[Granville-Hough] 19 Feb 2010 - Bishop and Arender memories

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:07:26 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Bishops -19 Feb 2010

    When I have no planned message, someone provides.  This time it was 
Harold Hopkins.  It contains bits and pieces which we may have included 
in messages last year..

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Harold Hopkins:

  That was a nice  piece!  I knew you were kin to the Arenders, but 
didn't know just how.   I've probably told you before
that I never knew any Arenders until I got to high school at Mize. 
 There,  Clyde Arender, and his sister, Ruth, were in my high school 
class.  Ruth  shortly afterward left school to get married to  Clarence 
Bishop, and they bought and operated a restaurant in Mize in the 
building adjacent to Lee Currie's big wooden store on the east side of 
the main street.  I remember that the Bishop restaurant's  jukebox 
blared loud and long, night and day.  

I remember that Rastus Bishop's family had an organ  in his front 
room played  for dances.  This must have been one of the few homes in 
Smith County that tolerated dancing back in those days, when many 
considered dances and the accompanying activities  sinful!  Rastus also 
had a cane mill for making molasses, as I remember.   He was a fairly 
prosperous farmer.   Wessie (Bishop) Ingraham used to write a news 
 column for the /Smith County Reformer/ around 1980 or so, mainly about 
the people in and around her own neighborhood of Rose Hill, which is on 
the old Shady Grove road.  All the Bishops apparently were buried at 
Calvary Cemetery.  

And as to Clyde Arender.  He was a very jovial fellow, spoke with a kind 
of lisp.  He was a sizable guy, kind of clumsy, and played as a lineman 
on the Mize football team. He was a very likable and I always wondered 
how he made out in life. I see in the /Smith County Cemeteries/ book 
that he died in 1978 and was buried at the Raleigh (North) Cemetery  and 
that he had a wife named Maxine Hardin, who apparently was still alive 
when the cemetery book was printed about 1999.  I see that there is 
another family named /Arinder/ with members buried mostly at Lorena.  

-----

(GWH: Clyde and his older brother
Reverend Coley Arender moved to West Texas until late in their lives 
when they returned to Smith County.  I think they were just normal 
folks.)
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    To begin, I want to take the advice of my niece when she as a 
teen-ager speaking in the local dialect: "I ain't gonna say nothin' bout 
nobody - they may be my kinfolks."
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    The Arinders are descendants of Tillman Arinder who was brother to 
my great grandfather Sampson Arender.  Neither could read nor write.  
After Confederate service, different school teachers or preachers told 
them how to spell their name, so Uncle Tillman became Arinder and my 
great grandfather became Arender.   Before, they had been usually 
recorded as Orrender.  Their own father had disappeared before 1840.  
They were reared, somewhat hap-hazardly, by their McCarty maternal 
uncles of Wayne, Scott, and Rankin counties.  Both were married tenant 
farmers for their uncles many years.  They each got possession of some 
land after they were at least 60 years old.
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    My other Bishop connection is from the first Governor Whitfield, who 
had come from South or North Carolina...  He married one of the Simpson 
County Bishops.  My great grandmother, Nancy Bowen Arender knew her 
grandfather was Billy Whitfield from SC and that he had died in Simpson 
County before 1840.  She and Governor Whitfield worked it out that they 
were cousins.  So GGrandma Nancy was sure she was kin to them thar 
Governor Whitfields.  (My niece works for a psychiatric hospital which 
used to be called Whitfield.  It was named in honor of one of the 
Governors.)
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    The story of often told of Wild Bill and Neese Sullivan capturing 
travelers on the road and working them as mules and then locking them in 
stables and feeding them corn.  One of their victims was Tillman Bishop, 
who lived North of Magee but was making his periodic pilgrimage to 
Ellisville to get supplies.  Tillman was a big strong fellow who made a 
pretty good mule.  When locked up for his corn lunch, Tillman said, 
somewhat as an afterthought, "You shouldn't do this to me.  I am your 
kin, I married Polly, daughter of Lod."  Wild Bill and Neese consulted 
and said:  "You are right and we are sorry.  Anyone who married Polly, 
the ugliest Sullivan girl ever born, deserves the best we have.  So they 
seated Tillman at their dinner table and fed him all he could eat. 
Tillman did as he was told and let the remark pass about Polly being 
ugly.  He did find another way to get home from Ellisville.
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    Well, Harold triggered a few memories.  Please, God, bless all who 
remain and their descendants.  Granville.