The trunk of John Mathis which was donated to the Historic Upshur Museum has shed light on an African American family and their activities in the first half of the Twentieth Century. HUM members saw the trunk in a display on Johnny Mathis in September, 2000.

An uncle of Johnny, Oscar Mathis, married Rusha Darden. On Nov. 30, 1922, they had the first of their three children, Ona Mae. She was followed by Juanita and Buford.

By 1922 John and Maggie Mathis had become respected members of the Moses Chapel C.M.E. Church, and Ona's grandparents operated a popular restaurant in Gilmer. John Mathis saved his important documents in an old trunk.

They had four children, Oscar, Dewey, Clemmie, and Daisy, who was later famous for her tamales. Clemmie married Mildred Mathis, and their fourth son is the singer, Johnny. Daisy married Jimmie Jones, lived on Vinegar Hill and made tamales which the entire town enjoyed.

When Ona Mae was six, Rusha died. To support his family during the Depression, Oscar left the children with his parents while he first went to CCC camp, and then to Glenwood and Silver City, New Mexico, where he found work and sent letters home. 

Over the years those letters joined the piano payment receipts, the poll tax receipts, the remodeling of Moses Chapel receipts, the insurnace payments for life insurance for the grandchildren. Other letters followed: letters from Oscar working in New Mexico, letters from Clemmie and Mildred Mathis from Hondo, Texas and from Silver City, New Mexico as they worked their way to California, letters from Dewey when he was a railroad porter to Mary Mathis who taught at Bruce School, from soldiers writing to Ona Mae from Camp Claiborne, near Tuskeegee, Alabama, to Des Moines, Iowa, from Sailors in Norfolk, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from sisters, cousins, from Buford in the Navy and Juanita after she became Mrs Moore, and finally from Ona Mae herself.

Maggie Mathis died in 1948, and the order of her funeral and the sympathy cards went into the trunk. After that there are no more letters.

Many of the letters are those sent to granddaughter Ona. At first she only received occasional letters from young men, primarily college boys; Roy Hart at Prairie View and James L Curtis at Jarvis Christian Institute. She also heard from Alice Banks from Hot Springs, New Mexico, and from a cousin in Baltimore.

Then World War II started, and life changed for everyone.

James Curtis, for example, wrote in October, 1941 about seeing Ona Mae at the East Texas Yamboree in Gilmer. After January, 1942, there is a long interruption before a letter comes from Fort Francis E. Warren near Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Several correspondents write from the Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago where her cousins John Harold King and James O Gibbs went to basic training. As a result of a photograph they had, Ona Mathis gets several new pen pals. (John King visited the museum with Buford Mathis last fall and saw the collection shortly before his death.)

Another old Gilmer acquaintance who signs his letters Rev. M T Hicks Pfc, writes from Ft Huachaca, Arizona. By the end of 1942 his rank goes up to Corporal, and Sergeant James. T Monroe, a fifth grade dropout is also writing. Both are members of the 93rd Division, one of the African-American divisions which had been decorated by the French in World War I.

Since Ona Mae Mathis graduated, she was ready to make her contribution to the war effort, so she begins a letter writing campaign to find training. Along with searching for training, she also is seeking scholarships. In all, more than 25 persons are among those with whom she corresponded.

From New Mexico, Oscar wrote. In May, 1942, he is working for the Calhoun Ranch near Glenwood in the Mongolian Mountains. His brothers Bip and Dewey are working together as cooks, and one letter urges Ona Mae to join them.

"Tell Ona a cook making cakes, pies, and biscuits can make $20 a week," reads the letter.

Meanwhile, Ona starts getting answers to her job-hunting letters. Perhaps most painful is the letter from Jefferson Davis Hospital, Houston, TX, Aug 26, 1942: "I regret to inform you that we do not have colored nurses in our school," wrote Margaret L Weinrich, Director of Nurses.

