Weakley County’s late historian remembered by friends and family

Posted: Thursday, December 2, 2010 11:35 am
By: By Sara Rachels, Staff Writer

The Press 11/30

At a time when true gumption was in its infancy and times were becoming increasingly uncertain, a girl was born in Sharon who would eventually make this American ideal her mantra for over nine decades. Long before Rosie the Riveter had been drawn up as an encouragement and tribute to women entering the workforce during war times, Martha Jim Pryor Roberts fought to make her voice heard. 

Having lived in comfort and having seen that comfort threatened and taken away by a great Depression, Roberts became a survivor and throughout her life, she dished out pieces of this frame of mind on her family and friends through her examples of love and encouragement and used, sometimes as a reward and sometimes as a weapon, her words and most notably, her written words.

“As intelligent and knowledgeable as grandmother was, what I would always see was the drive – the determination and will she had that made her who she was,” grandson John Roberts recalled. 

“If she wanted to do something, she did it. If she didn’t know how, she learned. Self taught in so many things, but successful in all.”

This included everything from practicing nearly extreme frugality (according to her relatives), to her devotion to her faith and church to working at the Milan Arsenal to learning to play golf in her later years. It was very evident her early struggles would work to shape her character.

“My father, James Edward Pryor, met my mother, Mattie Brooks Priestly, in the spring of 1917 when she and other high school seniors went to see the dredge that was channeling the middle fork of the Obion River,” Roberts remembered in some notes she’d written. 

“In her diary, she wondered ‘if that Mr. Pryor is married’ and he remarked after the girls left that ‘I’m going to marry that girl.’”

On Sept. 16, 1918, their first daughter, Martha Jim, was born at the William and Eliza Brooks Priestly home place just west of Sharon. James was whisked off to WWI and didn’t return until 1919. 

With the exception of two to three years in Shaw, Miss., Martha Jim spent her entire life in Sharon.

“Dad returned in summer, 1919 and continued his dredging in Arkansas and Mississippi. We lived in Shaw, Miss. where Emmalyn and Ruth were born. We returned to Sharon and lived in the house he had bought until he went to work for TVA in 1935. During that time, he and a partner paved the streets of Orlando, Fla. The city defaulted on bonds and he lost most of his property and equipment,” Roberts wrote.

Sharon native Frances Clark recalled a school age Roberts – a person already brimming with promise in often less-than-adequate circumstances.

“Martha Jim’s birthday was in September and mine was in November, so I was a bit younger, but we went to high school together. She was a very intelligent person, very energetic, busy, industrious, very dependable, smart, just a nice person. She was ahead of me in school, but she left school to marry Malcolm Roberts and got special permission to come back and finish and she still finished a year ahead of me and was able to graduate with her class,” Clark remarked. 

“I remember a time when we had our junior and senior banquets together. Martha Jim lived next to an elderly lady who was known for being nosy. After the banquet, she invited us to her house in town and she stood at the window and watched us. We thought she was nosy. Martha Jim was very outspoken. She wrote a lot of editorials to The Jackson Sun. If she didn’t approve of something, she wrote in. She was very politically minded and you knew where you stood with her.”

After dating in the summer of 1934, Martha Jim and Malcolm eloped the day after Christmas of that year. Martha Jim wrote that even though her parents were determined to have the union annulled, James’ attorney, Mr. Rowlett advised against it and pronounced Malcolm to be a “good boy from a nice family.”

“We rented a farm near Ralston (east of Martin) in the spring of 1935. I rode the NC and STL RR from Ralston to Martin for five cents, sold my cream at the station in Martin and then rode the ICRR to Sharon for 10 cents. After the Pryors moved to Corinth, Miss. in the summer of 1935, Mother urged me to go back to finish high school. We moved into the Pryor house and I did go back and finished high school with my class in 1936. Malcolm got a job driving a truck to Chicago for $2.50 per trip plus cigarettes and food. 

“Daddy got Malcolm a job in Pickwick in the summer of 1936 and we lived a few months in Corinth in a small apartment near the Pryors. And during that time, I went with a young mother, Peggy Edwards Osborne, to northern Michigan to protect her two-year-old from infantile paralysis. My friends, June Simmons and Mary Jane Taylor, had married the summer of 1936 and both were ‘expecting’ so we decided to join them. They both had girls, but when my firstborn James Gary Roberts, was born Sept. 27, 1937, I never wanted a girl,” Martha Jim penned.

She admitted that the years between 1936 were hard times with Malcolm making 30 cents an hour. His winter check was $27 and the Roberts owed $9.09 on their Crosley refrigerator. They purchased a Model A Ford and drove it for years. 

But, during these trying years, Martha Jim’s brother recalls humorous instances mixed in with the difficulties.

“I was only five or six years old when Martha Jim and Malcolm ran off and got married. The young couple moved to a small farm in Ralston and I was allowed to go there for a visit of a few days. I had spent very little time away from my mother so my willingness to go illustrates my close relationship with my ‘big sister.’ Both work and times were hard in those mid-thirties years and recreation and time for it was scarce. Martha Jim and Malcolm found an outlet for their youthful exuberance one night while I was there. 

“Malcolm’s sister, Virginia, and her husband Dick Buckley came out for a visit. Malcolm and Dick rigged up a cast-iron dinner bell to the front bumper of a car with wire running inside the bell. After dark, the four ‘adults’ and I and I rode wildly through the back roads of Weakley County ringing that bell. I’m sure people ran to their front doors wondering what all that noise was about in the middle of the night. That fun-filled night has remained a happy memory for me,” William Pryor commented.

A second son, Malcolm David, was born January 16, 1940. There wasn’t money to pay the doctor for the birth and Malcolm Sr.’s job with the railroad proved to be too demanding, so he obtained a job at the Milan Arsenal and later near Paris. 

Next came a job in Smyrna and in 1945, after maintaining a deferred status with the Army he was at Ft. Oglethorpe when the WWII ended and he was sent home. 

In 1944, the Roberts purchased a house from Tommy and Eula Erwin for $4,500 and lived out their lives there. Martha Jim took a job at the Milan Arsenal on two occasions and as the 1940s bled into the 1950’s and 1960’s, life began to improve. 

In a whirlwind of years, Martha Jim’s small family branched out to grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she took up traveling around the country and the world to places such as Russia, Germany, Finland, Ukraine, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Bali, Greece, Egypt, Israel and Canada with grandchildren and later on, she even took up the game of golf purchasing special left-handed clubs. 

In 1986, she began a project that would become her “labor of love” – a book recording the history of Sharon. She believed the Sharon History Book belonged the community and wasn’t written for her own profit so all profits taken from the book were used to buy and rehab a building for the Sharon Library.

Martha Jim’s life came to a close on this past Nov. 6. Her endearing yet firm voice was silenced, but she passed on her gifts and opinions to her family members. And her way with words, often-stubborn nature, cooking ability and love of people made a strong impression on a town and a community.

“She was not a perfect person as none of us are, but she did live a life of trying to follow the perfect example lived by Jesus Christ,” grandson Russell Roberts wrote.  

“I take comfort today in this time of deep personal sadness knowing that she put her faith and hope in His promise of that heavenly home for those who follow after Him. Her Christian faith was of the utmost importance to her. And I do pray and expect that we’ll meet again in a better place.”