Chapter   2     

Dora Lulu Tovrea

Autobiographical sketch of Mrs. John Oliver (nee Dora Lulu Tovrea) Prepared for her children May 2, 1941

My mother, Rosa Jane Hood, was born in South Carolina, and moved when quite young to southern Illinois. She only had school privileges for nine months in her life, where the main study books were Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and the Bible, in a little one room log building where the teacher spat his tobacco juice nearly across the room, where the dogs or pigs would go in and out at leisure and where the backless benches were used both inside and outside the building, where they studied and recited aloud amid the din of the children's voices.

Mother took cold from sitting on a wet bench and at times during her life she would be troubled with deafness for a while because of the cold she took as a child.

My mother wrote as well as the average college student and used splendid English, and read exceptionally well. She was most excellent in reading the Scotch dialect, and a neighbor Scotchman was frequently bringing her poems to read, and as she read, his face would beam as he drew nearer to her and would say frequently "that's it, that's it."

My father, Arthur Trumbull Tovrea, was born in Tennessee and went when young to southern Illinois. He taught school, and when mother was 18 years old and father was 21, they were married. They lived near Sparta, Illinois, and Father's people and some of Mother's, lived at Chester.

Their first son, John Bartley, died when 5 years old, having fallen when riding the back of a cousin and striking his head on a rock, causing paralysis, which caused his death. The second son, Charles S., was killed when 7 years old, by a large limb of a tree falling on him at a picnic. Then with their other children, Edward, William, Samuel, Zinnia, Mary and Charles, they went to Kansas on a quarter section of a farm. I was born there July 4, 1875. Born there also was Alfred, who died in infancy, and my brother Harry, who is still living.

Their first year in Kansas, when the corn was nearly grown, came the great cloud of grasshoppers, which blackened the sky, and when they left the cornfield, nothing was left of the corn. It was a hard and difficult time, and the winters were cold. Mother said more than once they had to go to bed in the daytime to keep warm in their cold house, with only cow chips and light fuel to burn.

My parents were staunch Presbyterians and for years my father was the Superintendent of the Sunday school. Later years when we were near enough to attend church services, father was an elder in the church.

We lived in a four room solid house and later built on a large kitchen, pantry and porch. We had a good-sized living room, and father and mother had a bedroom downstairs, and the other two bedrooms were upstairs. Before we built on the kitchen for some years we used our cellar, which was large and had windows and rock walls, for both kitchen and dining room. Our home was comfortably furnished. We made over rag rugs that is, we sewed the rags and had them woven. We had milk cows and other cattle, hogs, horses, chickens and other fowls, and raised all our potatoes and vegetables and killed our own beef and pork for winter use. We sold butter and eggs to regular customers in Wichita each Saturday and, as we had no rural delivery, telephones or other modern conveniences, one of our customers would give us all his daily papers once a week, which we greatly enjoyed.

I do not remember very much about my childhood days. We walked to school 1 1/2 miles away, 1/2 mile north and one mile east. It was a district school named Cottonwood where they taught through the 8th reader. The winters were cold and there was considerable snow and ice, and occasionally our parents would bring us home from school when the weather was too bad. I only had advantage of this one school all my life. It has been quite a handicap and humiliation many times during the years. I remember telling a falsehood when I was nine years old the only one I can remember that I ever told. The teacher had made rather an uncomplimentary remark about the way Lena Brown was slow in her schoolwork. In repeating this to some one, I made it a little worse and when I was brought to task about it, and the teacher repeated just what he had said, and I knew that was correct, but still I insisted it was what I had said when I knew it was not. If other people would be as uncomfortable in telling a falsehood as I was, then there would not be so many told.

