I was indeed fortunate to know both my maternal grandparents and my paternal grandmother. My paternal grandfather, Stephen Harry "Dick" Mason, died many years before my birth, so I only know what I have been told and what information I located doing genealogical research in the Prairie County, Arkansas, Courthouse in DeValls Bluff.

Stephen Harry "Dick" Mason was born 8 Jan 1890 in DeValls Bluff, Prairie County, Arkansas, and lived there all his life, dying on 1 Jan 1931 at the age of 41 from tuberculosis. I was told he was in a sanitarium sometime during his illness. He worked for the railroad, but I cannot recall at this time which one. It may have been the Batesville and Brinkley line in Arkansas.  At other times, Stephen worked as a plumber. Stephen Harry Mason is buried in the Mason family plot in Oak Lawn Cemetery, DeValls Bluff, Arkansas, along with his mother, father, and siblings. The entire immediate family of Wilbur J. Mason is buried in the same place.

Stephen Harry Mason married Miss Mary Pearl Garrison, who was born 4 Sep 1892 in probably Searcy, White County, Arkansas, and she died 4 Feb 1975 in Stuttgart, Arkansas County, Arkansas, in a nursing home. She, too, is buried in Oakland Cemetery in DeValls Bluff, Prairie County, Arkansas, alone, not by either of her husbands.  Pearl bore five of Stephen H. Mason's children: (1) Harry C. Mason, b 1911; (2) Wesley Mason, b 1915; (3) Frances J. Mason, b 1918; (4) Douglas F. Mason, b 1921; and (5) Marian J. Mason, b 1928. They lived in Biscoe, Prairie County, Arkansas, when my father, Douglas, was very young, and later when I visited my Grandmother Pearl before she went into a nursing home, she resided on Hazel Street across from the DeValls Bluff school with her second husband.

After her husband, Stephen Harry Mason's death, Pearl received a pension from the railroad and went to work as a cook of the nearby DeValls Bluff school, which was directly across the street from her Hazel Street home. As a girl, she helped her mother, Etta Jane (Norwood) Garrison, who ran a boarding house, so Pearl was an excellent cook.

Subsequently, Pearl married a widower, John Robert Mince, who himself had five children by his late wife, Hattie Blankenship: (1) Ralph Irvin; (2) Eunice Nora; (3) Thelma; (4) Lorene; and (5) Freda Mae.

John & Pearl Mince had one child together, Betty Ann Mince.

John Mince was the owner of lands referred to as "The Hall Field" in southern Prairie County where he farmed. His home for a while was next-door to Harry C. Higgerson's farm in southern Prairie County. 

My maternal grandfather, the only grandfather I ever knew, was Harry Clifton Higgerson.  He was born in Saint John Township, New Madrid County, Missouri, where he resided until moving by train south of DeValls Bluff in Prairie County, Arkansas, with his ailing mother, Kate Harris Shultz Higgerson Snider Coker around 1910. (Kate was married four times.) Harry, with an inheritance from his late father, Walter Buchanan Higgerson, purchased a farm and set up housekeeping in southern Prairie County, Arkansas, south of DeValls Bluff.

As Harry's mother's health deteriorated, he had to hire people to care for her. We know that Clara Swanigan, a black woman in the community, cared for her because years later, when my mother was a child, Clara was walking down the road and saw Mom and stated, "I  know you.  I cared for your grandmother," to which Mom was confused because she had only known one grandmother--her mother's mother, Elizabeth (Weckenmann) Mertens, who lived a mile down the road, and Mom  knew Clara hadn't cared for Grandma Mertens.

Kate Harris, who was born in March 1862 in Missouri died in April 1913, and my mother wasn't born until 1929, which explains why my Mom didn't know her paternal grandmother, Kate.  It took Mom a little while to figure out just to whom Clara was referring. 

Meanwhile, Harry heard that there was a young woman in the community who was a good nurse and midwife that was available, so he hired her--Ruth Mary Mertens. After a while, Harry took an interest in Ruth, and they wrote letters to one another, which would be delivered by anyone going by where they resided (not the post office). They married 26 Nov 1913 in Hazen, Prairie County, Arkansas, and subsequently had six children: (1) Lon Harold, b 12 Nov 1914; (2) Ivan Quentin, b 23 Sep 1916; (3) Edna Geneva, b 5 Dec 1918; Anna Lee, b 14 Nov 1924; Dolly L. "Evelyn," b 8 Jan 1929; and Marjorie "Margie," b 8 Oct 1930.

