Reese Browder Simrell: 1878-1955

Reese Browder Simrell: 1878-1955
Married: 1902

Idella Bailey: 1880-1923

Here Cousins is where the “Rubber meets the Road”….I will do my best to paraphrase my Father’s (John B. Simrell) story/stories of his childhood etc.  Please feel free to add any info you may have about the Reese Simrell family, to the blog-site at any time.

Reese and Idella lived in Warren County; TN. and raised a family of seven children and a niece named Alma Rains.

Ruth A. Simrell          1907-1987

W. Aaron Simrell       1912-1997

Robert B. Simrell       1913-2001

Mary M. Simrell         1916-1993

John B. Simrell          1918-2008

James L. Simrell        1920-1992

 

Reese operated a water powered Grist-Mill in Warren County, TN grinding wheat and corn into flour and meal for the local farmers and their families.  When the crops were still in the field and there were no grains to grind, Reese made a living as a traveling tree salesman.  He traveled for the most part in or around McMinnville, TN and sold mostly nut and fruit trees. 

Idella (his wife of twenty-one years) died of breast cancer in 1923.  I remember my Father (John) telling the story as follows:

When he was five years old he was called into the bedroom (as were all the children one-at-a-time) where his Mother was nearing death. She told him to “be strong and do exactly what Poppa says, say your prayers every night and take care of Jim.”  My Father told me he looked down at her open wound and described it as a huge black scare on her chest, (a memory he carried his entire lifetime)  That night Sept, 3, 1923 she died and was buried two days later in Daylight, TN.

Reese decided it best to move the family to West TN.  So, in the winter of 1924 the family boarder a train in Nashville and came to Gibbs Station, which was located on the East side of Union City, Tn.  When the family arrived at Gibbs Station, Reese’s brother, Will (Uncle Will to all of us who knew him) was there with a wagon and team of mules.  The men wrapped the children up in heavy quilts and headed for Cloverdale, Tn. where Will had a farm and needed the additional help putting in the crops and tending the livestock.  The trip was approximately thirty-miles over frozen dirt roads and took fifteen hours to navigate.

Spring came and the family went to work as sharecroppers for Uncle Will.  They chopped cotton, picked strawberries, milked the cows; feed the hogs and whatever else that was needed to make the farm productive.  Reese moved to Chicago sometime between 1933-1940 to help his sons John and James run a small restaurant downtown. More on this to follow under John Simrell.

I don’t know exactly when my/our Grandfather and Alma moved to the farm property owned by Uncle Aaron and Aunt Dell but I do remember all Reese’s sons and grandsons Buddy and Sonny helping build a small red house on the property in which he lived until his death in 1955.