Women's History Month: The Social Scene: Newspaper Country Correspondents

 Humans are made to socialize. We love sharing the latest news about our families, jobs, and local community gossip and events. Remember when the print newspapers offered local community news? Rural life was brimming with births, weddings, deaths, accidents, and events. We can thank the country correspondents who gathered the local news in their area. Editors relied on them. 

Veta Fikes Jennings was my mother-in-law, a country correspondent for the local newspaper. She was born and raised in Neosho, Newton County, Missouri. Her parents lived five miles from town and owned a small farm at the top of Schmake Hill. Her father worked on road construction for the Works Progress Administration. During her senior year in high school, in 1949, she sang in the choir and got a job writing about her local community news for the paper. Here's a photo of Veta Fikes Jennings

Veta was well known in the Schmake Hill Community, so visiting her neighbors and gathering their news was easy. She wrote it up and took it down to the newspaper office. She told me she received a "little bit" of money for each column she wrote. When I asked her what a "little bit" was, she said it was fifty cents. This photo of Veta was taken in 1955. 

 

After graduation, Veta married Leroy Jennings from Neosho. Her parents moved to town, and she and Leroy moved to the farm on Schmake Hill. That's where they raised a big family. Leroy is best known for his guitar music, which he played at all the local hootenannies for years.

 On the farm, Veta and Leroy raised a variety of animals. She was especially fond of her brood of chickens. She sold fresh eggs for years. Another favorite of their animals was the Shetland ponies. They owned a male and female, Tony and Tonette. Tonette had a foul one year, but it didn't last long. When we gathered for visits, the grandchildren loved the pony rides.

 Ask any of her grandkids what they loved about Grandma Jennings, and they will tell you her dill pickles were the best. She kept a jar on the kitchen table at all times, and she sent many jars home with us over the years.

Veta enjoyed quilting and reading. People may remember her working in the kitchen during the hootenannies at the Hammer Community Center held in the Hammer schoolhouse just north of town. She and Leroy ran the hootenanny for a long time. Veta died from cancer in 2009.

 As I researched this story, I read that sometimes people scoffed at community news, comparing it to gossipy rubbish. At the same time, people clamored to read the latest news reported in their community column. Correspondents were made fun of, but they eventually earned the respect they deserved. People cared about their neighbors and were hungry for news. As time passed, newspaper subscriptions were a great need in the community.

 Veta's newspaper columns are preserved on microfilm at the local library. From those columns, I learned that in July 1949, her parents bought a new car. In another column, she wrote about going to a Saturday night movie in Neosho with her future husband, Leroy Jennings, and a pal of theirs. That added exciting details to the growing family tree.

 If you're working on your family history, remember to check the local historical societies, libraries, and museums for newspapers on film. Read the society pages to find interesting tidbits about your family history. Newspapers.com is another online resource for finding social history. To serious family historians, it is a valuable research resource.