67 Year Old Memory Comes Alive for Babysitter

Sisters Linda Sue and Llewellyn Hollingsworth Hear from Thirteen-Year Old Babysitter 67 Years Later

I received a phone call today that I thought was from a stranger, but as it turns out, was someone who knew me when I, Linda Sue Hollingsworth, and my sister, Llewellyn Hollingsworth, were born in Linden, Cass County, Texas in 1942 and 1943. It was our then 13-year old babysitter, Martha Ann Whittenberg, whose parents were David and Jane Whittenberg. They also lived in Linden at the same time until 1957. Today Martha Ann Whittenberg Wynn, 80 years old, lives in Tyler, Texas. It was such a surprise and blessing to hear from her.



Martha knew Dr. O. R. Taylor who delivered my sister and me. His name is recorded on both my sister’s and my birth certificates. Dr. Taylor asked someone to go with him to assist in home births. He often asked Martha’s mother, Jane Whittenberg, to go with him. Martha believes that her mother helped Dr. Taylor deliver my sister in 1943 and me in 1942.



Martha was a member of the Linden United Methodist Church where my father, Kermit King Hollingsworth, was assigned as minister in June, 1941. Martha’s father was a Methodist minister also, and served outlying circuit churches in the Linden area including Godner’s Chapel Methodist Church (no longer exists) and Lodi Methodist Church. During the week he was employed at the Linden Post Office.



My dad, Kermit King Hollingsworth, was 30 years old at the time. Linden was his second station church. He had been the minister of the Tomball, Texas Methodist Church north of Houston, Texas in 1939-1940 and previously was minister at a five-point circuit in east Texas that included the Lovelady, Texas Methodist Church. My mom, Opal Murriel Gray Hollingsworth, age 25 and a beautician as Martha recalled, and my dad were married in 1941 at the Methodist Church at Cleveland, Texas, the home of my mom’s parents, Richard Lusky and Alice Lucindy Lucinda Willis Gray.

The 1942 Methodist Church building is still located in Linden although the parsonage was sold and moved to another location in town. Martha recalled that my dad, Rev. Hollingsworth, was an evangelistic singer and would sing, on occasion, at the Sunday morning service. She also recalled that my dad began youth meetings after school during the week and would award the young people with points for correct answers to Bible questions. She said that my mom, Murriel Hollingsworth, would always be ready to serve refreshments after the youth meetings.



This is the present sign for First United Methodist Church in Linden, Texas where I contacted the present minister Rev. Mark McClanahan that led Martha Ann Whittenberg Wynn to call me.

Martha Whittenberg Wynn remembered that there was a very generous retailer in Linden, Texas. Monroe Allen, a Methodist, whose name I recall hearing about from my mom and dad. He owned Allen Brothers, a local clothing store, and would give each Methodist minister a complete suit of clothes, including shoes, each year.

There is a family story that my sister and I heard from our mom about sharing a cow between the Methodist minister and the Baptist minister whose homes backed up to each other on opposite blocks. Martha Ann confirmed the fact that the Methodist and Baptist parsonages were located behind each other, and my sister recalls that my mom said that milking the cow might have been a quite a challenge. Finally, the cow was butchered, and canned—something I do not think we would not see happen today.

Wonderful Finds in Austin

What a wonderful four days in Austin, Texas in September, 2009. Not only reveled in a visit with a first cousin and his 94-year old mom (my aunt) but got to touch and copy many genealogical finds that places my maternal grandparents in four different Texas counties from 1893-1980.

Have you ever seen a Texas County Poll Tax receipt from 1915? A Texas County Road Tax receipt from 1914? A Texas City Water Bill Receipt for 1926? A Texas School District ISD Tax receipt for 1935? A Texas County Personal Property Tax receipt from 1935? A WPA Notice To Report For Work duplicate for 1937? A WWII Rations Book from 1942? A Federal Income Tax W-2 Withholding Receipt for 1944? What a genealogical find. There's more, but I wouldn't want to bore you with all the details. Ha! Ha!

Needless to say, I spent several hours over several days at the copy place but it was all worth it. The moral of the story is: Bless those ancestors who saved every scrap of paper, and bless those ancestors and living folks who did not throw anything away.

William Walter Robbins, The Grandfather We Did Not Know About

This is the case of William Walter Robbins (1859-1918), father of William Augustus Robbins (1888-1948), and grandfather of Kenneth Charles Robbins (1932-).

We will begin with the Obituary for William Walter Robbins, copied from the Middletown Daily Times-Press, Monday, September 23, 1918, Page 2, Column 7.

"William Walter Robbins, oldest son of the late Walter Robbins and Cornelia Strong, died Sunday, the 15th, in the South Side Hospital, Babylon, in his 60th year. He had been in failing health for some time. Mr. Robbins was born in Babylon, and the greater part of his life was spent there."

