The chance for schooling was very limited, and Asa never got more than three quarters or nine months of schooling until after he was married. He had a felon (an infected abscess deep in the palm side of his thumb tip) on his right hand which kept his arm in a sling for 18 months. Part of this time he went to school. Later he cut his leg very badly; as soon as he was able to ride, he went to school. He read much and was especially good in figures. In fact, one of his teachers said that he did not need to study arithmetic-he could make one. His interest in education is shown in the fact that of the nine children who grew up, all went to college at least a year, and five have a degree.

Marvel was as much interested in education as Asa, but she did not have as good a chance as he. She could read about like a third grader. She was a very great worker; the only request she made of Asa before they were married was that he would furnish her plenty of work. She was also an excellent manager. There is little doubt that she had much to do with his financial success.

Asa and Marvel were married in the fall of l851 at Washington, Pennsylvania. They eloped!  They lived on the waters of Bone Creek for a while, then on Middle Island until 1857, when they bought the farm on the South Branch of the Hughes River, a mile below Berea, where Alois Preston was born and reared.

Asa operated his father’s tan yard, and had one of his own also.  He was a member of the Ritchie Seventh Day Baptist Church in Berea where he served as an ordained deacon.

Marvel died December 2, 1887 in Berea, WV.  Asa married Mary Hannah Saunders in Alfred, NY on April 16, 1891.  Mary was born in Alfred July 4, 1837 and died there June 11, 1907.

Children of Asa Fitz Randolph and Marvel Maxson, born in Bone Creek, Middle Island or Berea, WV:

• Experience “Perie” Fitz Randolph, born July 10, 1852 in Bone Creek, WV. Perie became a Seventh Day Baptist preacher. She married when she was 35 (1887)to Leon B. Burdick. Both Perie and Leon were graduates of Alfred University, Alfred, NY, and both Seventh Day Baptist ministers. Perie was a teacher as well as being a minister. They had one daughter, Genevieve Burdick, born December 10, 1892 in DeRuyter, NY. She also graduated from Alfred University and married Arthur Loland Penny of West Hampton, Long Island, New York.

• Calphurnia “Callie” Fitz Randolph, born October 21, 1854. Callie married John Meathrell April 18,1882 and spent her life on a farm near Berea. Callie died October 26, 1948. Callie and John had four children:

1.    Julia Eliza Meathrell, born Feb 28, 1883 in New Milton, WV, died June 17, 1964 in Berea

2.    Rupert Richard Meathrell, born June 3, 1884, married Dottie Bee on April 19, 1911.  He was a foreman on the B&O Railroad.

3.    Conza, born June 17, 1886, a high school teacher, died in Salem, WV

4.    Draxie, born March 19, 1888, married Ruben Marion Brissey in 1922

• Emza Fitz Randolph, born June 11, 1857, married Rev. A. W. Coon, Seventh Day Baptist minister in Salem, WV in 1888 and died a few years later without children

• Virgil Fitz Randolph, born February 22, 1860 in Berea, WV. Virgil taught a few years after finishing his PhD at Alfred University, then became a farmer. He married Mary Eloise Yale on February 28, 1894 in Wellsville, NY. Mary was born October 10, 1866 in Wellsville, NY and died Janaury 25, 1930. Virgil died August 28, 1950 in Alfred, NY. Virgil and Mary had a son, Winston Yale Fitz Randolph, born December 10, 1907, who was an engineer, and who married Helen Jaunita Fanton in 1927.

• Ellsworth Fitz Randolph, born August 12, 1862 in Berea, WV.. Ellsworth bought the Hise Davis farm from his father, married Sarah Virginia Stalnaker December 3, 1890. Sarah was born July 21, 1870. They settled down on the farm. He had a fine team of horses and did lots of logging in the winter. While logging for Zeke Bee May 17, 1905, he was accidentally killed. They had one child, Blondie, born November 17, 1900, married Joice Jones in 1927, and who was a school principal in West Virginia.

• Andrew Core Fitz Randolph, born March 10, 1865, died May 14, 1866

• Alva Fitz Randolph, born April 20, 1867, in Berea, WV. A graduate of Alfred University, who married Mary Caroline Hoff on May 3, 1888 in Auburn, VA. Alva graduated from Alfred University and settled down near Alfred. He organized the Allegany County Farm Bureau, was president of it for 15 years, and was also President of the Alfred Farmers’ Co-op Association . Mary died April 19, 1944 and Alva died July 17, 1949 in Alfred. They had five children:  (Is this Jerry Snyder’s farm??)

