Copyright, 1945, by Edward K. Meador; Printed in the United States of America; The Meador Press, Boston, Mass.

P5: Introduction

 

To her host of friends our mother needs no introduction and all I can add is a note of appreciation which I hope is reasonably free of bias. She has told in a simple way the chronicle of a pioneer mother, country school teacher, business woman, which amply justifies our faith in the American way of life.

The sweetness of her character was untouched by the frontier hardships of childhood or the unremitting struggle for economic independence in later years. She was an inspired teacher, who for two generations brought the light of understanding into dark places. Her gentle God-fearing counsel won countless friends and changed the course of small communities. Her home-spun philosophy, uncompromising defense of the truth and simple virtues caused us to think of her as “An Abraham Lincoln in Petticoats”.

 

She brought to the boarding house business a spirit of service which approached evangelism. The welfare of the thousands who passed her threshold was of utmost concern and this solicitude so touched the guests that they called her “Mother Scott” with deepest affection. As a crowning tribute I can truly say, that I never heard any one speak ill of her.

 

Her enthusiasm for learning is no less remarkable than her many virtues for after her 70^th year she enrolled in a University for the first time and studied with unquenchable zeal. Shortly afterward, without

p.6

                             especial musical talent and no encouragement from her two sons, she wrote a hymn, Jesus Listening In. It was surprisingly well received by the radio and it is her fondest joy to hear it broadcast frequently over the National programs.

 

At the moment, she is full of the joy of living and it is a matter of speculation, which new venture may claim her fancy. Whatever it is, we will applaud her efforts for it is a thing of the spirit and an inspiration to the earthbound.

 

Along life’s pathway she has strewn flowers and sunshine so we feel that the world is the better for her passing this way. As a tribute to her rare spirit we have cast in immortal bronze a tablet for her gravestone, which eloquently testifies that she was a beloved soul:

 

“Were everyone, for whom she did some

act of loving service, bring a blossom to

her grave, she would sleep beneath

a wilderness of flowers”                                 

                                         Ralph S. Scott

 

 

 

p.7

 

                             FOREWARD

 

This is the story of Margaret McAvoy Scott.

She and I have written it together, Mrs. Scott telling me those things which she has remembered, and answering such questions as I put to her, in order to amplify or clarify a time, a special occasion, a personality.

Mrs. Scott’s life has been singularly rich. It spans nearly eighty years – years which have seen our country’s transition from a life not so far from Colonial simplicity to a complex culture which, in our metropolitan cities, became not unlike that of Europe.

In her own experience Mrs. Scott has spanned a bridge between childhood in an unlettered mountain community, to leadership in the field of education. She has gone the long distance from a log-cabin, where one literally lived by the sweat of the brow, to the position of highly successful woman in an enterprise that has been described as “the largest private concern of its kind in the United States.” This business was conceived, initiated, built up, and carried over twenty years, to such success that, when the war crisis came, the Government acknowledged her as an authority in her field, by putting a great project under her guidance.

The personalities she has met and known range from the lovable, obscure, humble people of her youth to leaders in her land and abroad. She has become known and beloved to thousands of persons, in her school

 

p.8

                                         classes and later in her hotel. Her pupils, when they meet her, still call her “Teacher,” and the guests in her hotels call her “Mother Scott”

It has been her remarkable achievement to build two highly successful careers in one lifetime. For a quarter-century she was a teacher. In her fifties – when most women are glad to relax and sink into middle age – she began her second career: the famous Scott’s Club, twenty-five houses, each of which is like a first-class European pension, yet bearing her unmistakable American touch of being a “home” in which, somehow, a large family has gathered and lives.

While women were anxiously debating the possibility of difficulty of “combining career, marriage, children, love, home,” Mrs. Scott was proving every day that it could be done, and with ease; and it could be done not in one career, but in two. She was not even aware the debate was flourishing.

She has never set out to prove a thesis. She has seen herself always just as a wife, a mother. She undertook her jobs each time because there was an economic necessity for her earnings. She made good, because that was how one did a job.

Her simplicity is the very essence of her character. The manner, the speech, the country phrases of her mountain childhood, remain to this day. She is a tall and handsome old lady, pink-cheeked and with finely chiseled features. She has a keen wisdom, without which she could never have set up and run her big business. She still sees the world with the engaging fresh vividness of youth. That outlook is expressed in the plain, homespun verse she likes to improvise – just as her mother loved to improvise designs upon the loom, long ago. A number of Mrs. Scott’s verses, however, are excellent enough to have been put to music.

The whole world is at war now, staking untold lives to prove its belief in democracy. Is it not of high value to have the story of American men and women brought up since childhood on the philosophy of democracy, and in the democratic way of life? The story of Margaret Scott, as a piece of American history, tiny but valuable, modest but illuminating, speaks to us for those days and those people who have made this land of ours the land it is and the land we love.

                                         Eleanor Morton

 

 

p.13

MEMORIES – THE LIFE OF MARGARET MCAVOY SCOTT

 

 

Part ONE

 

I

 

On March 13, one year after the Civil War had ended, and just as a new morning was dawning, I came into the world shouting God’s praises. Mother later said they were good lusty shouts. I would have been an ingrate had I not rejoiced in my surroundings and in my welcome. About our home was surely the most beautiful country in all America. In my home was surely the happiest household.

Our house was, like all the others about us, a one-room log cabin, built on the top of one of the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in West Virginia. Below, spread the beautiful valley of the Elk River. It had its name because of the wild deer abounding in the forests. The nearest neighbor was a mile away, if one went by the road across the mountain-top. The nearest town, ten miles off, was Frametown, named after my mother’s brothers and their kin, the Frames, who had settled there. My mother, Martha Jane Frame, had married James McAvoy. Scarcely anyone called him anything but “Jim Mack.”

 

 

p.14

 

My mother was a mountain girl, brought up in the wilderness. When she married, her young husband cleared for his bride a small space in the forest. He cut trees to make logs for their house. He dug out the stumps and rocks to create fields for their planting. He managed to get a cow, and in due time she had a calf; and soon he possessed an ox-team. He built a low-swung wagon which would carry the produce of his land over the mountains to town, for barter. He built a lean-to for his wife’s work. He built beds and tables; and soon he made a cradle. Two little girls were to come: Agnes and Drusilla.

Then the Civil War broke out. Father, like almost every other able-bodied man thereabouts, went to fight. Mother was left alone in her home in the forest clearing, with none to help her except an ancient man, called Mr. Haynes, and our great-grandmother (Nancy Given McAvoy, 1784-1864), who had a broken hip and therefore spent all her time in a chair.

Mr. Haynes had been with Father’s folks ever since Father could remember. He was not a servant; he did not receive charity. He could not do much for his board, but he did what he could. He was treated as a member of the household, and tried to help as one.

Through those years between 1861 to 1865, in the mountain homes about us, women had to see that their children and their aged had food and clothing, although the able-bodied men had been called to arms. Mother spent the four war years bearing the burden of work almost alone. “Grandma” could entertain the two tiny girls, and keep them under safe oversight, when necessary. Old Mr. Haynes could help Mother put in her seed and cultivate the plants which pushed

 

p.15                           from the ground; but he could assist her very little in the heavy tasks that demanded to be done.

The house was surrounded by fruit trees that Father had planted – apple, peach, plum, ox-heart cherries. There were small fields he had cleared. There was the cow, and there were the few horses. These, Father had left to provide rations for his family while he was away at war. He knew that his wife was brave and strong. He knew that if anything had to be done she could plan for it and she could face it. Nevertheless, he might never have had the courage to leave her, over the four years he did stay away, if he had known he would be absent so long. She herself never complained. She never lost courage.

 

Mail then was not the easy matter of having someone bring letters to your door. You went ten miles to Frametown, on horseback, over the mountains. If you went by night a wildcat or mountain lion, or a bear, might leap upon you from a tree branch or trunk; and perhaps you would not return home alive. You brought mail home in a saddlebag, made out of leather. Every letter was precious. Mail very rarely indeed came from Father. During one whole year our mother did not have a single word from him. She did not learn if he were alive or dead…(ed. note: Jim McAvoy was one of two Jim McAvoy’s who served with the Confederacy. It is difficult to discern whose records belong to whom…in any event, he had brothers who fought with the Federals, not unlike many families of West Virginia. It is vaguely possible they fought against one another. Isaac had moved to Illinois prior to the war, and enlisted there. William apparently was very young and found himself, willingly or not, in the Union forces. The picture below is of the 49^th Virginia Infantry, and is representative of the men of the time in the Confederate Army.)

