Cousin Cecil

 My grandfather Marshall Jackson and his cousin Cecil Ashcraft lived parallel lives. Their mothers were sisters, their fathers were brothers, and both couples married at about the same time. Marshall and Cecil were both first-born sons, born just 6 weeks apart, and they both had just one sister, in both cases 8-10 years younger. Their families were farmers in Western Kentucky, just as they had been for generations. It’s easy to imagine – possibly too easy – that Marshall and Cecil’s lives would have played out similarly, had it not been for the one inescapable What If? difference in their lives: Marshall’s father died when Marshall was still an infant.

Wickliffe High School Sophomore Class of 1920
Cecil Ashcraft is in there somewhere.

Because of all this, I find Cecil Ashcraft pretty interesting. I know very little about him or his life, but I thought I would record what little I do know.

William Cecil Ashcraft was born September 17th, 1900 to William Samuel Ashcraft and Dora Belle Simons Ashcraft. Both father and son went by their middle names, and in fact my Mom wrote that Sam was also known as Bully. Sam and Belle were married in 1899, when Sam was about 24 and Belle was about 15. In 1900 they were working a farm near their parents, living with a black 22-year-old farmhand named James Hawkins.

Cecil’s sister Eunice was born eight years later. In the 1910 Census they were all still living on the farm. James Hawkins was gone, but Sam’s youngest brother Jessie was now living with them.

Cecil and Marshall were both just a little too young to be subject to the draft for World War I. Their uncle Kees Simons was just 6 years older and was indeed drafted, although he never shipped off to Europe.

The Ashcraft family actually shows up twice in the 1920 Census. The first entry was recorded January 3rd, and it finds the family living on a farm apparently owned outright by Sam and Belle, just East of Wickliffe. But on the January 16th the family is living in a rented house in the town of Wickliffe, and Sam is recorded as working on someone else's farm rather than his own. I'm not sure what to make of that, but all the other information is the same.

In both entries, nineteen year old Cecil is living at home, and was still in school. That's confirmed by the Wickliffe High School yearbook for 1920, which counts Cecil among the sophomores. Obviously he's a little old to be a sophomore, but I get it, life happens. It's possibly worth noting that later census entries record this, the second year of high school, as the highest grade of school Cecil completed.

Lexington Herald-Leader, August 21, 1923

The next we hear from Cecil is a newspaper report from 1923. Apparently Cecil had just picked up a car from the shop when it locked up, inconveniently, on a railroad crossing just as the train was coming. Everyone escaped but the car was smithereened. I'm not the suspicious type, but it seems like there's more to that story.

Paducah Sun-Democrat, June 20, 1923

Speaking of partial stories, at around this same time the newspaper reported that Cecil's father Sam shot someone named Andy Armstrong across the river in Bird's Point, Missouri. That area is known for its duck hunting so it seems most likely that it was a hunting accident, but I have found no further articles.

Paducah Sun-Democrat, August 30, 1924

Paducah News-Democrat, September 10, 1925

The next two years, local newspapers reported that Cecil was leaving for Bowling Green, about 175 miles East, to enter Western Kentucky State Normal School. It's now known as Western Kentucky University, so I guess it's no longer normal.

My mother wrote that Cecil went to college on a baseball scholarship. He was by this time 23 or 24, and later would report that he never finished high school, let alone any college. So I'm not sure how the mechanics of all this worked out. Possibly it's significant that both articles say that Cecil will "enter" the college, as opposed to return to it. Around this same period, my grandfather Marshall was spending some time playing semi-pro baseball for $15 a game, somewhere "down south" of Chicago. Clearly an aptitude for baseball was another thing these cousins shared.

Cecil's baseball career was short-lived, possibly due to injury according to my mom. Soon enough he was back in Ballard County. By 1927 it was time for the cousins to settle down. In June of that year Marshall married my grandmother Helen Greenock, and then in December Cecil married Fannie Mae Chamness. Cecil and Fannie Mae split up shortly afterward.

In the 1930 Census, Cecil was divorced and once again living with his parents. He was working on the family farm, and somewhat inexplicably the 29-year-old reported that he had attended school in the previous 12 months.

