked on her mother-in-law, Cummy Grandstaff Price (my Great-Grandmother).  She found her lying on the ground near the home's foundation.  Carrie soon realized Mrs. Price was dead.

    Carrie then hurried to find her husband, Henry Price. To her shock and horror, she found Henry alive but pinned to a tree by straw through his body. Carrie cried to others family members to help him. She then looked for her thirteen-month-old daughter, and could not find her. A group of surviving family members and neighbors began to search for the toddler.  The group heard a small child crying in a distant field of corn; the searchers followed the cry until they found her, nearly a quarter of a mile away from where she played just minutes earlier. She was scared but alive and well. That child was my mother, Marie Price-Cline.

     Carrie Price was eight months pregnant the day the tornado hit the Price farm.  Her husband was severely injured, and she was frightened and confused.  She looked in the direction of the small home she, her husband and young daughter shared nearby and it was still standing, seemingly unharmed.  She wondered why they fled the small house to go to the larger one.  They thought it would be safer.  They were very wrong.

     The patriarch of the family, James D. Price helped removed his son Henry from the tree.  He prepared his wife for the mortician.  Then he left the group to be by himself and with his thoughts.  He lost his wife, and a daughter-in-law that day, plus five field hands that also had to be prepared for the mortician.  When he returned, the farm was busy with neighbors and others from the area who came to help retrieve what they could for his family.  They also brought food and drink for the Price family, along with moral support.

     My grandmother, Carrie Price, told me the area looked like a war zone.  Carrie went into shock briefly but understood her new responsibilities would not allow for such a thing.  Her dreams were blown away along with the Price house and its contents.  On the 23rd of June, Carrie gave birth to her second daughter, Beulah Virginia Price.  Her husband saw her briefly before he sure come to infection caused by his injuries.  He died June 25, 1916.

    My Mother was always terrified of storms of any kind. Is it any wonder? The wind took more than her father and grandmother in 1916; it took her feeling of security for most of her life; it also made a widow of twenty-two-year-old Carrie Price.  The thought of the loss of her husband and the unknown future without him to help her raise two babies overwhelmed her for months.  Nothing would ever be the same again.  What would she do?