Pearl and Lonnie Coker

I'm not sure how or where my grandparents met. Aunt Ginny thought it may have been when Grandma was working in Joplin but I'm not so sure. I say this because there is evidence that two of his brothers - Logan and Beau (Randolph) - had spent time in Parsons as early as 1911. My grandparents were married November 13, 1918 in Junction City, Kansas. My grandfather had been drafted during WWI and served his military duty at Camp Funston, not far from Junction City.

Lonnie Coker, fireman, circa 1920

Junction City (KS) Daily Union, Nov 14, 1918

Lonnie was born June 4, 1989 in Yellville, Marion County, Arkansas. He moved to Joplin, Missouri around the turn of the century and lived in the family house at 922 North St. By 1915 Lonnie and his first cousin Roy Emmet Watkins are working as bootblacks in Lawrence, KS. The 1915 Kansas State Census lists them at 735 Massachusetts St. which is now in Lawrence's historic downtown district so I'm guessing that is where they worked rather than where they lived. Both Lonnie and Roy are recorded as white. The record also shows that both were born in Arkansas and came to Kansas from Missouri. Lonnie registered for the draft in Lawrence in 1917 but Roy had gone back to Joplin. I have trouble imagining how my grandparents kept in touch in those days before cell phones and private vehicles. Did he propose to her before he moved to northern Kansas? Did she follow him there and cajole him into getting married?

By 1920 Pearl and Lonnie are living in Parsons with Pearl's mother Charity Brown and Pearl's son David Brannon at 710 S. 15th St. The census record (Jan 13, 1920) shows Lonnie as a railway wage laborer. An article in the Parsons Sun on Mar 17, 1920, page 1, says that he is one of the four colored firemen to be retained at the mayor's insistence.

Pearl Brown Coker

Aunt Ginny was the only sibling who remembered her father. Lonnie died shortly after my father's first birthday and Pop has no memory of his father at all. Though Aunt Ginny was only about six years old when Lonnie Coker died she remembers spending time with him visiting relatives and her memories led me to the discovery of cousins who had moved to Salina, KS and to Muskogee, OK, as well as to the confirmation of his service as a firemen in Parsons, KS (The above portrait of Lonnie in his fireman's uniform has been on her wall as long as I can remember). Aunt Ginny remembers her father as a quiet man who used to sit with her and her brother Red on a blanket in the yard of a juke joint waiting for my grandmother to tire of dancing inside. If he was indeed the taciturn man of Aunt Ginny's childhood, it is hard to imagine him with Pearl Brown.

Grandma was in her 50's when I was born. She had no teeth and chewed Day's Work tobacco. She dyed her hair (somehow it always seemed to come out a pinkish-brown color) and she worked cleaning white folks' houses. She would fight anybody who messed with her family and she was in church every Sunday. The only story I remember her ever telling me about my grandfather was that when she first brought him to Parsons she announced to all the women at a dance that she would cut any one of them who messed with her man. I had no doubt that she would do it.

Pearl Brown was born in Oswego, Kansas December 13, 1894, the youngest daughter of Grimes County, TX Exoduster Charity Brown. Though we were always told that her father was a Horace Brown that Charity married in Navasota, TX I don't believe this is true. Horace did not make the trip north with Charity, her mother Nellie Washington, and her son Dennis Brown. Charity had two other children (Florence and Jeff) who were born in Oswego as well. Baby Pearl is rumored to have been the child of a farmer named VanZant who owned the farm where Charity worked. That rumor may have to be put to rest with DNA evidence.

According to census records Grandma was in Checotah, OK in May of 1910. Uncle Son (David Brannon) was born there in October. Family history says Pearl ran off to Oklahoma. Charity Brown is at the same rooming house in the census (and in the census in Parsons in April of that year). Did she go there to bring her wayward daughter back only to find out that she was pregnant by a white man whose family would never allow a marriage to take place? Charlie Brannon wanted to keep his son but Grandma Charity wasn't having it. Charity and Pearl went back to Parsons after Uncle Son's birth. Charity raised the boy while Pearl was doing her wild thing.

Pearl and Lonnie were in their own place at 1311 Wilson in Parsons in 1925. Aunt Ginny was born in 1925 and Uncle Red was born in 1928. They moved to the family home in Joplin for a while in 1931 after Lonnie's father George W. Coker died. By 1932 they were back in Parsons where my father Harry Coker was born. After 14 years of marriage Lonnie died of mitral valve regurgitation on December 7, 1933. Aunt Ginny says he just collapsed at their home at 1325 Thornton. Grandma never married again.