When I was ten years old, my brother Will's children had the measles. They lived in Greenwich, some 4 miles away, but my mother went to help care for them and was very careful and changed her clothes out in the chicken house, so she would not bring the measles to us. But my brother Sam was not so careful, so he brought the measles home. There was Sam, Emma, Mary, Charley, Dora (myself) and Harry all down, and poor mother was hard of hearing at the time and we cooked downstairs at that time and we were very sick. Emma took pneumonia and died. I also took pneumonia and the doctor gave me up to die, and then our folks sent for the old family doctor at Wichita and when he came out the 8 miles, he said he would only take the case because he had been the family doctor. I was in bed 30 days and the day I could stand alone, I was very happy. They cut off the braids of my hair. When Emma, who was 18 years old, died it was a very sad day. When they put me in a rocking chair and pulled me in where her body lay I just looked and turned my head away, for I was very sick, and the day of the funeral when the people drove down our long lane Mary just cried so hard and carried on terribly, but I just looked rather dreamily out of the window and I guess I did not even cry, but I was very sick.

The country roads were all like lanes, as there were pastures or fields on either side. Across from our farm was the Toler stock or horse farm, where they had blooded horses and fine cattle. The jockeys were often seen driving along the roads.

When our cattle needed more grass, we herded our cattle in the lane between our farm and the Toler farm. All we had to do was keep them in the lane and it was my lot, so many times, to herd the cattle while they grazed. It is a monotonous thing to do for a young person, and all there seemed to be to do was daydream. I often wondered if my life was to be so drab and monotonous, or if I would ever have a change. I was happy enough and would sing at the top of my voice as I would go to drive the cows home to milk and could be heard about a mile away. I had to break the heifers to milk (no easy job) and had to feed the calves and do most everything in the line of chores. All my girlhood days I wanted to be a good singer and play the piano well. I also wanted to be an elocutionist, but opportunities did not seem to come my way to do any of these things. Later when my sister worked and bought an organ I only had a few lessons, but how I loved it, and would play and sing by the hour.

Each of our children were given as many lessons as ever I had, but none seemed to make anything out of it. What little talent I might have had has certainly been used to capacity, and more, for I've played at prayer meetings and church and Sunday school for many, many years. My father did not give his boys much privilege or opportunity when they were home and Ed, the oldest, left home at 17 years of age and then each of the other boys did the same.

In June 1897 my mother was very sick with neuralgia of the stomach. Father and Harry neglected the plowing for a few days while Mother was so sick, but the doctor gave her a shot of morphine and the men went back to the field. Before she went to sleep she said to me that she did not know whether she would get well or not, and to tell all the children she had prayed for them that they might meet her some day.

Then she said to me, "Dora, you have never caused me any worry or care," and other things for me alone. Perhaps I should not mention this, but I was so like my mother and did things like she did, and I hope you will forgive any seeming pride on my part that I should so please my mother.

After she slept awhile she awakened with an awful agony of pain. I asked her if it was her heart (her mother had died after 6 hours of agony with a heart attack) and she said it was not. I got her onto a chair and she moaned and groaned with terrible pain. I was alone with her, the nearest neighbor being a quarter of a mile away, and the men nearly a half-mile away plowing corn. I wrung my hands in despair, but as I could not do anything to relieve her, I tied a tea towel to a broom and watched till the horses were headed toward the house and got up on the wagon seat and waved the broom while they plowed the long field through; then they turned the other way without seeing me. Again I did the same thing, but they did not see me. All this time my dear mother was in intense suffering. Then I decided to run to the field. When the horses' heads were again turned toward the house I took my broom and towel and began running toward the field yelling at my loudest voice. Finally when I had run only a short distance, both my father and brother threw up their hats and I knew they saw me. You cannot imagine the long time it took for those heavy work horses to walk nearly half a mile and I kept running back and forth and when father finally heard me I urged him to hurry for I thought Mother was dying.

He walked to the neighbors; then the neighbor hitched a horse to a buggy and drove four miles for the doctor. Of course he eased her when he came and then in a day or so, her hand was all blue and seemed lifeless. When the doctor came he said there was a blood clot in her arm and we would have to keep heat on it and form a collateral circulation around it, which we did, and some later her arm got better.