 

 

The peace was declared. And still no news came of him. In the nation’s release from all the blood and sorrow, she did not know whether she was a widow, or whether her soldier would be among the living to return. Would Jim come home again now? Or was he dead?

 

Grandma smoked her corncob pipe.

It seemed to give the chair-bound invalid ease and contentment;

 

p.16

 

           most women smoked in those days. Mother would light her grandmother’s pipe, draw it till it lighted, and put it in between the lips of the old lady. Then the two of them would look down toward the valley. There was no manly figure to be seen coming up the mountainside.

The other women on the hills, Mother’s neighbors in their various homes, had greeted their returning husbands by now. Delilah Tolbert (who had 11 children) had her Tom back home again. (Near the McAvoys in the 1860 census is the family of William Talbert, with wife Delilah and 9 children; I found a source who said Delilah’s maiden name had been Johnson, and that William’s father was Charles Tolbert…) The Givens’ household head was home again. The Stonnakers (ed: perhaps, Stainaker, or Stonestreet?) at least had heard from their father. The community was Scotch, Irish, and Dutch. All were kind to Jim Mac’s young wife. On the rare Sunday when they could spare time from their work, they would come and take her to town, to hear the Preacher. But they could not go often.

She just did her work sturdily; and waited. She continued to care for her small daughters, five and seven by now; she cared for her land; she looked after her crippled, chairfast grandmother.

She was not one to imagine things. But years later she told this story to us, her children. How she went to sleep one summer night. She dreamt that just as the sun was setting on the mountainside, as the glory of the sunset lit the whole valley, blazed in the sky, and sparkled in the flowing Elk River itself, she heard a whistle.

She recognized it as our father’s whistling. He had never been able to carry a tune, she knew, but he was always trying to. Her dream seemed to worry her. She awoke troubled. She told “Grandma” about it, but it did not seem to impress any one except Mother herself.

 

p.17

 

Next morning, true to her dream, she heard some one whistling on the mountainside. It was Father!

She told her children years later that nobody in the Bible could have had a more wonderful vision than she had had.

And so they were united after four long bloody years. If they had lived in a mansion, and had all the luxuries of life possible, they could not have been happier. It was their second honeymoon.

Mother would describe to us later how Father walked over the sides of the hills to see every little change that had come. And he could never stop wondering, and finding joy in his two little girls whom he had left as babies, but who were now already five and seven. The birds sang sweeter and the sun shone brighter than ever before, it seemed to Mother now.

Before the year was over she was expecting a new member of the family. She was busy preparing. Her talcum-powder was scorched flour; her woolens were bits of red flannel. She knitted tiny stockings; she sewed.

She reserved no hospital room. She engaged no nurse. In her one-room house, she helped her husband see that there was plenty of fire on the hearth, and a nice warm feather-bed to tuck the expected baby in. Somehow, she expected a third daughter. They had already chosen the name – “Margaret”; naturally, Margaret would become “Maggie” throughout her youth.

 

II

 

 

Love and courage and wisdom awaited the new child from her parents. As was the custom of the new

 

p.18

 

forest-cleared country here when a baby was expected, the two older children were sent to visit the neighbors. It was a treat to visit some other children. Particularly was it fun for a youngster to go to the Givens’ home, to play with their children. Father reached the Givens’ log house with Aggie and Drusie. There was no sign of any one at home. He went indoors: no one locked doors there. Who had a bolt? The Givens’ were away, though, it was clear. They must have taken their children. He went to the bed, put his two little girls under the covers, blew out the candle, and said, “Just go to sleep.”

He added, “There is nothing to be afraid of, little girls, Father promises you.” Then he kissed them and, closing the door, which was nothing more than a quilt, called back: “Are you afraid, girls?”

Drusie piped up, “I’m not afraid. When Aggie is with me.”

He called again, “Are you afraid, Agnes?”

“No! I’m not afeard! You said there’s nothing to be afeared of, Father.”

So, he went on toward his own log house, where his wife lay in labor.

And, he himself had not fear, as he left two small girls in that empty house, a mile away from his home. His faith and courage he instilled into the hearts of the children. When I was a child, I, too, was to be given the same teaching, and that teaching was never to leave me. To the end of life, every one of his children was to say, as my small sister did that dark night, “Father says, there is nothing to be afraid of. So, I’m not afeard. What’s there to be afeared of?”

III.

 

p.19

 

During the night, Mr. Givens returned to his home and found his guests. He lit the fire for them. There really had been nothing to be “Afeard” of.

And soon their own father returned. There was something wonderful at home for them. A little sister had come to their house! He laughed at their numberless, excited, questions, and only answered, “Come home to see.”

They ran all the way home.

And there she was. They could not remember ever seeing such a fat, rosy, yellow-downy-haired baby.

“Mother, can we keep her?” cried Aggie breathlessly.

“Can we play with her?” cried Drusie.

“She will stay. And she will play with you, “ smiled Mother. And her eyes laughed to Father.

“She’s perfect in body. She’s the first, since you’re back,” Mother said to Father.

I can picture Mother lying there. She had brown eyes, thick dark hair parted in the middle, and an olive skin. I suppose her hair lay in long plaits on either side of her face, for ease in sleeping. The baby lay at her bosom.

The two older children stood near. Father was beside them. Grandma looked on from her chair. Old Mr. Haynes beamed. And outside the sun shone on the mountains, lighting up the green, starting buds on the trees.

That beauty and that love stayed with us all in our years in our parents’ home.

 

p.20

There was only a short stay in bed for Mother. Then work called her again.

Father carried on with the aid of neighbor-women, who came over a long way to help out but had to return to their own homes and their own tasks. And when they left there was no complaining, I am sure, on Mother’s part. Courage, serenity, were necessary in those times; and she was one of the bravest, gentlest, of her times. But it must have been hard to meet each day’s tasks. There were no modern devices even dreamed of. Everything was done the hard way. But all one’s neighbors fared the same. In the very hardest task neighbors helped one another – during birth, death, home-building. The women had to do their part like the men; children as they grew up took their part, too.

I was to grow up and take my share in this life. I was to spend an unforgettable, a happy, busy, childhood, as part of it.

 

IV

 

There were no trains within eighty miles of our home. There were no roads. There were only narrow trails through the forest. There were no broad acres to till. There were just little patches of ground which had been cleared for cultivation with hard, hard work. There had been stumps grubbed and rocks picked one by one. The rocks had been carried in heavy loads and were piled in rows. Later the stones were made into fences.

It was necessary – merely to be able to exist – to use every man, woman, and child who could pick a stone or

 

p.21              could drop a seed in those little fields. All things were, indeed, obtained by “the sweat of the brow” – the very hardest way. The years went on, one and three; and six and ten; but there was no change in our hard work.

The wagons, slung low for hauling logs, required the strength of the patient oxen to pull them. Every man and boy learned to drive a yoke of oxen. It was necessary for even the young to know how to help, if a family were to survive in the development of this new country. How familiar to us mountain-children was the sight of a mere youngster driving the powerful beasts! How well we knew the yell, “Gee!” if he wanted them to go to the right, or “Haw!” if he wanted them to go to the left. The fun of listening for the echoes, “Gee-ee” and “Ha-awh.”. Such vibrations as could be heard in those silent hills! For ours was truly “the forest primeval.”

(ed: a typical Virginia ox team picture, early 1900’s)

The Blue Mountains were high, rolling, hills. Rivers flowed at their foot. Our tiny bits of cleared land for farming, provided us with vegetables, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, peas, and beans – also corn for horses, cows, pigs. But, they did not provide clothing, sugar, salt, and flour. It was the forest that was to provide these – yes, the forest…

Trees were felled in winter, after the primitive farming was done, when the grain from the little fields had been garnered in. Each morning the men went forth to the woods, all through the winter. Daily, we in our house could hear the sounds made by axes felling, not isolated trees, now and then, but many. We would hear the tremendous crash as each tree toppled down, not a single one, now and then, but dozens, indeed many

 

 

p.22                                                              scores. The sounds of ax on wood, the sounds of great trunks tumbling, were part of our every-day life, all the winter through. Often we children knew every tree that we heard falling. There were hickory, ash, pig-nut trees, and our beloved maples which grew everywhere.

Our fathers cut the felled trees into logs; then they waited until spring came and loosened the snow on the mountain. Now the men rolled their logs down to the river bank, bound them together into a raft; where they were ready for rolling into the Elk River when the proper time came. They waited for the spring rains and the melting snow. The rains came down; the snow melted. The Elk River rose to overflowing.

