petty family - pafn455 - Generated by Personal Ancestral File

Selected Families and Individuals

Notes

This Joseph may be the Joseph who moved to Kentucky

In Robert's young life he was a heavy weight boxer and traveled around the state boxing.

In 1914 Tom and Owen Petty went to Denison to visit Rena, their sister, three days before she died of tuberculosis, leaving four children, Roy, Madgy, Bertha and Jimmy. Owen knew only too well the path Robert McDonald was to walk, because the year before he had been left with four children when Fanny had died.

As Robert was making arrangements for his children to go to a Catholic orphanage due to some Catholic friends, Tom and Owen protested in a big way and said they would be placed in the Baptist Buckner Orphanage and Robert complied.

Years later Robert married Blanche McGowan, sister to Gladys Blount, but by the depression in 1929 McDonald's luck was running out again. He was diabetic and Blanche had Tuberculosis. Concerned with the plight of his old buddy, Owen did everything he knew to help them survive the hard times. He furnished them with teams to use and shared in any way he could to help them. But it was not to be. They were too ill to carry on.

Then came one of the saddest days in Cumby. Robert and Blanche were taken to the train depot. He was sent in one direction, east to Louisana to family and she was sent in the opposite direction, west to Lubbock to her sister's home never to see each other again.

When Blanche was dying, Robert boarded a train to go to her, but when he reached Ft Worth, he was too ill to go on and Aunt Molly's daughter, Netti, Owen's niece, met the train and put Robert in the hospital where he died, but not before Blanche did.

Ruby Petty said that was the saddest experience she remembered while in the Petty family and requested that this account be included in this history of the Owen Petty Family.

William D. Petty-33516