- Helen Stout was born in Kansas in 1887 and she said she was "born in a barn" which is true, because the family built the barn first and lived in it while they were building their stone house4. I don't remember her talking about her childhood too much, except for a few little things. She played with the children of some Russian immigrants (the Roosians, as she called them)who lived up the road. She also mentioned remembering her mother with pins held in her mouth to be handy when she was sewing. She mentioned the "Red Birds" they had in Kansas and once said she never really got used to the way the rivers spread out in Colorado, as opposed to the way they were in Kansas. When they came to visit us at Christmas, 1964, she saw the China Berry trees growing here in Arizona and said they had them in Kansas when she was a girl, and they used to string the berries and then let them dry for necklaces. My aunts said that in the last year or two of her life, Helen did mention the stone house where she grew up quite often. Once in the 1950's Helen's sister, Gertrude Phillips, came to visit and Gertrude was remembering when Jud Bloyd came to court Helen.
In 1903 Helen was a pupil in Sunrise School District #30 in Lincoln County, Kansas. In 1907, she was teaching at Masmer School, District #70, Garfield Township, Ellsworth County, Kansas. She had 8 students. Judson Bloyd also taught school for awhile.
Helen married Cyrus Judson(Jud)Bloyd on Easter Sunday in 1907. It was a double wedding with her sister Nellie marrying Ernest Vawter at their parent's home. Helen said the lilacs were in bloom and they cut them for bouquets.
Helen and Jud came to Colorado by covered wagon and homesteaded southeast of Lamar. With 8 children and not much money, they worked hard, but they had a happy and close-knit family. For a time, Jud and Helen moved often, to where ever there was work. In 1916, when Arthola was born, they were in Olathe, Colorado, where Jud and his team of horses worked with a dredge boat on a canal project. Later he did the same thing at Rodky Ford, Colorado. In about 1918, the family moved back to Lamar, Colorado on a horse-drawn hayrack, camping out along the way. Helen had her dishes packed in a wash boiler and they were lost along the way. When they got to the Lamar area, they stayed in a corn crib at Jud's brother Roy's place near Wiley. They lived on the Jones place. In the 1930's and 1940's and until about 1951 they lived on a farm just east of Lamar. When I was a child, all the family gathered there on many Sundays. I always spent a week each summer there, often riding the bus or the "doodle-bug," a small local train, the 36 miles between Las Animas and Lamar. Their house was always a second home for me. My cousin, Nellyne Davidson, and I periodically would tell Grandma we didn't think she could turn summersaults and more, so she would go out on the lawn and show us she could. She liked to run, but the doctor told her she had heart trouble and shouldn't do it anymore. In about 1951, Jud and Helen "retired" and built a house in Lamar. They had more than one city lot in town and most of it was taken up with a garden. They usually planted more garden in the elderly next-door-neighbor's yard, too, and shared the produce with her. Helen did a lot of the gardeing because Jud began doing a lot of carpentry jobs for people who called and wanted cabinets built, etc. Helen always canned and froze a lot of the produce, and was a good housekeeper, seamstress, can cook. After they moved to town, she did a lot of quilting. She couldn't "just sit." She never learned to drive, and I remember a lady asking her once if she didn't get bored with Jud working a lit and not being able to drive places. She laughed and said, "No, I enjoy my own company." After my mother (Arthola Bloyd Harman) died. Helen and her daughter, Nellie Deeter, drove to Las Animas regularly to spend the day cleaning house and cooking for us. I remember what a good feeling it was to come home from school and see Aunt Nellie's car and know they were there. Helen also took over our sewing and made my clothes, so peridically I would go to her house for the weekend to buy material and be fitted for the clothes she was making.
In 1965, some creeks flooded, sending water into Lamar streets. Helen and Jud had gone to bed early and weren't aware of the flood, but in the night there was an explosion in their house. A flash of fire burned them and many things in the house. They thought the house was burning down, and went out through the water to a neighbor's. The phones were out, but people relayed the message from house to house to the fire department, who came and took them to the hospital. Helen had a minor heart attack in the hospital. Though Helen was 73 at the time, and Jud was 81, neither seemed like old people at all and characteristically, took it in stride. They seemed to recover and went about their work again uncomplaingly. Still, Helen, especially was never in as good health after that. The explosion was caused when the flood water sealed a leak in the gas line under their house.
Provided by: Dee Ann Harman Bishopp
- Nellie Anna Stout Vawter and Helen Stout Bloyd had a double wedding at their parent's home on a pretty spring Easter sunday, March 31, 1907. The girls had similar wedding dresses and cut bouquets of lilacs from the yard to put in the house for the wedding.
Source: Dee Ann Harman Bishopp
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Our Family History
1887 - 1974 (86 years)