Olive Rambo Cook
Olive Rambo Cook was a winner of the 2018 Chillicothe Hall of Fame.
Olive Rambo Cook authored several stories reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie. Coon Holler, her first book, was published when she was 65. This was followed by several other books including Serilda’s Star, The Sign at Six Corners, and The Trail to Poosey. As a young woman in 1917, Olive built a boat for a high school manual training class. She launched it into the Grand River just north of Chillicothe, Missouri, and for three weeks rowed, floated, tugged, fished, hunted, and otherwise drifted over 150 miles to Glasgow where she finally had to pull out due to bad weather. Olive graduated from the Chillicothe Business College in 1919. In 1921 she was elected Chillicothe City Clerk and later taught school in Chillicothe. She took up painting in earnest in her later years and had her first art exhibit at the age of 80.Olive's small headstone simply reads, “Olive Rambo Cook 1891-1981.” No dates, because she felt it’s what we do for others in between those dates that matter.
Her story was also submitted to the National Trust - Where Women Made History at https://savingplaces.org/where-women-made-history#shareyourplace.
Here's the longer story, written by Rodney Mouton.
This biography of Olive came about in a rather happenstance way. A couple of us were moving things around the storage area at the museum under the pretense of actually straightening up. As I was organizing pictures by size, I picked up an obviously old photograph of a small flat-bottomed boat pulled up on the bank of a river. It was very serene and unusual, and it drew me in to a time and place. The more I studied it, the more intrigued I became, and the more questions came to my mind. There were no apparent answers to the “who, what, where, when, why, and how” questions that spun slowly around through my head like a backwater eddy.
People take pictures of their family; they take pictures of their pet; their house or even their prize-winning chickens; things that meant a great deal to them. But this aging photo was of a canopied skiff with picket-fence seat backs pulled up on a muddy bank; maybe sunrise, maybe sunset, maybe 50 years ago, maybe 75, or even 100. Scenic photography was not necessarily an art form that long ago, so I felt the boat and the water must have had some significance to someone at that moment in time. The real nagging question was this: Why this scene?
I carried the photograph to the curator’s office where Pam Clingerman told me a little bit about it and the high school girl who had apparently taken the picture many years ago. She said there was a little more in the back room if I cared to dig a little more. Not requiring additional encouragement, I did.
Digging deeper, I found more of her pictures and a short story that read more like an epic romantic fantasy than a schoolgirl’s diary documenting the activities that covered a 3-week span of her life. I then went online and found sporadic articles from the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune and the Kansas City Star newspapers. Freshly armed with dates and other clues, it led me to scouring high school and college yearbooks from the era. What came together, piece by piece, was the story of an adventuresome girl-turned-woman, an author, an artist, and a person who gave more of herself to her fellow human beings without a thought of gaining anything in return; a story that foolishly had me thinking, if not wishing, that should have been born 70 years earlier.
Olive L. Rambo was (or IS, in spirit) a fellow Chillicothean. She was born in August 26, 1892 to George W. (1850-1927) and Effie M. (1863-1901) Rambo. She was born and raised for the first few years of her life in Avalon area where her parents owned a 400-acre farm. She had a younger brother who died as an infant, but no other siblings Her mother taught school at Avalon and Olive likely started to school there but it is unclear how long she may have attended classes at the Avalon School. Effie died when Olive was only 8-1/2 and her father needed the young girl’s help to operate the farm. Neighbors in Avalon convinced her father that Olive needed to attend school and live in town where she can be with other children. According to the 1915 Chillicothe City Directory, Olive, her dad, and her cousin Mabel (who was about 8 years older than Olive) lived at 209 Elm Street – which is a block south of where Central Elementary School is located. Chillicothe High School also shared that location at the time. George and cousin Mabel shared a phone number (1448); Olive had her own (1444).
In the 1917 Cresset, the Chillicothe High School yearbook, we find the following:
First is the portrait of Olive, during her junior year in High School where she was quoted for posterity, “I think I may, in a thousand years, remember the earth in it’s giddy course.”
The same Cresset has a photo of Olive with the girls’ basketball team, with the following excerpt written by schoolmate Marion Winn:
“The first games were inter-class games between the Reds and the Blues, and the Reds won 20-5, of course you have to understand this was a fast game because no one was fast enough to stop Olive Rambo the one all around star.”
There is also a full-page humorous story in the yearbook written by Olive Rambo, where she describes (in her excited and scatter-brained state of excitement) having missed a Valentine’s Day party by 24 hours. This may be her first published story.
It must be pointed out here, though, that Olive was “mature” for a typical high school student. In the spring of 1917, during her junior year, she would have been 24 years old. This can probably be attributed to having missed years of schooling while helping her father on the farm.
But it was during this year, in the spring of 1917, that Olive Rambo took a “manual training” class, which was an optional class initiated at the high school in 1906. The intent of the class was to promote the use eye-hand coordination to produce something tangible and useful. The type of project a student took on was completely up to the individual. The school offered needlecraft, cooking, and other projects suitable for high school girls, but Rambo “lived large”, as they say.
