By Michelle Ann Kratts
There are healers in our families. My line of healers stems through my great grandmother, Mary “Winnie” Chambless. I feel connected to her in so many ways…even though I never met her. She died LONG before I was born…but she died on my birthday–April 22– in 1936, and in my mind, the date of my birth and the date of my great grandmother’s death connect us.
Winnie was born 20 September 1889 at Woodland, Texas (now Paris, Texas) to Dr. John Albert Chambless and Mary Virginia Brown. Both families were pioneers in the northeastern area of Texas near the Red River and descended from people that had come ashore with some of the first Europeans in the early 1600’s–from England, Ireland and Scotland. It is through my great grandmother, Winnie, that a part of me has lived during the early days of the Jamestown Colony, in Salem during the Witch Hysteria, in Atlanta while it burned, on the battlefields of Shiloh and Vicksburg. A part of me was actually there. Not one of us comes from nothing…so we all have been a part of history. It is just up to us to figure it out!
Dr. Chambless, Winnie’s father, ventured out to Texas in the 1850’s, possibly to join his grandparents who were already in Texas. He had been born to an old southern family in Forsyth, Georgia. He fought in the Civil War with Maxey’s Ninth Texas Regiment, mustered out of Lamar County for the Confederacy. He was taken prisoner after a battle in Tennessee and held at Camp Chase in Ohio when the war ended. He was given the opportunity to “change sides” while at the camp and he took the oath of the Union. He worked a medical detail during this period and then trained as a doctor at Emory University in Atlanta. I love looking over his Civil War records and seeing all of the places that he traveled to during this time.
Grandpa Chambless was not the only other “healer” in the family. Winnie’s mother’s father, her grandfather, Dr. Charles Porus Brown, born in Virginia, also practiced medicine in Texas. I found some old family lore that mentions a beautiful horse farm my great great grandfather Brown ran in what is now a ghost town called Cuba, in Colorado County, Texas. He eventually moved on to a town in the bend of the Red River and he named it Kanawha (after the town by the same name in which he came from in Virginia). Winnie’s uncle (her mother’s brother) was a doctor, as well. I even found a grandfather (in my great great grandmother, Mary Virginia Brown’s family line) who was a surgeon during the War of 1812. Apparently there is quite a family interest in the healing profession.
As a young girl, Winnie found herself motherless at a very young age. Mary Virginia “Jennie” Brown died in 1893 of an unknown cause, leaving eight children behind, including baby Byron, who was not even a year old. One child, Florence, had died as an infant in 1888. She is buried beside her mother and father in Woodland Cemetery in Red River, Texas. Winnie became very close with her older sister, Ada Amanda, who was nineteen years of age at her mother’s death. She named her oldest daughter, my grandmother, to honor her favorite sister. My grandmother always had fond memories of Aunt Ada. I remember, as a little girl I had a doll that I called “Ada” after my grandmother and her kindly aunt. Interestingly, after all of these years, the only part of my Chambless family that I have been reconnected to is my Aunt Ada’s family. Unfortunately, my cousin, Delma Vaughan, who so enthusiastically shared so much of our family history with me, as she still lived near Paris, Texas, passed away. We thought it was so wonderful how our grandmother’s in heaven had probably “set up” our meeting. Her brother, Tex, and I have been able to get to know each other–even as he lives in Bolivia…thanks to Facebook…but I miss my interchanges with my sweet cousin, Delma.
I am so sad that I never was able to meet my great grandmother, Winnie. I wish I had at least one picture of me, her infant grandchild, in her arms. She would have been 82 if she had only lived until my birth. I think I resemble pictures of her at times. I love to imagine her southern drawl. When I lived in Texas I felt such a strange familiarity there. Like I was home. Of course, Texas is in my blood thanks to Winnie. I remember driving in through Arkansas and crossing the border, the signs saying “Red River” and “Paris.” The long stretches of flat land. The big sky. I used to call my grandmother in Florida during tornado outbreaks when I lived in Abilene. I was terrified! For I had never known a storm like a Texas storm, being from New York. “You sound just like my mother!” my grandmother told me, for she remembered how her mother would frantically order all of her children to the storm cellar during the slightest chance that a tornado might drop down. Winnie knew all about tornadoes after growing up in Paris–a hub in “Tornado Alley.” Maybe my experiences summoned some deep ancestral memories. Paris, Texas, actually is noted as having a much higher chance of tornado damage than most any other city in Texas.
From stories my grandmother told me, her mother was a very bright and determined young lady. She found herself interested in her father’s medical practice and accompanied the country doctor on many a visit. She also learned many medical techniques, such as those needed for the caring of injured animals. She knew ways of curing ailments and repairing broken bird wings–abilities she passed to her oldest daughter, my grandmother. Our family has such a strong love for animals, too.
Winnie’s family was very proud of her when she decided to go to Nursing School. In 1913, she was awarded her diploma from the Paris Training School for Nurses. She was the second woman to hold this honor (at the school) and the first woman in my entire family to earn a college degree. Her classes ranged from Ethics and Surgery to Obstetrics and Gynecology. I was told that she hoped to go away to Europe during WWI to serve as a nurse in that capacity–although this never happened. Instead she found a job in Oklahoma City. It was there that she met and fell in love with a young German sailor named Hans Knüppel. They were married 26 May 1921 in Oklahoma City. It’s strange how she somehow knew that she was fated to have her life involved with the war, or going off to the European front–even as it did not work out exactly how she imagined. However, things found a way to work themselves out when my great grandfather, a German from the other side of the world, “accidentally” found himself in America.
Hans and Winnie had five children. Unfortunately, their first daughter, Elizabeth Winifred, born with hydrocephalous, died shortly after her birth. My grandmother, Ada Johanna “Joy,” was born in 1924. John Albert and Hans Delbert, twins, were born in 1927. Bessie Marie was born in 1933. The family lived happily on 1216 North West 45th Street in Oklahoma City until April of 1936. Winnie, who had been working as a nurse, developed influenza and pneumonia and passed away 22 April 1936. She is buried at Sunny Lane Cemetery in Oklahoma City.
My great grandmother’s death at such a young age always bothered my grandmother. Why are some people taken from us so early? We will never know the answer. I feel that the more we learn about the people who made us who we are…they closer we come to learn about ourselves. My great grandmother was a kind woman who was compelled to learn and practice the art of healing. She followed in the footsteps of those who went before her. Even as she did not have a long time on this earth, her legacy is in the many generations of descendants that will carry a little piece of her into the future.
Fifty Two Weeks of My Family History 