(This account was written in 1976 by Willie’s oldest daughter, Nannie Ira Holder, and is a brief account of Willie’s youth.  Willie became the wife of Nannie Ira’s father, Young Henry Berry, on November 13, 1892. This story was first published, by permission of the author, in the book, "Our Berry Patch", pub. in 1982 by  W. Ross Berry (Nannie Ira’s nephew)).[Nannie Ira died, in Little Rock, AR on April 25, 1994, at age 99].  
                         *   *   *   *

Willie Evans was the most attractive one of Parson Evan’s family.  There had been born to Parson Asa Delosier Evans and Marcia Ann (Shannie) Whitaker Evans, two sons and four daughters.  Elvira was the eldest; then cane John and Nancy Alice (Nannie) - twins;  Willie Ruhamah, Edward Absalom, and finally, Emma May.  John died in infancy.
When "Shannie" died at age 34, in 1880, she left five children for Asa to raise.  Vira was about 14, Nannie 11, and Willie was 8 -- with Ed and Emma, about 6 and 2.  Of course the girls knew how to do lots of things.  Willie had read the entire Bible when she was 5, and could knit her wristlets and mittens (though she had trouble "heeling out" her stockings, she said.)
Asa had great love and patience with his children; but it was the lovely  intelligent Willie with her fair complexion, pixie face, dark eyes, and luxurious black curls, who seemed to respond to affection and teaching more than the others.
It was a hard life for the poor Methodist Circuit Rider when "Shannie" lived.  How much worse it was after her death, of "brain fever" (the doctor called it)!  The preacher’s pay was very small.  So he farmed, taught school, and taught "writing schools", to eke out a living.
The Evans family lived north of  Scatterville, Clay County, Arkansas, in the Liberty Hill Community.  This was where other relatives had settled, including the Whitakers, Hills, Simmons, and Crews, after coming to Arkansas from Tennessee in 1856.  Three of the Whitaker girls married Hill brothers, and Aunt Pet and Uncle Tom lived near enough to the Evans’ that Aunt Pet often helped Willie with housework, cooking and laundry; while the older girls helped Pa in the field, and helped with the wood-cutting.
Vira and Willie had their mother’s looks.  Vira’s hair was straight like her Ma’s.  Willie had one draw-back; her left eye turned inward.  Her eye straightened when she was in her early teens, though disuse caused blindness in that eye.  Blandfaced Nannie with pale hair and blue eyes, a pudgy little girl, would secretly laugh and say to herself, "Goody - goody", when she’d hear people say, "Willie is such a pretty child.  Too bad her eyes are crossed." "No one ever said Nannie was pretty", she said.
Asa married as soon as he could find a suitable mate.  Even though he was very poor and had five children, he was well educated (for his time and place), and was such a good man (though not much of a farmer), that he had plenty of ladies from which to choose.  His choice was Cordelia Cannon Pickens Myers, a cute little childless widow, about 33 years old.
The Evans family grew: Along came John Delosier (Asa’s first "John" was dead), James Archibald, and Hampton (called "Hampie", who died in his first year).  Asa was sent to verious circuits to preach, in Greene County and Clay County, Arkansas, and later to Missouri.  Vira had married Bud Lamb (a widower with five children), in Greene County, south of Rector.  She had an infant son, and she died shortly after he was born.  The little boy was taken to Missouri by Willie, who’d helped Vira when the baby was born, and for some time afterward.  However, loving care by the Evans’ failed to save the baby’s life.  It’s buried near Malden, Missouri.
Willie had many "would-be" suitors before her "Pa" went to Missouri (not far from Campbell, MO.), but she wasn’t interested in them, except as friends.  The same was true when she moved to Missouri.  Even though she had done an exceptional thing by having her extremely long, heavy black hair shingled like a man’s while she stayed with Vira.  (It was the style in that part of the country, not more than 50 or 60 miles from Campbell, but half a world away in style).  The hair was soon curling against her neck and long enough to be primly pinned up into a bun atop her head.  She dated a few young men, among them Omar Throgmorton, whose father, with three dead wives and four living children, was looking for a new wife.  His father had a nice country home with acres of land, was well situated, and had a fine reputation.  A sister lived in his home and cared for the family: Omar, 18; Percy, Effie and Myrtle, age 2.
Now, Willie was a very religious girl who had been brought up with a sense of high morals.  Her aim was to wed a man of good character and high ideals, such as she had seen in her father.  So, when Whitfield (Whit) Throgmorton, Omar’s father, began to notice Willie -- young, good, nice looking, intelligent, strong, kind (to her step-mother and sisters, and brothers), Willie looked back.
The Evans family was sent back to Arkansas, but Whit Throgmorton persisted in his courtship, so that he and Willie were wed on December 15, 1891 at the Evans home near Pleasant Grove Church, west of Rector, Arkansas.  Willie was 20, while Whit was 44.
Three months of happiness followed until Whit contracted pneumonia and died on February 15, 1892.  He was buried at the Clarkton, Missouri cemetery.   (The house that Willie and Whit occupied was still standing a few years ago).  The children went to live with relatives, except for little Myrtie who lived with her dear "Mama Willie" until the time came that Willie married Y.H. Berry, on November 13, 1892. *   *   *   *   *   *   

