Hinkles and Hanrahans

Mary Catherine gave birth to eleven children, but only five survived childhood. She probably suffered from glaucoma, because her granddaughter Jackie Hamlin Liford remembers that her eyes were very cloudy and she was almost completely blind. She and husband Ensley lived near the Rockholds High School. Their son Jim, wife Gladys and children lived with them, probably to help with her blindness.
She was sick several days before she died, and her daughter Margaret and granddaughter Jackie came to care for her. Jackie remembers spending Christmas there that year, and Mary Catherine died on New Years Day. Jackie recalled that like all houses then, each room was heated with coal grates, and coal stoves in the main rooms. Ice was delivered in blocks from the Corbin Ice House. They never owned a vehicle.
Ensley and Mary Catherine did not celebrate Christmas with a tree, but they did hang stockings. They made a bigger deal of Easter. Ensley would poke holes in eggs with a needle, blow out the contents, dry and color them and hang them outside in the trees.