 

All rafts were pushed into the waters at last. The men were ready to take off, to start on their semi-annual journey to market in Charleston, West Virginia.

(ed.: the pictures of this section are from a website dedicated to coverage of a recreation of a log raft journey down the Susquehanna River in 2004)

The women and children gathered to watch the men start down the river. Behind the rafts came canoes laden with necessary food and clothing for all emergencies. These canoes carried also precious commodities that the women, on their part, had gathered. The men were going to market “to trade” – to barter – the only way for them to get necessities of life. On each raft stood three men, their long poles pushing and steering the barges to keep them in deep water.

The thrill we children felt! Had not we, too, helped get things ready for this memorable trip to a magical place call “Town”?

What do the sheltered children of today, whose parents “do everything for them”, know of the joy of being truly and genuinely a part of the active work that maintains their home, and that keeps their parents

 

p.23                          and themselves alive? Our tasks were no manufactured “Projects” “to occupy” and “train” us. Our chores were the occupations of living. There were no “problems” of “maladjustments” in our little lives. We were adjusted, because we knew that we were needed. What we each did had a true, abiding value to our parents. We depended on them, in our small way; and they truly depended on us.

Had not we worked all winter, and even before? Our mothers had raised tobacco in their little patches, had cured it, made it into great “twists”. They had dried apples and peaches. They had made maple sugar. And, throughout, we children had helped. We’d carried the fruit, taken the pails of sap and “stirred it off”, gathered the tobacco leaves. Every single child in our mountain-house had gathered hops, so valuable, to be used for yeast. Our families sent forth on the rafts home-made molasses, geese feathers (if they had a flock on their farm), and we children helped make the molasses, we helped pluck the geese.

Now, as the men were about to start, we listened to the songs that our fathers sang as the rafts began to move. We watched the curve of the paddles in the water as the canoes followed. Then the raft came too. The moving rafts of bound logs would be traed, log for log, in the far-off town; but the canoes would come back, loaded, to use here.

“Good-bye! Good-bye!”

Nobody cried, “Be careful”…

 

Men were careful. It was not they alone who were concerned in their carefulness, but their wives and their children. In every household was a known and acknowledged unity upon that. What was there to be

p.24                          afraid of? Had we not been taught that since infancy? Father would take care. And surely God would look with love and care after our father; we believed that. And we knew Father had the skill needed for his journey; he knew how to take care.

 

At last the last canoe was out of sight. If the weather was favorable, it took two days to reach the city. If there were bad weather, it sometimes took three or four days to land there. Then time spent in trading. Next, time was spent returning home. Sometimes ten days passed. No wonder those half-yearly trips were “Events”. But, finally, the canoes came back up the Elk River. Each man brought home what he’d got in “Town”.

How we loved, in our home, to hear Father tell every tiny thing, every last detail, that had happened on that trip to town, in town, and from town! The songs and the jokes, the stories, the droll things said or done! Father would chuckle, telling about John, one of the green country-boys, whom they had taken on his first trip to a great city --- what the bewildered, dazzled boy did or said, when he saw a train or the steam-boats, how bemused he’d been, and the absurd questions he asked on that wonder trip to town! Father, who was a cosmopolite (for had he not seen many places, far away in large cities, in the four years he was in the Civil War?), he would laugh, as he described young John’s bewilderment. Father laughed, throwing back his handsome head, but he laughed with kindness. Next time, he knew, that green country boy John, in his turn, would be amused at another boy that had never before visited a great city.

We children, of course, had never seen the city at

 

p.25                                      all. But it was real to us, somewhat as places in fairy stories are. We seemed to see in our minds the streets, the houses, and the stores that Father so often pictured to us. We felt we shared his cosmopolitanism.

The first week or so after the men returned, however, none of us could really even listen to Father’s stories of the wonder-trip. There were such marvels to see, that had been brought back on the canoes for us! Wonderful to hear – but first, let’s see! Even Mother could barely hide her excitement. There were such beautiful things, newly bought. The calico, the shiny shoes, the big brown boots, the salt and sugar and spices, the muslins – such muslins! And, coffee! Father was surprised himself at the luxury of having coffee, each time he had it.

How well, how shrewdly, had he bartered in the city for us? How well, and how generously, had our forests provided things to exchange for the things that these poor primeval folks could not raise? How much had Mother’s dried fruits and her yarn and the tobacco been able “to buy things” for herself and the children? It was like opening a treasure-chest, opening the parcels Father had brought back.

The whole coming six months would have a sort of a romance, a richness, because of what Father had brought. A new dress, new calico for quilt-patches, new curtains, new covers for the feather beds! It was the subject of our talk for months until the next trip started.

 

Do not have the impression we felt we had all hard toil. We could play in our work. There was a joy in our pioneer life. When the men returned there were always some “play-parties” given.

 

p.26

Our parents knew how to play as part of their everyday work. Quite naturally, there would be a party, a “get-together,” when the canoes came back from town. And it is significant that we called each of these a “play-party.”

Such a play-party might be an old-time “taffy pulling.” There’d be exchange of reminiscences of the trip. And maybe there’d be trading right here between the women of articles their men had bought. Delilah would take May’s muslin for a pair of shoes; Helen would take Katie’s calico for coffee. Some men could make mistakes!

Often, though, the party would be in the form of an “apple-cutting” or “peach-cutting.” Music and fun would be blended, but in a good practical fashion.

 

V.

 

To “apple-cutting parties” one invited all the neighbors. A “neighbor” was anyone who could attend – who lived where he or she could ride over on horseback or paddle over in an hour or two down the river. Thirty was about the total we could collect from our immediate surroundings. They would come in their play-party clothes, but there was not much difference, in most cases, from their every-day clothes! The girls dressed, as did their mothers, in tight-fitting waists, well drawn in at the waist-line, and full skirts with loudly rustling starched petticoats. The men wore their ordinary jeans, made by wives or mothers by hand, and naturally, at home. They might, for occasion, put on a boiled shirt, (ed: a “boiled shirt” might just mean one recently washed!) and give their boots an extra coat of tallow, to make them shine. Occasionally one

p.27

                                                                 put on neat-foot oil, (ed: made from the fat on the shins and feet of cattle, neatsfoot oil is a well-known leather preservative, though, these days, pure neatsfoot oil is very hard to come by.) which smelled to high heaven, but “was mighty good for the leather.” The small fry, we children, were taken to all these parties with our parents. We came with aprons to enjoy that evening entertainment.

In our own house, when we were hosts, we had the greatest activity for days before a party. Mother, like all the other women, would bake ten or twelve pies; sometimes she baked twenty. There would be a dozen cakes. There would be apple-cider. And there would be also the important things: that is, three or four tubs, filled to their rims, heaped high, with the finest apples that we children had gathered in our orchards, in readiness for the guests.

Now the guests arrived. Girls and women and children rushed to the kitchen, to help in last-minute activities there. The men, of course, would be with Father, going over again the marvels of that recent trip to the city. Then finally the whole crowd would gather around the tubs.

Thirty pairs of hands would begin to pare apples and to quarter them. As fast as they were ready, they would be carried out to our kiln. There they were to be left till they were dry. The kiln had of course been fired earlier until it was at the drying stage. (ed: the heat was low, for the object was to dry, rather than cook, the fruit)

Work began! And there would be songs as we worked. We’d sing On Greenland’s Icy Mountains,(ed: In Greenland's icy mountains, On India's coral strand, Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand…. Can anyone give me the rest of the words?) All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name, Shall We Gather at the River, and Happy Day. Stephen Foster had not begun to write then. Male and female voices made a joyful noise. The men got the apples ready, just as the women did. In about three hours the guests had

 

p.28        everything “cleared out” and were ready to begin the dance or party games.

Mother, with the help of the nearest neighbor women, and the neighbor girls and my two older little sisters, Aggie and Drusie, presently “passed out” the refreshments – home made apple or pumpkin pie and molasses-cake. If they were lucky, they might get a cup of coffee, though that was not usual. Mostly it was cider or milk. That milk was so cool and rich! The cows grazed on the beautiful blue grass that grew on the farm and among the rocks.

At the crest of the evening they started dancing. They usually preferred the Virginia Reel, and they really could “Swing their partners.” When the caller shouted, “Swing your partner and all promenade!”, all the party participated.

Then came the games. All were gay and simple. I was then of course a tiny child. I do not remember much of what happened there. But the same games, the same dances, the same songs, were enjoyed in my small girlhood, my youth, and even through my womanhood in the early years. There was no need for “new popular songs,” for “star-parade” dances, for absolutely modern parlor games. We loved our pleasures and therefore we continued to enjoy them, as they were.