1.    Fucia, born June 18, 1889 in Berea, a graduate of Alfred University, and a teacher at the Seventh Day Baptist Mission School in Fouke, Arkansas.

2.    Elizabeth, born October 10, 1890 in Alfred, a graduate of Alfred University, a student of Theology at Alfred and Oberlin, Ohio, an ordained Seventh Day Baptist minister and a traveling evangelist.

3.    Lowell, born October 7, 1894 in Alfred and married Fanny Rane September 15, 1921 in Boston.  They worked at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY and had three children: Robert, Jane and Rane.

4.    Florence, born March 4, 1899 in Alfred, married on March 15, 1920 to Eldon Lee of LeRoy, NY, and died September 20, 1927 in Aurora, Colorado

5.    Vida, born June 7, 1903 and married James T. Barrs of Cadwell, GA on September 2, 1931.  Vida received her Bachelor’s degree from Alfred University and Masters at Harvard University.  She worked in a hospital laboratory in Boston.  James received his PhD from Harvard and was the Registrar of Southern Georgia College in Douglas, Georgia.  They had two daughters and a son, names withheld as they are likely living.

• Cleora “Cleo” Fitz Randolph, born September 27, 1869, moved to New York taught for several years, married Eugene “Gene” C. Jordan of Clarksville, NY on May 21, 1903. Eugene died April 11, 1925 and Cleo lived with one of Gene’s sons in Pennsylvania.

• Alois Preston Fitz Randolph, born Sept 7, 1872, married Jennie Mae Sutton in 1895. They are my great-grandparents, more information is in the section below, and the autobiography of Alois is on this web site.

• Felix Fitz Randolph, born April 30, 1875 and died two weeks later on May 13, 1875

• Delvinus “Delvia” Fitz Randolph, born May 13, 1876 in Berea, WV. He graduated from Alfred University, married Henrietta Short of Elmira, NY in Elmira in 1904, and moved to California for her health. In 1950 he was retired and living with his second wife, first name Marie. He died November 4, 1958. Delvia and Henrietta had two children:

1.    Dorothy, born August 21, 1905 in Rochester, NY

2.    Beach, born July 5, 1908 and married in 1934

Lost on a Visit to My Girl: I got home Wednesday and went to see Jennie Friday night. It was raining, and they had cleared out a piece of woods that spring that I was used to going through. Erlo was with me, so I didn’t pay any attention to the road. As I came back late that night, I got lost! It was still raining and very dark, but luckily I had a lantern. I suddenly found whichever way I went I would go down into a deep hollow instead of coming out onto the ridge road. I thought for a short time and decided as I had followed a fence out that I should find where I had missed the road by following the fence back, which I did and was soon on my way home. I never got lost again when I went to see my girl.

Bartlett School, 1893-94: I taught the Bartlett School on Spruce this winter. The teacher the winter before had not been able to control the big boys (there were eight over 15 years old) at all. I had a little trouble but not much. I saw some of these boys at church the next winter and asked them how school was coming. They replied, “We are having no school of any account. We wish you were back.” This made me feel very good, for one of these boys had given me a lot of trouble.

Summer at Ellsworth’s, 1894: The next summer I stayed at Ellsworth’s, and we raised a crop of corn together. But the summer was so dry that the corn was no good. Stock of all kind was so low that it was hardly worth anything. There was almost no work to be had at any price. I was lucky and got a week’s work at 40 cents a day cutting filth for Uncle Elisha! (Now, what do you think of that?) And we worked from sunrise to sunset. When I was 75 years old, I made 65 cents an hour for picking apples, and I picked from the ground and did not climb into the trees-but this will come later, for I was not 75 at this time.

Moon Rise School, Winter 1894-95: The winter of 1894-95 I taught at the Moon Rise School north of Auburn. I had a very nice school there, but it was a very cold winter, The snow was deep; the house was very open and on a high hill far from any road. This was not a very large school, and several of the scholars did not learn as well as very high intellectuals should. Indeed, several of them were dumb! I would go up to Uncle Elisha’s Sunday evening, stay all night and go to school. Then I would come home on Friday, stay all night, go to church Sabbath, and maybe stay down and work on the farm Sunday (I had the home farm rented) and go back to Uncle’s Sunday evening. I paid Uncle for my board. One Friday evening when I got home, my feet were so badly frozen that Aunt had me put them in cold water and soak them.

