COX, DONNA G. (OSBORN)
My father Rush Floyd (Colonel) Osborn came by train to Mullen in the late 1800's. My mother Jenny Strange came to Madison County in 1902 by train and married Dad on July 4th. They homesteaded about 14 miles north of Mullen. Both of them were from Grayson Co., Va.
A son, Charles Strange, was born to them in 1903; a daughter, Mary Irene (Mamie), in 1905; and myself, Donna Grayson, in 1911.
Always being kind of puny, I stayed close to Mama and had her read out loud to me as much as I could get her to. She read to me out of "Comfort" and "Woman's World Magazine". Mama would often explain the words and ideas to me so that I understood the printed page at an early age. Nothing was more of a luxury to me than getting in Mama's feather bed and having her read to me until I fell asleep!
When the Osborns were first married, everyone going to town would bring out mail and supplies for their neighbors. The Osborn home was located at sort of a crossroads with someone riding in quite often. It was natural that the other settlers would ask my folks to put up a post office at their place. In 1908 Cherry Post Office was established. The mail was brought out from Mullen by horse and buggy three times a week. Mail sorting was always an exciting time! The Omaha Bee became a popular daily paper for the patrons of the post office. My folks started a country store to go along with the post office so I managed to get more than my share of pop and candy.
A school was started in the community before the Osborn children were ready to attend. First it was held in someone's home and then the neighbors got together and combined their labor and resources to build a school called Cherry School.
I was crazy about horses and loved to ride to school but often we walked and I couldn't keep up with Mamie and Charlie and I'm sure they often wished they didn't have a little sister tagging along and crying for them to “Wait''!
When I was six I got so awfully sick. The roads were very bad and Dr. Roth wasn't able to come until the next morning. He diagnosed appendicitis. A car was brought out from Mullen as we didn't have a car and Dr. Roth rode to town with Dad, Mom, and me. We had a hard time getting to Mullen with all the snow on the ground and also a near blizzard going on. It was decided on the way that would get on the first train to leave Mullen no matter which way it was going. It turned out that it was going east so Mama and I went to St. Joseph's Hospital in Omaha. I was operated on at night and my appendix had burst letting infection go through my system. Then I was "really" sick and had drainage tube for several days. Just as I finally began to recuperate, Mom got very sick and had to have her appendix taken out, too! We were there so long that I got quite well acquainted with the nurses and nuns and they all made me feel very special.
When Charlie and Mamie were old enough for high school our folks decided we should rent a house in Mullen and Mama would go in part of the time and the rest of the time we would batch. I went to Mullen school in the 4th, 5th and 6th grades but I was always homesick for Dad so I went back to Cherry School for my 7th and 8th grade years after Charlie and Mamie graduated. In one of those two years I missed over a month of school because I became very ill with rheuma-tic fever. Every join ached! Oh, for some penicillin! But it hadn't been invented yet.
I attended high school in Mullen, graduat-ing in 1929. I took the Teacher's Examination in Mullen and received a Third Grade Certificate. I taught for five years in southern Cherry County. I took one fall quarter off to go to Chadron to school and attended summer school two of the summers – one at Wayne and one at the University of Nebras-ka.
In 1935 I married D.A. Cox and we lived on the north part of his father's ranch (A.B. Cox). We were in a very isolated location and had no telephone or electricity and had to carry water at first. We did have a lovely garden spot in a nice valley. Beverly Ann was born in 1938 and Marvin Alexander in 1939.
There was no school house in our district and lumber was not available because of the war so when Beverly was nearly six we bought a hexagon shaped, pre-fabricated brooder house which the men in the district erected between Garrett Roseberry's house and ours. Marvin started to school then, too, and the two children went all through school togeth-er.
The next year our children were the only students in the district so I took them to town to school, some 30 miles away. We all missed being home so in 1946-7 I taught them myself in the little hexagon school. The next year Hird and Evelyn Thompson's children were schoolmates of Beverly and Marvin. In 1948 we moved to the south part of the ranch on the south side of Calf Creek Valley. From then on, Herbert and Billy George (B.G.) Roesch were our children's classmates.
In January 1952 we moved into the nice, new house Donald built for us on the north side of Calf Creek Valley. There we had every convenience and a lovely view of the valley. I really enjoyed having a lovely home to decorate and live in as did we all.
In about 1968 my ill health forced us to retire in Mullen where we settled among many long-time acquaintances.