Mary Stella Jamison Lawson

(Jefferson Davis Jamison)

(Nancy Loucinda Peery Jamison, Thomas Brewster Peery, --------, James Peery #1)

Written by Paul Cheney, great-grandson, Spring 1995

Mary Stella Jamison was born May 17, 1887 in Jeffersonville (later named Tazewell), Tazewell County, Virginia. She was a daughter of Jefferson Davis Jamison and Nancy Loucinda Peery. Her family moved to Lewiston, Cache County, Utah while Mary was still quite young. They had a home there. Several residents of Lewiston were originally from Tazewell County.

She attended school only through the third grade and then was kept at home to help care for her numerous brothers and sisters. Her parents had the opinion that a girl did not need an extensive education, since girls were expected to remain at home and eventually become homemakers.

Mary Stella became interested in a young man named James Claborn (Jim) Lawson, born November 13, 1879 in Jeffersonville, Virginia, where he grew up. When his widowed mother, Mary Ann Burnett Lawson, married William Sawyer Litz, she moved with him to his home in Lewiston, Utah. Several of the residents were originally from Tazewell, including William Litz, Jim's parents and Mary's parents. It is interesting to note that William Litz was the brother of Mary's paternal grandmother, Mary Rebecca Jamison (nee Litz).

While visiting his mother in Lewiston, Jim met Mary Stella Jamison. Mary's mother, Nancy Loucinda, did not approve of him in the least. He came from a poor blacksmith's family whose social status was perceived to be far below that of the Jamison's.

Jim Lawson's family was Methodist, whereas Mary's family were Mormon. Nancy did not want any of her children to marry outside the church. One evening, Mary attended a dance in Lewiston with another boy, but ended up talking the entire evening with Jim. She thought he was one of the most handsome young men she had ever seen, and they began to see each other at future dances. When Mary's mother, Nancy, heard of this she became furious and forbade Mary to see Jim again. When later heard of this reprimand, he sternly said to Mary, "That's it! I'm leaving Lewiston and going back to Tazewell. You are either coming with me or we're through." And so they eloped on Valentines Day, 1906 and were married in Malad City, Idaho.

Mary Stella and Jim moved back to Tazewell after their elopement. She never saw her father alive again. She was totally disinherited from the Jamison family and did not even receive the customary dollar when her mother died. Despite this, they lived very well in Tazewell because Jim was able to find success in business. He owned a drayage company (similar to a trucking company) and part of the city's street car company.

Jim, Mary Stella and their family lived in a large house on a hill overlooking the city of Tazewell. Mary had a house servant and could walk into any store in town and charge whatever she wanted. Jim and Mary's first children were born in Tazewell: Rufus Harmon, Henry Jefferson, Georgia Bell "Georgia", and Mary Lou Margaret Mahala. Mary had miscarried the baby from her first pregnancy after recklessly lifting a bushel of apples.

Having been raised loosely by his grandmother, Jim had become a wild character who loved to drink and gamble. After heavily drinking and playing cards with some acquaintances, he was shot in the neck and jaw by a man whom Jim had accused of cheating. Jim reacted by instinctively pulling his gun and killing the man who had fired upon him. The other man shot first, so Jim's actions were ruled to be self defense. The constable was required by law to sequester Jim in jail until there was a hearing, but he felt there would be no question that he would be set free.

Jim was subsequently placed in a cell with the door open, so that Mary could come in and spend the night in jail with him. Jim wrestled with guilt over his actions for the rest of his life. He was ashamed that there had ever been a gunfight and that he was forced to shoot and kill someone. In all of the photos taken of him after that incident, Jim always had a high collar to cover the scar. Even when working in the field, he never wore an open-collared shirt.

Jim was raised in the South and had the manners of a Southern gentleman. If a visitor came to his doorstep, he would grab his jacket before opening the door, regardless of the often worn and old condition of his clothes. He would never go to the door in shirtsleeves. Even though he had a weakness for alcohol and gambling in his youth, he attended church regularly and was a Sunday School teacher in the Methodist Church, both before and after he was married.

Jim's mother repeatedly asked Jim and Mary to return to Lewiston to help her take care of her farm after the death of her husband, William, in 1915. Eventually Jim agreed and sold his businesses in Tazewell. Upon his arrival in Lewiston, he learned to his dismay that his mother had changed her mind and wished for a particular hired hand of hers to manage the farm. So Jim set out on his own.

Mary was happy to be closer to all her brothers and sisters. She was also grateful to remove her husband from the influence of his wild drinking "friends" back in Tazewell. Two additional children were born to Jim and Mary Stella in Pocatello, Idaho: Harry Litz and Mamie Lairmer.

Jim began his farming by purchasing several hundred acres above McCammon, Idaho upon which he intended to raise cattle. However, this endeavor was plagued from the start because he became involved in a dispute with his neighbors over water rights. They dammed up the creek along the property line above his farm so that he had no water for his cattle. When Jim discovered this, he defiantly blew up the dam. From this point on, he faced constant harassment from his neighbors and eventually lost his farm.