Olive started to build the Black-Eyed Susan, a 15-foot flat-bottomed skiff (also known as a “punt”), as her manual training project, finishing the boat, named “The Black-Eyed Susan” in her front yard across from the high school during the early months of summer. Well, not being satisfied with just READING Huckleberry Finn and the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Miss Rambo took it upon herself to LIVE Mark Twain’s adventure stories. So, in the middle of August in 1917, just prior to her 25th birthday, she launched her hand-crafted boat in the Grand River just north of Chillicothe above Medicine Creek.
She and her older cousin, Mabel (who was a bookkeeper and not at all athletically inclined), loaded up a rifle, a fishing pole, an 8’ x 10’ canvas wall tent, a jug of water, some bacon, flour, eggs, baking powder, and their dog. Oh, and lucky for us, she packed her “Kodak”. (Remember, that had it not been for the Kodak, her photo-documented story would never have been discovered.)
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For three weeks, Olive and Mabel rowed, floated, pushed, pulled, tugged, negotiated around rocks and trees, fished, hunted, survived storms, sank the boat, uprighted and bailed water from the boat, and otherwise drifted over 150 miles all the way to the confluence with the Missouri River, then followed the Wide Missouri down to Glasgow where they finally had to pull the Black-Eyed Susan out. Had there been a few more days of calmer weather and they would have made St Louis, their destination. Unfortunate thunderstorms and a swift, rising river full of debris larger than their boat, cut the trip short.
Three weeks with little opportunity for contact on a dangerous river through wilderness carrying little more than a rifle and a pole. In 1917 we barely had automobiles puttering around on buggy trails.
But these fellow Chillicothean women lived in the spirit of Christopher Columbus and Lewis and Clark. - not knowing what’s around the next bend or what the next sunrise or sunset will bring.
But Olive didn’t slow down after her river adventure. After high school (there is no mention of her in the 1918 Cresset), she attended and graduated from the Chillicothe Business College where she studied bookkeeping. Olive’s cousin Mabel was also a bookkeeper (A “prudish” one, as Olive described her). She then worked at the Chillicothe Trust Company, and then went to Washington, D.C. for a 6-month Civil Service stint beginning January 2, 1919.
On August 7, 1920, Olive Rambo married Frank Cook at her residence, which was then at 402 Graves Street in Chillicothe. They had one child, a son, George, in 1923.
According to an article in the January 20, 1934 Chillicothe Constitution, she taught Sunday School at the at the Primary Department of the First Methodist Episcopal Church. Olive also taught arts and crafts at the Missouri Industrial Home for Girls, and led a troop of “Campfire Girls”.
A newspaper article (May 8, 1983 Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune) stated that Olive also taught school. While living at 402 Graves, her home was directly across the street from the Washington School in Gravesville. (Note: Gravesville was an addition immediately southwest of the Washington St railroad viaduct). In 1944 Olive Rambo wrote a heartwarming tribute in the newspaper to Berta Jones, who taught 3rd and 4th grades for 22 years at the Washington School in Gravesville. It was apparent that Olive knew Berta Jones quite well and may have worked with her at the school.
Olive was also elected as Chillicothe City Clerk. She was considered an expert horsewoman and, according to several newspaper social-section posts, was also regular member of a sewing circle.
Olive Rambo Cook authored several children’s and young adult fictional pioneer stories that would be reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie. “Coon Holler” was her first published book, which was first printed when she was age 65. This was followed by, “Serilda’s Star”, a sequel, “Locket”, “The Sign at Six Corners”, “The Magic of the Golden Gourd”, and posthumously, “The Trail to Poosey”. The latter was originally entitled by her as, “Poosey, the Land of Never-Never”
Another of her accomplishments was that of an artist. She did slowdown only slightly in her later years and took up painting in earnest. Olive had her first art exhibit at the age of 80 while living in Mountain View, California.
Olive Rambo Cook died Christmas Eve, 1981 at the age of 88. In contrast to all her accomplishments, she led a very unpretentious and modest life serving others. She maintained her truly humble demeanor even after her passing: By her own expressed wishes, she was buried in a plain black pine box in the Avalon Cemetary. The small, unadorned headstone that marks her grave simply reads, “Olive Rambo Cook 1891-1981”. No dates, because they really didn’t matter to her. It’s what we do for others in between those dates that matter.
She lives as an adventurous girl, and woman, in my heart.
You and I have stories. We have about our families or stories of events that were passed down through generations. Some good stories, some that maybe shouldn’t be passed down. But it’s all these stories who make us who we are as a family. So, we remember our heritage through family stories. It’s the collective family stories- yours, mixed with mine, mixed with others’ that make us who we are as a regional culture. But what happens to our heritage when a family has no heirs to pass the stories on to? At that point our family stories end, and a piece of our identity as a community is lost forever - like it never existed. A part of our own significance is lost.
Frank and Olive Rambo Cook had a son, George, who married but had no children, so when their son passed, the significance of Olive’s life, her exploits and accomplishments could have been lost forever. But in his later years, George donated a mosaic of artifacts of Olive’s life to the Grand River Museum. That way we can all continue to “Live Large” vicariously through each other’s exploits.
Sources: Chillicothe Constitution/Constitution-Tribune newspapers, scrapbooks at the Grand River Museum & Historical Society, Chillicothe High School Cresset 1917