       Biography of Willie Evans Throgmorton Berry - Part 2
                         "MAMA BERRY"
                      by W. Ross Berry
                       *   *   *   *   *
     [A little more about Willie, my paternal grandmother]

Willie Ruhamah (sometimes spelled Rhuamah or Ruamah), the daughter of "Parson" Asa Delosier Evans and Marcia Ann Whitaker, was born in Greene County, Arkansas, on July 13, 1871.  (That area has been a part of Clay County, since 1873)
At age 20 she married a widower by the name of Whit Throgmorton.  She had only been married about 3 months when he died.  She had no children by him but took his youngest child to her parents home in Arkansas, to care for it there.
While there, in 1892, she started receiving letters from Young Henry Berry of Buffalo Gap, Texas.  He was a former Rector, Arkansas resident, but had been living in Texas for several months.  In one of these letters he proposed marriage to her, and in that same year, he and his youngest child Nola, made the train trip from Texas, and the couple were married there in Rector.  Willie was 21 years of age, and Henry (also called Y.H.), was 44.
Willie went back to Texas with Henry and became the new mother of Nola and her brother Mack, and her sister Alice.  The Berrys were farmers as most people were in those times.  Between the laying by of the crops and the time of the harvest, her husband would sometimes transport box-car-loads of speckled ponies to Arkansas and Tennessee for the purpose of selling them.  While he was away on one of those trips, she went into labor, due to a fall, and gave birth to twins, prematurely.  Before a doctor or a midwife could arrive, the babies were born and died.
After many years in Taylor and Jones Counties, in Texas, the family moved back to Rector, Arkansas, in about 1904.  They lived in many different homes after that, mostly in the Rector area.
It was Willie who first became interested in the scriptural studies and sermons of the man known as Pastor Charles Taze Russell.  Between August and September of 1904 the Berry family went to West Tennessee to visit kinsfolk, there.  While staying at the home of Young Henry’s sister, Mattie Berry Craig, Willie saw her first copy of the religious magazine, "Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence". (Lucretia Craig, Mattie’s mother-in-law lived there in the Craig home, and she was interested in the teachings of Pastor Russell, so this was probably her magazine).  
Willie liked what she read in that magazine, recognizing that it had the ring of truth.  Everything seemed logical, and had scriptural backing, which was to her liking.  But, it would be several years before Willie would see anymore literature of that kind.  This occurred about 1913 when her step-daughter, Nola Berry Reid, back in Texas, sent her and Young Henry a copy of a book by Pastor Russell, called "The Divine Plan of the Ages" (part of the "Studies in the Scriptures" series).  Willie really liked the book and became engrossed in it.
Young Henry noticed tears welling up in Willie’s eyes as she read the book, and began to get worried about her.  He called their 18-year-old daughter, Ira, to ask her to get Willie’s mind on something else.  So, Ira baked a cake and took it to her mother, saying, "Look what I’ve made for you, Mama.  Now put that book down, quit crying, and be happy!"
Willie replied, "Ira, you don’t understand.  I’m not crying because I’m sad.  I’m crying because the things I read in this book make me happy!"
Sometime later, Young Henry became interested in the book and he and Willie would study it along with the Bible.  They enjoyed reading the book and talking about it.  Then they started talking to their neighbors and relatives about the things they were learning.  It became common knowledge in the community that they had renounced their former religion for this "strange" belief, which was known by many as "Russellites", and by others as "Millennial Dawners".  They were baptized in 1920, in Jonesboro, Arkansas as "Bible Students" (this was the name of the organization that is now called "Jehovah’s Witnesses").  Both Y.H. and Willie believed that they were part of the heavenly class (those who will reign with Jesus Christ in the heavenly Kingdom).  They partook of the bread and wine annually each spring at special meetings that were held in Jonesboro, Arkansas.  Before Y.H. died in 1925 he always held to that belief.  Willie, on the other hand, learned, in 1935, that there will be a "great multitude" of God’s people who will live on a Paradise earth, and will not go to heaven.  So, she stopped partaking of the bread and wine, and professed an earthly hope.  (I still think that I remember her partaking of the bread and wine, however, a few years before her death - but I may be wrong.  I was just a child, but I attended a celebration of the Lord’s Supper with her and have always believed that she partook - but my parents have said I was mistaken.)