Meanwhile, a year of the war had passed. While Ona Mae wanted to contribute more than letters to soldiers, her grandparents wanted to protect her. Then another letter arrives which meant more to her:

"How ya, honey?...Well, don't faint because Mike's really writing to you....I am in Georgia, 15 miles from South Carolina....Tomorrow is pay day....and I will draw $97.00....I am a Military Policeman now."....Mike

The letter was from James Eubanks, Company B, 389th Engineering Batallion, Camp Gordon, Georgia. Soon, against her grandmother's wishes, she would join Mike in Georgia where they married. Later she would join friends in California while Mike went first to England and then to France.

In California, Ona would find work at the Lockheed plant in Burbank and become a riveter of P-38 airplanes. It is from letters like hers and others that one gains an insight of what happened to a few of the African-Americans who left Upshur County to serve their country and to see the greater world outside.

On Friday, April 5, 2002, Ona Mathis Ragland entered the old post office of her youth and spoke with Marion Travillo, the docent for the day. She and her husband Frank had something for the curator of the Historic Upshur Museum.

She had been amazed last September when a stranger called and told her about things she barely remembered. The stranger, Mary L Kirby, had been reading the letters of her youth, and had a few questions before she presented a paper at the East Texas Historical Association. Afterwards, she had shared some of the information with readers of the Gilmer Mirror, and Ona had received copies of the article.

Once she arrived, Mary Kirby also contacted Lynda Phillips who had helped her sort the letters; Frankie Lindley, an old friend who had found Raglands addresses for the curator, and Connie Duke, who had helped with the documents. All wanted to meet Ona Mae Mathis Ragland.

The report told of James "Mike" Eubanks, Ona, and their son Michael Eubanks, who was born on July 30, 1946. In a letter to Mom Maggie, Ona describes how tired the two young parents are as Mike works two jobs, Ona one, and she has to care for their home and the baby.

Finally, when the tensions grew to be too much, "I told him I could have had my pick of several guys," she stated in a recent interview. By 1947 when she writes the last letter found in the trunk, she is about to divorce Mike.

For seven years she was a single mom. Then a friend introduced her to Frank Ragland who was in training in the Air Force at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada.

Ona wrote Frank Ragland every day he was in Korea, and on July 3, 1954, after his return, they married. 

Over the years of his career in the Air Force, they traveled together. Frank adopted Michael, two daughters Felicia and Ona Rene were born, and they had a son, Frank Jr. They spent four years in Tokyo before returning to the States where Frank got a BS in Meteorology at Penn State University.

When Frank Ragland went to Vietnam in 1964-65, Ona and the family were in Portland, Oregon. From there, the family was assigned to Spain. Mike stayed in Portland where he still lives, while the others traveled to Europe. 

After Spain, Frank and Ona Mae moved to Colorado Springs where he retired in 1972 after they had built their own home.

Once they settled in Colorado, Ona studied Cosmetology and from 1973-1977 owned her own Beauty Haven salon in upper downtown Colorado Springs. Today they live in the house they built, filled with souvenirs of their travels together. They still travel together except on the golf course, which Ona lets Frank do alone.

Frank Jr. lives now in Dallas, where he is an associate in an architectural design firm. It was to see Frank Jr that Ona and Frank Sr drove to Texas, but they also came to Gilmer.

Mrs Ragland brought to the museum a vase or urn which is the one item from her grandparents' home which she took with her on her travels, umbrellas from Italy and a hat from Singapore as part of the wonders she had found. While she was describing her gifts, an old friend arrived.

Mrs Frankie Lindley spent a brief time in northern California with her husband, Marshall. Then, Mrs Lindley returned to Gilmer where she remains in touch with many of the old Bruce graduates. She has been an invaluable resource in concerning the Bruce students in the letters. She also helped fill in the rest of the story of a young woman who came from Upshur County and, like the singer of Moon River, went to see the world because "there's such a lot of world to see."

When the Raglands left the museum, they were off again, this time with Mrs Lindley to find Thelma Turner Owens, to recount old times, and to see what time had done to the world a young woman left behind.

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