Note: Sleeper family information as related by Virginia Grace Mistrot Sleeper to Lee Sleeper at various times. By the time I transcribed this section of Mother’s stories, she wandered a bit. I have tried to clean up the original transcript, but you may have to use a little imagination to keep up with the characters. As you will see, much of Mother’s memories are centered about Nanny – her maternal grandmother. She played a large role in several generations of the family.
Nanny
Virginia Blanche Grace
Born: 1871
Died: 1961
Born in: Mother did not know if it was Huntsville, Point Blank, or Cold Springs in East Texas; all are communities north of Houston. As noted in Emmalie’s addendum, Mother told her it was Point Blank
Father: John Grace – family story is that he fought in Civil War and lost a leg at Bull Run.
Mother: Blanche Hogg Grace; tie to Gov. Hogg.
Note: Nanny always bragged that the family was kin to Gov. Jim Hogg. When asked bout the lineage, she would come up with second or third cousins. It is interesting to note that Gov. Hogg was born near Rusk in Cherokee County, only about 30 miles from where we now live.
Family members:
Brother and sister, Walter Hogue and Minnie Hogue lived in Cold Springs;
Mother’s memory of trips to see the clan:
“We would get up in the morning in a great big, old old house, to Aunt Minnie cooking fried chicken for breakfast with a chicken killed that morning.
“Daddy (Mother’s father, our Grandpa) would give Uncle Walter a shave and a haircut each year when we visited. We had an old Dodge touring car with snap-down sides, and we must have gone down in the winter because Grandmother (Nanny) would wrap me up in a blanket and hold me in the back seat.
“She was the biggest champion I ever had – she took care of me all of my life. In fact, she took care of us all our lives by working at the dress store at Cawthon’s in Waco. She worked for Patton’s for 30 some-odd years before she went to work for Cawthon’s. She stayed 65 for so long (so she would not have to retire), she forgot how old she really was.
“When Ralph (Mother’s second brother) and I were going through papers after Daddy died, we were totally astounded the number of times Grandmother had borrowed money to finance some of his wild schemes. Only one I can remember is that he always wanted to be CEO. It had to do with something about collecting money somehow on the sale and dispensing of money on alcoholic beverages. Do not know what they did, but Mother worked up there with him and did all the work. It did not last too long. He just borrowed the pants off of her.
“Nanny’s husband, Hill Robinson, was a lawyer in Houston and a partner with his brother who was also a lawyer. Somebody was disgruntled with the brother and set out to shoot him, but shot and killed the wrong man. Mother was five months old.
“I think he was from Point Blank. He was so happy with my mother that she reacted every time he came into the room. When we would go down to Cold Springs to visit the Robinsons, I was teeter-tottering on the side of the well, and the adults were on the porch rocking. Mother is said to have seen me and saved me. I do not remember exactly, but mother always fainted in a crisis. I think Grandmother was the one who came down and got me off the side of the well.
Note: Mother’s Mother, Grace Hill Robinson Mistrot, was known to my sisters and me as Othermother. She was named by my older sister Margaret. Margaret was born while Dad was in the South Pacific in WWII, and Mother and Margaret lived with both sets of parents. Grace Hill was such an influence in Margaret’s life that she called her Othermother.
“I do not remember any of the Robinsons. Grandmother had an uncle in Houston who was Lee Grace, and they liked for grandmother to come down and visit with them. Aunt Edna was quite religious and liked to visit the jails and would always go down and visit with the prisoners. But she got hooked on Hadacol (was a drug to help you relax), and Grandmother said she stayed on it all the time. Aunt Edna evidently consumed large quantities of it. Every time she felt jittery, she was take it down from the kitchen cabinet and take a swig.
“Grandmother always said she could not afford to drink because she would turn into an alcoholic just like her father. The only time we could get her to take a swig was Mogen David Wine. But we had to convince her that she looked awfully tired before she would take a sip. So evidently, her father was an alcoholic.
“When her husband was killed, Grandmother moved to Waco. Her parents wanted her to come home and live, but she refused. Grandmother was probably one of the first working mothers and Mother was one of the first latch-key kids.
“When they went to Waco, they stayed with her sister Aunt Sadie and her husband Rob Wilson until she got going. She went to work as a milliner for Felix Mistrot Sr. in his dry goods store.
Note: Felix Mistrot Sr. was Mother’s grandfather. The ties start here.
“Her job as a milliner was making hats for the store, and she supported herself and mother. At some point, they moved and lived alone, but Mother babysat for Aunt Sadie for her son Robert.
“When Robert graduated from law school at Baylor, Aunt Sadie had a daughter, Elizabeth, who was my age. I was born in September and she was born in February. My grandmother would take infrequent visits to see Aunt Sadie. Every time she did she would drag me over there. I would be so sore when I got home because Elizabeth was so starved for affection she would hang on me. She was a perfectionist in everything she did, violin, piano, etc. Elizabeth had no friends and Aunt Sadie made her study 24/7. Elizabeth was high in the Dallas school system and took care of Aunt Sadie and Uncle Rob until they died. Her brother was an excellent lawyer who moved to Amarillo where he was in a firm. He married a lovely girl and had two children of his own and tried to be normal. Mother loved him because she babysat him.
