COUSINS

VOL. 1, NO 39 To/For Descendants of Silas Kyle Sims 01/15/2018 Howdy Cousins. I am one of the wierd ones that is enjoying the cold, cold snowy winter weather that we are experiencing here in Charleston, Illinois! If it were icy, I wouldn’t be so happy. But, I do adapt well to Illinois weather. The red cardinals are beautiful against the white snowy ground and the Juncos are so plentful. And I must not forget the white-tailed deer.

SILAS KYLE SIMS SCHOLARSHIP UPDATE April 1, 2018 is the due date for all completed scholarship applications to be received by the Silas Kyle

Sims Foundation, 5221 N County Road 2100 E, Charleston IL 61920.

It is acceptable to email the completed application form and required documentation to Jkmichael@eiu.edu

The SKS Scholarships are academic based, not need based. Any high school gratuating senior or one who has graduated high school within the last two years of the date of application is elibible to apply.

Age limit guideline is 17-21 as an estimating eligibility field.

A copy of the 2-page scholarship application form is included with this issue of COUSINS . Two $1,000 Scholarships are available for the 2018-2019 Academic Year

SIMS REUNION The 81ST CONSECUTIVE ANNUAL SIMS REUNION will be held at Fox Ridge State Park on August 5, 2018. Reunion President, Bob Stewart, Charleston IL will be assisted by Vice-President Hal Sims, Charleston IL and Secretary/Treasurer Lisa Sims, Springfield IL.

REUNION MINUTES

The 80th Consecutive Sims Reunion was held Sunday, August 13, 2017, in the Brick Pavilion at Fox Ridge State Park, with 76 people in attendance from States of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Virginia. The blessing for the meal was given by Jack Sweeney at 12:40 p.m. After the meal, family pictures were taken. The business meeting was called to order by President Bill Harrison at 2:09 p.m. The minutes of the 2016 Sims Reunion were read and approved. The Treasurer’s Report was read and approved. As of August 13, 2017, the Sims Reunion Account has a balance of $347.95. The hat was passed and $71.70 was collected for the Sims reunion Account. In New Business, Bill Harrison asked people to keep him updated about births, marriages and deaths. Gift certificates were given to youngest female present: Nora Wilson; youngest male present: Louis Baker; oldest male present: Ray Seeley; oldest female preent: Alice Seeley; traveled the farthest: Ray and Sue Floyd 800 mile from Virginia. Officers were elected and the President is Bob Stewart, Vice-President is Hall Sims, and Secretary/Treasurer if Lisa Sims. The 81st Sims Reunion is scheduled for 12:30 p.m., August 5, 2018, in the Brick Pavilion at Fox Ridge State Park.

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BIRTHS Ella Jane Sims born October 22, 2017 to Caleb and Cory Sims in Champaign IL. Sims lineage: Ella Jane > Caleb Sims > Scott Sims> Max Sims > Francis Sims > Pinckney Sims > Silas Kyle Sims. Ella Jane > Caleb Sims > Jacqie (Sweeney) Sims > Jack Sweeney > Mary (Sims) Sweeney > Hamilton Sims > Silas Kyle Sims. Noah Micah Clodfelter, Jr born April 25, 2017 to Noah and Audra Clodfelter at St. Anthony Hospital, Effingham IL. Sims lineage: Noah Micah > Noah > Carolyn (Henderson) Clodfelter > Norma (McGahan) Henderson > Nora (Sims) McGahan > Hamilton Sims > Silas Kyle Sims. Lawson Wayne Moore born May 11, 2016 to Lucas and Bethany Moore at Good Samaritan Hospital, Vincennes IN. Sims lineage: Lawson Wayne > Bethany (Clodfelter) Moore > Carolyn (Henderson) Clodfelter > Norma (McGahan) Henderson > Nora (Sims) McGahan > Hamilton Sims > Silas Kyle Sims. Zoey Adeline Craig was born January 20, 2016 to Andrew and Melinda Craig. Sims lineage: Zoey > Andrew Ryan Craig > Debbie (Henderson) Craig > Norma (McGahan) Henderson > Nora (Sims) McGahan . Hamilton Sims > Silas Kyle Sims. DEATHS Robert Charles Sims, 87, passed away on December 26, 2017 in Fort Worth TX . Sims lineage: Robert Charles> Robert Kenneth Sims > William Howard Sims > Silas Kyle Sims Richard Guy Rhodes, 85, passed away peacefully December 7, 2017 in Phoenix Arizona. Sims lineage: Richard Guy > Guy Lafayette > Jestina Anna (Sims) Rhodes > Silas Kyle Sims. Margaret Pearl (Russell) Shaver, wife of Marvin Shaver, passed away June 14, 2017 at Sun City AZ. Marvin is 92 years old and said he is lost without Marge. Sims Lineage for Marvin: Marvin > Beatrice (Sims) Shaver > Silas Albert Sims > Silas Kyle Sims. KUDOS TO BRADLEY SCOTT REES: USAF reservist, Bradley Scott Rees, attained the rank of Major! Brad – who was pinned by his father, Frank Scott Rees (SAC veteran), and his wife, retired USAR Captain Jinece Rees – has served since joining the Coast Guard in 1976, beginning as a Corpsman in Sitka AK. He is an RN in civilian life, working for Cerner Corp. Ooh-rah, Brad! Sims lineage: Brad > Phyllis Jane (Sims) Rees > Raymond Silas Sims > Hamilton Sims > Silas Kyle Sims.