One game which was very popular, a parody on marriage ceremonies, played to redeem a forfeit, had a bashful boy and girl “stood up” before a mock minister, who would chant:

           “I marry the Indian to the squaw,

           Up the Hill and down the level,

           Salute your bride

           And go to the Devil!”

 

p.29 How terribly wicked that seemed1

We children were of course part of the whole program. How we loved one highly popular kissing game, which I have not seen elsewhere. The boys were placed in one room, the girls in another which was darkened. One boy was blindfolded and led into the girls’ dark room. Near each girl was an empty chair. The blindfolded boy grooped until he found one of these chairs. It was his job now to guess who was his partner. He began to talk, seeking to learn her name. If he called her by a wrong name, all the others clapped their hands, he had a forfeit to pay, and went back to the boy’s room. The same procedure was followed, with the girls. When enough forfeits had been collected, the fun was in making girls and boys redeem them. The game was called “Clap in and Clap out.” Did we little ones love to watch the big ones giggle and blush!

Then, finally, the last guest had left. The last wagon-wheels were rolling away, the last canoe paddle splashed in the star-lit water of the Elk River. The guests had “cleared up,” of course, before they left our house.

And they had left us with enough apples cut for all winter, and some even to send to “Town” when the next trip was started by the men.

Another time “apple-cutting” would be at the Tolbert’s, or the Given’s, or perhaps, Stonnakers. It was arranged by whomever needed help in some task. We all took joy in giving the labor of our hands to our neighbors. The Givens might be having a carpet-rag party. The hostess would have ready her old white linens, sheets and white underwear, in every gaudy shade she could manage, and torn into narrow

p.30                                                        strips. The guests would arrive. Women and girls would then vie to see who could sew together most carpet rags, who could wind them into the most balls.

There were of course also quilting parties, husking bees, corn-cutting parties. We played with zest; but primarily we met to help in work. That was the occasion of most of our play. It had to be so, in that pioneer time.

Even the sweetest times, the taffy-pullings, had to be arranged for some other very practical reason. How those boys would stick that pulled taffy in our long braids! Just try to get cold taffy out of plaits of hair!

Such time, such pleasures, just as such hard work and daily toil, seem to belong to another world now.

 

VI

 

And then came the unexpected. Father suddenly decided to leave this mountainside. He had cut down the trees to clear a spot for his bride’s home. He had dug stumps to clear each little field to be cultivated. He had dug out stones for fences, milk houses, and barns. But he decided he wanted to leave all this. He wanted to pioneer again.

 

He wanted to begin once more, with more opportunity, a more ample future for his children. He was prepared to forego all he had attained. That was in his character. And from that trait, I think I may say, I have formed my own character. I have always been ready to drop everything, and begin anew. I have never once been afraid to be pioneering, in my life either. Have not I heard all my days the story of my two sisters, on the very night I was coming into the world? Did I not know it was as they had been taught: “What is there to be afraid of? What’s the use?”

We children listened, excited, entranced, expectant while our parents talked over Father’s new plan. I was only three, but I understood, too. We listened to the comments of the neighbors, whom we loved, who knew us all in work and play – and who argued intensely about Father’s unbelievable plan.

There had been coming letters, you see, from Father’s mother, and his two brothers and sister. They had gone, long ago, to the “Far West”, in Illinois. From the rare, brief, scrambled letters that Father received he had received a picture of another kind of life, a life which seemed, indeed, really unbelievable, to us in our lovely isolated hills. From Father’s relatives in Illinois, we heard such dazzling descriptions of luxury, of ease! We would listen, wide-eyed, as Father read aloud the accounts of the comfort, the abundance, which were part of the daily experience there in far-away Illinois.

The letters told of good schools, of churches, of fine roads, so infinitely better than here in our West Virginia. Mother would put down her sewing to listen as Father read. She could not help showing how fascinated she was.

A woman out in Illinois – the letters declared – could go to a store and trade her butter and eggs herself. She could select things set out on the counter in front of her. She would not have to do as all the women about her always did – trust to the selection of others. She could see, she could decide for herself, what she wanted.

And Father would put down the letter he had read

 

p.32                                      to us. He would tell us the words were not imagination but truth. He had seen for himself. He had been away those four years of the War, had he not? He had seen there were indeed better ways of getting a living. He had had a taste of a better way himself. He had traveled through broad Southern states. He had seen broad level acres. It was not hard for him to be convinced now that there could be other ways to earn a living than ours here.

However, he did not press Mother to agree to his way. He let her think and weigh and decide for herself. He was ever most tender and kind to her. She was a girl of these mountains. She had never been out of sight of the hills in her life. All her people, too, lived here. The very town nearest to her was named after her people, the Frames.

Our neighbors could not believe their ears when Father even mentioned going to Illinois. So far? That distant land? Why the Elk River even here had wild beasts along its banks! Who’d venture with a wife and little ones on such a journey? You’d take the life of your family in your hands! There were the panthers, the mountain-lions, in the forests. That place Jim McAvoy talked about was a thousand miles away! They pointed it all out to Mother, solemnly, warningly, in loving solicitude. She must not let Father…..

Father said nothing to urge her, but every letter which came from that distant, far Illinois, brought details which fired the imagination. They each brought nearer a decision.

Mother gradually found agreement with Father in her own mind. The neighbors continued to warn her

 

p.33              we would fall into the hands of Indians; we knew not what lay ahead of us. Her own folks showed how they hated to have her and her family lost to them. But one day she said to Father, “I’m going with you, Jim. It’s right for the children, and you, too.”

He had known, of course, that Martha Jane would see as he did. Theirs was a perfect union.

They announced they were leaving. Neighbors came in at all hours of the day and night to protest, to plead. But nothing could deter Father. He and Mother, he knew, were of the same mind now. It would not be easy to make the change. But they began to prepare, to arrange; they began to trade furniture, flour, and other belongings.

 

Then, something happened that did halt them after all. It was not that they changed their minds. It was Nature herself. A little boy was born to them. Embarking now must be indefinite.

But we were never a family to mourn. We took joy in what had come. The other plans would come true still – in time. There was delight and excitement in our home. Another man in the family! Everyone was overjoyed!

 

Did I say “Everyone”? Everyone but myself! I was much disgruntled. I was now past three. For a stranger to barge in and take my place on Mother’s lap – it made me terribly miserable. Mother seemed to pet him so much – too much to suit me! And he was a cross baby, too. He cried such a lot. I urged, “Let’s give him back to the neighbor!” But they never did. His name was “Emmett.”

I am writing this in the spring of 1943. We four children are all still living, Agnes is eighty-four, Drusie

 

p.34              eighty-two, I am seventy-seven, Emmet is seventy-four.

 

The plans to move had been halted, but Father had never been one to be beaten by what happened. He began to complete his arrangements for leaving the hillside and the forests. Before the baby brother was a year old we were ready to go.

To us it seemed we were going into a land like those described in the Bible, “a land of milk and honey,” where all we had to do was to scoop it up.

 

VII

As Riley says, “The frost was on the pumpkin, and the fodder in the shock,” when we started on our Westward trek. It was a cold and frosty morning as we stood, all huddled on the front porch of Mother’s brothers.

We waited for the flat boats (we had better call them canoes) that were to take us down the river. They came, and we climbed down in them. They were to take us part way on our thousand-mile journey to Illinois.

We had two home-made boats, one for household goods, which were very meager, the other for our family and a few friends who were seeing us off as far as the Ohio river. At Charleston, West Virginia, we boarded a steam-boat.

The farewells of that morning, even tiny as I was, I would never forget. “Goodbye, Uncle Mack.” “Goodbye, Grandma!” “Goodbye, Delilah!” “Goodbye, John!” To most of our loved friends, gathering from all the mountain-side that morning, we were saying our last “Goodbye.” All were weeping.

 

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But I, aged three-and-a-half, did not understand why. Was it not a wonderful adventure Father was taking us upon? I did not know how powerful a risk the journey really was. Two young parents, one of them completely inexperienced in travel, four small children, of whom the eldest was eleven, and the youngest eleven months! No belongings except bedding, quilts, feather beds, comforts. Very little money. And to go so far, from all that was known and familiar! To go to so great an uncertainty! Our neighbors were right. One could not even be sure that our little household would ever come through alive, let alone reach that far, far distant destination – Illinois.

My two older little sisters were warned by playmates, “You’ll see Indians and wild animals as you float down the Elk River.” But Aggie and Drusie were not to be scared!

