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| Edna Cordes Warren |
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By Karen Despain
Special to the BBN
When Edna Cordes Warren died on Aug. 27, 2009, she bequeathed 92 years of extraordinary family history to both Arizona and Yavapai County.
Fortunately, for her family and for those recording the annals of days gone by, she left - in her own handwriting - a memoir of her life.
The Cordes name is well known in this county - Cordes and Cordes Junction are the most visible landmarks that remain as reminders of this pioneer family.
"There's quite a bit of history to tell about my relations," Mrs. Warren says at the beginning of her personal chronicle. Indeed, there is. Her grandfather, John Cordes, was born in Germany in 1850 and came to America "for a better life in about 1875," she wrote."
John Cordes had arrived in New York where he worked as a candy maker. From New York, he went around the Cape of Good Hope to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, on to Yuma and then up the Colorado River to Ehrenberg. He took the stage to Prescott and got a job at the Tip Top Mine in Gillette.
That was the beginning of a large family tree that would evolve from the time John Cordes stepped foot into this area. He "sent" to New York for Lizzie Schrimpf, a woman he had known in Germany, and that union led to six generations of Cordes family that would leave footprints in much of Arizona.
Born in Humboldt on Feb. 9, 1917, to Charles and Mary Cordes, Mrs. Warren was one of six children. She grew up in the area that bears her maiden name and while historical documents undoubtedly chronicle the Cordes family's imprint on Yavapai County, some of the accounts may not mention Mrs. Warren's reflections of what it was like being a child in that era of so long ago.
"Christmas time was always special as that was when we received fruits and nuts and cranberries," she wrote. "A friend from Nantucket, Mass., sent cranberries in a large wooden basket and in it was coins scattered throughout the berries. We had to sort the berries to get the coins.
"We always had a cedar tree that was decorated with cranberries, popcorn and paper chains that we made. Only on Christmas Eve could we light the candles on the tree held with holders.
"Toys were few, but what we got were shared with all. My sister and I got dolls and we learned how to make clothes for them."
She remembered, too, a kitchen cupboard and "in one was a radio with ear phones that we each had one to listen to the Grand Ole Opry and the Two Black Crows. Then we got an Atwater Kent Radio that everyone could hear without ear phones."
Her recollections note, too, that her childhood home had a Delco light plant that "gave 32 watts of power that operated the sewing machine and food mixer and an iron."
"Our favorite day," she said, "was when the candy man came once a month to restock the counter at the store. The man always gave us jawbreakers."
The Cordes family operated a general store in that area, and that meant chores for the kids, but "after the chores were done, then we could do what we wished," Mrs. Warren wrote.
"The house was near a creek and that made for a lot of ideas playing in the sand and water. The frogs and toads were many as well as snakes and lizards. We even had a playhouse in a grove of trees. We would cook mesquite beans and sour dock, a weed, and of course never eat any of it. We made mud pies, too, and in the summer time we slept outside in the back yard with the bed legs in cans of water so the ants wouldn't get in our beds. The birds chirping would wake us in the mornings."
Mrs. Warren was one of four students to graduate from Mayer High School and she went on to earn her teaching degree at the Arizona State Teacher's College in Flagstaff. She married Vernon Warren in 1944 in Prescott, and they, too, had a large family. They lived in Crown King, Kingman, Hackberry, Seligman and Page and other locations around the state while Vernon pursued construction work. They also owned stores from time to time, but Mrs. Warren always continued teaching in schools where they lived.
The Cordes family - which numbers nearly 80 - will gather at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 3, at Heritage Memory Mortuary, 131 Grove Ave., in Prescott, for a memorial service for Mrs. Warren who, as she said in her memoir, had "quite a bit of history to tell."
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