James Columbus BOOTHE
Sex: M
Birth: 24-SEP-1862
Death: 21-FEB-1941 in Bee Creek, Taney County, Missouri
Burial: Taney County, Missouri
Occupation: blacksmith

Father: James Madison BOOTHE b: 14-OCT-1839
Mother: Agnes C. RUSSEL b: 24-JAN-1843

Marriage 1 Sarah Rebecca MCGILL b: 9-JUN-1862

Children
Hettie Genettie BOOTHE b: 7-JUL-1882 in Missouri
John J. BOOTHE b: 1884
Margaret Caldona BOOTHE b: 1886
Agnes BOOTHE b: 1888
Joseph H. BOOTHE b: 1890
Synthia Rebecca BOOTHE b: 1893
Elizabeth BOOTHE b: 1897

Marriage 2 Hattie Middleton THURNBULL
Married: 1924
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HIS FATHER:
James Madison BOOTHE
Sex: M
Birth: 14-OCT-1839
Burial: Taney County, Missouri

Marriage 1 Agnes C. RUSSEL b: 24-JAN-1843

Children
Siegal BOOTHE b: 1860
James Columbus BOOTHE b: 24-SEP-1862
John Eldbridge BOOTHE b: 4-FEB-1865
Mary Elizabeth BOOTHE b: 31-JAN-1867
Martha Anna BOOTHE b: 4-NOV-1869
Joseph Gilbert BOOTHE b: 17-FEB-1872
Syntha Adaline BOOTHE b: 2-OCT-1878
Margaret C. BOOTHE b: 25-AUG-1880

Marriage 2 Syntha Louisa MCGILL b: 1-MAY-1853
Married: 2-NOV-1892 in Taney County, Missouri
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HIS MOTHER:
Agnes C. RUSSEL
Sex: F
Birth: 24-JAN-1843
Death: 24-DEC-1887 in Taney County, Missouri
Burial: Taney County, Missouri

