120th birthday
For members of the Chapman family
Artelon Chapman was born on April 1, 1905. Today is his 120th birthday.
Artelon is one of my great-grandparents, my mother’s paternal grandfather.
Artelon Chapman was born in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana. He was the eighth child of Artelus and Sophie Chapman. His eldest sibling, a sister named Celestine, was already 16 years old when he was born. Artelon’s father died due to a fatal injury from a wagon accident when the young man was only 20 years old, in 1925.
Artelon married Murdis Ortego in April of 1927; he had just turned 22, and she was only 14. The young couple had their first child together, a son named Dempsey, just a little over a year later in mid-1928. Sadly, this baby died shortly after his first birthday due to an illness and a medical mistake. Dempsey was followed by four more children who survived to adulthood, three sons and one daughter — my own great-aunt, who is the source of most of what we already know about this branch of my family tree.
Artelon had a variety of jobs over the course of his life. He was a cotton sharecropper, harvested timber, was a laborer at a lime plant, and worked at a sawmill as a young man. Later, he worked as a watchman in oil fields all across Louisiana and Texas, which kept him away from home for weeks or months at a time. He also worked as a house painter for a short while, until his employer had to let him go because the business insurance refused to cover a one-legged man climbing ladders.
He originally injured his leg as a boy while playing a ball game, when he got knocked down and trapped under a pile of other kids. The leg never entirely healed. As a young adult, Artelon was prescribed a special treatment with some kind of heat lamp — most likely an early form of radiation therapy for cancer — for which he had to travel all the way to New Orleans. Despite these treatments, the presumed cancer progressed to the point that the leg had to be amputated when he was about 27–28 years old.
Artelon was widowed in 1972, when Murdis died of ovarian cancer. He survived his wife by just over two decades. Artelon died at the age of 88 on July 17, 1993; he was buried with his extended family in Ortego Cemetery, located between the towns of Mamou and Ville Platte there in Evangeline Parish.
Artelon was respected in his local community, deeply loved by his family, and remembered fondly by his surviving children and grandchildren and even a few great-grandchildren. Happy 120th, Artelon.
Another interesting story. Thank you.