The Houses of Cleburne County

WILLIAM CARROLL MOORE THE HOUSES BEFORE ME My family lived in eight houses in Cleburne County, Arkansas, where my parents were born, grew up, got married, and lived until I was ten years of age. Given the time and place—during the Depression of the 1930s—they moved from farm to farm, trying to get a purchase on life. The first five of these houses were before my unanticipated entrance into this world. These were the houses before me. THE GRESHAM LITTLE HOUSE My parents, Melba Adrid Gresham and William Carroll Moore, were secretly married the day after Christmas in 1924. Other than the justice of the peace who married them, only Mother’s friend and witness, Carmen Gunn, knew of the wedding until the announcement at a family gathering some days later. My brother, sister, and I never understood why they held the wedding in secret, and our parents declined to comment. Though never stated, we finally assumed, or at least I did, that Dad would have had difculty getting permission from Mother’s father, John Anderson Gresham, Jr., as Dad, at that time, had neither money nor land, and Mother was not yet eighteen years of age. She had, quite correctly, made this risky choice to become the lifetime partner to this handsome, charming, and industrious man whom she already knew she simply could not live without (her words). – 5 –

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