Jewell (Williamson) Peringer

Ancestors

Descendants

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Born Feb 17, 1909, Jewell was the oldest of 5 living children born to a farming couple named Boyd Williamson and Lorena "Reena" Taylor. According to family bible record, great Grandmother Reena had 11 pregnancies.

In Jewell's early years she was shy and busy helping her mother with the younger children. As she became a young woman, she was raped by a man in the community and had a still born child. It was a few years later that she met and married John A "Jack" Perringer who had come from California to farm land in Pope County, Arkansas. My mother recalls her father telling her that when he saw Jewell for the first time, he thought she was rather frail and needed someone to take care of her. So it wasn't love as much as his compassion that brought them together at first.

My mother said her parents weren't openly affectionate, but that love was more an understanding than an expression. John and Jewell worked as farmers in Arkansas, then moved to Lone Jack, MO when she was about 3 yrs old (her birthday is in Dec, so I'm guessing it would have been early 1937). John and Jewell became migrant farm workers and moved to wherever the work was in MO, KS, and AR. The family moved quite frequently before finally settling down in a little house in Lone Jack, MO sometime when mother was in high school. They lived there until John passed away in 1966 and my father helped Jewell find a little two bedroom house back in Dover, Arkansas near her sister's. She lived there until 1992 when mother got a call from one of the cousin's telling her that Jewell had developed dementia and needed care. Grandmother lived with my parents until about 1997 when mother could no longer handle the physical demands of caring for her elder mother. Mother labored over what to do and finally placed her in a good nursing facility in Weatherford, TX. Mother visited Jewell every week and did her laundry until she died in 1999. Grandmother Jewell's body was shipped back to Lone Jack, MO and buried next to her husband John Peringer.

Sources

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133133246/jewell-elzedia-peringer