Mary Sue Wootton

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This page is part of the Genealogy Research being done by Samuel Antonio Minter. It represents the best information I have at this time on this individual. This site is a Wiki open to be edited by anyone. If you see errors, or have additional relevant information, feel free to update this page. If you are not comfortable editing the page directly, please email me with the information at abulsme@abulsme.com. Thank you!

Mary Sue Wootton ~1947

Birth

  • Date: 26 Jan 1918
  • Location: Central City, Kentucky, USA

Immediate Ancestors

Immediate Descendants

With David Ramseur Minter

Places Lived

Marriages

Death

  • Date: 19 Aug 2012 2:40 PM MDT (20:40 UTC)
  • Location: Albuquerque, NM

Biographical Information

  • Born at Home in a small coal mining town
  • Lived in Hartford, CT for her "very young years"
  • Goes by "Sue" not "Mary" or "Mary Sue"
  • Met David Ramseur Minter when she came to work on the cooperative as a college student in 1939
  • After they were married Sue acted as an occasional assistant, messenger and receptionist for Dr. Minter.
  • On 27 Sep 1955 a "Mass Meeting" of the white elite of Holmes County, Mississippi met and accused Sue's husband Dr. Minter and his co-practicioner Dr. Gene Cox of "communist doings" at Providence due to the fact that they treated both blacks and whites at the same facility. They were told to get out of town.
  • David and Sue stayed for about another year, but then the pressure on them and on Providence Farm became intolerable and the family moved to Tucson, Arizona to join son William (Bill).
  • Story from MSW: "I guess the classic and most retold tale in our past is that ride from Providence to Tucson, July 1956. We started with a very pregant collie, medium size Sandy, in an uncooled Ford station wagon, sundry baggage, and the family. Visiting a farm friend in Ft Worth, the first pup arrived. We waited awhile and decided we had to be on our way. One born as we sped along the highway the kids named Ford. Poor puzzled puppies that continued to arrive spent the night various spots: Dave's older brother's in West Texas, several motel shower rooms, etc. We reached an apartment near Swan and Broadway with no fenced patio in the Old Pueblos famous heat. You can imagine what my living room looked like each morning!! The daddy was a classic longnose collie so we had no trouble selling the fuzzy little pups and the kids used the money to buy their first bicycles in their new desert home."
  • Story from MSW: "Susan and Diane were buddy hikers and set out often down the dusty road in front of our house, chanting merrily "We're off to seek adventure, adventure, adventure!" One time I think it was fall and all three [siblings] decided to do the hill above the house where trails were full of fallen leaves. They returned with a great sense of accomplishment, but alas Diane had only one shoe on. (They each had just one good pair for school.) We retraced their journey but so far as I remember never found the mate to her one shoe:>)"
  • Story from MSW: "Dave had no car for several years on the farm. It was 1939 when we met at the Quaker work camp and he was borrowing Gene Cox's car (husband of nurse Lindsey) to make calls etc. So he asked our workcamp counsellors,a young couple Biff and Elsie Jackson with two young boys to take us to a nearby town one evening for a coke. On the way I was singing some of my favorite folk songs (a Ky one) "Down in the Valley" for example: "The valley so low, Hang your head over hear the wind blow. Roses love sunshine violets low dew angels in heaven knows I love you!" I think it was that ride that raised the idea of lifetime companions which we were both in search of. Fast forward to 91 when susan and I were with a dying Dave in TMC hospital. He had been in a coma for several days and as I sang that song near his bed he gave a moan : The hearing goes last they say and I am sure he heard the down in the valley tune from that first date."
  • Story from MSW: "I guess some of the memories will inevitably be dark. I used to know the exact date as Coxes and Minters would call each other on MM day(mass meeting). But I will always remember going to Tchula School to pick up the kids after a peewee football game or such. Coming from various directions were adults heading there too . Gene and Dave had been notified to appear before a Citizens council meeting at the school house. (A white collar KluKluxKlan formed first in Greenwood this was only the third or so meeting: to oppose the integration of schools ordered by the supreme court.) What a long evening Lindsey and I spent waiting for our husbands return. The verdict of the aroused crowd was: "Leave the state!" with only 3 or 4 brave souls voting no or leaving. They heard tapes of 4 frightened af af boys who had yelled sometning at the school bus our kids were in... a long story told by Sam Franklin in his story of the Farms or in Rev. Will Campbell's book 'Providence' about the history of the square mile where we were located where details of that night were described."
  • Story from MSW: "A friend asked about Daves proposing or asking my Dad for my hand:> (Actually he did neither.) He got so weary of taking the Greyhound bus up through Paducah Ky over night that we started planning a wedding. His Dad and Mom and best man Bob Regan drove up from Texas to do the ceremony and my folks from Indiana. There was a biracial congregation in the big community bldg at rochdale and Bob borrowed candlelabra from Epicopal church in Clarksdale for atmosphere. Gene cox played romantic tunes on the victrola. We headed out to Memphis; us in a borrowed car from Dad, and he in his car. We stopped to help him with his flat tire enroute. The Peabody hotel had a pool in the lobby complete with ducks. When night came, the bellhops herded the birds into the elevator and up to the roof until morning when they brought them back down. (I think I read recently that they have brought the ducks back as they were so popular.)"
  • Story from MSW: "A rare african-american woman in our Providence community was Fannye Booker. She taught school, worked at the coop store, helped out at the clinic, and after the farm closed had Head Start classes in the county. The Rev Will Campbell persuaded the library committee to have a statue of her put in the Lexington Library. Her best accomplishment I think was a summer camp for the children around who after the cotton was picked had nothing to do. She started a camp. If a child had no money for tuition his mother could send some canned goods or fresh vegetables. One family even brought their cow who supplied milk for the meals!! The big event was the crowning of the queen who rode on a much decorated wagon float past the store the clinic and through the excited community. no one who took part ever forgot Fannyes summer camp!!"