The journey started. It was incredible to us, though, as we began to float down the river. How terribly disappointing! Not an Indian, not a wild cat, leaped upon us from the banks of the Elk River!

And it was tame, the whole way down. Time to say, “Goodbye” to our loving neighbors. But we children felt too cheated now to mourn. Not an adventure! Not one danger!

There was one thing that did disturb me then – big rocks, flat and terrible, hung over the edge of the river from the mountain sides. Not like it was at home! I was frightened, and clung tight to Mother.

The days following seemed dull after the vivid life at home. Two days and nights we floated down the river. We landed then at Charleston. We did not get to see the wonders of the town. We transferred, by

 

p.36                          luck, at once, to a steam-boat. I myself remember nothing of that part of the trip.(ed. note: one of her obituaries quotes her as telling tales about floating down the Ohio River on a flatboat or raft that capsized….I think the obit writer embellished) Our boat took us to Cincinnati, where we boarded a train.

This was more like it! Thrilling! Our first train! Wonderful, wonderful. But, the whistle of the train terrified me. There were horrors, in traveling to the Far West!

I was so tired now, though, that all I wanted was to get to that place which Father had told us about. I’d brave any danger, only to get there. I’d never been out of our mountain-quiet. The exhaustion of these ships and trains!

I remember clearly how glad I was to be told, “We are going to Uncle Bob’s for the night.” We were in Illinois.

The night was cold and the ground was covered with deep snow.

 

VII

There was an immense room; it seemed unbelievably big, compared to the one room of mountain homes. This one great room was one of several rooms which made up a great house.

Even in my sleepiness, I marveled. There was a fire blazing on the hearth that lighted the whole room. This was the home of my far, far away kinsman in Illinois. He was no longer far away – for – we – were – here.

My Aunt Mag (ed note: Apparently, Sarah Margaret McAvoy went to Illinois with her older brother, Robert, after the Civil war) tucked us children in. How good it was to lie snug in this feather bed! How good to stop traveling – to arrive. I remember even today how sweet it was to lie down, to end our travel. I have never remembered wakening from that sleep.

 

p.37

I only remember that there came another morning; and Father said, “We are leaving Uncle Bob’s now.” He took us to an old log house in a clearing. It was not in good repair. This was to be our new home?

I was very small, and tossed my yellow hair back, and piped out, “This is an awful-looking place after so much thrashing along, Mother!” and I never changed my mind.

But, we didn’t stay there long. Father had promised easier life, a pleasanter home, than ever we had had before. He bought fifty acres of land, and he made sure to choose land heavily timbered. He began to plan the new home that he would build for his wife and his children, here in the wild west of Illinois.

 

p.38

PART TWO

I.

 

Father and Mother walked over their new land. Where to choose the site for building? They were used to hilly country, therefore, a hill must be found upon which to put the house. There must be a spring under that hill, of course, to supply water.

The walked the length, the breadth, of their fifty acres. The two older girls, Aggie and Drusie, did not much relish that insistence on a spring at the foot of a hill! That meant, they remembered only too well, carrying water from the spring up the hill to the house. Was there to be no ease and luxury for them, in this new land?

A hill was found on the land, and there was a spring at its foot. But, where to place the house on this hill now? Where the trees were thickest, Father nodded. There was such a place, with fine large trees in a great clump.

The clump had to be cleared, Father told us. That would provide logs. The logs would be right at hand then to use on our home. Nature provided all, and at hand; but the kindness of Nature was not enough. One needed wisdom and forest-knowledge. Of these Father had plenty. Not for nothing had he spent his youth and early manhood in the mountains.

To plan the house did not take much time. It was to be one room, about eighteen by twenty feet, with a

 

p.39

                 lean-to which could be built after we’d moved in. How many logs would be needed for such a house, with attic?

Father counted the number of logs that would go into each of the four sides, the number for windows and two doors, then for the attic, overhead. One had to have an attic where could be stored odds and ends. Later the lean-to would serve as a kitchen.

His computation completed, he went out to the trees, and marked those to be hewn. Now he was ready to start.

We already had made friends with our new neighbors. In those days, neighbors were more than people who lived near you. They were next to your kin. On them – and on you – might depend life. On you, and them, rested the burden and privilege of any companionship that was enjoyed. Our new neighbors waited only until Father had his trees marked. Then they came to us, with offer of their hands.

The men’s help was, first, in cutting down his marked trees, then in “dressing” them for our house. Father was at home in any forest matters. It was soon done. Henry and George Cower (very likely “Cowser”..ed.) and John Q. Clark and their children came. And naturally Aggie, Drusie, and I were there. Work? Of course! But what happiness work was then! Often I am sorry, for young folks now – with nothing real to do, with nothing hard and joyous to do!

The trees fell, one by one. We youngsters knew where to stand, how not to get hurt. As each great marked tree fell, it was cut into its proper length for its appointed place in the house. If the special day for felling was hot (and how often did the sun burn down, that summer!) sap would come out in great drops; and

 

p.40                                            we children would race over, to stoop and put our mouths against the hot dripping wood – and lick until our tongues were sore. When another tree was to topple, Father would yell, “Look out!” and we would scamper to a safe distance.

When the raw wood screamed and cracked, how we young ones danced in exhilaration! We would not be too pious about mere work, let me admit. There would be side-trip exploring, for many different things that Nature had made for us were waiting to be found. There were wild berries to pick and streams to wade and the names of endless birds to learn.

We were taught never to put our hands on a bird’s nest. There was a sort of ethics in that which we always regarded. We were taught that if we touched a nest the mother-bird would never return, the little eggs would never hatch, if there were tiny birds they would be left to starve. What fun would there be then – without crows and hawks, blackbirds and the naughty, pretty bluejays, the wild doves, the woodpeckers, the bobwhites – and most dear of all, the redbirds?

At last the logs would be cut – ash, oak, sweet maple, hickory. For felling the ancient trees, cross-cut saws were used and broad-axes to “square” them. No longer did the men let us run our tongues raw licking the treesap dropping out! The men now began to dress the cut logs with broad axes. The lumber for our house was put into convenient piles – each piece, nearest to the place where it would have to go once the house was started.

Now, the McAvoy’s had the first party, in this new country, with new friends. Every neighbor came, with every child. They brought well filled baskets.

 

p.41

Our home did not exist yet, therefore Mother could not prepare food; nevertheless, she had managed to have cold meats, cake and even coffee. As the sun stood well up the neighbors arrived. Our “house-raising” party began.

Father had every one of his logs marked and the men began to put each in place. It seemed to me magical, the way they were putting those logs together! By the time the sun was down, the McAvoy’s had a house – a a good one.

Snippy little Maggie McAvoy – aged four – had no need now to snort, “Was this what we had been a-thrashing around so far for?” This was a house to dream about – to dream in, and to love. And that was what we did. We didn’t talk of it; no. We never talked then the way people do now, about everything. We just felt it.

 

II

 

Now, Father had to fix the inside of the house and make it Mother’s home. A woman lived in a house, and it was her right to have it after her own heart’s wish. It was typical of the times, Father’s house. Not a closet, not a shelf! It did have some forked limbs on the wall, for Father to hang his cow-horn shotpouch, and to hang his rifle, too. We could be proud of that house. Had we not a rare thing – a real storelock on the front door? This was an up-to-date edifice! Our old mountain-home that we had left had no lock on it at all. Father had put a heavy two-by-four, in front of our door there by night; that was all. I cannot remember how we kept the cold out then, in the

 

p.42                                            winter; but we did not freeze. Here, the house was snug; the door locked tight.

And Father made wonderful luxurious additions. He built a lean-to to serve as kitchen and pantry. In the old Mountain-home, we’d sleep, live, and cook in the one big room. For our kitchen here, Father made a novel sort of lock, himself. He took a thin board, and fastened it to the kitchen door, with a store-screw. Then he notched a second piece of board, nailed that to the door-jamb, and bored a hold into the floor. By tying a string to this, and dropping that string inside, he had achieved a lock. All you needed to do, was to pull the string of this latch; and you could get into the house.

It was not artistic, nor did it prove useful to lock the door. But we were very proud of it! And when Father and Mother went away, and we children “kept house” alone; it did have use, indeed. We little girls locked up by pulling the string in – and we were safe. Anyhow, what was there to be afeard of? The latchstring always hung on the outside. I can’t ever remember Father locking the door.

The town was only about two miles from our home, so Mother could go to the store, could “see on the counter” what she wanted to trade. She had a school for us children, not too far off. She had a church. She had neighbors. She had a modern house, with three rooms, an attic – and a lock.

