A "Woodmen of the World" tombstone dedication in the Lost Prairie cemetery in 1906.
This is the same tombstone as it appears in 2002. Notice that the decorative finial is now laying on the ground by the tombstone.
My great-grandfather Crider (above), a veteran of the Confederacy.
My great-uncle Josh, the village blacksmith.
This is my grandfather A.B. (Al) Crider. He died from complications of diabetes in 1947, a few months before my second birthday. He owned the General Store in Personville for 40 years from the 1890's until the late 1930's or early 1940's
To the right is a list of Personville's prominent citizens from the historical marker. My grandfather's and great-uncle's names are on the list.
These two buildings comprised my grandfather's store.
This is my great-uncle Josh's blacksmith shop. He is the one wearing the apron. My great-grandfather Crider is on the left. The boy in front is my uncle Blake, who was born in 1901 (thus dating the photo to circa 1906). Though it cannot be read in this lo-res photo, there is a sign on the building which reads "Coffins Made".
Loading cotton at the railroad dock. Personville had a gin in those long-ago days. It has probably been at least 60 years since cotton has been grown in the area. This photo dates to the first decade of of the 20th century.
Two miles down the road from Personville there was a community area, Baptist Church, and cemetery named "Lost Prairie". The church and cemetery are still there, and it is where many citizens of Personville to laid to rest. The graves of my great-grandparents and other relatives are there.
There were two other cemeteries which served Personville. One, located adjacent to State Highway 164, was the Person Family cemetery. The other cemetery was located north of the townsite, but has been lost. Evidently it was plowed over. My father told me that his father had told him that most of the graves were those of itinerant workers.
Until the Great Depression, "homeplaces" dotted the entire area around Personville. Most were small farms which provided a subsistence living to the families with --hopefully--a little left over. Most moved away during the depression or moved to the cities to support the war economy which followed the depression. However, some of the land is still owned by their descendants. Those who retained the mineral rights to the land may now be fortunate to have some income from the many natural gas wells in the area.
Most of the old homes are long gone, but a few of the old derelicts remain. They, too, will be gone with the passage of a few more years.
