Below is a paper that I wrote on my family's history since 1891, over 4 generations. At least this will disprove my grandfather's belief that he came over on the Mayflower. Actually, our first ancestor in America was John Chandler who came over to Jamestown, VA with Lord Delaware when he was just a boy. He survived the Jamestown Massacre or we wouldn't be with you today!
Throughout Your Generations
Chandler Family History from 1891 - 2008
By Bryce A. Chandler
Cicero Francis Chandler was born August 30, 1891 in Blackhawk, Caroll County, Mississippi, just outside Greenwood. His wife, Annie Inez Shipp, was born February 8, 1898 in Belzoni, Washington County, which is now Humphreys County. Cicero and Inez were married on December 2, 1917 in Greenwood, Leflore County, Mississippi, and had eight children: Thomas Cicero (T. C.) , Agnes May, Ernestine (Ernie), Walter Frank, James Richard (Jimmy), Llewellyn Arthur (Lou), Annie Frances, and Robert Louis who was born February 12, 1937. Robert was the only child born in a hospital. Cicero fought with the U.S. Army in France during World War I before receiving a medical discharge when he developed double pneumonia and tuberculosis of the lungs. In 1929, the bottom fell out of the stock market and unemployment rose drastically. During this Great Depression era, Cicero moved to Memphis to find better job opportunities where he could use his trade as a carpenter.
Not able to find sustainable employment in Memphis, the Chandler family moved again to Mickie in McNairy County where Cicero helped the Tennessee Valley Authority build the hydroelectric Pickwick Dam that was constructed between 1934 and 1938. While in Mickie, the family lived in a small rental home, and the children attended Mickie Consolidated School. After the completion of Pickwick Dam, Cicero took his family back to Memphis to a house on Douglas Street. Robert remembers how there were no jobs available, but two or three men in the neighborhood would compile their money together in order to purchase food for the other families. With the start of World War II, the economy began to improve.
After Douglas Street, the family moved to a rental at 1057 Springdale. While living there, Robert often attended the Lucianne theater with his brother and sister on Saturdays. The theater showed anything from cowboy and war pictures to Humphrey Bogard and mysteries, but at the time, Robert mainly went to see the cartoons such as Snow White and Pinnochio. Before the pictures, he remembers how they would always play the national anthem, then show an exciting advertisement on war bonds, with flying fighter planes. This was part of an over four million dollar governmental advertising campaign that swept through the nation and rallied Americans to support their country during the war, of which was said “no promotional campaign, commercial, governmental, or Goebbel’s has ever spread its basic message so broadly, so quickly.” In addition to war bonds, there were also other ways to support the war. If one brought a pound of copper for the war effort, he could get into the picture for free; otherwise, the picture costed a dime. “It was something back then,” Robert said about the war fever.
When the family left Springdale, Cicero purchased a house at 614 North 7th. It was a big house, especially for the time, with 17 rooms and 4 bathrooms. They lived here for many years, and Robert remembers that his mother would hang a flag with two stars in the front window. The stars were for Robert’s older brothers Jimmy and Walter who were in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Jimmy helped build the flag pole on Okinawa while serving with the Construction Battalion (called Seabees), who gained respect for their ingenuity in constructing everything from quonset huts to seaports. Walter fought with the U.S. Marines. Two others in the house were also away at war. Both Ernie and Agnes’s husbands were in the navy. Robert remembers when his mother received letters, there would be holes in them. The soldiers were not allowed to tell where they were or what they were doing, or else a censor would take scissors and cut out the jeopardizing information.
The Chandler family’s first car was a 1939 Oldsmobile. Robert remembers his family crossing a railroad track one night and being hit by a train. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt, but they all spent some days in the hospital.
On Springdale, the Chandlers attended Little Flower Catholic Church, and on 7th Street, they attended Holy Names. At the time, there were not many mission groups, and no one really had time or money to do much besides raise their own family. To save money, Cicero worked a garden and had a flock of chickens at Springdale, besides his regular 6 to 7 day a week job. When he came home from lunch, he gathered the eggs and would sell them for 25-30 cents a dozen. Even so, Robert remarked that he never knew his family suffered financially. His parents never led on about it.