Marriage 1 James Madison BOOTHE b: 14-OCT-1839

Children
Siegal BOOTHE b: 1860
James Columbus BOOTHE b: 24-SEP-1862
John Eldbridge BOOTHE b: 4-FEB-1865
Mary Elizabeth BOOTHE b: 31-JAN-1867
Martha Anna BOOTHE b: 4-NOV-1869
Joseph Gilbert BOOTHE b: 17-FEB-1872
Syntha Adaline BOOTHE b: 2-OCT-1878
Margaret C. BOOTHE b: 25-AUG-1880
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In Douglas Mahnke's 'Bright Glowed My Hills' he writes:
Lum had long been a friend of my parents and the old widower had agreed that during the school term I could live at his little farm place that stood only a mile from the school.
Lum's place became my winter haven. Far to the west, Fox Creek Mountain and Winding Stair Mountain reared their cedar and glade covered heights to shade our valley from the setting sun. From Fox Creek to the north and Bee Creek to the south this ridge came to a point in a gentle slope at the convergence of the two bright mountain streams. Here, at the foot of the mountain between these two streams, James Columbus Booth had homesteaded the acres that were my home place the first year of teaching.
Lum's little fields of fertile creek bottom land were in meadow and fenced with winding rails. Walnut, persimmon and haws edged the fields. Wild grapevines, left there for the birds and small wild animals, almost covered the fences. Off in the northwest corner of the little meadow was the Booth family buryin' ground.
The settlement was only a short distance away. Here a score of small buildings, mostly of logs and typical of the pioneer farms in the Ozarks, stood in scattered order. Early settlers had not had the means, the materials or the tools for building large houses and barns so they built a complex of small structures. As I had come down the long ridge to Lum's place, I first saw the house, a simple structure of unpainted pine lumber. Years had softened and mellowed the house into its quiet surroundings so paint would have been a garish sacrilege. Across the front of the house hung a long porch with shelves for storage, hooks for hanging saddles, scythes, and even red peppers and onions. There was a table for the water bucket and was pan (men folks always washed on the porch, winter and summer). In the front part of the house were two rooms one a dual living room and bedroom, the other a bedroom. Then, all across the back there was one large room which served as kitchen, dining room and all purpose storage room. In scattered array and fitting in to their proper and convenient places in the slope of the land, were the chicken house, a corn crib, a granary, the buggy shed, tool shed, hay barn and then, down in the bottom, a barn with hay and stalls for horses Prominent in the midst of this settlement was the blacksmith shop. Lum Booth's main interest, unless it was hi fiddle. Like all the other outbuildings, the shop was of logs and it had an old fashioned leather bellows. A walled in spring furnished water and a cellar, hewn out of cherty limestone was mounded over with wild honeysuckle. It lay like a huge box turtle just outside the kitchen door and a smokehouse stood nearby. I t was her on this little farm place that I learned to love Lum Booth, builder of all that was in sight.
Lum was about sixty years old at the time I moved into our little house on the crick. He was about five feet eight, well built and strong as an ox. His complexion was swarthy and his hair almost gray. He always wore a mustache, trimmed short, except for a little "drooping" at the corners of his mouth. He was quick of hand and equally quick of temper. A wonderful workman in his blacksmith shop, he often remarked, "I can make anything of wood or iron."
That he could surely do. Through his help Bee Creek School was to know basketball. From a little plan I drew for him, Lum took a discarded wagon tire and fashioned it into a splendid set of goals and were used for years on the outdoor basketball court we prepared that fall of 1920 at Bee Creek School.
Many times I watched him, always in complete control of the situation, shoe a wild, mean horse. From his forge and anvil, he made the shoes and the mastered the wild horse and nailed all four shoes in place. And I also watched as, with tender hands, he made a casket for a baby, using some of the red cedar lumber he kept stored in the loft of the shop. The cotton padding and the white lace were carefully and tenderly put in place with deft fingers.
All life was not dull work for James Columbus Booth. He was a musician. He had no musical training, but somewhere in his Irish and Scotch ancestry there must have been a harp or bagpipe player because Lum could truly make his old fiddle sing. He kept the instrument in a bleached white muslin floursack carefully laid in the bureau drawer. Inside the fiddle, he kept a set of rattles form a rattlesnake, "to help the tone," he explained.
His was a quietly peaceful yet lonely place there at the foot of fox Creek Mountain. At night only the singing of the waters of the two creeks, the distant baying of hounds or the cry of a night bird could be heard. On those nights, Lum would go to the old bureau and tenderly lift the old violin from its drawer and shake off its covering. A s he walked back to the living room, he would begin twisting the keys, bringing the fiddle into tune with his particular mood of that evening. Then sitting in a little straightback, homemade ash chair and without accompaniment he drew the horsehair bow across the strings. Humming or half singing, he played, keeping time by tapping the toes of one foot and the heel of the other. He alternated the tapping by the tune he was about to play; his repertoire including old favorites such as "Saddle Old Spike," "Old Joe Clark," "Cripple Creek," "Hell Among The Yearlin's," "Redwing," "Take Me Back to Mammy," "Fox and the Hounds," and many, many more.
Lum taught me to delight in fiddle tunes and to this day, my favorite music is good oldtime Ozark fiddling. As I listen by radio to some of the real mountain music from Nashville, I am taken back forty years to that little house at the foot of Fox Creek Mountain listening to Lum and his fiddle. I can see the heater, and Lum, patting heel and toe and playing and singing; "Take me home to Mammy; Oh, Take me home to Mammy' Oh, fer I'm too young to marry".
As I became better acquainted with Lum Booth, I began to learn his philosophy of life through the stories he told and the good advice offered to a young school teacher with little worldly experience.
As my first school term progressed that autumn Lum and I were invited to nearby homes for "play parties" and square dances. Lum was always in demand, for his fame as a fiddler was well "norrated" in the community.
Lum and I, going to the dances, used safe and economical transportation. He had a little bay saddle mare and a long eared fox trotting mule. Lum mounted on the mare and with the precious fiddle under his arm, led the way over dim mountain trails and through swift streams. I followed at a good trot on the mule. It mattered not how cold the weather, every week we rode off to some mountain cabin for a play party or square dance.
