Mary Stella Hill

Mattie Louise Hill, "Honey"

On September 9, 1937, Dr. J. J. Baggett delivered me, Peggy

Jane Converse, to my parents, Mary Stella Roberts and Everett

Russell Converse in Prairie Grove, Arkansas. Dad drove a bus for

Santa Fe Trailways so we lived in several small towns in

northwest Arkansas, northeast Oklahoma and southwest Missouri

before moving to Wichita, Kansas.

In 1962 I married Jerry Gilbert Drennan and moved to his

home town of Winfield, Kansas. Our son Mark is married to

Mary Ann Hogan and they live in Rochester Hills, Michigan

where he is employed by the Chevrolet Division of General

Motors. Our son Steven is a sophomore at Southwestern College,

Winfield, Kansas.

Mattie Louise Hill was the grandmother who nurtured my

love for Arkansas. When I was young, I would visit her there and

she would let me go through her old trunk filled with pieces of

my history while listening to stories of family, many of whom

were born and lived in Washington County, Arkansas.

Mattie Louise Hill was born June 23, 1893 in Viney Grove,

Arkansas to Hypasia Amanda West and Robert Thomas Hill. She

outlived three husbands, Prof. Wm. H. Roberts, Henry VanHoose

and Anthony Rosebud. No children were born to any of these

marriages. She married my grandfather, Prof. Wm. H. Roberts,

after his wife, Mary Stella Hill, passed away a few days after

giving birth to my mother, Mary Stella Roberts. She raised Mary

Stella, Arline and James Roberts, her sister's children.

While visiting with her about our 1975 vacation that included

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, she told me her grandmother, Martha

(Rogers) West, was held prisoner in her home by two Northern

generals while the Battle of Prairie Grove was being fought. The

officers used the house as a hospital for the wounded and stacked

five or six hundred dead in the smokehouse. They buried them

in a large trench east of the house. After the war they were dug

up and buried in a National Cemetery. Her grandfather, Robert

Gentry West took his negro slaves south, possibly to Georgia

while the war was being fought.

I visited my great-great grandparents home with my

grandmother in August of 1944. The next time was in 1976 and

the smokehouse had been torn down and the house had been

moved about one mile to the north. Frank and Judy West have

built a new home on the original sight.

My dear grandmother, Mattie Louise Hill, passed away in

Wichita, Kansas, February 19, 1979 and is buried in the Wichita

Park Cemetery. "Honey" is on her grave marker as that is what I

always called her and that was how Mark and Steven knew her.

The aroma and taste of her homemade clover-leaf rolls and the

unconditional love she gave each of us is her legacy.

By: Peggy Drennan