In 1932 Cecil married 21-year-old Lorene "Tris" Tanner. They had two daughters, Cecile and Charlotte, similar in age to Marshall's girls.

Paducah Sun-Democrat, November 6, 1935

Paducah Sun-Democrat, November 20, 1935

My mom wrote that Cecil probably made better money as a moonshiner than as a farmer. In 1935 he got caught. Prohibition had been repealed a few years earlier, but then as now liquor was heavily regulated and taxed, and of course these boys weren't paying taxes. Cecil was charged along with his brother-in-law Mills Dusch, Tris' second cousin Frank Tanner, and 21-year-old Nathaniel Rice. Cecil and Frank pled guilty. The article says that Mills and Nathaniel were acquitted by a jury, so there must have been a trial; maybe Cecil and Frank should have held out. According to Cecil's daughter Cecile, after this conviction Cecil was unable to own property in his own name. Aside from the stigma of a felony conviction, I'm not sure why that would be.

Frank Tanner came to a sad end. A few years after these events, while Cecil was filling the radiator of his car and Frank was sitting nearby, Frank shot himself.

To hide the cash he made from his still, Cecil apparently buried it in jars down by the river. At some point he dug up some jars and found that the bills had been partly eaten by worms! The bank replaced the damaged bills, no questions asked.

Cecil and Tris' farm was in an area called Barlow Bottoms, on the banks of the Ohio River just before it merges with the Mississippi River. I don't know precisely where they lived, but it sounds like it may have been similar to this property. That listing says that there's some land suitable for planting, but that the whole thing floods when the Ohio hits 36 feet at Cairo. Is that a lot? Well, as it happens it's at 36 feet today, according to weather.gov. In each of the last few years the crests have been at least 47 feet.

It should come as no surprise that the Ashcraft house was built on stilts. My mom says that her family used to spend practically every vacation with the Ashcrafts, having fun on the farm:

What fun. The swing was from the rafters of the main floor.  There were chickens under the house.  We got to ride on horse drawn wagons and swim in the ole’ Mississippi (the Mississipi and Ohio Rivers converged right around this area).  My cousin Cecile Ashcraft reminded me that when we were eightish, she told my sisters and I that our family name was really Ashcraft - and we cried!  She said she got a whipping from her Daddy for telling, because my Dad either didn't know or wouldn't admit to this!  We also cried when we found out that milk came from cows.  That one I can understand!

In the 1940 Census, taken during this period, the Ashcrafts are living with a hired-hand named Roy Rice, an older brother of moonshining partner Nathaniel Rice. As it turns out, my mother remembered him:

Cecil farmed at the river bottom for many years.  He underwent quite a bit of surgery and sold off farm equipment, etc. to pay those bills.  We recall his having a guy named Bad (or Bat) Eye working for him. Bad Eye (Roy Rice) took a shine to my sister Jeanne, and even wrote her while he served in WWII.  He was quite the drinker, and was eventually killed while he sat on a railroad train track, dead drunk!

In 1940 Roy was 30 and Jeanne was not yet 10, so that's uncomfortable. A newspaper article from 1947 confirms his end, although it politely suggests he was "asleep apparently".

Considering how closely they were related, I wonder whether Cecil and Marshall looked alike. I have lots of photos of distant relatives, but unfortunately none of Cecil. In 1942 both men had to describe themselves a little while registering for the draft, so we find that they're both around 5'-8", with ruddy skin. They both have light-colored eyes and dark-colored hair. Marshall weighs 158 pounds, but Cecil's about 25 pounds heavier. Not a lot to go on.

Left to right: My mom, some kid, and Marshall Jackson.
Visiting Marshall's family in Kentucky, 1958.

I don't know anything else about Cecil and Tris. They both lived long lives, dying within a year of each other in the late 1980s. But they stayed out of the papers and my mom wrote nothing else, so for the latter halves of their lives I have nothing to report.

Marshall Jackson's father died when he was an infant. His mother remarried, but she married someone from elsewhere, and ended up moving with him to Chicago. Cecil and almost all of Marshall's other cousins lived their lives in Ballard County, as did most of the following generation, before modern mobility made that kind of continuity less common. So I think that Cecil's life may give hints of what Marshall's story might have been, had he lived as an Ashcraft and not a Jackson.