I had one family that was rather hard to control, so I whipped one of them for not getting his lesson the second time. This made the parents very mad, and they took the children out of school two days before school was out. The father said he would whip me the first time he saw me, and the boy said he would whip me when he grew up. Some years later the boy got drunk, came to church at Otter Slide on Sunday night and inquired for me. He said he didn’t want to whip me because he liked me. I am glad he got over being mad.

There was a family of several children who never came to school. They were very poor. I told the children one day, near the end of the term, that I was going down at noon to enumerate them and that I intended to talk to them about going to school. They said the woman would run me out. I talked to them, and they were very nice. The woman said they were too poor to buy the books. When I told her how little they cost, she was surprised and said they would send them the next winter. She was as nice as could be. So you see that you should not cross a bridge till you come to it-nor ever meet trouble half way.

Our Wedding, March 28, 1895

School was out March 15, 1895, and we had planned to get married March 28. So I hurried to fix up the house, get some furniture, and get ready for housekeeping. I bought a bed, a cook stove, cooking utensils and chairs. We had some bed clothes, pillows, etc., and felt we were ready for housekeeping. I bought a horse and cow, and Jennie had a heifer that would soon be fresh; so we would have two cows. We also had a half dozen hens. Jennie and her mother had raised a calf together. When Jennie told her mother that she was going to get married, her mother gave Jennie her share of the calf, which was then two years old. This cow proved to be very fine, and we kept her till she was 10 years old and sold her for $30, which was a good price for a cow at that time.

Elder Seager was holding a meeting at Roanoke, but we hoped he would be back in time for the wedding. I got our license on Tuesday and waited till Wednesday to get a preacher. When Elder Seager was not at home Tuesday night, I got a preacher named Robinson. When I got back, I found that Elder Seager had come home at midnight that night. So you see, if we had gone there that morning, we would have had Elder Seager marry us. I have told this so that you may know why Seager didn’t marry us.

We went together for nearly two years before we were engaged and a year after we were engaged before we were married. The morning of March 28 (Thursday) was nice and fair. I rode one horse and led one with a side saddle (there were no autos then). Sarah rode another, while Ellsworth walked across the hill. The guests were Jennie’s grandfather, grandmother, Uncle Frank, John, Callie, Ellsworth, and Sarah. We had a very nice dinner. (Mother Sutton was very good cook), and everybody seemed to have a good time.

Sarah fixed the Infore supper that evening. The guests were Father Sutton, Mother Sutton, Uncle Frank, Cleo, Sarah and Ellsworth. That evening several friends came to spend the evening. Those who spent the evening included those at the supper and these others: the whole Meathrell family, including Tom Ehret and Watie. Of all those who were at the wedding, none are left except the bride and groom. Those who were at Infore and at the reception that night are all gone except Cleo and Julia, Rupert, Conza, and Draxie. It does not seem possible that it will soon be 56 years since these events, but time does fly!

Our First Year-Gardens and Chickens: I have but little memory of the first summer we were married except that I raised some crop and Jennie raised a wonderful garden. We planted beans the 15^th of April, for she said she had plenty of seed and could plant again if they failed to grow. The neighbors made fun of her, but the beans came right up and grew right along. We had beans the 7^th of June, which was a full month before others had them. We had plenty of beans all summer. Mrs. Colgate came over one Sunday as soon as she heard that we had had beans and said, “Jennie, let’s go out and look at your garden.” When she looked at the beans, she said, “Now, Jennie, you can’t eat all those beans. Won’t you let me have a mess?” So Jennie gave her a mess. Poor thing, she just couldn’t see something good to eat and not try to get some of it.

I remember that we had 7 hens and got 7 eggs a day for weeks till one hen went to setting (we set her). Then we got 6 eggs a day. There had been no chickens on the farm for two or three years, so the hens did extra well.

After the hen we had set hatched, the crows began to take the young chickens. I saw a crow light down among the chickens, hop up to one, grab it in its bill, and fly away with it. This made me so mad that I said, “I’ll get you old sinner,” and I did. I borrowed Rupert’s shot gun. I knew about when it would come, so I went out into the coal house and waited for it. It soon came, and I fired. That crow began to fly in a circle and went higher and higher until it went out of sight. I knew I had gotten it.

