James W. Meeler

James W. Meeler was born on January 8th, 1958. On August 22nd, 1910 he married Etta Icie Davis. Rev. Robert Freeman Rice performed the ceremony. James Meeler was thirty years older than Etta; however, she brought three other children from her previous marriage to John Starlin Deaton: John Henry Deaton, Jake Leander Deaton, and Harve Wesley Deaton. He was a sharecropper and farmed on other peoples land.

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Etta and James Meeler had five children, Charlie, in 1912. Odell in 1916, Annie Mae in 1920, Robert in 1923, and Elsie in 1927.

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Their two year old daughter, Annie Mae, passed away in 1922 due to pneumonia.

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James Meeler was said to have been very mean to Etta's Deaton children. John Henry, Jake and Harve frequently huddled up outside the house in the chimney corner to stay warm. Etta would secretly slip them in through the window at night after Meeler had went to sleep. During the day they stayed in the barn and Etta had to slip them bread out of the house in her apron in order to feed them. Things continued to get worse and Etta had to start begging the neighbors to raise the older children.

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James Meeler had cancer that had started to rot his eye out. During the night, he used a net to cover his face to keep the bugs off it. James Meeler died in 1928. When news got to his step son, Jake Deaton, he told them to throw him in a red gulley and he kept on plowing the fields. He is said to be buried at Lamar Christian Church Cemetery where he and his son, Charlie, went to church.