Carling Family History & Genealogy

Grandma Leora also told me about one time when her Mother Julia Vilate Warner Carling got trapped in the outhouse by a bull. She was making a visit to it when a bull escaped from the field. The bull trapped her inside and was hitting it shaking it from side to side. She was inside screaming at the top of her lungs, and scared for her life as the house was tipping from one side to the other. The men heard the screams and came and rescued her.

Grandma Leora said they were also the first ones in town to have electric lights. They just had a bulb hanging from the ceiling. Grandma Vilate would put her white oil cloth on the table under the light and stand back and admire how it pretty it looked all lit up. People would drive for miles around to look at their porch light. Grandma said that the electricity cost 90 cents a month and Grandpa Merrit was always complaining about how expensive it was and to not be so wasteful.

After Grandma Leora had gotten married, she became interested in doing her family genealogy. It was at this time she found her parents Merrit and Vilate Carling's marriage license. She could see where her mother's birth year had been erased and 1886 had been hand written in. She asked her father and he told her that it was because her mother was extremely embarrassed about marrying a younger man and had tried to change all records of her birth. When Merrit and Vilate were married in 1910, Vilate was 26 and Merrit was 21. In those days, women did not marry younger men and Vilate was quite embarrassed over the fact. She was actually born in 1884.
Grandma Leora had always known her mother was older but never understood the embarrassment. She had questioned her mother about why she married him then. She even came right out and asked her mother, " Did you have to get married or something?" Grandma Vilate was quite taken back and highly insulted as she answered, " Absolutely not!!"

Grandma Vilate told Grandma Leora that she had first seen Merrit as a child while buying ice cream up to Harriet Mae Mcbride Carling's house. He was just a little boy then. Harriet later became her mother in law. Merrit and Vilate both sang in the Tom Beaston's choir. This is where the two really met and got involved together. Vilate told Leora that Merrit would not leave her alone and was always hanging around and pestering her. He was always over to her house and her parents were sick of him. Because he wouldn't leave her alone and was always bothering her, she decided to marry him to solve the problem. She knew that people knew she was older than him but changing the dates on records made her feel better about the difference in age. When Vilate was quite advanced in age, she really could not remember what her correct birth year was any longer or how old she really was.

With the excitement and fears of the upcoming Y2K new millennium, I started wondering how people felt about the turn of the century in the year 1900. Were they scared or excited for the new century? I asked Grandma Leora if her mother ever talked about what it was like when the new year was welcomed in for 1900. Grandma Vilate would have been about 16 years old at the time. Grandma Leora said she only asked her mother about it one time. Vilate told her she could remember everyone being drunk in the streets of Fillmore, hollering and yelling. Several of the men had guns and they were shooting them off in the streets. Everyone was scared to let their kids out of the house because they were afraid they would get shot by the drunks. Grandma Vilate told her that, "When drunks shoot guns, someone always gets killed!" So Leora asked her if anyone got killed that night and she replied, "Not that I remember." She told her that there were a lot to tired people in Fillmore the next day.

When Grandma Leora was about 4 or 5 years old, it had been predicted that the world was going to come to an end on a certain day. She doesn't remember who made the prediction or why but most everyone in town believed that it was true. A good portion of the residents of Fillmore decided they wanted to go to the mountains to wait for the end of the world so they could be closer to the Lord. Grandma said she watched out the window while numerous horses and buggys went by heading for the mountains. Her Father Merrit Carling wasn't quite sure if he believed the prediction or not. But he was not going to leave his house and head to the mountains. He was going to stay in his own house and wasn't going anywhere. He said he would wait for the Lord in his own house. Grandma was terrified of what was going to happen, but they all went to bed. The next morning they woke up and were surprised to still be there. Grandma Vilate made the comment, " Well were all still here and we never got blown up!"

One time Merrit Carling was out in the back field cutting hay with power machinery. He was wearing an old pair of overalls that were frayed all along the bottom. His wife, Vilate had warned him not to wear them, but he had not listened. Somehow the frayed part of his overalls got caught in the power machinery while it was running. Merrit was quickly being sucked into the machinery and knew he was going to die. He kept pulling back as the machine ate his clothes one piece at a time and all he could do was let it. Eventually it had stripped him down to nothing and had shredded all of his clothes to pieces. When all his clothes were gone he was freed and he was feeling lucky to be alive with just cuts and scrapes. All he could find to cover him was a little piece of burlap sack to walk back to the house to. When his wife Vilate saw him coming, wearing nothing but a burlap sack and a dirty face, she threw up her arms as she always did and exclaimed, " Oh Lord, He has finally flipped his lid! "