I never lost any more young chickens from the crows. A hawk soon started to take them (they will usually come about the same time of day). So I took the gun out into the woodyard and began to split wood. Soon I saw it coming and again I fired. It never came back! So I soon got the drop on the varmints.

The first winter after we were married, as I came home from school, I saw where a mink had been eating a chicken along the river bank. So I got two of my traps and set them. They were too light; the next morning I found it had got away. I had a double spring trap which was loaned, so I got it. I staked a muskrat to the ground so it couldn’t pull it away and set the big trap. The next morning I had as big a mink, I think, as I ever saw.

Father and Mother: You can see from the above incident that Father was very set in his views. I will give a few more incidents about Father. Father and Mother were very much opposed to Emza’s marrying A. W. Coon for several reasons-she was not strong (in fact, she had T. B. and only lived about two more years); they considered him an old crank (he was about 70 years old) and not fit to marry anyone, much less an invalid. After they were married, Emza wrote; but her letter was never answered.

One other story will suffice to give a good picture of Father, except for his work in church and charity, which I will also mention. Perie spent a couple months at home the fall after she was married. They went to church meeting on Friday night and a good “Sister” got up and delivered a eulogy on Father. She told how honest he was, how truthful he was, how charitable he was. In fact, with one little change he would be just about perfect-if he just wouldn’t be quite so harsh in some of his statements. She thought she had put the “cleaner” on Father. When she sat down, Father got up and this is what he said, “I wish I could say as much for some other members of the church as has been said about me.” That evening at supper, Perie told Father that he should not have said that. Father’s reply was, “I know when I am insulted.”

I will also tell one story about the way Father paid on the church when they were building it. They were having trouble to raise the money to finish it, so Father offered to pay one-third if the rest of the church would pay the rest of the cost. This was subscribed but not all paid, so he had to help pay the rest. Someone reported Father had built the church and was going to use it for a hay barn, so you see that you can’t please some people.

Mother was every bit as liberal as Father and maybe a little more interested in the church and the church work than he.

About 70 years ago, Father was on a deal for a farm (known as the “farm with the brick house”) near the Seventh Day Baptist Church on Green Brier. Father had been out there; when he came back, he told Mother that they were trying to raise a salary for a preacher and got pledges for $13.75. Mother said, “You don’t need to buy, for I won’t go there.” The church is now dead.

Father and Mother were an ideal couple, for I have heard them each say that they never had a cross word (and I never heard them, either). There are not many couples like that!

Mother’s Sister, Rhoda: Mother had another sister, Rhoda, whom I have not mentioned so far. She had rickets when she was a child and was not strong mentally. She stayed at Grandfather’s (Doctor John) until I was about eight years old. Then it was reported that an old widower by the name of Tolls was planning to marry her for her money (he was past 70 and had very little himself), as she had about $1,000 that her father had left her. Mother and Uncle Elisha felt Tolls would use up her money and leave her with nothing to live on and no one to care for her but Mother and Uncle Elisha. So Uncle Elisha went out and got her and brought her to our place, where she stayed until some time after Mother’s death (about 8 or 10 years). Then Uncle Elisha took her to his place and kept her till she died, for which he got what she had (he surely earned every cent of it), which was a small thing for 15 years (or maybe 20 years) of care. She had a good home and good care; I am thankful.

One little incident happened while Aunt Rhoda stayed at our place. One Friday evening a spring wagon stopped at our place, and Toll and Uncle Joel came in. We knew at once that they were after Aunt Rhoda, so Ellsworth went after Uncle E. J. to come in and help prepare the strategy by which they hoped to win. It looked as if Father planned to take Aunt Rhoda in the buggy, but just before he got in the buggy (Aunt Rhoda was already in), Father told Uncle Elisha to get in the buggy and drive Aunt as he had forgotten to ask Mr. Tolls to go to church with us. So we all went to church. When we got there, the buggy was not there; and they saw nothing more of Aunt Rhoda. This was hard luck for Uncle Joel, for he was to have had $50 for the trip if he could have delivered her to Salem as planned.

Now what had happened was that Uncle Elisha had crossed the Deep Ford and gone up the river over to Pullman and on to Dan May’s (whose wife was Mother’s cousin) and left her there until the coast was clear. When they asked Elisha about her, he told them the last he saw of her, she was going West. They thought we had sent her to Uncle Nathan’s, who lived in Ohio. Toll tried to hire someone to slip her out and take her to Salem, but failed. So ends this beautiful romance in failure.