MEMORIAL DONATIONS RECEIVED For the year 2017, $640.00 was donated to the Silas Kyle Sims Scholarship Fund from our cousins to honor love ones’ birthdays, fathers day and Christmas. This neat idea of gifting the SKS Scholarship to honor a loved one on these special occasions is a good one. My sister does that for my birthday, and I love it! Also, during the sad time when a loved one passes, memorial donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the Silas Kyle Sims Scholarship Fund. Another neat idea is to bequeath funds to the Silas Kyle Sims Scholarship Fund within your will.

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I have asked for news items, human interest stories or happenings of your family, etc. I hope you enjoy the following article which includes a little history, memories and a little humor.

SOME OF MY MEMORIES OF LITTLE BRICK SCHOOL By

Jack Sweeney I started my first grade in school at Little Brick in the fall of 1944. There were probably 30-40 students there. All eight grades were taught in the school to local students. Our teacher was Don Haddock. Ron Robinson and I were the only first graders then. On that first day, the teacher had me at his desk learning for himself how much I knew. I told him I even knew my ABC’s backwards. He had me to recite them backwards, which I did. Later, he told me that he couldn’t do that, but that night at home, he learned to do his ABC’s backwards, also. He didn’t think that it was right for the teacher to not be able to do anything that one of his first graders could do. One day when the weather was too bad to play outside, during lunch hour, Mr. Haddock told us he would show us how to see stars through our coat sleeve. We smaller kids were brought into the room one at time carrying our coats. We were asked to lay down on the recitation bench on our back. Our coat was placed over our faces with one sleeve held upright by the teacher. As we intently looked up through that sleeve looking for stars, he poured water down through the sleeve.

Another time, Mr. Haddock told us he had a steamboat that could run faster on land than any of us. We, of course, didn’t believe him. The next day the teacher brought a rather large dog to school with him. The dog’s name was “Steamboat”. Grace Goodman was hired to teach when I started fourth grade. She got sick and Jim Boaz substituted for a few days. He would get kids busy on assignments, then he would step outside to smoke. Some of the older boys would lock the door and not let him back in. When it became apparent that Mrs. Goodman would not be able to return soon, Reba Lawyer was hired to teach the remainder of the school year. My fifth and sixth years were taught by Maurine Field. Maurine took us on field trips. In the spring, we would go to someone’s woods to learn to identify wild flowers, and to collect them for a flower notebook. On one such trip, Raymond Stewart, who was a year ahead of me, found a nice stone Indian axe head. If my memory serves me correctly, Maurine bought that from him for $5.00. I think it was the beginning of my 5th grade that the 7th and 8th graders were bussed into Charleston to attend school in what we called “Junior High” School. Also at that same time, our 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade children were bussed over to the Davis School with Mrs. Miller as their teacher, while the Davis School’s 4th, 5th and 6th graders were bussed to our school. Occasionally, Mrs. Field’s husband, Bob, would bring her to school. If he wasn’t too busy, he would get out and play with us for awhile. He might catch a kid and pull off his shoe and run with it. We would all try to catch him and get it back. He usually wore gum boots, but he could still run pretty fast in them.

Quite often the teacher would use an older student who had his studies caught up, to help the younger students. If, for example, the younger ones were doing a reading assignment and came across a new word that they didn’t know, they would hold up their hand and the older student would whisper the word to them. This would save a lot of trips to the teacher’s desk and kept the teacher from being distracted when she had a class in front doing recitation, or whatever. Our school was on the south side of the road. The front door was on the north, in the center of the end of the building. When entering, you walked down a short hallway that entered the large school room. On the right was a large jacketed coal-burning stove. During cold weather, the teacher would need to come to school early enough to get the fire going and get the room warm. The south wall of the schoolroom had a blackboard across it. The Teacher’s desk was centered against the south wall facing the room. Students’ desks were in rows facing the south. At the back, on each side was a small cloakroom with a small one-stool bathroom behind each cloakroom with a small

