Family
What we know about the young boy, Dean, that my great-grandparents took in when he was 9 years old.
The photo below is of Dean Gipson, his wife and their son. Dean's family threw him out when he was 9 years old and Granny and Pa took him in and raised him. He took their name, Gipson. He eventually married a girl from Vines Ridge and moved to Ohio. He had a son and a daughter. I don't remember ever meeting him but he obviously stayed in touch with at least Pa and Granny. He was one of the miners in last week's photo.
Dean Gipson, his wife and son
After last weeks post on our family, I asked my sister a few questions about Dean. We all knew about him as you would any member of your family but none of us (my sister, myself, or my brother) remember ever meeting him.
Below is a dictated account of Dean, how he became part of our family, and a harrowing story about a farm accident involving Dean.
After I sent this picture of Dean, I read a memoir Grandma Dorothy dictated for me back in 1999. This is what I found out about Dean:
After Doc and I were married, Granny and Pa adopted a little boy. His mother had passed away and there were several in the family and the father could not do with the children, I guess, so he let Granny and Pa adopt Dean.
He was a very sweet child and Doc just fell in love with him. Doc was teaching him a lot of things around the farm, how to feed the mule and feed the cows and the chickens and the hogs. Doc was always pulling pranks and doing things, so one day, he put a black snake in the corn crib to eat the mice and rats who were eating the corn. So, Dean would go with Doc to shuck the corn and shell it to feed to the animals and Dean was alright as long as Doc went with him to the crib because he was afraid of the snake. One day, Doc wasn't available to go with him, so Dean had to go the crib by himself and shuck and shell the corn. He was just scared to death of that snake. He told Doc, "If you want me to feed the stock and go into the crib and shuck and shell the corn, you're going to have to get rid of that snake." So Doc had no other choice but to get rid of the snake so Dean could go into the crib and shuck and shell the corn.
After a while, Dean grew to love all the animals. He was such a good kid, he was so much help to Granny and Pa. He did the feeding. One time, he went into the barn to feed the mule. They kept the mule so they could plow the land. They had no tractors or anything like that. They had to use animal power. They had to use the mule to plow and cultivate the land to grow the corn to feed the animals. So, this day, Dean got his corn and feed and started into the barn to feed the mule and he stumbled over the door going into the barn and fell right under the mule's feet. The mule was scared and startled and it kicked Dean right in the face and almost took one of his eyes. It was terrible. We were all scared to death. The nearest doctor was at Livingston, about 25 or 30 miles away, so they had to get him in the car and take him all the way to Livingston. We just knew he was going to lose his left eye. When they got him to the doctor, though, the doctor took him in and sewed his face up and put his eye back in the socket (it was plumb out of the socket) and saved his eye. It was miracle; God just had to be watching over him and He saved his eye. After that, though, Dean always had a weak eye on the left side. His eye watered and you could tell he had a weak eye, but the doctor did save his eye. That was a real scary, bad time for us, because we thought sure he was going to lose that eye.
