On August 3, 2001, Mrs. Ellie Esther Birmingham Nolen celebrates her 100th birthday. There will be a celebration honoring her on August 4th, at the American Legion Building, in Sulligent. To live 100 years is amazing. I have lived over half that long and I can’t imagine 100 years. Mrs. Nolen lives in Norton Estates in Sulligent. The family of Mrs. Ellie Nolen has truly been blessed. It was an honor to interview her and learn so much from what she had to tell me.

Mrs. Nolen’s parents were W. Thomas Birmingham (born 1878 -died 1942) and Mary Lou “Mollie” Otts Birmingham (born 1882-died 1974), they lived in Lamar County, Alabama. Mrs. Nolen has lived here for most of her 100 years except for living a short time in Mississippi. Thomas and “Mollie” Birmingham had eleven children with Ellie Esther being the oldest. Their other children were Myrtle ( married Rufus Weeks ), Clifton (married Madge Ottts), Grace (married Earlie Evans), Gertrude ( married Howard Crew), Hazel ( married Roy Otts), Clarence ( married Robbie Weeks), Ralph (married Gladys Burks), Ray ( married Ruth Murrow and Jean Sorrells), Delbert ( married Helen McDonald and Gail Harris ), Evelyn ( born 1922 - died 1925 ), Daisy ( married Roland Egger).

It is a different day than when she was born that is for sure! According to the Vernon Courier, August 1, 1901 issue, lady’s umbrellas were selling from 50 cents to $1.50 at J. E. Morton’s store and he also had the latest thing in lady’s straight front corsets. You could buy 9 pounds of coffee for $ 1.00 in money at N. Edgeworth & Son. At W. B. Clearman’s store, 16 pounds of sugar sold for $1.00 and domestic and calico cloth was 5 cents per yard.

In the July 18, 1901 issue of the Vernon Courier, the weather was mentioned as “the hot wind of last Friday and Saturday were new things to the people in this section. Large saplings were parched to death in the two days and fodder was cured on the stalf without pulling. A month of such wind would turn any country in the world into a desert. The possibilities for great changes in the earth’s surface are many.”

“ The rains for the past day or two have been very general throughout the corn sections and the South. This warrants the statement that the corn crop will be large and not a failure. Not in years have the farmers of this section been so solicitous about a food crop. It is needed and means something to everyone”.

Mrs. Ellie Nolen remembers her grandparents, John Otts( born 1862 - died 1927) and Americus Catherine Newell Otts (born 1862-died 1927) and John Birmingham ( served CSA) and Mary Jane Birmingham ( born 1852-died 1940). John Birmingham’s first wife was Mary Esther ( born 1851-died 1891). Both of Mrs. Nolen’s grandfathers were farmers and served the south in the Civil War.

Growing up in rural Lamar County meant doing chores on the farm, among these she remembers picking cotton in cold weather, hands freezing from the early morning dew or frost. At night, in front of the fire, a sheet was laid on the floor and the family would all shuck and hand shell corn onto the sheet, The corn would then be bagged to carry to the mill to be made into corn meal. The houses back then had cracks in the floors, she can remember living in a house with a dirt floor at one time. In the summertime it would be hot and they would often bed down at night on the porch to be cooler. Her mother must have been a good cook, because the baked sweet potatoes, she described baking in an oven in the fireplace, and the food cooked on the wood stove sounds good to me. Mrs. Nolen said “some of us liked brown biscuits and some liked light brown biscuits, Mother would cook some of each kind. One time Mother cooked an apple stack cake, I took the top layer off and ate down through the center of the cake. I can’t remember what Mother did to me”. “Mother had two cows that she milked. She would mix a tub full of hulls and cottonseed meal to feed the cows”, said Mrs. Nolen.

“ I had a sister Evelyn that was sick, the night that she died, we were all on the porch, there was a loud noise like a wagon and team of mules loose, we all heard it rattling but there was nothing there. Everyone was scared and we went in the house. Later that night Evelyn died”, said Mrs. Nolen”.

Mrs. Nolen married E. B. “Birt” Nolen , whom she had grown up with, at age 14. They married at Gattman, MS. They had eight children; J. K. (married Ruby Northam), Annie Mae (died age 15 months), Marie (married Frank Gilmore), Mary (married Ray Stephens), Jewel (married Clarence Quick), Lois (married Benny Collins), Carl (married Mary Crossley), and Billy (married Ruth Hankins). J. K., Annie Mae, Jewel and Billy are deceased. E. B. “BIrt” Nolen was the son of John and Catherine Flynn Nolen.

Mrs. Nolen has been affectionally known for years as “Nonie”. She was given the name “Nonie by first granddaughter, Gwen Nolen Buckley, daughter of J. K. and Ruby Northam Nolen.

