The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

Born in a boarding house




I was born in one of the first boarding houses in Jenkins.

My grandfather, Daniel Washington Short, first married Charlotte Hollyfield, who died young. He then married Sarah Jane Brummitt, my grandmother, in 1890.

When Jenkins was being built and my mother, Lucinda Short, was a young lady, they opened one of the first boarding houses on High Street, Jenkins.

It was a large house and would be used for single coal miners. My mother was one of the cooks, and my dad was one of the miners, and they started dating. They got married in 1927, the year my grandfather died.

My Uncle Joe Sexton lived on one side of us, and the Blizzards moved two houses down from us. They were a very nice family and were our friends forever.

Folks who lived west of the bridge had to go to Burdine School, and people living east of the bridge had to go to Jenkins School. I ended up going to Burdine.

My mother was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. She was as kind as she was pretty.

My grandfather died before I was born.

When he was a young man he had an illegitimate child by Germima Maggard, daughter of Samuel Maggard of Cumberland River. The child was a girl named Mary Melvina ‘Polly’ Short.

She lived with her mother until one day when Daniel came riding by on his horse and saw his daughter playing in the yard. Without stopping, he leaned over, swooped up his daughter and sat her on his horse in front of him and rode off with her. He raised her until womanhood. She was my oldest aunt.

Many years later when I was starting my family tree, we found out that the man that Mary ‘Polly’ married was my wife, Estelle Mullins Vanover’s, grandfather.

But Mary ‘ Polly’ died at 30 years old. My wife’s grandfather, Jefferson Hollyfi eld, married again.



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