The Clubb Family and Katie Leona (89 and 90)

Katie Leona was born January 12, 1903 in Abilene, Texas.  She was the youngest of four children of John/G.W. Clubb (still trying to get this one right so I'll refer to him as Mr. Clubb) and Saphronia Josephine "Josie" Butler.  Mr. Clubb was known as a gunfighter in west Texas and had been born on July 19, 1865.

On family legend states that Josie was part Native American and was only 13 years old when in 1892 she was stolen from her family by Mr. Clubb as she and her family were crossing the great plains on their way to California. He had been working as a bandit in the area and was so taken with the young Josie that he took her away from her parents and married her.

Mr. Clubb and Josie had four children.  The eldest was a son named Thomas-who was born in 1898 and later married Mabel Carnahan and lived in Escondido, California for over twenty-four years.

The next was Minnie.  She was born in 1899 and married Emmitt Dunn.  They lived in Wichita, Kansas.  Another son, Jessie, was born in 1901 and he also married Mabel Carnahan, but were soon divorced, and she then married the eldest brother, Thomas.

Mr. Clubb and Josie's youngest child was Katie Leona.  Mr. Clubb died three months before Katie was born, leaving young Josie with a family of four to raise with no money and no education.  Family legend states he was shot in a gun fight and slowly died of the wound.  Josie cleaned homes, washed clothes, and became a sharecropper to feed her family.  Eventually, she brought a covered wagon for the family to live in and began cooking meals for the other sharecroppers.  When the children became old enough they too had to work in the fields to help feed and support the family.

Josie eventually married a man named Brown who was a strict disciplinarian, and expected the kids to work as hard as the adults.  They moved to California in 1907 and had a daughter named Essie in 1908.  Their marriage didn't last very long and after their divorce Josie married a man named Scott.  Josie and her third husband had one child, a son named Adjar.

Katie Leona quit school in the fifth grade and worked cleaning houses, sewing, and doing laundry.  At fifteen she left home and went to live with her sister in Wichita, Kansas.  Minnie's husband, Emmitt Dunn, was friends with Ferman Washington Rhine, and Ferman visited the house one night and met Katie.  They were married three years later on March 16, 1921.

Josie lived out the rest of her life in Ontario, California and died in 1953.

Josie, Katie, and Minnie