Some Stories About Alva: My brother, Alva, was by far the greatest squirrel and crow hunter of us, as he was a great shot with a rifle and had lots of patience to wait for game. He did not hunt rabbits or night hunt as he would rather read than to be out at night. One day he was down below the corn field when he ran into some young animals that he thought were young wild cats. He began to shoot; when he thought he heard the old cat, he began to yell for help. He got all three-they were young coons. One of them he got alive. These were the first coons (I was about 10 at this time) that I ever saw.

Some years later Alva was in a big woods back of our home farm when he saw a wild cat behind a tree. He could not see its head nor shoulders, so he shot where he could see. He was afraid to move for fear it would run, and he only had a rifle. When he shot, it fell over and scratched and screamed. He was afraid to go near it until he got the gun loaded; by then it had left. He followed it by the blood to a big fence. Every little bit he would see where it had fallen off the fence and had trouble to get back on the fence. He tracked it to a den but could not get it. Later it was found dead near the den. It had come out of the den to die.

It was rather difficult to get Alva to do chores about the house, so the girls would sometimes offer him special things to get him to do some of the things they wanted done. One day when Father had butchered a sheep, they offered to make some meat dumplings for some work they wanted done. Now Alva was very fond of meat, so he did the work. They made a nice batch of dumplings, but when Alva cut into one, he surely was sore and said, “There isn’t a bit of meat in them.”

I remember one more thing that I think I shall tell. All our clothes-pants, shirts, and under-clothing-were made at home. One night our hired girl (Tanie Hammond) gave Alva a new pair of pants which she had just finished for him and told him she would guarantee they would hold him. But she didn’t know what a test they would get. He got up and put his new pants on and hurried out. A little later he came out with a long face and said, “I put on my new pants and just filled them full! Isn’t that a shame?” I think so.

An Incident when Callie was Courted: I will now turn to some other members of this populous family. In the winter of 1881, Father and Mother went to Salem on a visit. While they were gone, Callie’s boyfriend (John Meathrell) came to see her and brought a black Indian pony, which he gave to her. Ellsworth didn’t like Callie’s sending for John to come see her when Father and Mother were away. So when he went upstairs to bed, he, instead, watched them to tease Callie. He soon grew tired of this and finally went to bed. Just as he went to sleep, Virgil jumped out of bed and said that he heard the shop door open. (Now, the shop door made a noise every time it opened by grating on the floor.) Virgil grabbed his pants, rushed out and called the dogs, with Ellsworth at his heels. But there was nothing wrong at the shop. When they got back, John was mad; he thought it was a joke on him until he found that it was Virgil who had heard it. He feared someone was trying to steal his horses. They went to the stable, but there was nothing wrong; so it left everything a mystery. Ellsworth always said it was an easy thing to settle-it was just that John kissed Callie. I expect that he was right! Anyone can see why John and Ellsworth never got along well. They never could have gotten along anyway.

Ellsworth and Steele Brake: I will now tell a little story about a school experience that Ellsworth had at Berea while Perie was teaching there. Steele Brake was about Ellsworth’s age and size. He made a business of getting Ellsworth down and beating him up very often. Ellsworth feared to resist; for Perie would not give one of us a fair deal. She feared people would accuse her of being partial. But Ellsworth grew very tired of being submissive.

So one day when Steele had him down flat of his back and pounding him just as he wanted to, he just reached up with his right hand (he was left handed) and pushed him up and poured his left fist into the pit of his stomach until Steele howled like a whipped hound pup. As soon as he could got loose, he ran to the house to tell how he had been treated. Of course, Perie held court to see who the criminal might be. The children all said that Ellsworth was no rougher than Steele had been. But Steele said, “Ellsworth was mad, and I wasn’t.” “How do you know he was mad?” Perie asked. “I saw the tears way back in his head,” Steele replied. The whole school yelled, and even Perie smiled. This settled the case, and Ellsworth got sweet revenge on Steele for all his bullying and didn’t get a whipping either.

A few years later, after Steele had quit school, he met Ellsworth one night as he came home from school and told him he heard he had been talking about him and if he didn’t quit, he would tan his dog hide. Ellsworth just looked at him and said, “There is such a thing as a ‘bull hide,’ and it’s mighty hard to tan.” This settled the whole argument.

