The Clannish Corbins!

I will attempt to identify as many as possible and I'd love to have my cousins help me with the rest.   Living away from Maple Hill had it's disadvantages.
First row:  L-R are Katy Lynn Clark and Steven Clark, one of the twin sons of Tim and Lucille Clark.
Second row:   Nicholas Clark, Sr., the author of this blog,  Karen (Cochran) Clark, wife of Stanley Clark, one of the twin sons of Tim and Lucille Clark, Timothy John Clark, son of Steven and Brenda Clark, Brenda (Harris) Clark, wife of Steven Clark, Sarah Emma (Corbin) Justice and her husband Leslie F. Justice, Lucille (Corbin) Clark, widow of John L. "Tim" Clark, Jennie Justice, wife of Robert Justice (not pictured),  next is Freda (Kitt) Corbin and her husband George Samuel Corbin.
Third row:  On the left end is Robert Frazier,  and his wife Joan (Corbin) Andrews-Frazier, Joan's daughter Coleen (Andrews) Tyler and her husband Jim Tyler,  Joan's daughter Christine and her husband Lee Tuck, Joan's daughter-in-law Laurie (Pierce) and her husband Bruce Charles Andrews, Sheila (Corbin) and her husband Laro Hill.
Fourth Row:  L-R First is Cameron Tyler and I don't know who the two girls are.   Next to them is Vivian Mae (Corbin) Wild and her husband George R. Wild, Jr., Vivian and George's daughter, Pamela Mae (Wild) and her husband Russell Martin, Vivian and George's daughter-in-law Kimberly(Tarbutton) and her husband Randolph "Randy" Corbin Wild and Ronald Corbin, son of Freda and George Corbin.
Fifth Row:  L-R Gary Wayne Clark, son of Lucille and Tim, the brunette teenager is Rebecca Wild, daughter of Randy and Kim Wild, next is Hillary Martin, daughter of Russell and Pam (Wild) Martin, next is Shannon Wild and her brother Randolph "Randy" Wild, daughter and son of Randy and Kim (Tarbutton) Wild and Collin Corbin, son of Sandy and Robert Corbin.  
Sixth Row:  L-R  I do not know who the four girls are on the left end of the row.   Next to them is Nicholas L. Clark, II, son of the author; Stanley J. Clark, twin son of Lucille and Tim Clark,  Verona S. (Little) Clark, ex-wife of the author, Robert Frederick Corbin and his wife Sandra (Root) Corbin and their daughter, whose name I do not remember.
Help me cousins!
My Mother, Lucille (Corbin) Clark, was the oldest of the five children of Robert and Mildred Mae (McCauley) Corbin.  She and her brothers and sisters used the phrase often, "The Clannish Corbins."  They all lived within 50 miles of each other most of their lives and enjoyed family reunions, trips to Las Vegas and the Ozarks, and many other activities.   Robert and Mildred (McCauley) Corbin had five children: Lucille, born on April 22, 1921; George Samuel, born on February 28, 1923; Joan born on January 15, 1925; Sarah born on December 4, 1929 and Vivian born August 3, 1932.    They were as close as brothers and sisters could be and they enjoyed doing things together.   Joan (Corbin) Andrews-Frazier is the only surviving member of this clan, and is in great health and very active, living in Topeka, Kansas.

My mother always called me, "The Traitor."   She always said it jokingly but we all know jokes are just truth masked in funny ways.   I left the ancestral home at Maple Hill, Kansas in 1978 to attend graduate school at the University of Idaho and never lived in Maple Hill again.    Here is the remarkable thing:   All of the people you see in the photograph above live within 50 miles of Maple Hill.    I truly was the only one who did not stay in Kansas.   I was fortunate to be able to visit my family at least twice each year and sometimes more when business travel took me nearby.   I moved my family a lot.   We lived in Idaho, Wisconsin, Oregon and the longest in Indiana, but I can truly say that my heart was always in Maple Hill.

This photograph at the top of the page was taken in August 1996.   If that date is incorrect, I hope someone will correct me.  My family was visiting Maple Hill to participate in the annual fish fry and picnic which my father, John Leander "Tim" Clark started two decades earlier.   I really don't know what other family members furnished fish in those early days but in addition, but my three brothers, Gary, Steve and Stan were all fishermen and pitched in pounds and pounds of crappie, catfish and bass fillets from local streams, rivers and ponds.   My mother kept two, large, upright freezers running and they were full of fish.   I know others did as well.    The event wasn't really a family reunion.   There were 100-150 townspeople and friends invited.   Everyone brought covered dishes to share and my dad and his family and friends provided the fish.

