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A Columbia County Boy's Recollections and Memories of Columbia County Florida (2012) Lenvil H. Dicks

MY AUNTS AND UNCLES AND COUSINS

The children bom to Grandpa and Grandma Dicks were 12 in number, and I’m sure I have all of the
boys in birth-order, but I’m not quite sure about the girls.

Eight of the boys lived to maturity, and the 4 daughters born to them all died prior to attaining maturity,
except Aunt Sarah who was named after her grandmother Sarah Dicks, who was married to the original
Dicks from England, namely Joseph Dicks.

So there were 8 boys and 4 girls, starting with John, then Ollie, then Aunt Sarah (we all called her Aunt
Sis), Henry, Walter, Press, Drew, Roy and Trammel. Somewhere among that string of boys there were 3
other girls, two of whom died as young children, namely Lavenier and Katy, and a third girl named
Mabel who died when she was 17. The only member of my family that remembered Mabel was Golde,
since their lifetimes overlapped a little bit. I can recall people asking my daddy how many brothers and
sisters did he have. He’d say “there was 8 of us boys, and every one of us had a sister”. The person
hearing this would usually jump to the conclusion that there were 16 children but daddy would say no,
no, no, we all had the same sister, referring of course to Aunt Sis. On the Tyre side of my family, and
here again I am not sure I am getting these in the right order, but the oldest daughter was Ma Pearl, then
Frances, then Gordon, then Jess, then Kate, and Hilda, Aunt Clara (Babe), and Essie, and Myrtle.

I have many first cousins on both sides of the family because all of the Tyre girls had several children as
well as Gordon and Jess, the only two boys in the bunch, and all of the brothers and sisters of my dad’s
all had big families so the total number of first cousins that 1 have enjoyed being acquainted with over
the years is a total of about 55, counting all those on the Dicks side and all of those on the Tyre side of
the family. Many, many of these have already left this world, but there are still quite a number of them
around.

Naturally, when you have a lot of cousins, there are bound to be some with whom you spend more time
and have more in common with. Jn my own case, the cousins whom 1 seem to have been drawn to the
most were Emory, my Uncle Henry’s son; Bob, my Uncle Press’s son; Ivol, my Uncle Ollie’s son; Roy
Jr., my Uncle Roy’s son, and Wayne, my Uncle Trammel’s son. On the Tyre side, the cousins that I
seem to be closest to were Grady Tyre,(my Uncle Gordon’s son,) Gene Tyre,(my Uncle Jessie’s son;)
Vivian, my Aunt Frances Douberly’s daughter; Wayne and Everett Crews, (my Aunt Clara Crews’)
sons; and Rudolph Pearce who was Aunt Clara’s son by her first husband, Alison “Doc” Pearce, who
died from tuberculosis when Rudolph was about 8.

Wayne and Everett Crews are related as half-brothers to Rudolph Pearce, but they seem closer than most
full brothers. I probably feel closer to Rudolph than most of my other cousins, with the possible
exception of Bob and Emory, because Rudolph and I spent so much time together when we were boys.
Rudolph will be 88 on his next birthday, which will be December 10, 2012. It may not be of much
interest to the average reader of this book, but I am going to include the following information, since it
might be of some interest to the readers of this book who are related to me. I am going to make an
attempt to list all of the children of my uncles and aunts on both sides of the family, and I apologize in
advance to anyone that I might leave out, since I am doing all this from memory. Of course my Daddy,
John Dicks had the following children: Golde, Clarence, Tribble, Emerald, Opal, Faye, Lenvil, and
Rodney. The next brother was my Uncle Ollie, and his children were Ora Lee, Earl, Ivol, and Harvey.
The next in line was my Aunt Sarah, whom we referred to as Aunt Sis, who married Butler Toney and
they had 4 girls, namely Keron, Jessie Mae, Irene, and Sybil. My Uncle Henry Dicks had 4 children,
who were Kenneth, Emory, Frances, and Bill, whom we all referred to as “Bigon”.

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