Macon Telegraph Newspaper article, circa 1930

ONE HUNDRED and seventeen living members in one family! No race suicide in that home! Mr. and Mrs. J.E. Crook, of Reynolds, Georgia, have been married 63 years, they have 13 living children, 75 living grandchildren and 27 great grandchildren.

"Some of the grand children have passed away, bug Mama has never lost one of her children" said Mr. Crook. "We've never had a funeral from our house and never a corpse laid out in it. And we've raised 13 children, too. All of them good children and nev er a bit of trouble to their father and mother."

White haired and tall, with a small mustache, the venerable great grandfather, sat with his chair tipped back against the porch wall, balanced precariously on two legs, just as if he were 18 instead of 84. Near him sat his wife, the partner of his trials and his pleasant days, also with hair as white as any snow and with a face much younger than her 79 years of toil might have brought.

"We were married in '67," said she. "We were both children when we married, I wasn't even 17 then and there were hard times in those days. Right after the war, it was and we were just renters then. But we stuck together and we made the pull."

Her son interrupted at this point. "It used to be a long time ago women didn't have jobs and there weren't near as many divorces in those days. Nowadays, women say to the men folks, 'You go long with you. I'll do like I please. I can make my own livin '."

But the mother, heedless of his talk went on, "We've gone on just as smooth and good together as anybody would want. You know when you marry, you promise to stay with him for sickness and trouble and death and everything else. I promised my Savior I'd d o it and I've tried to stick to it. I've been just as good to him as I could be, and he's been good to me, too.

"There is no reason for folks leaving one another if they're good to each other. If he'll do his part and she'll do hers, they'll manage to make it over. There have never been any divorces in my family. One of my sons has lost two wives and the other l ost one, but it wasn't by divorce."

She is gentle voiced and little and her black silk dress, dotted with tiny white dots, was clean and fresh. She walks with a crutch, but her fair face shows very few wrinkles and here snowy hair has rebellious curls which no amount of brushing can keep i n place.

"It'd curl, now if I'd turn it loose." the little old lady confided to me, "I use to have a real curly head. And I was as peart as any of them till last year, when I fell and broke my foot."

Madison, the oldest son, who sat upon the steps, smiling at that. "Yes, neither one of them is old much. Ma is only about 17 years older than I am, and I am sure I am not getting old. Why, last year, Pa went fishing one day and walked six miles. He a lmost walked me to death. And four years ago, Pa picked 135 pounds of cotton in a day and I told him I'd give him a box of tobacco if he'd pick a hundred pounds and he picked 135. Never started picking till eight o'clock and stopped an hour and a half f or dinner. And he is 80 years old."

"I picked over a hundred and thirty next day, too," proudly said the old man. "Yeah, Pa surely did pick nearly 130 next day."

"Well, we're used to work," sad Mrs. Crook. "Twenty-three years we lived on rented land and we raised 13 children and they were no easy times. Many's the time I worked in the field all day and then sat up and worked every night while they slept. Many a nd many's the night I sat up till 10 o'clock making trousers for the ten boys, of mine. I'd buy a bold of osenberg and make them two pairs of trousers apiece when the summer came on. Those with what they had left over would do for the summer. I'd make them and then dye them with willow bark and sweet gum bark and they looked pretty, too, when I got them done."

Madison chuckled. "I remember the pants," he said. "They used to stretch like all git out and they were always under my feet. I used to spend half my time trying to keep them rolled up."

"Well, I had to make 'em long, for the boys to work in, in the hot summer, to sort of protect their legs from the hot sun," Mother Crook justified herself.

"When I was first married, I spun and wove. I used to work in the field all day and then spin my cut that night before I went to bed."

"How much is a cut?"

"It takes four cuts to make a yard."

"Have you always lived here, in this house?"

"No'm, we lived in half a dozen places, I suppose. But we have been living here eighteen years."

She looked at me over her gold rimmed glasses. "My work has been hard, but I didn't mind it."

MR. CROOK interrupted - "One thing you can say about us, I always paid my debts and don't owe anybody anything. I have never been in the courts for anything and I have never been sued. I been on the jury many times, but except f or that, I never been in a courthouse or near a jail."

"Did you fight in the Civil War, Mr. Crook?" I asked, noting a Confederate Veteran's Cross of Honor on his coat lapel.

"Yessum, I joined up, but I had the good luck not to be in much fighting. I was in Hood's Division and I served part of three years, but I had the good luck not to get in any battle. They had me guarding soldiers down at the Andersonville prison for a l ong time, then they sent me to Savannah for a while and then to Atlanta, but I had the luck not to get into the fighting, it was mostly over before I got there."

"Then, I got sick and the company went over to South Carolina and I couldn't go with them. There were some mighty big fights, all right, but I missed them. I was down sick. I had the typhoid pneumonia and the measles at the same time and it almost put me out, I can tell you. I lost my voice."