Then again it came in her right leg. We tried again but to no avail. Her leg died at the foot and gangrene set in and we had a hard time of it. I did all the milking, churning, housework and nursing and the neighbors sat up at night and I slept on the floor in the same room and would get up and change the dressings on her foot. We put a clean rag in carbolic solution and I would very carefully take it off and burn it. I lost 18 pounds in little more than two weeks. My sister Mary had gone to Arizona and was working for my brother Ed.

As Mother's foot got worse the odor became very bad and the surgeon came and said it would be best to have her foot taken off. When the light wagon took our dear mother away we were most fearful she would never return.

They amputated about half-way to the knee and what a sad day when we took this home with us, put it in a little wooden box and Harry, Father, and I, went to a grove and buried part of mother the foot that had served all these years as she walked back and forth in all her loving ministrations for us all.

Mary came home when mother had to go to the hospital. It was a fine Catholic hospital, and either Mary or myself stayed in the large room with mother the three months she was there, and each day in these months we, the ones at home, drove the eight miles to the hospital. After Father and Mary went home one day we could see that mother was not going to live and all night the Sister nurse kept a candle and match near the bed and once or twice picked it up to use it. When one died, the Catholics would light a candle to light them out of this world. The next morning I could see the end was near, and I prayed, perhaps hundreds of times, that mother would live till Father and Mary came.

She lived till seven in the evening. My cousins Erma Bullinger and Mary Mitchell (our only near relatives) came and were with us and the nurses were most kind. Mother had been in the hospital three months. My mother and Emma are buried in a Dunkard burying ground in the country near Kechi, Kansas. The grounds are nicely kept up by a cemetery association. We put stones and flowers there. One day, after Mother's death, Father stood before her picture on the wall and wept bitterly. He scarcely ever wept and we were worried. Later in the day he got his razor and began to strap it, though he had no thought of shaving. We put his bed in our room so he would not be alone, but we were really alarmed at the way he acted for several days.

Later Mary married Ben Clay and went to Arizona to live. Harry had gone, so Father sold the farm and stock and everything we had and we went to Congress, Arizona, where I kept house for Charley, Father and Harry. Then Charley married and Father and I went to Los Angeles and lived at the Savoy Hotel, where now stands the Broadway Department Store. After a few months there funds were very low and I went to Jerome, Arizona, to work for my brother Ed and to live with Mary. Father stayed on in the city for years and when his money was gone his sons supported him.

To go back to our life in Congress, Arizona -- a gold mining camp -- where Charley had a butcher shop for years: He had a room with a bed in it at the shop and we rented and furnished a three-room house. The bedroom had twin beds where Father and Harry slept and my bed was in the front room. We furnished it quite nicely and were there nearly a year. We had a Sunday school there and I taught a class and played the organ, and sons minister would preach there about once a month. I had brought up in quite a strict way in our home, and dancing, card playing, etc., was not tolerated.

When my brother Charley married Kitty Harter we all went to Phoenix for the wedding and a 12-course dinner where 13 of us sat at table. At the big party they gave Charley and his bride they had a grand march and dancing. Of course I had to join in the march and I learned to waltz and during those few months there I went dancing occasionally. I did not feel altogether comfortable about it because of my training, but every one there did it and the Episcopal minister who preached there said it was perfectly all right. I became rather infatuated with a friend of Charley's--his name was McDougall--but for fear I might fall in love with him, as he drank some and went to bad houses. I prayed much that when I did fall in love it would be with a Christian and, no matter how hard it would have been with me, I would not have married anyone but a Christian. This man wrote deep words of regret when he found I was engaged to marry John Oliver.


Ben Clay, baby Ernest, Mary Tovrea Clay, and Dora Tovrea

To go back to Jerome ... I worked in a large meat and vegetable market for Tovrea and Clay and lived with Mary, Ben and baby Ernest. I was paid $30 per month as a cashier and paid Mary $10 per month to hire her washing and cleaning done. Sister Mary told me what a fine Methodist preacher was there, just one half block from her home. He had only been there two months when I went there to live. The first time I saw him he had on coveralls and a brown sweater and a cap, and I said, "Well, he doesn't look much like a preacher to me," (I had been used to our Presbyterian minister with his long black coat and a bible under his arm.) and Mary said, "Well, he sure can preach." I met him and told him I had my church letter from the Presbyterian Church at Burton Car Works in Wichita, Kansas, and that I would like to join his church. He seemed little interested but I went into the church and being the only young unmarried woman in the church I again stretched what talents I had and taught a Sunday School class, sang in the choir, played the organ occasionally, and superintended a Junior League.