But something was missing – a fireplace. Father, though, refused to build a fireplace in this new house. She could not persuade him. And she so wanted a fireplace. She felt lost without one. She had to have one, she pleaded, so she could dry her catnip, and her pennyroyal,

p.43

and her sweet-corn seed. She urged, how could Father himself make his bullets for hunting, if we had no fireplace?

We children listened, with puckered, questioning brow, to this question. Why there had to be a fireplace for that! We had watched him often enough to know. We’d sit very close (as close as he’d let us) as he melted the lead in a pan, and the molten lead would run into the little holes of his bullet molds. When he’d open the molds out popped the bright shiny new bullets. We’d be let near, then. We’d cut for him the bright shiny little necks that stuck out of the molds. We knew that these bullets were like shining bits of silver melted and shaped. But how to make them without a fireplace and flames on the hearth? Did he not know how right Mother was?

He shook his dark, silky head, though. “We’re not a-goin’ to have it, Marthy Jane,” he repeated, inflexibly. “You’ll not get yore fireplace. We’ve come to a new country. We’re a-changin’ our mode o’living. Thar’ll be no more dryin’ catnip and such around a fire.”

Mother folded her hands. She tried not to let us children see her puzzlement, and bewilderment, too!

Father stood up. “Yore a-goin’ to have a new cookstove,” he announced proudly, “and one of these up-to-date heaters from the store.”

You cannot imagine the thrill. We? Our family? But it was as he promised. You can imagine Mother! Maybe she missed the familiar dear fire on the hearth. But – progress! Going with the times! Being one of the most modern housewives in the country about! Wonderful! Had not Father said, back yonder in West Virginia, she’d live an altogether new life, here?

 

p.44

And she took compensation from the loss of her fireplace, in her unexpected pride. She began to fix up the inside of her home herself. She scrubbed every corner, every cranny, with soap and water.

It was spring. It was the season for burning brushheaps. That was our job, the children’s. The blaze started and sparks flew. “Don’t set your dress afire!” called Mother, to us. But she came out, to guard us, of course. When the ashes went cold, she’d have a place in which to plant her lettuce. Such tall lettuce as was never seen elsewhere was to grow there soon.

All winter long, while we lived in our new home, the first season, whenever Father took the wood-ash from our grand new heating oven, Mother would empty the ash-pails into a funny-looking box or hopper, that stood just outside her loom-house. That was what we called her weaving-room.

That funny box there, four feet high, three feet across its top, narrowed toward its bottom until it was two feet square. The bottom rested on a platform, built for the purpose. That hopper was a most important article in the beginning of soap-making.

It stood two feet from the ground, so Mother could put under it her old three-legged iron oven,

that she’d used to bake bread in when we had a fireplace. The wood-ash collected in the hopper until Spring came. Then she sent us youngsters to get a bucket of water; usually from the rain-water barrel. We poured the water into the hopper of ashes and continued pouring water so, for two weeks, every day. And presently, lye started running into the oven from the hopper-bottom.

That was a signal. Father drove two strong forked

 

p.45                                      sticks into the ground, about six feet apart. He put a strong pole on the sticks and on it Mother’s kettle swung. She could empty her lye into the kettle now.

She had been saving her lard and also what fat was left from butchering and from cooking all through the winter. That was added to the lye. She was ready now to make all the soap we’d use for laundry, for toilet, and for house.

It’s different from going out to buy laundry-flakes or a bar of face-soap. I can remember clearly the very first bought toilet-soap I ever saw. It was red, very pretty, perfumed to high heaven. When we girls got old enough to go to the store, how we longed for soap like that. But not while Mother could make ours did we get any!

The lye she made was amber-brown. If you’d put it to your tongue it bit you, just like the lye you now buy. Mother knew just how much grease to use for the amount of lye used, we children were aware. If it was too strong, she’d add more grease. If that did not make it right, she’d add water. She could tell by the mere look of the boiling soap just what she should do. By the time twilight fell she’d have the finest soap for all uses.

She let the soap remain overnight and in the morning she’d pour it into a barrel. Then she’d start all over again and make more. She continued this process until the barrel was filled and she’d made enough to last all year.

In our house, we would have stared at the complaints about “rationing” of anything, had that time been now, in this war!

 

p.46

III

We girls scrubbed and swished and wiped, right with Mother, until every piece in our house gleamed. Then she was ready for something more. She must beautify her shining, scrubbed home. She got unslaked lime, slaked it, and whitewashed the big room, wall after wall. Dazzling white!

Now one must adorn it. She set to work to make a rag carpet. That was done, at last. It was tacked on the floor close to the walls with plenty of straw under it.

When one entered Mother’s home one was greeted by the clean smell of new timber, straw, and pure lime. What tapestry walls could be more inviting?

She had had to leave all her belongings except bedding back yonder. Father bought, but more often built, new furniture here for her. She had the beds; but there were no mattresses, of course. There were none in those days for poor families; one used strawticks, made of the best white linen. Mother wove hers from her own home-grown flax. They were filled with clean straw. She had also fat beds of soft feathers, the down from her own geese. She had white fluffy blankets; she had spun the yarn and woven them. No better beds are found today!

There was not a closet, not a shelf, in the house; there were only the forked limbs near the door. Everything in the primitive house was made for use, and for immediate use. There was so much needed, the families were usually so large, and so much work was required for every object used – in clothing, food, house – that nothing could be made to be folded or wrapped

 

p.47             and put aside. Each possession was lived with daily; that was the reason for its being. Mother did not need closets or shelves, but she did need the attic with its ladder reaching from the big room to the attic-door; she needed also the lean-to, used as kitchen and pantry.

These were all put up by Father, of course. Each man was his own carpenter, as each woman was her own cook.

I did not think then how much a woman did. She was seamstress, baker, nurse, textile worker, canner, teacher, gardener, soap-maker, house-painter, farmer’s helper, dairy woman; and in addition loving wife, comrade to a man, mother of many children. Later I heard of “women’s independence,” of “equality.” I had long known these to be “women’s rights.”

In my childhood, women had the right to as hard work, as much opportunity for “expressing themselves in their work,” as any man!

 

IV

But our father did fascinating things for us to share, too. For example, there was the making of “spiles.” A spile was a foot-long, inch-thick length of young sumac.

Father would go out, when frost was still in the ground, before sap rose in the trees, and while they were still flexible. He would cut about forty spiles and put them into a heap by the stove, indoors. We children delighted to heat the pokers red-hot, and burn the “peth,” as we used to call it, or pith. We would run the poker right through the length of the wood. The lovely fragrance it made!

 

p.48

We then would follow Father into the woods, where he would select sugar-trees to be tapped. He’d bore with his augur a hole about three inches into the trunk, about 3 feet above the ground. The spile was then driven in about an inch into the hole. In the vacuum left, the sap gathered. Then it began to pour out through the hollowed spile from which we had burnt the pith.

Now to get the buckets for the sap! Every hand was needed. Every child stood by to help. How heavy were the big buckets! Sometimes it took two of us small ones on one pail. The sap ran all day; the cooler nights stopped it.

Time came, at last, to “sugar off,” as it was called. There were no tired children, then. Mother would let us each have a little paddle and scrape the pans. There was one special delicacy she allowed us. She would take the egg out of its shell and fill the emptied shell with sugar, for each child. Did anyone ever have a sweeter time?

Those sugar eggs are, even now, happy memories to me. Only we had them. Many things at our house seemed a bit different from other homes. It was because of our mother, for she had come from the wilds of West Virginia; she had learned to make all things that she could not buy. Even here, with a store just two miles away, she made many things others bought.

She would entertain, too, all the children in our neighborhood with games of her childhood. All loved to come to our house. Our mother could do things that our neighbors had never seen and done, that the mothers of other, less lucky boys and girls somehow never thought of or even knew how to do! She was like a gracious, taller, lovely child herself.

 

p.49

She could make soap, weave carpets; she made fancy coverlets with all kinds of designs; even the pretty yarn she spun herself.

Of course, I, too, helped her with the soap and carpets. I learned, as did Agnes and Drusie, how our Mother did these things. But I was never as skillful as she! Her hands had a delicate artistic deftness. I never could spin my yarn without making it lumpy. Mother could use me in all other work, but at this fine textile artistry I was finally relegated to the rear. One could not help her as she sat in her weaving-room, jus “because one felt one would like to.”

Father had made her a lovely room. All we children could do was just to look in and watch her, absorbed in her work there. We felt proud and happy, only watching. No woman around us could surpass her in this field.

