Rawlins, Lucretia”Creasy”(Fruit)Gill

Name: Rawlins, Lucretia”Creasy” (Fruit) Gill
Burial Date: 1931, 01/02
Age at Death: 92
Plot Location: CS 03-01
Notes: wife of Walter R /Donny

(sold at 5 yrs. old to be a slave) Fruit was a last name given to her by owner.

Marriage performed by Rev Henry Lightfoot

3 Jul 1892

Jetmore, Hodgeman County, Kansas

Marriage Service of Donny Gilly and Lucretia Rolllns was performed by Rev Henry Lightfoot (he changed his name back to his Native American name that he had before slavery). U S Census records show him as “Tandy” with his family..

Phyl Currie

Phyl Currie originally shared this on 14 Nov 2008

Source: originally submitted to “Kern and Mason Family Tree,” by owner, phyl_c.

http://o.mfcreative.com/f1/file06/objects/2/1/7/6217c917-f994-4467-80f8-1e1abe763289-0.jpg

“The Egg Lady”

Lucretia Rawlins Gill

   The connecting link between the Rawlins, Kern, Crooms and Guiterrez cousins of Kansas begins in Pembroke (sic Pembrooke) Kentucky after the Civil War. The direct connection is embodied in the personage of Lucretia Rawlins Gill, better known as “Creazy” or “Gramma Gill.” Lucretia married Donnie Gill following the death of her first husband Jim Rawlins.

The Rawlins, Tandy and Birney families from Kentucky were friends and frequently shared the same housing enroute to and in Kansas. The Rawlins – Jim and Creazy – moved with the Andrew Jackson Tandys (Mary Jane) who were the parents of Dorothy Tandy Kern, to Newton, Kansas. The Rawlins later moved on to Jetmore, Kansas and homesteaded there. The original deed for acquisition of the land is in the possession of Carl Levi Kern I, and was recently on display at the University of New Mexico. The homestead was sold after many years when one of Lucretia’s children, Emma Rawlins Crooms, died and the property was old in a division of the estate.

Lucretia Rawlins Gill was a builder and there are photos extant of one of the sod shanties she constructed with prairie grass growing from the roof. The fold-up door key to that shanty is in the possession, this date, of Carl L. Kern I, the oldest living member of Rawlins-Kern family.

It is definitely established from stories and bits of conversation that Lucretia Rawlins had with her descendants that she was born into slavery and that her father was an Indian. Because she was a slender child, she was assigned to work inside the “big house.” At least one artifact from the “big house” remains in the family. It is an emerald green dish, footed and with a saw-tooth edge. The feet of the bowl and the edges are heavily encrusted with 24 karat gold. The dish was given to great granddaughter Charlotte who asked for it and she has given it to her niece Phyllis Kern of Albuquerque, New Mexico, who retains possession of the bowl.

In the course of Lucretia’s work at the “big house,” she overheard many conversations about the ending of the Civil War and the freedom from slavery. Lucretia repeated the information to the slaves in their quarters and upon discovery was beaten for revealing this advance information. Diane Kern Hardeman remembers Gramma Gill’s stories of beaten slaves having salt poured into open wounds. Lucretia was about twelve years of age when the War finally ended. She also regaled her great grandchildren with stories of the sounds of the guns at the Battle of Lexington. (Lexington, Ky.)

Creazy and Jim Rawlins, with their children Walter and Mary Elizabeth, set out for the journey for Kansas after the Civil War. Mary was born Nov 18 in 1880 and died January 8, 1955. Creazy would have two other surviving children, Emma and Benjamin, who were born in Spearville, Kansas. From newly acquired information, we have learned that the Tandy, Rawlins contingent became stranded financially in St. Louis, Mo. Distant relatives in St. Louis have indicated that this group of Tandys were able to continue westward through the efforts of a relative, Captain Charlton Tandy of St. Louis, who despite the price on his head for his political activities, went to the President of the United States and requested $10,000 for the families to migrate on to Kansas.

A statue of Capt. Tandy stands in the park in St. Louis, Mo. We know for certain from his descendants that he was a humanitarian on behalf of many colored families as well as his own. Branches of this family are located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, St. Louis, Mo., New York, N.Y. and Atlanta, Ga.

Creazy and Jim’s daughter, Mary Elizabeth, grew to young womanhood and married J. Levi Kern in 1896. John Levi had the distinction of being the first child born in Peace, later renamed Sterling, in Rice County, Kansas. From this marriage, two sons were born – Carl Levi and Donald Emil – both were born in the frontier Kansas town in Rice County.

Mary Elizabeth’s younger brother, Benjamin, married Pearl Walton and before her untimely death in childbirth had three sons, John, Edward and Raylord. Benjamin would later remarry and take Leona Martin as his wife. She was from St. John, Kansas, fifty miles southwest of Sterling. From this marriage another 10 children survived.

Lucretia’s son Walter produced a daughter, Amy, whose family contributed the Guiterrez branch of the family.

Lucretia’s youngest child, Emma, married Kavanaugh Crooms and they produced one child, Kavanaugh Crooms “Junior,” Jr. who now resides in Portland, Oregon. At the close of Emma’s life she was living with her family in Minneapolis, Minn. In the records of Carl L. Kern I, are newspaper accounts of how Mary Elizabeth Rawlins Kern traveled to Minnesota to bring her sister, Emma, back to Kansas and of the subsequent death of Emma to diabetes.

