Fifth Generation

Callie Elsie Carter was born on April 24, 1874 in Waverly, Humphreys County, Tennessee. She died o March 14, 1966 in Union City, Obion County, Tennessee. Her parents were John M. Carter and Hannah Cotham both of Tennessee. Callie had two sisters, Lillie and Gillie and one brother Isaac Anderson Carter. Callie was the third child.

She grew up in Humphreys County Tennessee where her father was a farmer. She grew up around her cousins and aunts and uncles from both sides of her family. Her father died when she was 9 years old. Her mother remarried to a man named Isaac Flannery a year later in 1884. Isaac Flannery was marred to Callie’s aunt Nancy who died a couple of years before. So her cousins were now her step- sisters, Erie, Eva, and Lillie Flannery. She now had two sisters named Lillie! She was good friends with her sisters throughout her life. Soon after her mother’s marriage to Isaac, she had three young brothers Riley, Elmer, and Clarence.

Callie received some education for she could read and write. She was a small woman with light colored hair (light brown?).  At 20 she met the young handsome widower Willaim Henry Etheridge. I am sure they knew each other at some point. She had 10 healthy children who all lived into adulthood. Around 1906 she moved with her husband to Kentucky. He died in 1919. Her parents-in-law also died in 1918 and 1917. I don’t know when her mother died.

After her husband died she moved with her children near relatives in Gibson County, Tennessee. That is where one of her sons, James Ollie met his beautiful wife Lena Irene Burns.  She lived the rest of her life in Obion, Tennessee. My mother remembers visiting her once as a child. She only remembers that there was not a bathroom and that you had to go to an outhouse to use the bathroom. She was very small when she went to visit her great grandmother.

I have met some of Callie’s children at family reunions. They are the sweetest ladies and always talk so quiet. One thing I notice about the family is that they are all so humble. It was teaching her children these great values that prepared my grandfather to accept the gospel later when he was in his twenties.