I don't think there was any special occasion in 1996, but I just got the idea that it would be fun for our Corbin family members to sit on the baseball bleachers at Maple Hill City Park and take a picture.  Life is fickle and I'm so glad that we had the picture taken because the youngest of the Corbin children, Vivian Mae (Corbin) Wild, was stricken with brain cancer in 1998 and died on January 1, 1999.   It was a cruel blow to the family to have its youngest member taken first.

I believe I'm correct in saying that everyone in the photograph is either a child, spouse, grandchild, great grandchild or great great grandchild of Robert and Mildred Mae (McCauley) Corbin.   Unfortunately, my Grandfather Robert Corbin died very young.   He was 58 and died in on April 16, 1958 as the result of lung cancer.   My Grandmother Mildred (McCauley) Corbin lived another 34 years and died just a few days short of her 93rd birthday on March 21, 1994.

McCauley) Corbin and her husband Robert Corbin taken on their farm about 1.5 miles southwest of Maple Hill.   I believe the photo is from 1948 or 1949.  I think that because in 1950, Richard Andrews moved in an old storage tank, cut the top off, reshaped it and put the top back on with an opening for guttering to carry rain water into the tank.   I would say it was probably 250 gallons or more.   It was a heavy steel tank and in the summer, the sun would warm the water so that it could be used for the Saturday night bath.   Some of my young readers will be shocked but the house had no indoor plumbing of any kind so we had to take our bath in one big double wash tub.   Children went first and then adults.  It was nice to set the tub out on the south side of the house in summer, or on the back porch.   The road went about 100' north of the north side of the house.   The house had a big circle driveway.   The only really private area was on the south side of the house.  In cold weather, the tub was brought into the kitchen for baths.  The outhouse was a good 250' south of the house.   It was a cold walk in winter so we used chamber pots, as did most farm people at that time.   You used the pots at night and carried them to the outhouse to empty them in the morning.

There was no bathroom in the house until after my Grandfather died in 1958.   My Grandmother Mildred Corbin decided that she would have the house moved into the town of Maple Hill and remodeled.   The work was done mostly by her son-in-laws Richard G. Andrews, Leslie F. Justice, George Wild, Jr. and Tim Clark.   I believe that Leslie's father, Clifford also helped.

The house also had no heat upstairs.   You either had to leave the stairway open from the kitchen and dining room or it was very cold.    I think about 1950 or 1951, Richard Andrews put a metal vent in the upstairs floor that would allow heat upstairs.   That was a great improvement.  During that construction, my brother Gary Wayne Clark was about 6-years-old.   He was upstairs playing when no one was nearby and fell through the newly sawed hole for the heat grill.   Everyone thought he was probably dead, because it had knocked the breath out of him, but he recovered just fine. 

Grandfather Corbin was usually first up in the morning.   He would go downstairs and would build a big coal fire in the Warm Morning Stove.   It was a round, steel stove that stood about 4'6" off the floor.  When the coal was burned, you had to shovel it out of the bottom of the stove into a bucket and carry it outside where the "clinkers" made excellent pathways.    The path to the outhouse, and the chicken house just to the south of the outhouse, was paved with coal clinkers.    Before the 1951 flood, the well was located between the barn and the chicken house on a high knoll.   It was ruined when flood water got into the well.  While the chicken house, well and barn were flooded, the house was high enough that the flood waters only lapped at the foundation.   A new well was dug about 20' outside the door of the back porch and was much more convenient.

This photo gets a little ahead of the story because it includes Mildred May (McCauley) Corbin's second husband, Roy H. Clark.   However it's a fairly good picture of the children of Robert and Mildred Corbin's.  Roy and Mildred are seated.   It was taken shortly after their wedding on September 22, 1973.

Standing in the second row, L-R are Joan (Corbin) Andrews-Frazier, Freda (Kitt) Corbin, Lucille (Corbin) Clark, and Sarah Emma (Corbin) Justice. 

Standing in the third row, L-R are Robert Frazier, George Samuel Corbin, John L. "Tim" Clark, George R. Wild, Jr., and Leslie F. Justice.

This color photo of the five Corbin siblings was taken in the between the kitchen and dining are of the Mildred Mae (McCauley) Corbin-Clark home in Maple Hill, Kansas.  It is from sometime in the 1980s but as most of us do---there is no date on the photo.  Standing L-R are Joan (Corbin) Andrews-Frazier, Vivian Mae (Corbin) Wild and Sarah Emma (Corbin) Justice.   Seated left to right are:  George Samuel Corbin (named for his two grandfathers) and Lucille (Corbin) Clark.

I have wonderful memories of the Corbin Clan.  They were the best ever aunts and uncles.  I had 15 first cousins on the Corbin side and while they probably thought their oldest cousin was a pest at times, they were also the greatest!   My mother always said, "There's no such thing as shirt tail relations---either you are or you aren't!"   If she would here today, she would add, "I love you all," and so do I.     Happy Trails!!