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| (Plainview Cemetery) |
Harry Joseph Abernathy was a man of the southeast Missouri soil whose life bridged two distinct eras. Born in the tiny hamlet of Shrum in Bollinger County, Harry belonged to a generation that witnessed their rural birthplaces fade from the map. Named for a local landowner, the hamlet was once a distinct community in Crooked Creek Township. However, like so many small Missouri towns, it fell victim to modernization; the Shrum post office, which had opened in 1900, was discontinued in 1937 as rural mail routes consolidated. Its closure shuttered the town's identity nearly fifty years before Harry himself passed away.
As a farmer in the Ozark foothills, Harry was not merely an agriculturalist but a survivalist. Through the lean years of the Great Depression, his labor stood between his large family—spanning two marriages and at least six children—and the economic hardships of the times. As any lifelong farmer knows, the circle of life and death is a constant. Whether it was animals in the barnyard, crops in the ground, or family members in his home, Harry witnessed and travelled along that circle over and over.
Harry Joseph Abernathy was one of ten children born to Marry Elizabeth Kirn (1877-1950) and Joseph Noah Abernathy (1875-1957). A month and a half before his 24th birthday, Harry married Gladys Marie Campbell. She was the eldest daughter of Hattie Ann Lancaster (1883-1933) and George Moore Campbell (1883-1974).
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| Clipping from circa 1930 plat book for Bollinger County, Missouri, showing the village of Shrum and Joseph Noah Abernathy's property. - Missouri Digital Heritage |
Harry and Gladys would have six children together before he became a widower at the young age of 39 when Gladys died in January 1941. Harry was suddenly a single father with six children, all under the age of 15, including a son of just 6 months.
By the time of that life-changing event, however, Harry had already been around the circle several times. When he was 11 years old, Harry's sister Olga Mary died at the age of 3 years. Three weeks later, his sister Bertha Mae was born.
When Harry was 27, his youngest brother Hersel died at the age of 7 of acute nephritis after contracting pneumonia. Four months later, wife Gladys gave birth to Harry's second son, Lentice Melvin.
Three years after the death of his wife Gladys, Harry married Helen Huffman Williams on 1 February 1944 at Jackson, Cape Girardeau County, Missouri. Four years later, tragedy would strike the Abernathy family again in an unimaginable way.
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| Sikeston Herald (Missouri), 10 June 1948 |
"Willard Abernathy, 12-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Abernathy, who live near Whitewater in Cape Girardeau county, was fatally shot by his grandfather, George M. Campbell of Morley, who was visiting in the Abernathy home." I cannot fathom the trauma. Harry lost a son at the hands of his late wife's father.
Harry Joseph Abernathy was 83 when he died on 10 December 1984 at Southeast Hospital in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. During his lifetime, Harry witnessed his country go to war four times, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of a U.S. president, and the Apollo moon landing. His life was defined by movement around that circle—not just from the tiny hamlet of Shrum to the city of Cape Girardeau, but from a world of horse-drawn plows to the space age. Harry was a man who had to bury a wife, raise six children, and outlive his own hometown, eventually returning to the same Missouri soil he had tilled for eighty years.
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