THE HOUSES OF CLEBURNE COUNTY The secret marriage seemed ironic as Mother’s father had been—or perhaps still was at that time– justice of the peace for the Pearson community where the Gresham family lived. In later years, Mother told me how as a young girl, on some of the many buggy trips with her father, he stopped the buggy at the side of the road, asked her to hold the reins, and disappeared into the nearby woods for some time. At first, she thought he had been disappearing to relieve himself, but later realized he had, as justice of the peace, been performing secret weddings in the shadows of the oak forest. We were never clear how our parents’ marriage was received by her father, who had clearly been oneupped by another justice of the peace, one Claude Jones. * * * * * My parents started their life together in the small cottage we called the “Little House” on the Gresham family property near the town of Pearson. It was a twostory cottage built by my grandfather John Anderson Gresham, Jr. in 1906. The cottage had a certain beauty in its simplicity. The downstairs had a kitchen and dining room at the north end and a living room in the south. The two were separated by an entryway with the front and back doors and a stairway to the second floor, which had a bedroom on each side of the stairs. The cottage was a wood frame, board-and-batten structure with a cedar-shingle roof. It stood in a level area facing the road and meadow beyond and backed up to the edge of a woods. – 6 –
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