Everywhere were little signs: “Don’t touch,” “Don’t touch.” That was meant for all, even Father, or “Grandma,” or the grown neighbors. It was so easy to get things out of order in Mother’s weaving-room. This one room was her separate, special place. It was as if one saw there the symbol of her life-dreams: work, beauty, usefulness.

There was her loom, all set up to weave carpet, with the pretty warp of different colors and the large balls of cloth strips, about a half-inch wide, and in varying colors. These torn strings would make the carpet. “Just look,” Mother would say, “but do not touch.” We would ask, diffidently, to wind the shuttle with rags from those balls. If she were not too busy, she’d let us try. But often she’d have to unwind the shuttle

 

p.50                                                        part-way again. It was too full or something was wrong after we wound.

I can still see her there, as she would sit on her stool, with two pedals under her feet. Just as you would play an organ, one foot went down and the shuttle would fly through; and then the second foot would go down and the shuttle would fly back. And so on, until the shuttle was empty. It was more fun to watch than to do it, I used to think.

Another of Father’s jobs we young ones loved to share, was making sorghum molasses. It didn’t come in cans from the grocery store then! We youngsters piled after Father and “skutched” the cane, knocking off the blades. We cut off the heads of the cane with our long corn-knives. We helped cut the stalks and lay them in piles to be hauled to the great mill a neighbor had.

The cane-sticks were thrust in between rollers, squeezing out the sweet juice. What glory then to be a child, and allowed to ride the horse as it went ‘round and ‘round, turning the rollers! The juice was boiled into syrup. What excitement, when a vat was ready to be taken off! There was a very special skill in knowing, precisely when the call should be shouted, “Fire Pulled!”. That was a sign the syrup was done. It needed neither more flame nor boiling.

We young ones got our paddles ready to scrape the big pans. But all we were told was “Get out of the way!” That boiling syrup was a danger to life. We got our molasses, for all that! The big men let us come, despite their shouts of “Here, you! There, you!” They had an understanding of the child’s heart and needs and joys.

 

p.51                                V.

 

There was work for Mother to do outdoors, also. Though we were not much use to her at her loom we could help get the material to color her yarn, our linsey dresses, our woolen stockings, Father and Emmett’s mittens. It was for us to find the materials out of which the colorings could be made. They were in the woods and forest, waiting to be taken.

All the neighbor children came along. We were to search out certain particular kinds of trees. Every tree had its own type of bark, Mother had taught us. We had learned from her what color this bark and that one would produce. I never learned how she manipulated her materials, how she set her color. But I did know walnut made brown, logwood made black. I knew that she made blue from indigo. By an ancient mountain-method, learned from “Grandma,” she would set it to a lasting blue, by using what Father would twinklingly call “Chamber-lye”. It was quaint and amusing, but I know it was so effective that the color remained in the last strip, finely torn, to be woven into a carpet. She used diverse devices to set the colors and also to vary them. So when we children would think of trees it was in their uses – for coloring, for making fences, for building houses – just as later, in a ship-building community, I was to find that children thought of trees in terms of ships and lumber.

With the gentle tasks were contrasted strenuous activities such as sheep-shearing. We drove the animals into the corral, and each was placed on a platform. A boy or girl held a sheep, its head down tight on the platform, while the men cut the wool from its body.

 

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If a youngster happened to be just a little timid, or afraid, the sheep would get away. How ridiculous those sheared rams did look after shaving! But they were grateful enough, gamboling presently in the hot summer sun.

 

VI.

I have often been asked, “Had you no play without work, as a child?”

Maybe the only times of pure play that I can remember in childhood were in the visits of our neighbors, the “Cowser kids,” when Mother and Father went away to be from Saturday morning to Sunday with our uncle.

I remember one week-end when we were told we could have the Cowser children visit us, the seven of them, five girls and two boys. Aggie was living away, that year, so Drusie and I would have full responsibility for the farm, our little brother, and our guests.

Our parents gave us endless, repeated directions – how to manage the stock, how to do the watering, the milking, how to divide the beds, what to cook, to be ever careful of the fire, and again to see that the fire was properly put out. In those days we cooked with wood; fire was an ever-present danger. Didn’t we know that, though, as well as the adults?

Uncle lived almost fifteen miles away. It would take Father about three hours for his drive, with our big draft horses. He was very careful of his stock. We children, too, were fully aware of the need to look after the colts, the pigs, the sheep, the horses that were left. Those had to be cared for most guardedly.

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And didn’t Father know we knew just how to do it? Father had only one boy, so we girls had always taken the place of boys.

However….no sooner were our parents out of sight than Drusie seemed suddenly to forget her wisdom. “Let’s,” she proposed, “take the little colt out of the stable, and all learn to ride.” Even then, though, she remembered not to let a larger child ride. That might hurt the colt. I, who was about eight years old, was picked.

Drusie put me on and led the little beast a way. It seemed to take this only as a matter of fact. Where, then, was the fun?

Without warning, she threw the halter over the colt’s neck and hit it with a strap that she carried.

The colt tore along like the wind, with me holding to its mane and screaming for dear life. As fast as they were able, the other children scampered after. They were sure I was going to be killed, either by falling off, or having my head knocked off on the door-frame. The colt swept into the stable. But the Lord takes care of sparrows and He took care of me. I was small; the colt was not high. We cleared the door-frame. I was alive and whole. I was scared and crying, for all that! The only one not excited was the colt.

Drusie came up, compunctiously petted me, began to bribe me, “not to tell Father and Mother.” If I “told,” they’d not let us “keep house” any more, would they?

Yet – we both were solemn. It was not the fact that I was almost killed that we both thought of. We had endangered the colt. We were expected to have sense

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                                                           enough to take care of our own lives. But we were also as much responsible for our stock. The stock made our whole family’s living possible. How foolish and wicked we had been to forget that.

We turned soberly to more childish and safe games – pop, pop, pullaway, baseball. We ran ourselves down until it was dark.

There was supper to get, everybody of course knew how to cook. Everyone had to know, there. Dishes were washed. Again we played games, popped corn, used plenty of butter. Why not make molasses candy? Take plenty of butter and flour to pull it; make it into little sticks. The nasty boys of course soon started to put the candy in our hair. We had Mother’s pretty white maple kitchen floor covered with flour and butter. We girls could scrub it nice and clean, though.

Should we play “Old Bloody Tom?” That was a very destructive game indeed. A Cowser kid was blindfolded, and lay on the floor, face down. We held an object above him and said, “Heavy, heavy, hangs over your poor head!” If he did not “guess” the object, it was piled on him. He could not “guess” very well, so, the pile on him grew and grew. The fun would begin when he did guess correctly. He would jump up and everything piled on him would fly in every direction. The first one of us he’d catch would have to be next “Old Bloody Tom.”

We had piled everything loose in the house that we could put on him. Someone picked up Mother’s clock, and put it on the very top. He heard it tick and “guessed” it. He jumped up, crying, “Clock!” As he jumped, in the midst of a hillock of falling objects, the first thing to hit the floor was Mother’s clock. The

p.55                                            glass face scattered in many pieces, the hands flew in different directions.

The others could go home and not face the music. We McAvoy children would have to tell about the clock when our parents came. Yet even in the silence ensuing, I knew we did not feel the breaking of that clock as the others would, had it been their mother’s. Our father and mother would understand. He’d tell Mother he would take it to town. If it was not broken internally he would say, “It’ll not cost much to get another face and hands.” It never occurred to me we’d not tell.

We children had been taught never to be afraid to tell if we did wrong, no matter how bad. We were taught, “tell and have it over with.” What’s there to be afeared of? For all that, I never did forget how sad Mother looked, when she saw her only time-piece. Yet, as we had known, they did not punish us.

Father just took the pieces, shook his head, and said, “I will get it fixed, if it’s not beyond repair.” The matter was dropped.

Then he said, “Don’t ride the colt again. He’s too valuable to me.”

Drusie had told him of this at once.

But little children sometimes forget. I was no angel-child. None of us were.

Naturally, there had to be a return visit, on our part, to the Cowsers. Mr. and Mrs. Cowser went to visit a relative. Minnie Cowser came to invite me to her house. Their chickens, she whispered, had the cholera and “were not fit to kill.” Could we take a fowl from our roost, and cook it over there? Since it was my task to care for the chickens and gather the eggs, it did not

p.56        seem necessary to explain to Mother about this hen-business. I could select our hen, put it into a coop, and just tell Mother she was “a setting hen.” Stealing? Certainly not. Didn’t the hen belong to us? I told that to myself…

 

I’d tied its legs with a piece of cloth; we’d been taught, never tie a chicken with a cord, because it’s not good for their legs. The sun was shining brightly as I started forth through rows of corn that I hoped were high enough to hide me and the hen. But Mother, sitting in the front yard, raised her eyes.

