52 Ancestors: My Mother Mary Margaret

This post is part of the 52 Ancestors Series.
While I had the time this evening I decided to go ahead and post my 52 Ancestors entry for this week. I usually do not make the post until Wednesday but decided to go ahead and post early this week since I was behind a bit last week.
 Today I am going to share some stories with you about my Mother. I am fortunate enough by the way to still have her with me. She celebrated her 82nd Birthday last November.
My mother was the youngest of ten children born to Grover Cleveland ESTERLINE and Cora Mae WILKEY. She was born in Manila in Mississippi County, Arkansas. Mother was very poor and was actually born in a Barn. They lived in a little cabin with a dirt floor on the ditch banks near Craighead County in Arkansas. She walked barefooted across the foot log for miles to the little one room school house which she attended. Her parents divorced when she was about three years old and both remarried. Grandma later moved to Gideon, Missouri. Momma attended school there in Gideon for a time as well.Her youth was spent traveling with her mother and married siblings as they followed the fruit harvest, even leaving Missouri for a time and going to Michigan, where she talked about seeing the Straits of Mackinac. Momma was raised as poor as Jobs old Turkey and her family was about as country as country could be. They had terms known only to folks in the Deep South and so you can imagine when she was up North in Michigan and visited a Candy Store for the first time what happened. She saw her favorite chocolate candy and so she marched up to the counter and asked for some  Nigger Toes. The lady stood aghast and said: "Hon, we don't call them that here, we call them Chocolate Drops"  Momma looked kind of puzzled, not realizing she had said anything wrong.
Momma doesn't like to talk about her past much because she had such a hard life and her mother did what she had to do to make ends meet to care for her children. It did not always create the best environment for a child but somehow she made it work. She will tell me stories of her childhood with a noted disdain in her tone at times.
She told a story about how she went to school one day and there was this boy named: Ikie Davis. He was a mean onery little cuss to hear her tell it. She said one day he did something that she did not like so on the way home from school she found this big bolder and she took her pencil and wrote in very big letters for the world to see: Ikie Davis is a Horses A$$. You can imagine her surprise when she walked up to the school the next morning, there stood the teacher along with Ikie Davis and you guessed it, that big Boulder! He and some more boys had rolled it up to the school yard and of course momma got a whipping for having written what she did on that rock.

Momma married for the first time at the tender age of 13 years. Their marriage lasted all of 1 month, she cried and wanted to go back home to her momma.
It wasn`t long after that until she married for the second time at the age of 16. That marriage lasted a little over a year before ending in Divorce. She met my Father in 1950 and they were married on the 2nd of December, 1950.
Mom and Dad had five children, three girls and two boys. Mom has always been a hard worker. She loves her home and takes pride in its appearance.  She has always been a very loving and empathetic and devoted Mother. She loves her children and her Grandchildren very much. She has not only been my Mother but my Friend throughout my lifetime.

Myself, My Grandmother, My Mother

People always say that My mother and I favor so I thought I would close this post with a Collage for Comparison. Until next week, I hope you are enjoying learning about my family, through my eyes!