The materials thus far discussed are verifiable through public documents and other records and from oral history of the living members of the family. The impressions of the woman, Lucretia Rawlins Gill, are from the memories of five of the Kern great grandchildren whom she frequently baby-sat when Dorothy Tandy Kern, who is the wife of Carl L. Kern I, went to work serving parties with his mother, Mary Kern, and later as a self-employed cateress.

“Gramma Gill’s” house was between the Carl Kern house of South Street and the Ben Rawlins house. It was a rented weatherbeaten grey place. We had to cross behind her house to go to the Rawlins kids’ house to join up to walk to school and Sunday School. Gramma had chickens and she sold eggs. One of her old hens was a terror and would chase Carl and Dorothy’s son, Phillip, who insisted on always having a piece of bread in each hand. Usually the old hen, named Miss Hickey, won and Phil would stand sobbing in Gramma Gill’s yard while the old hen ate his bread.

Diane Kern Hardeman recalls Gramma Gill’s “summer kitchen” as the place she cooked in during the summer to keep the other part of the house cool. The summer kitchen was also the repository for food staples and drying herbs. Creazy, like many slavery victims, was something of a “currandera” or healer with herbs and home remedies. A deep sliver of wood under Diane’s finger would only respond to removal when the old lady applied a poultice of bacon fat. She knew the various types of wild greens to pick and she would teach the children about Indian bread and how to get the long white tuberous root out of the ground.

Horehound plants grew around the house of Creazy Rawlins Gill and from these she made health preserving “horehound teas.” Lime caked gourds on the north side of her weathered plan house were used for drinking at the outside pump. She loved to make sugar cookies for the great grandchildren, but Gaylord, Ben’s youngest son from his first marriage, resented the little children hanging around and would order them to ‘get out’ or to ‘go home.’

Between the ‘summer kitchen’ and the three-room main house was a wood planking platform. Creazy Rawlins Gill would set on the ‘porch’ with a switch supplied by her great grandchildren and try to switch them as they ran across the ‘porch.’

Wild asparagus and currant bushes between the Gill house and the Kern house were the subject of correct identification for the great grandchildren. Carl L. II recalls that Gramma Gill always wore an apron over a long dress that swept the floor. Photos of the older woman, Lucretia Rawlins Gill, have been retained by her oldest grandson, Carl L. Kern I. A photo of the old woman holding little Kavanaugh Crooms, Jr. has recently been given to Junior Crooms.

Despite stories to the contrary, Creazy Gill was not a laundress for hire but sold eggs and chickens. Further income came from her daughter Mary E. Kern who loved to cook for customers and for herself. She would entertain visiting dignitaries and the dish-washing was performed by Creazy Gill and granddaughters Diane and Charlotte Kern. Mary was a famous caterer and she avoided doing dishes. Diane recalls that Gramma Gill used to say, “May (Mary) does not need to dirty all these dishes and pots and pans to prepare a meal.” Creazy went to her grave and never told “May” that Diane “Dan” broke one of the Kern crystal goblets. Dan buried the broken goblet behind the garage on Jefferson street. Hoping it would dissolve. Oddly the crystal set with one goblet missing was bequeathed to Dan when Mary Elizabeth Rawlins Kern died.

Creazy’s grandson Carl worked as a mechanic and would bring home the residue from a welding operating involving a carbide solution. This residue was milky-white and served as a white wash for interior of Gramma Gill’s chicken coop. It was always chickens and eggs that remind them of Gramma Gill. She made hard boiled eggs and mashed them up to feed her baby chicks, and great grandchildren. She also made hot scaled corn bread on top of the stove.

Cousin rivalry was at its height when the cousin, Donald E. Kern II came to visit in the summers. Donald and Carl, Jrs. did not want to be bothered with the younger Phil. The older boys pretended to drink dishwater and pretend it tasted good. They persuaded Phil to drink some. Diane was furious with the older boys and Don Jr. claims she peppered him with a B-B gun pellets in the belly. They do not record what Gramma Gill did to them.

Charlotte recalls the loss of Gramma Gill when she was eight years old. It was summer and hot. The body of the tired old woman was brought up to Mary and Levi’s home in a type of “wake.” The Kern grandchildren were not permitted to go to the funeral but spent time with the body. A curtain window of voile blew across the casket from an open window. The children believed the old woman was yet alive. They were terrified Gramma Gill was being buried alive despite the assurances of the adults.

Chalotte Kern Mock recalls Gramma Gill as the patient grandparent who listened while she would “read” to her from Gaylord’s old books in the house. Charlotte learned to actually read before going to school in this manner because of Creazy Rawlins Gill who quietly sat probably recalling green hills of Kentucky, the “big house,” her husbands, her children and the dusty land of Kansas and the golden wheat that grew around her. When she lay in the shiny brass spindled brass bed dying, Charlotte still read to her, but it is doubtful if she heard the babbling child as the edema of “dropsy” swelled her body. Her beautiful bed remains in the possession of the oldest Rawlins granddaughter, Cosa Mae Rawlins Vaughn, a shiny tribute to our connecting link.

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CK Mock

August 1986

 

Birth: 1841  Death: 1930
Age 86
Burial:
Sterling Cemetery
Sterling
Rice County
Kansas, USA
Plot: CS 03-01
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Created by: Lawcas
Record added: Mar 10, 2013
Find A Grave Memorial# 106452024