William Walter Robbins, father of William Augustus Robbins and grandfather of Kenneth Charles Robbins. This photograph and others were taken by Linda Robbins in 2000 during Ken's 50th Islip H.S. Reunion, Suffolk County, New York. At at time, we did not know the significance of the people whose names appeared on the headstones in the Babylon
Rural Cemetery in what is now a residential section of Babylon, New York.

"In his early days he lived in this city with the late Mr. and Mrs. James W. Stewart, on Mulberry Street, Mrs. Stewart being his aunt. He represented a business house on the road and traveled quite extensively."

"He is survived by a brother, Jeremiah Robbins. The funeral took place at the latter’s home last Tuesday afternoon in Babylon."

From reading the obituary, one would think that William Walter Robbins had no immediate family, only his brother Jeremiah Robbins in Babylon, NY, and his late aunt and uncle Julia [Ann Strong] and James [W.] Stewart of Middletown, NY.


Wedding Announcement of William Walter Robbins and Pauline Wheeler Robbins, San Francisco Morning Call Newspaper, copy sent by Jim W. Falkenbury, Sacramento, CA genealogist.

However, that was not the case. At the time of his death, William Walter Robbins had a wife and child he deserted about 1890 in San Francisco. He had married Pauline Wheeler, daughter of James, an attorney, and Sarah LaRose Wheeler of San Francisco, CA in 1887. James Wheeler's father was Elisha Pearl Wheeler, a famous saw manufacturer of Middletown, Orange County, New York.

The obituary for William Walter Robbins appeared eight days after he died. The paper was published daily except for Sundays and holidays. Perhaps obituaries only appeared on Mondays or someone did not turn the information in soon enough for the obituary to appear closer to the time of William Walter Robbins' death. The funeral was held one day after he died, indicating there were not many family members to come from greater distances, so the funeral was arranged rather quickly.

As a matter of fact, William Walter Robbins had a wife, Pauline Wheeler Robbins, who was incarcerated in the Napa State Hospital from the late 1890s until she died in 1940 in California. She retained her surname Robbins to her death from her marriage in 1887.

He had a son, my husband’s father, William Augustus Robbins, who was born in 1888 in Babylon, Suffolk County, New York, was raised by his mother and Grandfather James Wheeler in San Franciso, California. until 1893 when his Grandfather Wheeler died. After that year, his mother and he became destitute and he was raised at San Mateo's Armitage Orphanage until he was 18. He went to the University of California at Berkeley and earned a Civil Engineering Degree in 1914. How he could afford to do this still remains a mystery to this writier. He had moved to Maui, Territory of Hawaii, at the time of his father’s death and was working at a sugar cane plantation that later became the C&H Sugar Cane Company. He was 30 years of age. I believe that no one contacted him about his father's death.

A photograph of the Bishop Armitage Orphanage in San Mateo, California where William Augustus Robbins was raised from about age 5 to age 18 from 1893-1906.

As far as can be determined at this time, there is no record of divorce, only seemingly a record of desertion by the father of his wife and son.

When William Walter "Willie" was almost four, his father, Walter Wilson Robbins (1818-1863), passed away. William Walter "Willie’s" older half brother whom he never knew was named Elbert Strong (1857-1858) and lived for ten months from 1857-1858. William Walter "Willie’s" younger brother, [Abraham] Abie T. Robbins (1860-1866) lived for five years, eleven months. William Walter Willie knew his brother Abie T. for the years he lived. William Walter "Willie’s" youngest brother Jeremiah Robbins (1863-1929) was born one half year before their father died in 1863.

Walter Wilson Robbins, husband of Cornelia Strong Robbins, Father of William Walter Robbins, Abraham Abie T. Robbins, and Jeremiah Robbins. Wlater Wilson Robbins also claimed Elbert Strong as his son.

Cornelia Strong Robbins, Wife of Walter Wilson Robbins and Mother of Elbert Strong, Abraham Abie T. Robbins, William Walter Robbins, and Jeremiah Robbins

Elbert Strong, older half-brother of William Walter Robbins

Abraham Abie T. Robbins, younger brother of William Walter Robbins

Jeremiah Robbins, youngest brother of William Walter Robbins

Between 1863 when William Walter Robbins’ father died and the 1870 U.S. Census, William Walter lived with his aunt Julia Ann Strong Stewart and her husband. It was here that William Walter was called "Willie" in the 1870 U.S. Census. His wife, Pauline Wheeler Robbins, who retained the Robbins surname all her life, also called her son, William Augustus Robbins, "Willie."

