“Lillie and the children were still in bed when Will came rushing into the log home, ‘Fire.’ She grabbed the baby and he carried the little girls out just as the ceiling fell on their bed. There was no water system, so it was soon all gone but a few logs. They made a small room out of these logs, shingled it and moved in before winter.” In time the family grew to 9 children, but it would have been more. Two babies died very young, and one daughter, Birdie, died as a young adult. Each loss was painful. Will worked hard. He was kind and loving, singing with Lillie, playing mouth organs with the boys, whistling while he drove horses, thrashed and sacked wheat. Will was generous when he sold his vegetables, and always had time to wrestle with the boys, and play with the children. “Prayers were always said at the table, everyone on their knees by the chairs that had been turned with their backs toward the table… Lillie… taught the parents class in Sunday School.” She worked hard, loved her family, but had her trials. When baby Blanch died, Lillie wrote, “For a long time, I went around trying to do my work and care for the family, but my heart was broken. With the help of the Lord, I overcame it all, and one morning, as I went to the creek to get a pail of water, the gloom seemed lifted and everything seemed to put on a new life. Those beautiful mountains on the west seemed to be so near and the blue sky overhead. I said to myself, ‘You foolish woman, Look up and thank God for all this beauty that you have been so blind to all these days…’ From then on, things seemed to be more to live for.” Lillie outlived her husband by 40 years. Her son said that her beauty was the kind “that emanates from heart to heart and affects the fiber of each and everyone…”

(Adapted by Ken Hardman from, William Wallace & Annie Lillie Clark Walker Book of Remembrance: Their Life, Their Family and Their Story, compiled in 1985 by Dorothy Hardman, granddaughter. Some excerpts from Lillie’s autobiography) #AncestorClips