I don’t have the space this week to write all that Mrs. Nolen told me about her early life. She had a daughter, Annie Mae that died as a child. She remembers that they cut stove wood to pay the doctors that treated her. They would shell 3 bushel of white corn and sell for $1.00. Before electricity or iceboxes, they kept milk cool by lowering down into the well or placing in a spring of cool water. Later they had an icebox and would buy block ice to keep things cool. She washed clothes by hand and the dirty ones, she beat them clean with a “battling stick” and hung on a barbed wire fence to dry.

I asked her if she had a Christmas memory to share. She said, “we usually got an apple, orange and a stick of candy for Christmas. One Christmas when we lived near Tol Anderson’s place Daddy bought me a doll. I remember running over to Granddaddy's to show him. On the way I fell and broke the doll and cut my arm”. Mrs. Nolen still has the scar from that cut on her left arm.

I asked her if she remembered picnics when she was young. She said “there was a place at Beaverton where they would have picnics. One time Myrtle ( her sister ) and I went over there, we each had a dime. They had tubs of lemonade, which they sold. At the end of the day, they would sell the lemonade, two glasses for the price of one. Myrtle and I would wait and buy the end of the day. We got more for our money”.

When asked if she could remember anything unusual about the weather, Mrs. Nolen said” one time there was thunder and lightning when it was snowing. Another time there was a tornado below our house; we got under the house under the rock chimney”.

I asked what could she remember about the Fourth of July. Mrs. Nolen said “after I married some friends, came over and we made ice cream. One freezer wasn’t enough so we poured it out and made another freezer full. The first ice cream almost melted before the second was finished. The friends were my cousin Dudley and Ruth Otts”.

What do you do in a hundred years? She has been a loving wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother ( I am not sure how many greats ). She has quilted many quilts and family members have enjoyed them and are enjoying them. She loved working in her garden when she had one. She enjoyed going to gospel singings with her husband and Earlie and Grace ( her sister) Evans.

I spent ninety minutes talking with this great lady and the time went by fast. She is remarkable. I asked her for words of wisdom for living a long life, she had none. I think that she has taken whatever fate dealt her and made the best of it. To a precious lady, Happy 100th Birthday.

Lamar County Kin

By: Barbara Woolbright Carruth

Two Hundred and Fifteen persons registered Saturday at the birthday party honoring Mrs. Ellie Esther Birmingham Nolen, at the American Legion Building in Sulligent. Mrs. Nolen was 100 on Friday, August 3, 2001. Believe me, Mrs. Nolen doesn’t look one hundred. This lady has had a special week. I often hear someone say “if I live to be a hundred’, Mrs. Nolen has done that, and with such grace and dignity. I visited with her a few minutes before the party and made her picture. I couldn’t stay because of my allergies. It was an honor to make her picture on her special day. She was dressed in a red outfit and looked great. Her family beautifully decorated the building and there was lots of good food. I commented to Mrs. Nolen that it looked like they had a good “spread” on the table. She said “ I know, I have been hearing them talk about it.”

Distance didn’t matter, folks came from Florida, Illinois, Texas, Kentucky, Georgia and it seems from all over Alabama, to wish this precious lady good will. Mrs. Nolen received many gifts, cards and of course she had flowers. She enjoyed her son Carl’s guitar playing and singing. His daughter and granddaughter joined him in singing. Her daughters, Marie Gilmore, Mary Stephens and Lois Collins were there. Honorable Roger Bedford stopped by to offer his birthday wishes.

Pictured this week is a picture of Mrs. Nolen and her sister Daisy Birmingham Egger. Mrs. Nolen was the oldest and Mrs. Egger was youngest of the children of W. Thomas and Mary Lou “Mollie” Otts Birmingham.

In my interview with Mrs. Nolen last week, I asked her about her school days. She said, “I went to school at Prospect. I remember playing baseball when I was 10 or 11 years old. I was catching, a boy was bating, and he hit me in the head”. She walked to school, but not too far, about half a mile.

She has witnessed things that most of us can only read about.

Mrs. Nolen remembers taking short trips on the train. When she was growing up they would catch the train at Crews and ride to Beaverton. Later when she lived at Greenwood Springs, she would ride the train to Sulligent and back.

Mrs. Nolen told me that her daddy pulled one of her teeth with the pliers. She said,

“ Daddy carried me to Dr. Collins because I had been keeping them up nights with the toothache. Doctor Collins was going to pull my tooth, but I wouldn’t open my mouth. Daddy carried me back home, later I woke up in the night crying with the toothache, so Daddy pulled the tooth himself.”

I asked Mrs. Nolen who had been her best friend. She couldn’t remember “a best friend“. She didn’t know who to say was her best friend. I know that she was “a best friend” to many and that she has touched and is touching many lives. I first knew Mrs. Nolen as J. K. Nolen’s mother. I worked in the ASCS Office in Vernon and he was one of our farmers. When I would see her in Sulligent, she didn’t know me, from anyone else, but always had a smile and something to say, and it was usually something funny. You felt good after being around her. This was about 35 years ago when I first knew who she was, and she still makes me feel good, when I have been around her. She is a charming gracious lady. God bless her !