Leonard Travis Cranford (143) and Josephine Phillips Cranford (144) were the parents of Maud Cranford Martin. L. T. (known as "Trav") was born in Alabama February 2, 1840 and died March 14, 1923 at his home in Wolf Bayou, Arkansas. He served four years in the Civil War and was wounded twice.
L. T. and Josephine Cranford
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Josephine was born November 17, 1853 in (Birmingham?) Alabama, died at Heber Springs, Arkansas October 24, 1946. She was thirteen years younger than her husband and experienced the Civil War as a child. She told me stories about the Union soldiers coming through her father’s farm and taking whatever they could get from them in the way of food and supplies.
I don’t know anything else about Josephine’s childhood except that it was short. They were married December 16, 1869, about a month after her sixteenth birthday! They raised nine children, Thomas, Ella (Pritchard), Mollie (Beasley), Dora (Sharp), Maud, Leonard, Oscar, Ada and Myrl (Inman). |
Theirs was a farm family which meant that the whole family had to work hard. I have a brass bell that they used to call in the people working in the field for the noon meal. My mother, their grandchild, remembers getting to ring that bell when she would be visiting them as a young child with her mother.