I had a little trouble with one of Steele’s younger brothers when I was a boy in school. He was quite a hand with the girls, and one day at noon three of them told him they would like to kiss me. “Why don’t you?” he asked them. “We’re afraid of him,” they replied. He told them he would hold me. I just got up, took off my coat and put it on the fence. Wirt, that was the boy’s name, raved but did nothing. We became fine friends later. One evening when I was in his store where I traded, he told this story. One of those there asked him why he didn’t hold me. He replied, “I was afraid he’d whip me.”

Mr. Wasp: The common wasp used to build its nest in all the outbuildings. One day I went into one of the sheds, and a wasp was sitting on the wall. I just pointed my finger at him and said, “I am going to kill you.” Just then Mr. Wasp rose up and lit on my nose and stung me. Oh! How it did hurt! My nose got big, and Delvia told what I said and everybody laughed at me. Right here I will insert a few quotations from the Bible which I think will apply:

Let he who thinks he standeth take heed lest he fall (1 Corinthians 10:12, KJV)
Pride goeth before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction (Proverbs 16:18, KJV).

Such is life!

Jip and Sheep: When I was about 8 years old, Father bought a yellow “bone-legged beast” from Harrisville. We called him “Jip.” Now Jip was a good rabbit dog and not much good for anything else. We let our sheep and lambs run out in the road early in the spring before the grass started in the field, as the grass would start earlier along the river than in the fields. Jip would get and run the sheep. Ellsworth took care of the sheep and didn’t like to have them run.

One evening we were at the barn doing the chores when we heard the sheep coming (one of them had a bell) with Jip after them as hard as he could run. Ellsworth picked up a two-inch cube which had been sawed off an oak scantling. The sheep went by as hard as they could run with Jip after them, grunting every jump. As soon as the sheep passed, Ellsworth leaped out of the shed door where he had been hiding and let loose with that left hand. The block took Jip square to the side of the head and knocked him over the bank next to the river. He got up, yelling like a possessed one, and ran to the house like Satan was after him. That was one dog who was broken of sheep-chasing, for Jip never ran sheep again.

Alva and the Sheep: Ellsworth had always cared for the sheep; but when I was 12 years old, Father decided that Alva should care for them that spring and summer. When grass came, Alva turned the sheep out in a field we called “Poverty Point” (which was in the far end of the farm a half mile from home and adjoining a big woods). We had a part of this field in corn and beans, and Mother went up to see it. When she came back, she said she could carry all the corn and beans up there in her apron (and this wasn’t so far wrong), so we called it “Poverty Point.”

The first time Alva salted the sheep, which was about twice a week, he said one little lamb was missing. In about two weeks he reported nine more lambs missing (they would have weighed from 40 to 60 pounds each), and he couldn’t find them. On search, the nine were found near the woods, partly covered up with leaves. Their throats were out and they had been partly eaten above the necks. They seemingly had been killed one each night. The sheep were moved to another part of the farm, and no more lambs were bothered; but Alva never took care of the sheep again. His mind was too much on books.

About two years later a neighbor (Ves Parker) killed from 5 to 10 cats. (The cat that I told about Alva’s shooting was in the same woods.) So the lambs were revenged!

The next fall after the lambs were killed, Father gave Delvia and me charge of the sheep; and we never had any more killing.

The spring we bought the farm Father traded for a small roan mare, which we kept for 12 years and raised 7 fine colts. One of these (Midge) I bought from Ellsworth the spring Jennie and I were married and kept her for 7 years. This was the first horse I owned.

I lived a rather strange life as a child, as I had no friends among the children of the neighborhood and played with no one except my brother Delvia and sister Cleo and Uncle Elisha’s children. Elva and Dow came down once or twice a year, and Delvia and I went there as often. This was all the friends we had till I was 15 years old, when we began to play with Buddy and Day Hoff, who lived a half mile below us. This is why it has always been hard for me to make friends. I will mention these friends later.

When I was about six years old, we had diphtheria in a very hard form, and it settled in a sore in my foot. It ate a hole larger than a quarter between my big toe and the one next to it. They could find nothing to help it until a man from Weston came to help Father in the tan shop. He said it was the germs of diphtheria settled there. He had known several cases in Weston, and they had to use diphtheria medicine. This soon cured it up, but there was a scar there larger than a quarter long after I was grown.

A Story of Wolves

I will digress now to tell a story as told to us three children about 70 years ago by Dorinda (I believe her name was). She was Uncle Zibba Davis’ wife. She was then about 65 years old, and she said this happened when she was about 8 years old. It had been a very long, cold winter and the snow had been very deep for weeks.