  • Story from MSW: "This holiday was one of the exciting times of the year for us. Weather was usually crisp and the heaven full of stars. All ages and sizes came to the community house where there were carols by the teen chorus, and the manger story with local actors. I was back up prop for little Mabel Pearl the rolypoly granddaughter of Louisa who cooked for us. She was elegant in her shiny halo but at the most important part she fell off the table and caused quite a commotion in the drama. Then came Santa who was actually grandfatherly Nick with bags of fruit, candy, sox etc. for all. Then home up to our hills. The next morning the Minter girls had life size dolls under the tree that clever nurse Lindsey had made. Alas, too busy at the clinic, she had for her girls dolls missing a leg or arm and had to finish them later!!!"
  • Story from MSW: "One of the fun things sister Norma Louise and I did at Grandma's in the country was to go to school with our male cousins, Wilbur and Charlie. We rode ponies and Charlie the littlest rode on the back of a wide mare driven by the schoolteacher, a cousin of Aunt Besse's, up to the one room school (all grades). We took a bag lunch and took turns from the water bucket for drinks. Charlie, a first grader I think, was at the blackboard and the teacher pointed to a picture of a pig, PIG written by it. 'Hog' answered Charlie. When the story was told at the supper table that night, Charles' reply was 'Wilbur has a big mouth!' It was at just such a school that our Mother Maude taught as her first job."
  • Story from MSW: "I was in Oscar Wildes 'The Importance of Being Earnest' in high school."
  • Story from MSW: "Wash was an elderly dignified gentleman in the Providence communmitee. Somehow he acquired a pet(?) alligator and kept it in a cotton house near the store. He would put a rope around its neck and take it down to the creek for a drink. Once a week or so he would put a chicken in with the pet and before the week was out the chicken disappeared. Wash was crippled and slow and if the alligator had decided to attack him he had no defense. This was a big thing in the area. Most people after they had been to Dr. Minters 12 room clinic would stop by to see Wash's alligator."
  • Story from MSW: "This is one of those stories one would rather erase, but the girl and I will never forget it so it must be told I guess. The car was hard to start so I parked at the top of our hill drive and put a rock to keep it secure. One morning Susan and Diane were in the back seat and I loosed the rock and ran to get in the car and to the steering wheel. It was faster than I was and went bumping along without me!! Fortunately for all concerned there was a turn in the road and it stopped the car. A member of the Farm came over and helped me get the car back on the road. The girls comment was: 'Mom, we bounced up and down! :<(' I relive that and shudder often. What if... As susan says: I'm not great with cars. We were sitting in a living room at Providence (a later visit as we had a rental car I think). I had parked out front. We looked out and saw the car sliding by. I guess I hadn't the brake on right.  :<( That ended OK too as i recall."
  • Story from MSW:
    • Bill was born Sept 22 in Walter Reed Hospital (which he drives by often as you probably know) in 1942 while Dave was in tropical medicine school to go to the South Pacific.
    • We were sent to West Palm Beach, Fl and on my birthday January 1943 he and Dr. Francisco Dy from Manila were flown over to Australia as malaria was killing more soldiers than were the Japanese.
    • (Letter enclosed from Paquito Dy who after the war was head of Infectious diseases in the WHO in Manila. The episode he refers to in the first paragraph was a bottle of prune juice in the big plane and a toilet that flushed backward and the pilot said someone always left the seat up!!!)
      • Note: No letter was actually enclosed
    • Dave had come home to me in Evansville, Indiana where Bill and I stayed near my folks during the three years.
    • We took a train trip before Dave left to see Daves folks.
    • WR was semiretired in a small church in Palestine, Texas.
    • We were only there a few days and dad Minter baptized Bill.
    • When Dave returned Dave took a refresher course at his alma-mater University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and we lived in several places: bedrooms in peoples houses in the suburbs.
    • Then we returned to Providence where the Coop Farm had moved from Rochdale, Mississippi where we met further south.
    • You probably know more about all his (William Maynard Minter's) African homes and travels than I.
    • Dy and I corresponded after Dave died: a smart gentle man. He and Dave were great friends.
  • Story from MSW:
    • This Sue Minter that uses her microwave a few timess a day and seldom the oven wouldn't recognize the hard working country wife Sue Minter who with nurse Lindsey tutoring cooked, canned vegetables, soups, fruits on a charcoal fire in the yard (mixed the vegetable soup in a #3 tub that we bathed in at Rochdale), took care of puppies, kids, helped in the clinic etc., etc.
    • One thing Diane remembers about our last weeks in Mississippi: Lindy and I were making apple butter our last days there and getting bored with the yummy brown stuff, colored the last pints a bright green:>)
    • It was a strange sight, to see in the small pantry at Providence about a dozen small green jars that made the trip from Tucson.
  • Story from MSW:
    • Not so strange I guess (as she is our rememberer) that Diane remembers a tale I told them from my past.
    • It was Christmas; the tree all decorated, presents still under the tree.
    • Family friends came over to wish us well on the holiday: the Ruleys who worked with Dad in the business college I believe.
    • Their boy Henry shot his cap pistol into the tree and it burst into flames.
    • Everything began happening at once.
    • The nurse mother had for Norma Louise was just diapering her and had to run across the street to finish pinning it.
    • A niece one of the many that Mother gave bed and board to while they went to Lockyears Business college was upstairs and came down on a ladder the fireman put up to her bedroom.
    • Another fire story is when the fire was sweeping through the trees at the bottom of the hill our house sat upon and we had to stand guard to keep it from spreading .
    • But that is for another time.
    • (I must've been about 4 at the time.)

References

Notes

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