These gathering provided good entertainment, and entire families attended, little children and all. The children, when they grew sleepy, stretched out on the large beds in the back bedroom and I have seen a score of them sleeping on these occasions while their mothers and fathers danced into the small hours of the morning. There were no baby sitters in those days.
There were some places where Lum did not like to go giving as his reason that the crowd was "too rough" or that those holding the dance were not of good name. Once when Lum learned that I had been going to of these "off limits" dances he reprimanded me. It happened one morning after I had been to one of the mildly wild dances across the Arkansas border, he let me have it as we sat drinking our strong, black morning coffee. "Now ye do as ye like, young man, fer I ain't here to say anything about your comin' and goin' but, if I wuz you. I'd not go over there no more, fer that bunch sure air ornery."
Lum gave his little speech time to soak in and then, with a twinkle in his bright blue eyes, he added: "Don't never have nothing' to do with nobody that is any ornerier than you air."
That ended the one sided conversation but it always stuck with me as about as good a piece of advice as I ever received, or lesson learned in high school, college, or even in church.
At another time, Lum and I were sitting on his front porch and talking, trying to make the best of an unhappy situation that had arisen. Lum told me a story to illustrate that there is always some good to be found in almost any situation:
"Now take Uncle Dave Smith fer instance, the time he got down to Harrison and they put him in jail for a week for bein' drunk. Now that wuz pretty shameful fer Uncle Dave, him bein' respected citizen of Bee Creek. Well, weuns all wondered what he would have to say fer hisself when he finally got home. A bunch of us wuz settin' on Crump's store porch at Lowry, just a loafin' the time away, and we looked down the road and here come Uncle Dave, afoot. Well, he walked up and weuns spoke as though nothin' had happened. Then one of the more outspoken of the loafers says, 'Uncle Dave, how did ye like it down to Harrison in that jail?' Uncle Dave didn't bat an eye, jest held his head high as he replied, 'Well, actually I didn't mind it so bad down there, fellers, they had such good strong coffee, and lots of it."
On one occasion Lum was telling me how difficult it was to get ahead of any of the hill people, although they were not educated. He remarked, "Even the half witted ones are naturally smart."
"One time," Lum said, "I had a half witted boy workin' fer me, helpin' with the summer plowin' and other chores. The poor feller couldn't tell his right hand from his left, but he wuz hard to head off. We were usin' the little mules fer plowin' the corn, and at night we'd feed them corn and then turn them out to graze to fill up on the grass. One of these critters wuz real ornery and wouldn't let us catch him the next mornin'. So we strapped a little short piece of chain to his front foot every night so he wouldn't run the next mornin' when we wanted to catch him. To keep the strap from chaffin' his ankle and getting' sore in the dew, we'd strap the cahin first on one foot and then 'tother. On evenin' after supper and after the mules had finished eatin' their corn, I said to this half witted lad, 'Go down there and turn them mules out, and don't fergit to put the chain on that mule's left foot.' The lad went down to the barn, and the mules wuz turned on the grass and, as he come back to the house, I said to him, 'Did ye put that chain on the mule's foot?'
'Yep,' he replied.
'Which foot did ye put it on?' I asked, knowin' that he could not tell right from left.
He studied a minute and then said, 'I put in on the one next to the calf lot, by God!'"
Lum and I lived together for three years, and, in the final term of the school, I had advanced in the world so far that I bought a second hand T Model coupe with cloth top. We put a little truck bed on the rear of the car. It would go almost anywhere a mule could go. We had great times running up and down the creek, fishing and hunting with the little Ford. Years later while I was at Forsyth as Clerk of the County Court, Lum came to town on his faithful little mare one day. I had a shiney new car with free wheeling and a lot of other gadgets. I took Lum for a ride which he enjoyed immensely. When we had parked the car in front of the court house, Lum got out and walked all the way around that car as though looking at some farm animal. Then in his wise old way, he remarked, "Doug, I liked your old car the best. There air too damn many fixin's on this one, fer ye know the more fixin's their air on a thing, the more damn apter it is to get out of fix."
Lum's evaluation of gadgets often comes to mind in this age of automatic transmission, central heating, automatic washing machines and the other wonderful things we now enjoy, all of which are "more apter to get out of fix."
Lum and I had a neighbor who was having a rash of bad luck. It grew worse until finally his last cow died and his family was left without milk to drink or butter for the table He came to visit Lum and me and I wa expressing my sympathy to him on the loss of his only cow when he came up with this little story making light of his own loss. It was about a man who had only one shirt to his name and had to go to bed while his wife washed and ironed the shirt. One day as he waited in bed for his shirt his wife came in and said, "Bad news, paw. The cow was done at et yer shirt." Undismayed at the loss of his only shirt, the man replied, "Don't worry, old woman, fer them that has got, has got to lose."
A few years after I moved from Lum's place, he found his second wife, a good woman from over in Arkansas. She had lived in a small town on the Missouri Pacific railroad and did not like the quiet life on the little farm on the Fox and Bee It was too lonely for her. Lum, wanting to please her and realizing that he could not tend his farm any longer, sold the old homestead Lum had a general farm sale but kept his bay mare and saddle. He rented pasture at a point about half way from his new home to the old one and frequently rode the U.S. mail truck out to where his little mare was pastured. He would saddle her and ride her back to his beloved Bee Creek. Um owned nothing there anymore, yet in spite of having moved away to town and the big highway, he remained on Bee Creek in spirit. He finally returned to this eternal rest in the little buryin' ground in the corner of the bottom field. Now the hazel, the sumac and the walnut, and simple sandstone markers overgrown with wild grapevines, shade his grave. But Lum Booth's philosophy, his homespun wit, his fiddle music and the clang, clang of his hammer on the anvil live on in my memory and will as long as I am on this mortal earth.
Contributor: Travis Holt