Henry E. Clountz
A few family notes about names;
there has been confusion in the
family about my Grandfather Henry E.
Clountz. Some people call him
H. C. Clountz, but his real name as
far as I can find is Henry Eugene
Clountz. Also, his headstone
shows he was born in 1884, but we
think it was really more like 1886.
Also, my
grandmother Nora Gertrude Flippin
Cook's name and identity has been
a mystery for years. She
kept her real name a secret from
the family most of her life; they
wouldn't talk about her
family. She even used
different names on census records
- Nora, Gertrude, Lenora (her
mother-in-law's name), like she
was afraid someone would find her
or recognize her, but that may
just be a coincidence. She
used to say her maiden name was
"Clay"; but even when she married,
her fiancee had to go to her
mother and ask her what Nora's
last name was so they could put it
on the marriage certificate; her
mother said "Flippin" was her
last name. Big Mama began to
reveal some information at the end
of her life to one of her
daughters, Dadie. She
admitted John Flippin was her
father, but she still called her
brother George Clay. And I
think she lived with his
grandparents, the Clays,
too.
From my research into the census
records where the Clays lived, the
only John Flippin in the area
lived right next to them.
The Clays and Phoebe in her
teenage years, but he was 30 years
older than Phoebe, who was a
teenager, about 14 when Big Mama
Nora was born. But this is
not strange for him, because in
the 1880s when this happened, he
was married to his second wife,
with a few more to come - each one
younger than the last; and he had
children with them all, up until
he died in his seventies. So
he liked young girls, a lot
apparently. There is never
any record of Phoebe marrying John
Flippin; the family always told
the story that John died in a
water mill accident. I can't
find that either. I think
Phoebe must have had a long
standing affair with neighbor John
Flippin over some years and had
Nora and George from it. I
heard Phoebe had red hair and was
not exactly like all the other
Victorians. (There is a
little mental instability that
runs through some in that family
too; maybe it came from her,
but this is a lot of
surmising). I'm trying to
find anyone who knows about this
family to confirm my
suspicions or replace them
with facts.
Big Mama's
mother, Phoebe Sloan Clay, married
another man, Mel Cinto; there
was some mystery about that too.
It seemed like they were
ashamed of him, maybe because he
was Indian or Mexican -
considering his surname, he could
have been. Nora, "Big Mama"
as we all called her, said she ran
away from home at an early age and
stayed away for a long time, and
her brother George helped
her. We don't know why, she
never said, but we can guess maybe
there was some abuse there from
the stepfather. It is known
and a record (although I have not
found it) that a traveling
preacher (maybe from the Church of
Christ of which the family were
all members) and he and his family
took Nora in (maybe out of
compassion for a girl trying to
escape abuse, who knows) and took
her away from the family for four
or five years; and the Clay family
was looking for her. When
they found them, her uncle got a
job chopping wood to pay for a
lawyer to get her back from them
and have them prosecuted for
taking her away. I don't
know how that court business
turned out; "Big Mama" didn't even
know. She was still a kid.
But they did not let her go back
and live with her mother, Phoebe
and Mel, or the Clays either, her
mother's parents. She was
adopted by a family that were
friends and relatives of the
Clays, the Tauls; and Nora
Gertrude can be found on the
census records after that listed
as an adopted daughter.
Nora married James Jackson
Cook in 1901, mid-teens by
the look of her in pictures.
She was born about 1886, so that
would make her about 15 when she
married, though she claimed she
didn't ever know for sure what
year she was born.
Natalie's Family
Biography Index
Susan Hawkins
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