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one-stool bathroom. The boys side was in the northwest corner of the building, and the girls in the northeast. Off the northeast corner of the school building was a one-car garage with a coal bin and a cob bin in it. Off the northwest corner of the school building was a hand-dug well with a concrete top. A hand pump was over the well. A wire hook on the pump held a tin cup. All students and the teacher drank from that tin cup. Usually we would pump a little water into the cup, slosh it around, and throw that water out. Then we would pump more water into the cup and drink it. We never worried about any more sanitation than that. Also, it never entered our minds that each bathroom had a septic tank under it and the tile that drained these septic tanks was all within 30 feet of the well! After Mrs. Field became our teacher, she encouraged each of us to bring our own drinking cups to school. Most of the time, those cups just drew dust in our desks. It seemed way too much trouble to us to run inside to our desk to get a cup to drink from, when that tin cup was hanging right there on the pump. Sometimes the teacher would assign tasks to the students and set aside a few minutes each day to do those tasks. Also, the tasks would be rotated between students. Some of those tasks were carrying in buckets of coal from the garage, carrying out ashes, carrying some water in and dumping it down through those open-bottomed bathroom stools into the septic tanks below, carrying in water to keep the tanks above the water basins in each cloak room filled, sweeping floors, empting trash, washing blackboards, and dusting blackboard erasers. The only play-ground equipment we had was a merry-go-round. It was held up by a sturdy center post with a ball on top. A round metal dome sat upside down on the ball with metal rods radiating downward and outward to the ring that held the seats. During Halloween, someone would lift that merry-go-round up and off the center ball. Then it would set down on the ground. It would be useless, usually until a group of men would come and lift it up and put the dome back on the ball. Back then, I think school started after September 1st, and ended by May 1st. Also, the days ran, I think, from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm. We had a midmorning 15-minute recess, an hour at noon, and a midafternoon 15-minute recess. Five minutes before the end of the play-time, the teacher would ring a bell. That meant that if you need a drink or a bathroom break, now is the time. Get it done, because in 5 minutes, another bell would ring and you needed to be ready to go to your seat and get back to learning. Games? If the weather at all allowed it, we played outdoors. The grounds was large enough that several activities could go on at once. Along the south fence, a game similar to tag that we called 3-corners was played a lot. Sometimes we played a game called ante-over, where a ball was thrown over the school building. There was a team on each side. If the ball was caught before it hit the ground, that team charged around to the other side and whomever the ball touched, that person was captured to become your team member. Often a form of softball was played. Mrs. Field was good about playing with the kids. She might be the pitcher for both sides of a ballgame. During this time period, all bicycles had large-diameter tires, were only one speed, and had coaster brakes. My parents bought me a small bicycle with either 18 or 20 inch diameter wheels. It was the only one at school that small. It was a novelty to the bigger boys who had larger bicycles. I was always being asked if they could ride my bike. My payment was to get to go to the secret room with them. The boys bathroom door did not have a lock on it and the room would only hold about 3 persons at once. But the only place on the school grounds where you could get away from the others, was to go into the bathroom, put your back against the closed door, and your feet against the far wall. This was the place two guys would go if they wanted to tell a secret or a joke to each other. Because of the popularity of my little bike, I was allowed in to hear a lot of private stories or jokes that I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. I attended Little Brick School for six years. My sister, Judy, who is three years younger, attended it, and I think my younger sister, Joy who is 6 years younger also attended it. My father, Rex, who was born in 1912, attended it for 8 years, as did his older brother, Paul. My grandmother, Mary Henry, I think, attended in an older building at this location, also for 8 years. She was born in 1875. I think the Little Brick building was built in 1894.

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Not very many years after I attended Little Brick School, it was phased out. It and the Davis School were two of the last of the country schools in the Charleston district to be closed. The property was sold and converted to a home. It went through several renters and, I think, caught fire twice. The second fire ruined it and it was torn down soon after. The Hutton Township road commissioner, Harry Stewart, hauled a lot of the bricks to fill washouts and bad holes along several of the roads in Hutton Township. There is a house trailer on the property at present. One or two of the trees we used to play under are still standing, and the property line is still present

(Jack is the son of Rex and Mary Sweeney, the grandson of Hamilton and Ethel Sims)

Please email me if you are still receiving the COUSINS via U.S. Mail. Postage and reproduction costs continue to increase. It is much more cost effective to email the Newsletter. My email address is jkmichael@eiu.edu I need news items, human interest stories or happenings of your family or anscestors for publishing in the COUSINS NEWSLETTER. These bits of information are sure to be of interest to your cousins and is a way of sharing your heritage. Send to Judy Michael, 5221 N County Road 2100 E., Charleston IL 61920 or email jkmichael@eiu.edu

Please forward notices of births, marriages, deaths and changes of address to: COUSINS c/o Bill Harrison, 916 Seventeenth Street, Charleston, IL 61920

or via e-mail to: mstrwm777@gmail.com Bill maintains the genealogy records showing our ancestry. His records begin with James Sims, who was Silas Kyle Sims’ grandfather and include meticulously recorded entries for births, marriages and deaths of Silas Kyle and Virginia Sims’ descendants.

UNDER SHADE TREE AT SIMS REUNION

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C O U S I N SIn th i s i s sue o f C O U S I N S you w i l l f ind

• Minutes of the August 2017 Annual Sims Reunion

• SKS Scholarship Application Information

• Births, Deaths

• Kudos

• Memories by Jack Sweeney THE SILAS KYLE SIMS FOUNDATION 5221 N COUNTY ROAD 2100 E CHARLESTON, IL 61920

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