Margaret Jane (Hopson) Kitts' memories of Indiana

Mamaw always looked forward to when her mother would fry chickens and make cakes and pies to take to the July 4^th picnic at Stylesville, IN, where everyone in the area gathered for food, games, fun and fellowship once year. It was at the Stylsville picnic that she and her sister Eliza spun the wheel to try to win a little stuffed poodle. Mamaw won the poodle, and Eliza won a wiry spider, but it was Mamaw who later dropped the spider onto the bald head of Uncle Pete when he was visiting their home. She ran out of the room laughing when it fell into his long, snowy beard and he began to dance around! Needless to say, she got into trouble for “doing that poor old man that way.”

In the photo, Mamaw (Margaret Jane Hopson Kitts) is on the back row on the left, with the “Princess Leah” buns and the big, black bows and plaid dress.

Margaret Jane (Hopson) Kitts' brother Greenlee

My mother's mother's family lived in Indiana for several years, but they eventually settled back near Washburn, TN, when Indiana began the practice of embalming the dead. My grandmother's father, William Hopson, wanted no part of that, and it wasn’t the norm yet in Tennessee! Mamaw said she was so sad and disgusted to come back to the hills, partly because she couldn’t stand up on the rough terrain and was constantly ruining her pretty stockings! She had also left behind a serious boyfriend, Gilbert Rhea, who was studying to become a doctor and wanted to come get her when he finished school.

Mamaw’s older brother Greenlee Hopson and his family continued to live in Indiana even after his parents and two sisters returned to Tennessee. Greenlee was a dapper young man who served as the local postman with his horse and buggy in his younger years.

Margaret Jane (Hopson) Kitts' school days

My grandmother, Margaret Jane (Hopson) Kitts (center of circle), was a delightful lady with a twinkle in her eyes. She enjoyed telling stories from her childhood, which was spent divided between Tennessee and Indiana. When she was quite small, her family moved to Indiana but came back to Tennessee for a while before her father, William Hopson, sold their Washburn farm and went to a rented farm in Indiana, where her father's sister America Melvina and her husband Eli Sevier Branson also lived and farmed in or near Jamestown.

There in Indiana, Mamaw enjoyed things like taking her doll on Saturdays and riding with her friend Ruth Woods and Ruth’s older brother Arthur in his car, the first in the area, to the town of Amo. Mamaw was always on the move and enjoyed going to church, school, etc., but a few of the services of town, such as peddlers and the physician Dr. Enoch Idle came to them by horse! Sometimes she would take a buggy and her mid-sized, feisty pony, Nell, and drive herself to town. It was that little mare’s colt that was later gored to death by their oxen Berry and Ben at her ill Uncle Jess Hopson’s home, when the community gathered there to get his wood in before winter after he’d had a stroke and was partially paralyzed.