In the 1920s, after William Walter Robbins's son William Augustus Robbins returned from San Francisco and the Territory of Hawaii to Babylon and Islip, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York to live, there is evidence from family correspondence between William Augustus and his uncle Jeremiah Robbins and Wheeler descendents in Middletown, Orange County, New York that William Augusus Robbins learned more about his mother Pauline Wheeler Robbins, his father William Walter Robbins and made a genealogy pedigree chart of his family history on a sheet of paper.

William Augustus Robbins in his U.S. Army Uniform, stationed in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii in 1918, the year that his father died

Kenneth Charles Robbins, William Walter Robbins' son, never knew who his father's mother was for sure, although he had heard of a Pauline, but did not know what her significance was, or who his father's father was at all until 2008 when Kenneth's family began researching records, letters, diaries, and hired two genealogists who helped from the San Francisco area to put the mortor and missing bricks together from the brick walls of his past.

Kenneth Charles Robbins at the Robbins and Strong Family Plot at the Babylon Rural Cemetery, Babylon, Suffolk County, New York.

Robbins Littlejohn Gray Willis Streetman Family Reunions

The history of our family reunions began when many families migrated from the southeastern states to east Texas. This began in the middle 1800s and continued through the early 1900s. The Calhoun County, Florida migration to Houston County, Texas took place in about a ten year time span in the early 1900s from about 1905 to 1915. Streetmans, Cooks, Nichols, Willises, Hudnells and Brinsons arrived.

Over the years my mother's family held several fairly large family reunions. They began many years before my mom was born in 1916 or I was born in 1942. They were usually held in east Texas where the Grays, Willises, and Streetmans had settled in Anderson and Houston Counties as early as 1848 and continued to migrate to the Elkhart, Slocum, and Grapeland areas through the early 1900s from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

The Charles Mack Streetman family was made up of eleven sons and four daughters. The oldest three children were by his first wife Mary Margaret Cook and the remaining living children were by his second wife Clara Parasota Cook. Surely these seventeen family members would be a family reunion.


Growing up, my mother's siblings and their families often met at my grandparents' home in Cleveland, Texas. The first reunion I went to was in the late 40s. On this occasion, all the grown children and their offspring, the first cousins, including me, showed up at once. I do not believe that it was planned in advance. I recall twenty-one of us with my grandparents, their four children and spouses, and eleven of us grandchildren who were born by that time. I recall sleeping on a pallet inside in front of the open front door.

My grandmother canned most of their food and my grandfather took care of the gardens and chicken yard. We all learned to dodge the chicken poop in the chicken yard to go to the outhouse. We grandchildren took baths in the kitchen on the kitchen table in the galvanized tub. We all learned to play checkers with Grandpa and he knew how to beat us every time. We learned our manners from our grandmother, known as "Granny Gray", as well as from our parents. The grownups enjoyed taking the straightbacked cane or rope chairs into the front yard after supper (in Texas, that is) and visiting with each other in a circle in the cooler evening. They usually talked Texas politics or traded jokes. "Granddaddy Gray" or "Grandpa" as he was called by both names, used to put the grandchildren in the wheelbarrow and push us all around their home.

In today's world, we are carrying on the time-honored tradition of family reunions. Our family reunions may not have as many people at them, but the intent and the joy of being together is still the same. These are family reunions because they include family members from our family from three states with mine and my husband's second marriages of 29 years. We have always celebrated holidays with each other as much as possible, as well as birthdays and anniversaries.

These special events mark the most memorable occasions for family reunions in my mind in recent years:

In 2005, my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Our six children and most of the fifteen grandchildren surprised us by showing up one by one during the special weekend which culminated in special picture taking and

Three years ago sixteen of our family cruised together from Seattle to Alaska. That was fun with all six children, four spouses, and four grandchildren.

Two years ago I retired from working, and fifteen of our family members surprised me with a retirement weekend, including five children, three spouses, and five grandchildren.

A family reunion last year was for was my husband's 76th birthday. At that family reunion, there were twenty-two family members: all six children, four inlaws, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Some stayed in our home, in our apartment, or in a motel.

The most recent family reunion was to celebrate our oldest son's 50th birthday in Wichita, Kansas. Nineteen family members from three Kansas towns, two Oklahoma towns, and two Texas towns came together to spend the weekend in two Kansas homes and one motel. Our ages ranged from 7 to 77 and included two grandparents, five children, two inlaws, nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

If you read this far, you may think: Where are the missing children when these family reunions are going on? Some need to work, some are in college, some have other conflicts, some grandchildren live far away in Minneapolis, or Fort Riley, Kansas, and will be deployed to Afghanistan this week, and a new grandchild was born on July 28th.

I am indebted to my first cousin David Snow, formerly of Austin, Texas, and now of San Jose, California and my second cousin Ivey Maurice Brinson of Highlands, Texas for adding photographs and information from the early days of our families in east Texas.