Compiled by Teresa
Martin Klaiber 2023
Hillman
Bayes Jordan was born 10 December 1906, in Carter County, Kentucky. Hillman was one of seven known children of
Thomas and Mary Elizabeth Arden Jordan.
By
1929 Hillman was in Ashland along with seventeen-year-old Opal Lucas Jordan Hillman. He was working in the Ashland Sanitary milk
plant on Winchester Avenue. They lived
within walking distance of the plant.
Hillman
B. Jordan went to work in the plant during a turbulent time of the
company. In November 1929 the Boyd
County Circuit Court had awarded the estate of Janet Messersmith $10,0000 for
her death[i]. Jane, a child, t had been hit and killed by
one of the company’s trucks on June 29th. For many years, milk trucks and wagons delivered
up and down the residential streets of Ashland delivering fresh milk products
to homes. The cost of operation for the
company was up because of the Depression. The Depression of 1929 had effected everyone
and everything. The price of milk was lower and it is easy to assume that
anyone working for the milk companies would be getting lower wages as well. The death and lawsuit put a strain on
everyone from the plant to the courthouse and those in between trying to make a
living during such hard times.
But
there certainly were happy times. On 2 July 1930 the Daily Independent printed:
“Mr. and Mrs. Hillman Jordan of Winchester Avenue are announcing the arrival of
a baby girl born at the home Saturday June 28.
This is the first child in the family and has been given the name of
Della Jean. Mrs. Jordan was formerly Miss Opal Lucas of Rush, KY.”
Opal
was the daughter of Perry Allen and Cora May Estep Lucas. She had many
relatives in Big Garner, Rush and Glancy Fork areas of Boyd and Carter County,
Kentucky. Born 6 August 1912, she was
just days away from her 18th birthday when little Della was born.
Hillman
Jordan went to work on the 31st July 1931 according to his death
certificate[ii]. He became ill and died according to his death
certificate 1 August 1931 from a heart block and being over heated. His obituary appeared in the Daily
Independent 3 August (Monday) stating he died on Saturday (the first) after an
illness of one day. To complicate the
date and show that “carved in stone” is not always what it seems, Hillman Bayes
Jordan’s homemade tombstone states he died the 30th July 1931.
None
the less it was a tragedy and the obituary states he had many friends in
Ashland, while his parents still resided on Big Garner. He was survived by wife Opal and his small
daughter. Thus Hillman Bayes Jordan was
brought out to the county and laid to rest in Klaiber Cemetery near his parent’s
home.
It
must have been a tragic time for Opal.
Little Della’s death date is carved on the same headstone as her
father’s and states she died 30 August 1931. The stone would have been made
after her death and there are several other handmade stones for the Jordan’s in
the same design. Della Jean Jordan’s
birth, as stated above, was announced in the local paper and the Kentucky Birth
Index as “Della J. Jordan”.[iii] But the only record this compiler can find of
her death is the date and name carved on the stone with her father. “Carved in stone” her middle initial is “C”
and the date of date is 30 August 1931.
It took several readings to determine if the it was a 0 or 1. Della, cited in her father’s obituary, died
just weeks after his death.
I
wish to thank Judy Cantrell Fleming of the Boyd County Library, Genealogy Room,
that shares my passion for county cemetery work and who has helped me obtain
records now that I have a few mobile disabilities. Over the past few years I have given her my
county notebooks full of notations and photographs and she continues to add to
them, update and add material at find-a-grave helping thousands of folks that
can’t visit a loved ones grave in person.
Opal
Lucas Jordan moved to Floyd County, Kentucky where her widowed father Perry
Allen Lucas resided and on 12 April 1932 married Joseph Elmer Akers, a coal
miner. For a short time in the mid 1930’s they lived in Wise County, Virginia. Opal
died in 2004 at the age of 91 and is buried in Ligon, Floyd County, Kentucky.
