Clara Clark Leggitt Smith

Source: Leggitt family records.

Clara was born while her parents were living on the Pittsburg Ranch north of Berlin. When she was three the family moved to a small two room house near Edenview where she later started school. When Clara was in the third grade her parents purchased some land from the Pittsburg Land Company seven miles northwest of Berlin. They built a big comfortable six room house there where Clara grew up.

About a year after her son Roy was born in 1933, Clara and he went to live with the Samual and Bonnie Purdy family in Carter, OK. Clara assisted Bonnie in the homemaking chores and did the family book keeping. She finished high school while at Carter in 1936. By the summer of 1937 the dust bowl made it impossible to continue making a living in Oklahoma and the family moved to California in a manner similar to John Steinbeck's novel, Grapes of Wrath.

They picked cotton and fruit the first years, but by 1940 the family had become quite successful. In 1941 Clara married Chester Leonard Smith who had a girl Roy's age and two nearly grown boys. She and Leonard had another family of a boy and two girls by 1946.

Leonard was primarily a carpenter and mechanic during the war (WWII) and post war years. However, he was seriously injured in an accident in the early 1950s and could no longer work doing physical labor. He and Clara later had a series of grocery stores and Clara entered the real estate business in the 1960s. She was quite successful and remained very active in that business until she fully retired in 1988.

For a detailed account of the first nine decades of her life, read The Life and Times of Clara Clark Leggitt Smith at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~royc/Leggitt/The%...

She lived a very active life until just before her 95th birthday. Apparently she had a mini-stroke while attending church. She had suffered from macular degeneration for nearly 20 years but the stroke temporarily completly blinded her. She did recover some periferal sight after a few weeks. For about the last year and a half of her life she suffered a recuring severe urinary track infection. She was in and out of hospitals, nursing homes and home care. Finally a few days before her death she was released from the hospital to home hospice. She died peacefully on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Junior's I Have a Dream speech.

• Residence: 1920 - Berlin, Roger Mills, Oklahoma, United States
• Residence: 1930 - Berlin, Roger Mills, Oklahoma, United States
• Residence: Aug 28 2013 - Lake Elsinore
  • Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: Dec 1 2018, 4:36:20 UTC
• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Dec 1 2018, 4:43:51 UTC
• Residence: 1920 - Berlin, Roger Mills, Oklahoma, United States
• Residence: 1930 - Berlin, Roger Mills, Oklahoma, United States
• Residence: Aug 28 2013 - Lake Elsinore
  • Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: Jan 27 2019, 4:03:44 UTC