One Sabbath morning her father hitched the horses to the sled and went to church, leaving the children at home. Two or three were older than she. There was not supposed to be any danger, so the children were not afraid. About noon one of the children said he saw some big dogs out in the yard. When they looked out, they saw a half dozen, a dozen. and then hundreds of great, fierce brutes which the older children knew were wolves.

They had a large dog in the house. One of the wolves stuck his head through a window (which was made of greased paper). The dog sprang upon a bed which sat by the window, grabbed the wolf by the throat before it could get anything but its head inside, and held on until the blood ran down the wolf’s neck and it was still. Then the dog let loose, and the other wolves ate it up. In an hour or two they all disappeared.

When their folks came home, there was no sign of the wolves except that two or three acres of snow was cut all up with wolf tracks. No wolves were seen for years. The old people said that it had been such a hard winter that the wolves could find no food, so they had selected that spot to start their migration.

Hunting and Trapping

I remember my first hunting. Virgil and I were out together (I don’t know why) in the woods below the log cabin on the hill, when Virgil caught a rabbit under a rock. I remember how it squealed. I thought it was a ground hog. He gave it to me, and I sold it at Brake’s store. I was about six years old. This was the beginning of my hunting and trapping.

Hunting and Trapping with Delvia: By the time I was 10 years old, Delvia and I began to hunt and trap together. One day that winter we found a hole where we thought a skunk was denning, so we set a trap. The next morning when we went to the trap something was caught. It had dragged the trap the full length of the chain into the hole, so we could not see what we had caught. As everyone knows, you can have serious trouble with a skunk. To save my clothes I stripped naked and pulled the beggar out. It was a possum. Of course Delvia told what I did, and they laughed at me a great deal. But I got the possum!

We would take the dogs out and hole rabbits. Then we would set a box and catch them that night We could make a lot of money, for we could frequently catch two or three rabbits a month. We got from 5 cents to 10 cents apiece.

By the time I was 14, Delvia and I began to set snares for rabbits. We had fairly good success, and we lost no time as the traps were on our way to school. Once we caught a pheasant (which brought us 25 cents), and we felt rich. I remember one night it rained the fore part of the night and snowed the latter part. When Delvia got to the traps (I did not go that morning), he found two rabbits and a possum. We were rich again, as they were worth 50 cents.

I think I will give one more experience with snares and then drop that subject. The next winter for several mornings we found the snares thrown, the strings cut, and no game. I told Delvia we would get the sinner. So we fixed a solid framework, pulled down a strong pole and prepared for the kill. The next morning when we got in sight, the pole was up and there was a possum hanging by the neck more than two feet off the ground. In a week we had 5 or 6 possums; then we could go ahead catching rabbits. There had been a whole den of possums.

When I was 12, Delvia and I began to hunt at night and trap for skunks and possums. This was the fall that we hunted with John Meredith. We caught several possums, one of which was the largest I ever saw. John was a large, strong boy of 17, but he could only carry it a few hundred yards until he would have to stop and rest. He gave me half of what the pelts brought. He was one of my best friends for many years.

After this we hunted by ourselves for several years, as we had two good dogs. We caught many skunks and possums, which gave us much fun and a little money. This we used later to buy some sheep. Our two dogs were named Fisk and Bounce and were good hunters, day or night.

Night Hunting for Rabbits: One Sabbath Elva and Dow came down to stay all night. As this was in October and a good time to hunt, we decided to go; so we went and had no luck. Then at about ten o’clock, we decided to have a rabbit chase anyway and set them on a rabbit (they would not hunt rabbits unless we set them after them). They chased it down into a deep hollow, up a hill for over a half mile, and put it into a rail pile. We caught it and went back on the hill. They immediately started another, which they ran way down the hill for a long way before we got it also. As soon as we got to the top of the hill, they took another one down the hill and soon began to rave. So we hurried to them and found a hollow limb about five feet long in which the rabbit was hiding while the dogs ran from one end to the other and howled. Of course we got that one.

When we got to the top of the ridge, they started another one, which they soon put into a sink hole. It was now about eleven o’clock and getting rather cool, so we built a fire and began digging. In about a half hour we had the rascal. We felt it was quite a successful hunt as it is seldom you can hole a rabbit at night. We would often get two or three possums and sometimes a skunk in our night’s hunting (and sometimes nothing but tired legs). But we had lots of fun.