Later in the year Mr. Oliver wanted to hold special meetings down in the Gulch so some one loaned him an empty house, some one an organ, others chairs, and he began his meetings, but as there was no other to play the organ, I went each night the half mile through a marvelous moonlight and helped in the meetings. Small wonder our courtship began there. We seemed to have very much in common and he courted me in my sister's home and we became engaged to be married. Of course I told him of my lack of education and that if we thought it would in any way hinder his work in the ministry, I could not marry or hinder his work, He said I had so much common sense and was so willing to study and learn, he felt I would be a great help to him, and during the years he has repeatedly said I had always been a great help to him in his work. We read many books together for many years, which was so helpful.

Editor's note: The "Letter to Darling Dora", Chapter 4, was written during this period. Reverend O. in Jerome, Dora in Oakland

My sister's husband, Ben Clay, sold out his business in Jerome, and she and Ernest and I went to Oakland, California, and Ben came a little later. While in Oakland I called on a lady whose daughter lived in Jerome and her son had just come home from the Klondike and seemed a nice fellow with plenty of money. He took me over to San Francisco for a day and we had a nice time, dinner, etc. He wanted me to attend Grand Opera, a thing I have never done (much to my regret), but I did not know that I should and I did not know the fellow very well, so I did not stay. Mary took a fever and was very sick. She was in pregnancy and lost her prospects and a few days she died. This was a terrible blow to me, for we were very near, and her little 16 months old boy called me mamma after the first day. After some telegraphing to brother Ed, we planned to take Mary's body to Phoenix for burial. Because of some delay in the messages we had to stay in Oakland a second day before starting. What a sad journey with Ben and Ernest and myself in the coach and the loved body in the baggage coach ahead.

Editor's note: The "Letter to My Darling", Chapter 5, was written during this period. Reverend O. in Jerome, Dora in Los Angeles

My father met us at the depot in Los Angeles and Mr. Oliver met me in Phoenix, and the funeral was held from Ed's home there. I went back to Jerome where Ben had two furnished rooms in his one house; where Mary and I had stayed a few days before leaving, and I kept Ernest there for about a month. But being unmarried and having my brother-in-law and sweetheart call to see me I knew I could not stay indefinitely as there is so much evil thought and talking in a small mining town, so then I took Ernest to his aunt's in Los Angeles, and I boarded with a friend in the city and got ready to be married. Ben had given me Mary's piano and the few things they had not sold.



John Oliver and I were married in the Methodist Church at San Pedro by Bishop J. W. Hamilton. Among those present were Frank McCarty (pastor of that church) and Grace Davenport. Only father and Ben and two lady friends were my special guests.

We took a taxi cab to Long Beach and the driver stopped at a saloon in San Pedro, so on the way to Long Beach through the fog he was doing some bad driving with the horses, so Frank had to get up on the driver's seat and help drive.

We stopped at the Del Mar Hotel in Long Beach on the oceanfront, a three story new hotel. We thought that we would go away the next morning so that they would not detect that we were newly wed, but when we came downstairs the morning paper with our pictures and the write up was tacked up on the office wall, so we stayed there two days, went on to San Diego four days, and to Mr. Sharp's farm out from Santa Ana for two days, then to Los Angeles where we stayed at the Hotel Savoy in the bridal chamber.

As it was near Easter, and as they did not have lilies in Jerome, my husband got a lot of calla lilies and paid the porter to care for them, and our Jerome church was beautiful with them for days.

We lived in a three-room parsonage next door to the church. The bedroom and kitchen had linoleum on the floors and the living room had a rug and was nicely furnished with the piano, a couch and rocking chair the church had given their pastor, including his desk.