From that time on, Jim leased any land that he farmed. he was a great businessman, but a very unsuccessful farmer. His lack of fortune was in part due to poor judgment and in part due to bad luck. If he planted grain, there was either no rain, or a poor crop, or a low market price. If he planted potatoes, then everyone will have planted potatoes, thus reducing his profits. If he planted sugar beets, then there would either be a low market price or so many weeds in the field that he would be unable to harvest his crop. However, all of his neighbors could vouch that he had the straightest plowed rows. Jim loved to see how straight he could plow his planting rows. Perhaps his problem was that he spent too much time trying to make them perfect instead of trying to make the farm profitable.

Jim owned a matched team of horses that he had trained to plow and perform other farm tasks in a perfectly balanced tandem. Teams such as this were very rare and one summer he was offered several hundred dollars for them. he refused to sell on the basis they were worth more to him and his farm than any other additional horses or equipment that the extra money could buy. Shortly afterwards, one of the horses fell ill and died, leaving the other horses with a value of only a few measly dollars. That same summer, one of the haystacks was hit by lightning and burned to the ground.

Catastrophe continued when Mary Stella fell through a floor board in the haywagon and miscarried the baby she was carrying. However, despite all of the [personal and financial misfortune they had endured, Jim and Mary were very happy once they moved out to Lewiston. And besides, Jim so loved farming that he would not have traded it for any other career.

When Jim passed away on August 22, 1932, he had thirty-five cents in his pocket, the full extent of his monetary wealth. It had been a particularly hard summer and harvest season, and his family had virtually nothing. He had been hunting with his sons Henry and Harry up in the hills behind his home, when the party encountered a rattlesnake. Since Jim was extremely afraid of snakes, his normal reaction would have been to run away. According to Henry, however, this time Jim took careful aim, shot the rattler, and then keeled over dead of a massive heart attack. The family believed the he quite literally was "scared to death."

After her husband's death, Mary's family was broke and she supported them by whatever way she could. She performed a great deal of domestic servant work: cleaning houses, hanging wallpaper, and calcimining walls. In later years, she primarily performed by baby-sitting.

Mary moved into her daughter Margaret's house during the winters in approximately 1940. She had her own little house in another part of Pocatello near her son Rufus. As soon as spring came and the weather was warmer, she returned to her own home. Her reason for moving into Margaret's home was that, during the winter, Margaret traveled to her mother's house practically every day to make sure that everything was okay.

Eventually, Margaret's husband, Sylvan Hart Cheney, said "Why doesn't she just move into our house during the wintertime?" Mary's daughter, Mamie, moved in as well until she got married. Mary moved in permanently in about 1944. During these years, Mary enjoyed being near her children and her increasing number of grandchildren. During the last few years of her life, she lived with the family of Mami and her husband, Ted Bradley Lynn.

Mary traveled to California once to visit her elder brother, William Flavius Jamison, and she stayed with him while he made her a set of dentures. She was so proud of these dentures that she wanted to make sure that they remained looking nice, and put them into a glass of hot water. This pair was made out of Vulcanite, a particularly heat sensitive rubber-based material, and the heated bath caused the lower half to warp so severely that she was unable to wear them.

She was so ashamed of ruining them that for years she didn't tell her brother that she wasn't wearing her lower dentures. When he finally found out, he insisted on making her another pair. Mary refused and consequently lived for years without a lower denture and ate whatever she cared to. She had such a strong lower ridge that she could bite and chew through the toughest and crunchiest foods. No one could tell that her lower dentures were absent. Mamie's husband, Ted, never found out until he graduated from dental school. He wanted to make her a set, but she wouldn't allow him either. Mary suggested that perhaps her grandson, Paul Sylvan Cheney, could make her a set after he graduated from dental school, but she passed away before this came to be.

Mary had been having trouble with her heart for years, even before the death of her husband, Jim, in 1932. When she traveled through a subway (an underpass for a road or railway), she would become light-headed and sometimes faint due to the change in elevation. She also suffered from dropsy (edema), had numerous attacks of erysipelas (fever and skin inflammation), survived diphtheria, and later lived through a bout of smallpox in 1936. However, Mary succumbed to congestive heart failure shortly after completing a trip to the Los Angeles area to visit her daughter. She remained bedridden for the last few days, which allowed for all of her children and many of her grandchildren to gather at her side. With loved ones near, she passed away on the morning of April 2, 1960 in Canoga Park, Los Angeles County, California.
Source: Paul Cheney, great-grandson of Mary Stella Jamison Lawson. Submitted for publication in the "Family Newsletter," by and for the descendants of Jefferson Davis Jamison & Nancy Loucinda Peery,
Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring 1995, pp 8-12.
Editor - Peery Family History Home Page
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