Cicero was a home repairman during the war. Then one day he walked in the house and declared, “Every building they build, they have to tear one down. I’m going to start a wrecking business.” And he made good his promise. He bought three houses for $200 a piece on Crump Boulevard and Somerville to tear down and use for material, and in 1946, started C.F. Chandler Wrecking Company. The company survives today in Memphis as Chandler Demolition and is being carried on by the third generation.
Despite the 1938 Federal Wage and Hour Law, when he was 12, Robert Louis would work the company payroll for 25 cents an hour. “You could do a lot on 25 cents an hour,” he said, in a time when gas was less than 20 cents a gallon. By the time he was 15, he was driving a truck on the job site, even though he didn’t have a license yet. He ran his first crane in 1960 when he was 23 or 24. Robert’s first car was given to him by his father, and he took over the note. It was a sharp Royal Blue 1955 Dodge with a white top. Robert said his parents never wanted to control his future, but if there was something they would have liked him to be, it was a lawyer. He went 3 years to college. When asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said he never remembered wanting to be anything other than what he was.
Robert met his first real friend, Ronnie Averwater, in 2nd grade. In high school, he met Harry Debandi (now a doctor in Madisonville, Kentucky) who became a life-long friend with whom he still keeps in contact. Once, a friend of his, Eve Bennet, arranged for him to go on a blind date with Marilyn Mills, a Methodist girl who came up from Yazoo City, Mississippi. Her father, also named Robert, ran the Memphis oil refinery that is Valero today. This blind date turned into romance. Robert and Marilyn were married on October 4, 1958 at 7 pm in the chapel behind Grace Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church. Marilyn, who was 19, was too young under state law to marry without parental consent and her mother signed for her. Robert was 21.
(Robert and Marilyn Chandler, circa 1967).
The couple first lived in a small duplex at 1106 N. Garland where their first child, Pamela Diane, was born on July 25, 1959. From here, they moved to a house on 1457 Fox, and later moved to 2972 Estes, where their other three children were born. Dawn Denise was born August 22, 1962 and passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack on June 6, 2005 at the age of 42. Robert said losing a child was the hardest thing he had ever experienced. Robert Louis, Jr. (Robbie), was born December 29, 1963; and Christopher Mills was born April 28, 1969. All the children started school at Fox Meadows Elementary School, and then Grace St. Luke’s Middle School. Dawn went her senior year to Evangelical Christian School (ECS). During his high school years, Robbie attended Christian Brothers High School (CBHS).
(Robbie at 2 1/2 months, March 19, 1964).
Cicero died July 25, 1962 in Memphis from cancer of the lung. He asked to be buried with his feet to the east so that when Christ returned he could rise up and look Him in the eye. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was staying at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to support a local strike by black workers. As King stood on the balcony, he was shot and killed by assassin James Earl Ray. At the time, Robert was working on Main and Beale, just two blocks away from the shooting. When Robert’s mother heard of the assassination of Dr. King, she became anxious with worry for her son and suffered a fatal heart-attack. She died April 13.
In the mid-70's, Robbie remembers his Dad breaking out on his own to start an excavating company where he worked on parking lots, tennis courts, and drive ways. For two years, the business flourished, and he received more work than he could perform. Then, the 1970's recession hit when Robbie was in 3rd or 4th grade, and his Dad “lost a lot.” But Robbie proudly told how his Dad did not claim bankruptcy but “worked a deal and paid back every dime he owed.” It wasn’t easy. He worked two and three jobs at a time. In the evenings, he worked at the Pancake House, and he worked maintenance at Grace Saint Luke’s before he went to work at wrecking jobs.
(Chris, Robbie, Pam, and Dawn in December, 1969).