We had some $50 in gifts and cut glass pieces and many nice gifts for our wedding. The church gave us a most lovely reception. We wore our wedding clothes and came in to the wedding march, original poems, songs, a lovely framed picture to the bride and a most elaborate and beautiful three-story bride's cake.

We enjoyed our pastoral work there very much indeed and had many happy and otherwise experiences there. There were 27 saloons to 2,800 persons; many immoral places, and much sin. My husband buried twelve murdered persons or suicides.

Before we left there, they said there was a fire in the mine and hundreds of folks left town. The church owed us $200, which we needed very much as it was near Conference and we were going to move and soon have an addition to the family. Mr. Oliver told them if they could raise half the amount we would let it go at that, but we made a special subject of prayer about it, and monies came in from unexpected sources and all was raised. I did not go to Conference and on the Monday a bartender's wife living just across the street invited me to her house for dinner. I tried to decline but she insisted and I went to a fine chicken dinner in her home. The man asked me to ask a blessing and it was as nice a time and visit as one could wish for.

Before we were married Mr. Oliver asked me to call on a woman who had attended our church some, and she had pledged on missions, and as she did not seem to have a very good reputation, he did not want to go, but as folks knew we were to be married, he felt that was all right. I went in the forenoon and this woman and a Chinaman were playing cards. Things did not look any too good to me, so I made my errand known (didn't get the money, tho) and went away. She had a lovely little boy who attended our Sunday school. I was telling my brother Charley, who lived in Congress, Arizona, about it and he said she had been living in Congress but had killed her husband (so people said) and she was living with this Chinaman. There was so much wickedness in this town, and women singers in the saloons. One night I heard a man with a beautiful voice singing "The Holy City" in a crowded saloon. It seemed blasphemous and that something dreadful might happen by such blasphemy, but it did not.

From Jerome we went to Williams, Arizona; a Saginaw lumber camp town. Jerome had been a copper mining town and Congress a gold mining town.

Our Conference was held at Flagstaff and the then mission Conference had a small group of preachers and they all decided to visit the Grand Canyon while they were so near. Bishop Joyce was the presiding bishop and his next appointment did not give him time to go to the Canyon and he said with much regret how sorry he was that now he felt he must forever give up the thought of the visit.

The pastor of Williams, Will Geyer, had gone to Kansas to get married and they thought he was to be their pastor again with his bride and they had fixed up the six-room parsonage very nicely for them, so when we were appointed there we had a very nice, clean, comfortable place to live.

I forgot to mention that at Jerome we met Jim and Bessie Berner and their son Leo. At the time Mr. Berner had a grocery store and his wife had a millinery store in the same building. During the years since they have lived at Azusa, California, they have visited us in every place we have lived. Mr. Berner died in December (I believe) of last year.

Our pastorate was pleasant and profitable at Williams. We had the only Protestant church there. We lived next door to Cap Smith, who owned the largest saloon in Williams. They were very good neighbors and he did not spend much time in the Fashion Saloon.

I played the organ or piano in our church a while, then Frank Schwentker, a very fine organist, came and said he had come there to die of tuberculosis, that the doctor had given him eleven months to live. The last I heard of him, after 35 years, he lived with his wife and children at Albuquerque, New Mexico. As we had prayed for some one to be sent to play for our church, we felt he was the answer to our prayers and certainly a providential guidance for him. On February 16, our first-born came to our home and brought much blessing. Dr. Mellick was the physician and Mrs. Rawlins, a widow (later Mrs. Machlebe of Anaheim), was the nurse. A fire that night burned seven saloons and brothels, two blocks from us. We had lots of snow and ice there, as it is a high elevation, and altho they had a large lake there that kept water for the company, water was scarce the first summer and the cattle would bawl for water and the deer would come into town and drink the water that came from the engine while standing there.

We were at Williams for two years.

Editor's note: I interrupt this biography at this point to maintain the chronology of these collected writings. The remainder takes up where this leaves off in Chapter 7 - Dora Lulu Tovrea, Part 2

             



Copyright © 2018 John Oliver II