Nannie Lucille Caise Bland, my great grandmother, born on March 8, 1922. She was the oldest of John Elmer Caise Sr. and Katie Creth Caise’s 12 children. At 8 years of age, Nannie was living with her father, mother and siblings on Nicholas Pike in Woodford County district 3. Her father, John Elmer was renting a home which in 1930, their rent was only $4 (today that is equal to $64). As a child, Nannie learned very early on what responsibility looked like something she often reflected on when I was younger.
“I was the oldest child, my mother would have a child every year, I had to take care of my younger siblings while my mother worked.” she would say.
Her mother, Katie Creth, died in 1942. Just 5 years after the birth of Nannie’s siblings, twins, Mary and Martha Caise. During that same year, before the death of her mother, Nannie, then 20 years old, moved to Louisville with her cousin Christine Creth. They boarded with Christine’s older sister Leola Creth Estelle. As many others in the Caise family, Nannie was chasing opportunity outside of the rural area of Southern Woodford County. Unfortunately though, her mother’s death was sudden and her sisters came up with a plan to all take the younger children (Martha and Mary were 5yrs old, and Paul 7yrs old) in. John Elmer, their father was adamant about continuing to raise his children together and Nannie felt the urge to come back home to help her father raise her siblings.
Nannie went on to marry Herbert Bush Sr., who she bore two children with my great Uncle Herbert Bush on July 7, 1947 and my grandmother, Katherine Bush on May 12, 1948. In 1950, Nannie was living with her father and younger siblings at 116 Simmons Street. She divorced her husband and kept house for a woman that lived across from them. Nannie was known for her extraordinary cooking skills which also landed her a position cooking for the principal of Versailles Elementary School and others. She made an earning being an entrepreneur.
With two younger children living in a segregated era, Nannie made attempts to lead desegregation during the 1960s. She and the Jackson family appealed to the Board of Education and a year before integration became a law, they allowed the two Jackson boy twins, Lonnie and Lee Jackson, to attend school at the “all white” middle school. This was the beginning of integrating schools in Woodford County.
That liberation often found Nannie in leadership roles. She was the President of the Missionary Board at First Baptist Church Versailles, President of the Eastern Region of the Progressive Baptist Conference, and she was a member of War Mothers. During her membership of First Baptist Church, she was the super intendant of Sunday School, a Sunday School teacher and at one point she was the janitor. As a child her was Pastor Harry Keaton. Once he passed away Pastor Thomas Peoples took his place and he later took on the position of President of Pleasant Green Church. Pastor Willis Polk took his place then Pastor Floyd Greene came after his departure.
I remember growing up and watching them as they would gather. They would wear black skirts with red jackets and red hats. This was a group of women that started meeting around the time of World War 1. Often they would meet to help support one another and to figure ways to support their troops. Every one in the group was a black woman and they would do things like knit quilts to sale in order to raise money for care packages or whatever their sons or daughters enlisted may have needed.
Nannie later remarried her long time friend Eugene “Pat” Bland in the latter part of the 1960s. Pat didn’t have any children but he was kid friendly. My grandmother, Katherine Bush, remembers him as a positive influence in her and her brother’s life. Nannie and Pat bought a house at 105 Macey Avenue in Versailles, KY before they married and lived there until they both passed. They bought it from Pat’s brother, Al Tanner, it was ironically located by the Versailles Elementary School, the school that was previously a “whites only school” and across the Versailles Cemetery, where the enslaver of our ancestors is buried.
Today, she is remembered by the elders of Woodford County as a “very smart woman”. She is remembered by our family as the glue even though she wasn’t the only family member that held that title. The Caises are a family that have always stuck together, through the good, the bad, and the ugly.