In January of 1929, Willie and her two youngest children, teen-agers, Vivian and Mary, moved to Pontiac, Michigan, to live for awhile with Willie’s sons, Ted and Louie, who had good jobs there.  Soon she ordered cases of books and Bibles from the Watch Tower Society, in Brooklyn, N.Y., and she and the girls (and sometimes Ted), went door to door in the city of Pontiac, to distribute these, and to talk to interested persons about Jehovah’s purpose to bless people of the earth through his son Jesus Christ and his Kingdom.  It is believed that she was the first one of Jehovah’s Witnesses to do such door to door preaching work in Pontiac (unless there had been some from the Detroit congregation who had done so occasionally, prior to this).  At that time there was no congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Pontiac, and the closest meeting place was on Alexandrine Street in Detroit.
After the economic slump of 1929, which led up to the Great Depression, many of the Berry family, who had been working in Michigan, went back to Arkansas, including Willie and her daughters.  They settled near Leachville, Mississippi County, Arkansas, and lived there several years.  Mary and Vivian got married there and she resided with them and their families.
Willie died of cancer, on March 2, 1945, at the home of her daughter Mary (Berry) Laffoon near Paragould, Greene County, Arkansas.  She was buried next to her husband Y.H. Berry, in the Mitchell Cemetery at Greenway, Clay County, Arkansas, after a funeral conducted by one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.  The funeral service was at the Irby Funeral Home in Rector.
Willie Ruhamah Berry died with the hope of coming back in the Resurrection to live on a Paradise earth.  She believed she would come back to life in a body of flesh and blood, to live in perfect health, everlastingly.  She believed that on awakening, she would be able to be with her loved ones once again.  She based her hope on her many years of intensive Bible study.
I remember Mama Berry as being a very spiritual woman.  When I was a little child,  she would visit at our home near Marmaduke, Arkansas, and she would take me on her lap and tell me Bible stories.  I enjoyed hearing her tell the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, and would have her tell me that story over and over.
Willie used to help her children pick cotton in their fields, right up until she was just too ill to do so.  On returning from the fields, at the end of each day, she would ride atop the wagon,  piled high with cotton, along with grandchildren and other cotton-pickers, leading all in the singing of songs, particularly songs of praise.  I recall that when I was age 6 or 7, that I enjoyed riding on one of those loads of cotton, and hearing her sing the song that goes: "To the work, to the work, o ye servants of God",  I couldn’t understand why she sang "to the work", when we were going home, from the work.
Nannie Ira Berry Holder told me more about Willie, in a letter she wrote me, dated July 14, 1976:  "She had a deep love for her family, and a deep sympathy for children whose mothers were dead, and a kind feeling for the father of those kids (remembering her childhood).  In addition to being intelligent, good, sympathetic , -- Mama Berry was gifted in sewing, all kinds of housework, gardening, flower raising, etc.  Then too, she was a wonderful nurse.  I have never known anyone as intelligent as your grandma Berry.  She had a wonderful voice.  I wish I had copied down her reservoir of songs and poems.  ‘Twould be a collector’s delight".
"I guess you get the idea that Willie Ruhamah Berry was something special.  She was!  She was continually searching the scriptures and living by God’s precepts as much as she could.  Your grandpa Berry was a remarkable man; but his standards were not as high as your grandmother’s."
                        *   *   *   *   *

Return to Authors Showcase

Berry Family Stories and Poems