The 11th Montgomery Child

I have had a couple of inquires about an 11th Montgomery child. I knew there was an 11th child that died as an infant, but did not have any additional information. Carol Allen, the youngest of Scottie Hope, sent me the following story.


When my sister Kathleen and I were in Arkansas once, Uncle Joe told us the story. When my mother Scottie was about a year or two old, Kate was pregnant with her last child. Lattie's mother was having dementia problems and had come to live with the Montgomery household. They were living in Kibler and Lattie was working for a man who was raising horses. Joe drove us out there and located the spot where they lived but a barn off in the distance was all we could see. The field was waist high in tick and chigger laden weeds and Joe had to call Kathleen back from climbing the fence for a hike out there. This was where our mom had been born and Kathleen wanted to go see what she could find. Well, as I said, Scottie had been born while they lived there and now Kate was going to have her 11th child. One day, the grandmother was walking near the fire and fell into it. Kate jumped up and pulled her out, saving her life. Joe told me that the grandmother was not harmed but Janet remembers hearing that she was badly burned. Well, Kate went into labor and delivered a premature little boy named Buchanan. Uncle Joe said they called him a "blue baby" because he wasn't able to breathe correctly due to immature lungs. They made a bed for him out of a box and kept him near the stove to be warm. He only lived two weeks and is buried in the cemetery just outside of VanBuren on Kibler Road. This is the cemetery that is adjacent to where Arnold and Jean Stratton used to live. Uncle Joe said that years ago, Tim Burris went to the cemetery to try and locate the grave of our Uncle Buchanan. Tim was told that it was probably unmarked and that the records were burned a long time ago when the caretaker's building burned to the ground. Jean Stratton and I walked through the graves once and found the area where the dates on the stones would have matched the time, 1922 or so, but we didn't see any evidence of a Montgomery grave marker. The Montgomery clan moved back to Appleton when my mother was in her early teens and started living in the big house. Joe said they moved because the climate in the hills was better than the flatlands of Kibler. A doctor had built and owned the Montgomery house originally and I believe they lived there until Kate and then Lattie died.

Thanks for the story Carol, and if anyone has any additional information, send me an email, or post a comment.