1967 Bernhardt Family Reunion

Were you there?

Tainted Candy

Lonnie Cletus, son of Jacob Alphonso Bernhardt, used to attend a school house that was located on Webb road, down in a slight creek valley just before you reach the Lyerly’s residence. You can still see it from the road but it is just a skeleton of a building now and nearly covered up with vines and weeds – in fact, it looks like it is ready to collapse. At the time that this school was built, a small spring lay just north of the school house but it was not usable. All age levels attended this school but the older the boys were assigned to carry drinking water in buckets from the Webb’s place, a homestead about ½ mile up the path which included a small store. While they were on the water runs, the boys would buy candy for a few pennies and then carry it back to the school in a small bag (along with their water buckets, of course).


Grandpa liked to slip some of the girls candy that he had bought. One little boy, named Willie Hill, talked sort of like the Buckwheat character on the Little Rascals shows. Lots of his consonants sounded like “t”. Willie was jealous and whispered to my dad one day that if he didn’t share some of the candy with him, he was going to tell the teacher that the boys bought candy at the store and didn’t just go only to get water.

It didn’t take long for my dad to fix that scene. He took the wrappers off of some of his own Grandma’s chocolate-flavored Ex-lax and put it in a small brown paper bag. In the morning after the boys had gone for water and returned, Willie approached him and threatened dad again. So dad was extra generous this time and gave Willie the entire bag of “candy”.

When the class returned to the schoolhouse from recess, Willie asked the teacher to be excused. Confused, the teacher asked Willie why he needed to be excused because they just got back from the afternoon recess. Willie replied, “When you totta toe, you totta toe” (when you gotta go, you gotta go) and ran out the door. Last thing the students saw was Willie running with his pants half down going around the flag pole and heading for the woods. Dad said that Willie would not eat anything he was ever offered after that episode.

Story told to Stan Sebastian by Oleba Bernhardt Sebastian

Bernhardt Clan - Can you identify?

Little Girl with a Fish Bowl

This story was told to Doris Elizabeth Faggart Gillon by her Grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Bernhardt Pense (5th child of John Crawford Bernhardt and Laura Elizabeth Davis) and her Mother Vera Elizabeth Pence. (Sarah was 10 years old when her mother, Laura Elizabeth Davis, died on the 22nd of March 1882).

When Sarah was a little girl her Mother was very sick. A large group of family and friends were gathered together in a downstairs family room. Suddenly a little girl dressed in a white gown and carrying a bowl of goldfish came down the stairs. She did not look or speak to anyone in the room, just walked through and on out the front door.

Some of the folks in the room got up and went out on the front porch looking for her but she had completely disappeared. Now this was in a remote area with nothing close by. When they couldn’t find her and went back in the house they found that Sarah’s Mother had just died.

My Grandmother and Mother always told us the little girl with the fish bowl was a token to the family that her Mother’s death was very near.