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Submitted: 9/3/08 • Approved: 9/3/08 • Last Updated: 7/26/12 • R51957-G51956-S3
Birth: Nov. 13, 1893
Wayton
Newton County
Arkansas, USA
Death: Apr. 2, 1970
Harrison
Boone County
Arkansas, USA
Mary Sue (Snow) Vaughn is the daughter of Jasper Law Snow and Mary Eveline (Youngblood) Snow. She married William 'Will' Nelson Vaughn on January 11, 1912. Together they had seven children, Lawrence, Columbus (Dood), Joe, Gracie, Mina, Fern and Lynzo (Doc). Mary loved to tell stories of mischief on her kids and grandkids, but her favorite was to tell 'haint' tales that would make your hair stand on end. These stories of 'boogers' and 'spooks' left many a grandchild with a healthy fear of the dark and things that go bump in the night.
She always had a cat or two around. And tolerated Will's beagles, hiding from him the fact that she would slip them table scraps while on her way to the chicken pen to feed those said scraps to the chickens. The chickens usually got the vegetable parts and smaller scraps from her dining table. The 'hated' beagles got the meat scraps, bones and chunks of uneaten, older home-made cornbread or biscuit. Mary loved the flowers in her yard. She planted Snow ball bushes, Peonies, Cannas, Jack Beans to vine on the big front porch and a line of Jonquils down each side of the front walk way. In 1956 she clipped a small sprig from an ornamental cedar growing on the courthouse square in Harrison, brought it home, stuck it in the ground and IT GREW!! As of this date, June 2007, the bush covers a spot the size of a large pick up truck and is still thriving in what used to be her front yard.
In the days before there were plastic or silk flowers, Mary would sit for days cutting different colors of crepe paper, folding the pieces and making flowers for the decoration day on the first Sunday of June for the Snow Cemetery. There were also folks buried at other cemeteries in the county that she would takd flowers to. She would patiently show a grandchild how to fold the paper just so, then gently pull apart the layers to make the prettiest flowers. The only bad thing was that after the first rain after decoration, there would just be a sick there with a wad of colored blob on it. She would also cut bunches of roses from the vines that trailed along the west side of her yard and take them to the graves in covered tin cans filled with water.
It was these kinds of flowers that she would place on her relatives, parents and younger sister's graves. One grave that she tended with special care was that of her fourth child, her baby girl, Gracie. Gracie died from spinalminingitis when she was just two years and seventeen days old. Mary never completely got over the heartache of losing her golden haired baby. A lock of Gracie's hair was kept in and is still in the Snow Family Bible.
Mary loved to get a good joke on someone or scare the living daylights out of an unsuspectiing victim. She would laugh 'til she couldn't breathe. She had a wonderful sense of humor, twisted sometimes but a good one.
After breaking her hip in the late sixties, Mary's health steadily declined. She was never able to enjoy her yard and flowers as she had when she could be up and about.
During a stay in the hospital she passed away on April 2, 1970. She was buried in the Snow Cemetery at Wayton, Arkansas. The same cemetery that was started by her paternal grandfather, Wiley Snow.
Contributed on 9/3/08 by silver-b
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Record #: 51957