Robbie does not remember his grandparents except for Francis Mills, his mom’s mother whom he saw often. One special memory is that she always kept her Bible on a wooden stand in her house. He never mingled much with his cousins on the Chandler side, and it became a family proverb that “they only got together on weddings and funerals”. On the other side of the family, however, it was a little different. When he lived in Memphis, Uncle Marvin Mills, a cardiologist, and the cousins would all gather at Robbie’s house on Thanksgiving. Later, however, Marvin’s family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Robbie’s dad, Robert, coached his baseball and basketball teams at Grace Saint Luke’s and took him fishing. He worked on cars, even though he hated it. He also did some yard work when he had the time. Robert was good at golfing and bowling, and was very big into the latter. Robbie’s mom never worked outside the home, and was fully occupied raising her four children. She cooked almost every night until the kids got involved in high school sports. Marilyn drove them to all their sport events, “sometimes two or three a day,” Robbie said. She also took care of writing the bills.
They went to church at Grace Saint Luke’s Episcopal where Robert served as an usher. Robbie said he hated going to family weddings because the Chandler side were Catholic and their ceremonies lasted for a long time. Due to this, Robbie and his two sisters vowed never to get married in the Catholic Church. Ironically, they all married Catholic spouses, but not in the Catholic Church. In the 70's, the Chandlers built an addition on the house at Estes, where Robbie’s room would be.
For entertainment, the family had their sporting events. Robbie played baseball, basketball, and soccer. Robbie won his high school’s Athlete of the Year award in1978-79. At 14, his brother Chris won the National Junior Putt Putt competition and he helped his cheerleading squad win the national championship. They also watched the popular TV shows of the day like Happy Days, Dallas, Knott’s Landing, and Mission Impossible.
Robbie remembers neighbors on each side of his house—the Longs and the Walters. He was good friends with Toby Walter until Toby’s parents were transferred and they moved away. Another friend was Bret Leppard who lived in his neighborhood. Robbie would go to his youth group sometimes, and they remained friends until they were 15 or 16 years old when Bret got on drugs. His best friend was Curtis Motley when he was about 12 or 13. When they were young, the duo would do almost everything together—including taking trips to the hospital to get stitches every week after climbing trees or failed attempts at riding their bicycles down a slide. His sister was also Dawn’s best friend. Eventually, Curtis’s parents were transferred to Houston, Texas where they bought a big house with a swimming pool. Robbie and Dawn visited twice, but soon lost contact with them.
(Robbie and his grandmother, Francis Mills, when he graduated college).
Robbie attended Christian Brothers College where he received a Bachelor in Accounting. In 1986, he worked for Motorola, and eventually, he worked many years as a business manager in the building products industry. While working at Putt Putt Golf and Games in Memphis when he was in highschool, Robert met fifteen year-old Tamara Slinkard who had come to Putt Putt with a church youth group. Robbie gave her some free tokens for the machines. “I always liked a bargain,” Tamara said, and she was hooked after that. Five years later, the couple was married at Holy Communion Episcopal Church on August 9, 1986.
(Bryce and Brandon, circa 1990).
Their first child, Brandon Michael, was born at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis on May 26, 1987. Bryce Andrew was born November 22, 1989, also at Baptist. Robbie worked at Amoco and was transferred to St. Louis when Bryce was just a baby. They lived the typical suburban family life at a house on 109 Bonnybridge Court in Ellisville, West County, Missouri. Here, Robbie and Tamara attended Gateway Christian Church, where they made a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and were baptized. They also decided to home-school their children, a unique practice at the time that has grown over the years. They met the Billings family who lived in Arnold, became fast friends, and still keep in contact today. Mikey and Jamie would prepare for the annual speech competitions with Brandon and Bryce, and the boys played several years on roller-hockey teams. They also met at each other’s homes or at the park for home-school get-togethers, or attended field-trips. Once at a park, Brandon was attacked by a swarm of yellow jackets, and Mikey came to the rescue by trying to swat them off. They both wound up side by side in the emergency room. On November 4, 2007, Mikey was killed in an automobile accident in San Antonio, Texas. The Chandlers also became the assistant leaders of the West County Christian Home Educators. They became friends with the leaders, the Muller family, and a highlight of their home-school meetings was a visit to Steak-n-Shake afterwards with all the kids.
(Jamie and Mikey Billings with Brandon and Bryce at a Civil War re-enactment in Pilot Knob in 2004).