The old gentleman has a high pitched, very weak voice, which I had attributed to his advancing age, but which must have been caused by the illnesses of the war times.

"How were things down at Andersonville prison?" I asked him. "were they as bad as people represent them nowadays?"

"Wall, I don't know how bad folks make out like it was. But it was bad enough I can tell you. There was no feeding the prisoners enough I suppose, but then we were not getting much good eating ourselves."

"Did you have enough to eat, or did you go hungry?"

"Well, such as it was, I guess you might say they was enough to make out with."

"Was that spring which now has a tablet over it telling how the Good God let the water spring from the rock, opened while you were there?" said I, with a distinct recollection of the doubt which was mine, when I saw the spring of water which flows through the old prison grounds, and observed the pious declaration.

He grunted and eyed me a little strangely.

"What water's there now, was there then," he declared with an air of finality.

"What were your duties as a guard? Was it hard work?"

"Much of them time, I was busy burying the dead." he said quietly. "I suppose we buried as many as 125 a day there some days. They were down in that sickly country and weren't used to it and they couldn't stand it."

And that was about all the talk I could get from him about the war times. He was as loathe to discuss those days as the average world war veteran is to talk about the zero hours.

But there was plenty of conversation going on around me. In fact I nearly strained an ear drum trying to catch the remarks of different sons and daughters and grand daughters who were sitting around.

"We had a reunion here a few years back," said one son. "You should have seen that. It looked like an association. They had fixed up every thing you can think of to eat, fried chickens and things. I reckon there was a handful of gizzards and I spent th e day running to keep the rest of them from getting any. I had stole the whole works."

"Ask Pa how long he's been a member of the church?" said another.

"O goodness!" said Mrs. Crook. "I reckon we been members ever since Gus was a baby, or maybe it was you. I don't remember."

"She joined first" said Mr. Crook.

I reckon it must be 60 years ago, now. All of the children are Baptists, except one boy and he isn't anything. One of them went free will to suit her husband, too."

M. L. Crook, the eldest son was trying to give me the names of the 13 children. "Come here, Susie," he called to his wife, "come and help me get them straight."

And he certainly needed the aid of his wife.

"M.L. - that's me, I'm the oldest," he began. Then he hesitated a moment.

"A.J. - he's the next one, he lives in Hartford, Alabama." He scratched his head thoughtfully, and tried to recall who came next.

"Let's see, the next one's Rosetta."

"No, she ain't next," said his wife. "Lon's next."

"O yes, Lon, he's L.J. I missed him, that's right, he lives over close to Americus."

"J.T., Tom, he's next and lives in Moultrie, then there B.C. - Ches, he lives right back over there close to Pa. The twins are next."

Hereupon the husband took up the story again. "Yes, the twins are next, C.B. and J.L., they live close to Americus. And the next's Henry, he's H.R. and he lives over here back of Ma and J.G. - Julius is next."

"Wait, hold on a minute" said Mrs. Crook. "Mary Lou is next."

"Well, Julius looks older than Mary Lou, he ought to be next."

"Well he is not. Mary Lou, that's Mrs. Rooks, lives down close to Americus and the next's Mrs. Perry, that's Eva Bell and she lives at Cordele."

"Yes, and I do know the youngest. He's Monroe and lives at Montezuma."

Then they both waited anxiously while I counted up to see if there were 13 of them listed.

But Mother and Father Crook knew them and in order, too. Mrs. Crook had a list all written out for me and I discovered that there were two sons, then a daughter, Mrs. Fulford; then three sons, followed by twin boys, then two more sons, before another da ughter came along. The daughter is Mrs. Rooks, who was followed by a sister, Mrs.Perry and the youngest child was a son. Ten grown man-children is quite a record. "And never a one of them caused me a minute's trouble" said the mother.

There are twins in the second generation, too. Henry, the son who followed after C.B. and J.L., the twin brothers, has a son and daughter who are twins, and five other children, besides.

Only one child of the 13 has no children, the numbers of the third generation ranging from 3, to 11, and the total living, being 75.

"If you will excuse me, I'll go see about some dinner for you," said Mrs. Crook hospitably, raising herself to here crutches.

We assured here that we could not stay to dinner and I asked her if she had a cook. "No, indeed." said she. "What would I want with a cook?" Despite her crutches and her 79 years, this sturdy, pioneer continues to prepare the meals for herself and her husband.

"Folks call us Crooks, but that isn't right," said the father, when I was about to leave. "The real name is Croak. My grandfather came to this country from Germany and he spelled it Croak, but it has got so it is spelled Crook and everybody calls us tha t."

The eldest don laughed. "Well, I guess Crook is a good a name for us as any, but none of us ever have been in jail yet!"