“Grandmother lived with Mother and Daddy until Daddy got transferred to Dallas with Krespi’s Cotton Co. She came to Dallas from Waco every weekend on the InterUrban – a little streetcar type thing that went from Waco to Dallas – cheap. Daddy’s first cousin, Burns Mistrot and his wife Aunt Helen lived there. They played bridge together. They had a son Norris Mistrot and Little Gus and an older daughter, Helen, whom I never knew. Norris and Ralph were the same age and were little toots. The only thing I can remember is that when they were playing bridge one night, the boys filled up tubes made of rolled up notebook paper with face powder and blew it on all of the winter clothes Mother had just had cleaned. Norris had polio and was crippled in one leg.
“In Dallas, they lived at 2728 Shelby St. and down at the end of that street was Parkland Hospital. You could see it from our house. It was not all that big in the 20s. Times were good then. We went to Holy trinity school. I was a child, and about the only thing I could remember, Aunt Anna gave me a great big doll and over Christmas, the weather got bad and Ralph and Hill (the oldest of the children) operated and took out all of her straw. That was the end of the doll. There was no plastic in those days. We had a good life then.
‘Then my father left Krespi’s to go back to Waco to go into the insurance business in 1929. That was the end of the good life right then. I was in the second grade then. I went into the third grade when we went back to Waco and was in the convent. Who is going to buy insurance when you do not have money to put food on the table. Daddy tried to sell insurance, and for many years, he did not do a damn thing.
“After many years of trying to sell insurance and trying to do other things that did not pan out, he tried to sell fuller brushes. I have to admit that embarrassed the hell out of me. After all, what girl wants to admit her father sells fuller brushes. Grandmother was working and Mother was staying at home doing her best to keep them from killing each other. I look back and wonder how Grandmother kept from killing him. She kept us afloat. I remember one time they turned off the water. And in about 1930, we lost the house out on 3012 Ethel, and we lost a car he bought in Dallas. Grandmother lived with us from the time we moved back. When we lost the house on Ethel, we moved down to a rent house on Barnard and it is no longer there. We did not have a telephone – we did not have one for years. It never seemed to bother daddy that he was never ever able to pay his bills.
“Mother was practically engaged to Ben Sleeper when she met Daddy, and she ditched Ben Sleeper, who turned out to be a prominent lawyer in Waco, for Daddy.
“Grandpa was Felix Junior, and Felix Senior lived in St. Louis. I do not remember when he went up there, that is just where I remember him. Muddie, Felix Sr’s wife, lived with Aunt Cecile in Bryan. Aunt Cecile was Daddy’s sister. The only one who survived of 13 pregnancies were Daddy, Cecile, Mary and Evelyn who survived until she was 18 when she died of a burst appendix.
“I remember Sudy asked her mother if Muddie and Felix Sr. were divorced, and Cecile blew a fuse and said that no one in our family has ever been divorced and do not ever ask that again.”
Note: I purchased at least two tape recorders for Mother to record more family history, but talking to a tape did not interest her. She was the historian (really a story teller) for both the Mistrot and Sleeper clans. The last of her generation in our family, she took many stories to the grave when she died at 91.
Addendum 1
From the baby sister of the clan, Emmalie:
“She did share with me that Uncle Ralph, age 12, found Othermother in the kitchen with her head in the gas oven in the Ethel Ave. house. Then mother looked at me and said I’ve never told anyone that. Sounds like things were awful.”
Note: This was the era in which they lost the house on Ethyl Ave. along with the family car. this rather dark secret tells us how desperate they really were.
“So interesting how far back the Sleeper and Mistrot families crossed paths. Mom always said Point blank was Nannie’s birth place as I recall. Nannie made all of mothers clothes her entire life and Ralph gave Mother spending money when she was older. Mother also hated the house on Mulberry Street in San Antonio. She was so embarrassed her parents lived as they did and long ago lost all their possessions.”
Note: Grandpa and Othermother stored all of their possessions, minus one silver bowl, in an escapade to Arkansas. They could not afford the lease on the storage building and lost everything. They ended up renting the second floor of the house on Mulberry Street in San Antonio from Gordon McKenzie. He was a gruff old man, and we avoided him, if at all possible.
Addendum 2
From the first sister of the clan, Margaret
“I remember a story that Mother told about Nanny walking across a bridge to get home from work. She took out a hat pin from her hat in case she met a mugger.”
Note: The bridge was probably across the Brazos River. I remember Nanny’s hat pins – they were long enough to be lethal, and she usually had at least two pinning her hat to her hair.
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