In 1997, the Chandlers decided to move rurally, and purchased 70 acres on Pike County Road 223, north of Troy. Pike 223 was right down the road from a town called Paynesville with a population of 60. All that was there was a soda machine that people kept robbing. Bryce remembers that the last time he saw the machine it had a note warning people that if it was robbed again, then it would be taken away. The Chandlers bought a small Shetland Pony that they named “Trigger,” after Roy Roger’s Palomino. He was ornery at first, and even threw Tamara when she was pregnant. But Brandon was able to break him into a gentle ride. The Chandlers enjoyed their property, but didn’t know much about living in the country. A neighbor, Carl Brune, who ran a cattle farm, often helped them learn the ropes. During the winter, he would plow them a driveway through the snow, and during the summer, he would help them with fencing. Miss Linda owned a 16 hand Tennessee Walker, and the boys would sometimes ride “Trigger” with her. Carl would also take the boys on inner-tubes on a track he had made in the snow, pulling them behind his 4-wheeler for a wild ride.
The Chandler’s also would hunt on their land, but never shot anything accept chickens. Other friends who came up from St. Louis to hunt would bag a deer, one of them a fifteen-point buck. Once, the Chandlers bought several chickens that turned out to all be roosters. They became wild and would roost in the trees at nights. Eight year-old Bryce asked his mom if he could try and shoot one, and she answered “yes,” not thinking he would hit it. Bryce took his pellet gun and stalked one of the roosters to the creek, took aim, and hit it in the back of the neck with the first shot. Shocked, his mom scrambled for the book to find out how to pluck a chicken; that night, they had chicken soup. Brandon and Bryce enjoyed dressing up and playing guns in the woods. They would climb up the steep hills and wade in the creeks. They also fed the animals, built the corral out front, and did fencing. They helped Carl Brune haul hay in the summer, and they put siding on their double-wide before they moved away. It was here, too, that Bryce accepted Jesus as his Savior.
As the roosters crowed outside, Blake Christopher was born at home September 9, 1998, leaving a nine-year gap between him and Bryce. The day before Blake was born, Mark McGwire had hit his 62nd home run, breaking Roger Maris’s record. The St. Louis area was wild with excitement, and subsequent articles in the Post-Dispatch ran headlines like “Swing King. Amazing! Even the slugger can’t believe he did it!”
In 1999, the Chandlers wanted to get closer to their family in Memphis, so they moved to 803 Leewood Drive in Paragould, Arkansas, where they rented a small house in a neighborhood for a little over a year. Robbie and Tamara’s fourth child, Elizabeth Ann was born July 15, 2000 at St. Bernard’s in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Eventually, they moved to 11 acres at 451 Robinson Road, in Pocahontas, Arkansas right before Christmas and celebrated the holiday at their house with the relatives. Here in Pocahontas, the older boys did 4-H Shooting Sports, and both won many honors. One year, Bryce won 2nd, Brandon 3rd, and their team placed 1st in Pellet Pistol Competition. They also wrote articles for their local newspaper, the Pocahontas Star Herald, and Bryce took up writing the 4-H Limelight column after Brandon started it. On 9/11, Bryce watched the television in horror as the second plane slammed into the Trade Tower, and the country plunged into war. Little did he know that, seven years later, his own brother would join the Marines.
(The Chandler family at their home in Pocahontas, circa 2002. From Left: Bryce, Tamara, Blake, Robbie, Elizabeth, and Brandon).
The family attended Beautiful Gate Baptist Church in Horseshoe Bend, Missouri and became firm in their stance on Bible doctrine, and how a sinner must repent of his sins and trust in the finished work of Christ in order to be saved, and how it is not of any works of his own. For, “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us....” Later, they began attending Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church in Walnut Ridge, and Robert and Bryce took classes at Gethsemane Bible Institute. Bryce also published two books on the Civil War and presently travels to schools and libraries to represent the drummer boy’s life. He is pursuing an online degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
America has changed drastically since Cicero Chandler was born in the late 19th century. The new millennium has emerged from a troubled century with a Great Depression, two world wars, and a crisis over civil rights. The new generation has suffered very little of these burdens, but trials of the new century continue to loom overhead. With the continuation of the War in the Middle East, a gathering financial crisis at home, and an African-American in the White House, the 21st Century appears a typical, yet very unique era of the American experience. Just what is in store for this new generation is mere speculation.