Harry C. Higgerson moved from New Madrid County, Missouri, to DeValls Bluff, Prairie County, Arkansas, when he was a young man in about 1910, on the advice of his mother's physician, Dr. O'Bannon of New Madrid, who thought a change in climate might improve Kate's health.  So Harry sold everything they had in New Madrid and moved to DeValls Bluff--hardly a different climate. One can travel today from New Madrid to DeValls Bluff in a matter of a couple hours by automobile.

The very doctor who advised Harry to move is the same person who purchased Harry's land. Harry, his mother, their scant belongings, and their mules traveled by train to their new home in DeValls Bluff.  There Harry, Ruth, and their six children resided through the Great Depression. Their oldest son, Harold, worked on farms in the community, raking hay when he was only six years old.  As a young man, Harold worked on a farm owned by Adolph Sickel in Tollville, about eight miles from home.  Many times he walked eight miles to work, did manual labor, and walked eight miles home--in the hot sun.  He was as strong as an ox.  

My mother, 16 years his junior, recalled riding on his--and her other brother Ivan's--backs in the White River when they'd go swimming.  She recalled Harold's old truck starting by itself and her brothers running after it--just like a scene from the movie, Paper Moon. I always thought Tatum O'Neal, who played the little girl's part in the movie with her father, Ryan O'Neal, looked at lot like my mother when she was small. The setting for that story was during the Great Depression, so the clothing, automobiles, and places depicted in Missouri were smiliar to Arkansas.  

Peopl did what they could to get by.  Harold recalled carrying moonshine to an old man in DeValls Bluff when he was just a little bitty kid, he once told me.  

Ruth was of enterprising German stock. In addition to bearing six children, she kept an immaculate home, planted, tended, harvested, and canned food from her garden, made all her children's clothes, hauled water for both drinking and cleaning until Harry "finally" put in a pump   after years of hauling it.  She fed the chickens, killed, dressed, cleaned, and cooked the chickens, birds, squirrels, and rabbits that Harry brought home.  She made and baked the bread, performed midwife services, and prepared bodies for burial. She generally did everything around the house whether her husband was home or not. Oftentimes, Harry would be away for days working his team of mules snaking logs out of some low-lying land, and he stayed in the logwoods in a tent, cooking and darning his own socks. He even knew how to knit and had knit a pair of socks before. We still have his sock-darning tool, which I really don't know how to use!

Living next-door (on what is today called State Highway 302 south of DeValls Bluff) with children all about the same age, the Higgersons and Masons and Minces interrmarried. First, L. Harold Higgerson married Eunice Nora Mince. Then Edna Geneva Higgerson married Ralph I. Mince. That resulted in a brother and sister of the Higgerson clan marrying a brother and sister of the Mince clan. 

Then my dad, step-son to John Mince, married  Dolly L. "Evelyn" Higgerson on 7 Feb 1949 in South Norfolk, Norfolk County, Virginia.  Whenever I explain it to anyone and witness the confusion evident in their faces, I remind them of the old TV show called "The Brady Bunch" where they had "his," "mine," and "ours," and then I draw a picture similar to the one below complete with arrows showing the marriage connections and resultant double cousins.

Stephen H. & Pearl G. Mason    John R. & Hattie B. Mince      Harry & Ruth M. Higgerson

Harry C. Mason                                 Ralph Mince                         Harold Higgerson

Wesley Mason                                  Eunice Mince                        Ivan Higgerson

Frances Mason                                 Thelma Mince                      Geneva Higgerson

Douglas F. Mason                             Lorene Mince                      Evelyn Higgerson

Marian Jean Mason                           Freda Mince                        Margie Higgerson

                                Betty Ann Mince

John Robert & Pearl Mary (Garrison) (Mason) Mince had one daughter together, Betty Ann.

Consequently, I had a large extended family but grew up an only child until the age of 11 when I learned of the existence of a half-brother. Because my Mason family and some of the Minces lived in Arkansas, I only saw those kinfolk about once every couple of years whenever we visited my grandmother, Pearl, in DeValls Bluff, or they visited us.  

By 1946, Harry C. Higgerson and his wife, Ruth Mary (Mertens), and their last-born child, Margie, who was born with Down Syndrome, moved to the Fentress community in lower Norfolk County, Virginia, where almost all their children had settled previously.  Harry was a logger, farmer, carpenter, and an excellent hunter and fisherman of fresh-water fish.