Satan helped me frame a story, to explain the hen I held. But she knew the truth before I confessed it. She asked why I had stolen the hen. I didn’t seem to know what to say. In my heart I knew full well she gladly would have given us that hen. I just began to cry.

Suppose Father appeared on the scene? That would make matters even more terrible. When Mother got through talking with me all I wanted was to leave the hen at home. But she insisted I must take it with me. “Why were you afraid to tell me?” she asked. “Why didn’t you just ask me for the hen?” How heavy that fowl was as I carried it to the Cowser’s!

She knew how to give a reproof sternly, when needed, yet not so heavy that it would burden and spoil the joy that was a child’s right.

When I arrived at Minnie Cowser’s, the very same “directions” were being given, as to the care of the stock, the fire, and other things, that my own parents gave whenever they went away. Their old Grandfather’s clock, though, had to be wound very carefully, as the two weights were large; and they had to be

 

p.57                                      wound up high. Mrs. Cowser was telling Minnie, “There’s a little paper of poison in the bottom of the clock. Be very careful. Don’t touch it!” Mr. Cowser now said, “The well is nearly dry. Lead the horses and cows down to the creek. Do not draw any more water out of the well than you possibly have to.” Before the rattle of the wagon had died away, we were hurrying back to the house, for we had many things to do.

We must take care of the hen I’d acquired so painfully. We must put water on to boil, in which to scald her. But she was not killed yet, a hard job. Who’d do it? I held the legs; the head was nicely laid out on the block. Minnie raised the ax, shut her eyes; the ax fell. My eyes, too, were closed. The poor little thing was dead, now? I let loose the legs but away she went, the little speckled hen. All the Cowser kids and I ran a hard race; finally we killed her. We scalded off the feathers, singed her over the stove, very carefully, as we’d been told, on the fire. Now to dissect that hen. Neither of us had ever done it before. We had great faith in our ability, though.

Finally, she was in parts, anyhow. Someone suggested, when the hen was tender, have dumplings with her. We dropped in slices of dough, lifted the led every few moments, and poked the dumplings with a fork. The longer we cooked, the tougher those dumplings got. Mother explained later we should not have lifted the lid until they were done, and then take them out quickly.

The hen was good; Mother had forgiven us for her. There was nothing to spoil our enjoyment. But, when

 

p.58              we tried to feed stony dumplings to the cat, she’d only lick the gravy.

The cat, however, made passes at the Cowser’s canary. She was doomed to die, therefore.

Wasn’t there poison – in the clock? Mrs. Cowser had said “not to touch it.” But surely her bird’s life must be protected? We buttered a piece of bread, sprinkled it with poison. The cat was under the old smoke house, and there we very carefully placed our tempting morsel. She licked the bread! All five of us lay, flat on our stomachs, to watch the cat die. She came out, licking her chops instead.

 

The thing to do, was to drown her. Mr. Cowser, though, had said water was to be used for “cooking purposes” only. An “emergency” justified us in drawing two pails of water from the well? If we tipped the tub a little, the water would be deep enough. We caught her and put a stocking over her head, so she could not read her fate. We happened to recall we must put a rock in the stocking, to weight her down. Little Charlotte Cowser held the kitty, because it belonged to her. The poor child did not even know what “drowning” meant. All gathered close to the tub to witness the tragedy. Of course, we expected the cat to do the right thing and lie nice and still until she was quite dead. But the minute she struck the water she was out again. The poor thing though did not know where to go, because she could not see anything.

Charlotte ran, and the cat ran at her heels. The little girl was almost into spasms. She thought the cat had been both poisoned, and drowned, and was now a feline ghost, running after her. We had to get

 

p.59 Charlotte quieted down. We had to hunt the cat and get her blindfold off.

I wrote a little jingle, not so very long ago, recalling the childhood drama:

 

“Let me go back when alone we girls stayed –

     And the Cowser girls came, so we weren’t afraid!

Let me go back when we poisoned the cat,

     And looked in the clock for the strychnine for that…”

 

Nevertheless, and with all our childishness, never for a moment did we youngsters at our house, or at Cowser’s even think of failing to do the essential tasks entrusted to us. We were all under twelve. But our parents were justified in entrusting their valued stock and the fire, to our young selves. These were important responsibilities. They were duties never to be neglected, as the sun in his duty rose daily to make the day.

 

PART THREE

 

I.

 

Spring passed, then summer. There came the wild-fruit time. We children here learned just where to find the patches, as we had “back yonder” in the mountain forests.

Then came autumn. I was only five, but my parents said, it was time to start school. I suppose Mother wanted me to go as much to get me out of the busy house as to have me educated.

 

(ed.: a typical one-room-schoolhouse picture, ca 1900. …Warren Royer wrote a book about one-room schools in Illinois, and he noted that in one area, the photographer used his car (unusual at that time) as a prop for kids to sit in while taking the school picture…millions of these photos must be sitting around the country in the bottom of dresser drawers…local newspapers, like the Glasford Gazette, sometimes run a picture and challenge the readers to identify any or all of the students pictured.)

School was two miles away. One went over a weed-path and a dirt road. A pond lay near that road. If rain filled the pond we had just a black lake to cross, often a foot deep. Such black mud! Father had later to get me a pair of high-top boots with copper toes.

I was to attend the “Saylor School” for only two years, but I remember more about the two years in that school than any other two years of any other period of my life.

It stood in the south-east corner of the yard, nestling close to a very high hedge fence, in order, I assume, to give the children more room to play. It stood north and south, and had been painted possibly in the year one. There were still signs of paint on it, then, but only signs. The building was long and low, with about five windows on each side, and one door at the south for all to crowd through. When the bell rang we

p.61                                                        little ones had to run fast or be trampled by the big boys and girls.

In the interior, on each side of the room, ‘way up to the platform, were two long rows of home-made seats, nailed to the wall and to the floor. In the center of the room stood the old red “Cannon” stove, so red, so pretty! There were two short rows of seats, both in front and back of the stove. How hot we got, we small folks, who sat in the front rows. Some big boy would say, “I’m cold, teacher,” and urge “Fire up!” just to see us little ones burn up. To plague the tiny folks he would insist that he was cold; therefore we had to bear the heat.

Every seat held two pupils. The platform was across the north end of the room. On this platform were recitation benches in front of the painted blackboards. We could not use those blackboards very often. When the class was reciting we could not see the board at all.

Shall I ever forget my first day at school? The bell rang. There was a mad scramble for seats. I had heard vague only that, for various reasons, nobody liked to be in a “front seat.” I landed in some seat. Naturally, we little ones didn’t know that the seat we’d get into had to be ours, all year.

I found I was with my sister, Drusie. My sister was with our young Aunt Mag, just behind us. Hugh Jones was our teacher. How kind he was to me! I was so very frightened.

Mr. Jones came up, with his pad, to get our names. He took my elder sister’s name: Sarah Agnes McAvoy. Then he wrote our Aunt’s name: Sarah Margaret McAvoy. Next, came poor scared, tiny me. I stammered out, “My name is – is Sarah Margaret McAvoy.”

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He stopped, looked at us four girls, thinking we were all sisters and asked, “How does it happen, that you are all named Sarah?” My sister Sarah Agnes gave me a thrust in the back, and pronounced, “She stole my name! Her name is Margaret, not Sarah Margaret!”

How scared I was!

Mr. Jones was to live to see me a teacher, and he neer failed to twit me, about “not knowing my name.”

It was not long until our teacher had all the little ones placed in the front seats, which were planned for our size. My seatmate was Cerilda McQuown. I loved Cerilda. She would bring me big red apples. What a marvelous place was school. There were so many children.

And then I met a new little girl, May. She took me with her, one day at noon, and her mother patted my little tow-head, and gave me a doll which went to sleep, and had hair that was curly, what was left of it.

I was always to love Mrs. T. May became my dearest, dearest friend. In childhood, there is a love for one’s friends that can be as deep as for one’s lover, later.

It was worth traveling a thousand miles to have a school like this one we attended. I loved everything in it. I loved to hear the big pupils recite. And when Teacher, himself, would read The Burial of Moses and Woodman Spare that Tree!

But the larger boys and girls were nearly as impressive. Going to recitation, they would step very firmly onto the platform, give their lesson or their “piece,” and then reseat themselves, as firmly.

When they had poetry to read, how beautiful it was

p.63   &nbs