Mr. Mink, Muskrats and Coons: One cold morning in January, 1888, we saw where something had carried corn from the crib up the road across the river on the ice to a hole in the river bank. We set a trap and caught a muskrat, but its head was eaten off. We knew a mink was responsible, so we reset the trap. The next night we got Mr. Mink, which ended the threat to our muskrat trapping. This was our first mink, but we caught several after that.

We got 25 or 30 rats the rest of that winter, which we thought was quite good. But the next winter we really went after them with traps and barrels set along the bank (which we often visited before going to bed and again in the morning). We got as high as three rats in one barrel during one night. When spring came, we found we had sold 100 rat pelts that winter. This (with the other fur we caught-skunks and possums) made quite a showing as we got from 3 to 10 cents for our rat pelts.

We went ahead trapping, but not until after I was 18 did we get our first coon. There was a den near the school house where the steam would roll out. We decided there was something denning there. So we set a trap and caught a cub coon. Several years later I caught two fine big coons from the same den.

Sheep Enterprise: When I was about 15, Delvia and I took some of our money from furs and bought two sheep, which Father kept for the wool and we got the lambs. We would get from $2.50 to $3.00 for the lambs. When Father went North in 1892, we sold our sheep. We gained some knowledge of trading by buying and selling while we were boys. Father dealt with us as he did with other people.

Tenants

Jetts: The first tenant we had on the Davis farm was Alvin Jett, who was no good. One morning Father went over to the farm early. As he came back Mrs. Jett called to him and said, “Mr. Randolph, we don’t have a bite of bread stuff about the house.” (Jett was running around with the threshing machine getting good things to eat and doing nothing.) She looked as if she were hungry. Father said, “How about your potatoes. You had a nice patch of them.” She said that the potatoes were all gone, that they got along pretty well while they lasted, but it was hard to live without bread or potatoes. Father had Mother fix up a pail of flour and send Cleo and me up with it.

That afternoon Father went to see when the machine would be at our place. He took Jett out to one side and told him to go home and get his family something to eat, or starve with them, or he would cut him a hickory and give him a good whipping. Then he would throw his goods off the farm. For no man could run around and get plenty to eat and let his family starve on his farm. Jett toddled right off home.

Father often said that he hated “blamed orneriness.” (You may not know just what that word means, but in West Virginia to say a person is ornery is about as mean a thing as can be said of him.)

Now the next tenant was Dolph Weaver-but before I speak of him, I should tell one more story about Jett. He was with Marshall Meredith (who lived on an adjoining farm for 20 years and knew Father very well). Jett told him scandalous tales about Father. Some days later Marshall was at the mill when Jett came to the mill with a grist on one of Father’s horses. After he had tied the horse, Jett went to the mill. Marshall said to him, “How much does Asa charge you for a horse to go to mill?” Jett replied, “Not a cent. I can get a horse to go whenever I want it, and it doesn’t cost me a cent.” “It seems to me,” Marshall said, “if a man treated me like that, I wouldn’t talk about him like you did about Asa.” Jett replied, “I just talk that way about you when I am at your back.” So you see Marshall got it in the neck.

Dolph Weaver: This man, Weaver, was a big, strong young man who was married to a nice looking girl, but they preferred to fool around rather than work. In fact, they were both too lazy for any good use. Dolph told some of the neighbors that Father owed him a lot and wouldn’t pay him so he said he intended to whip him. When Father heard about it, he sent for Dolph to come down and settle up. They found on settling everything that Dolph owed Father between $10 and $15.

Dolph started off muttering to himself. Father let him go about 75 yards. Then he called, “Dolph, come back here.” When Dolph came back to the gate, Father said to him, “You have been telling it all around that you were going to whip me. John Snodgrass jumped onto an old man the other day and got an awful whipping. If you jump onto me, I’ll give you a worse licking than John Snodgrass got.” Dolph just went off without saying a word.

Frank Gardener: The next tenant was Frank Gardener, an Adventist from Kansas. Frank had two children (Charlie, about my age, and Minnie, a girl a little younger). Charlie was a playmate of ours while they were on the farm. Frank was a jolly, good-humored fellow who said he had moved over 30 times. So, you can see that he had the wander-lust.

He was a great hand to joke, and I never saw him get mad. I remember one day in harvest Ellsworth was raking hay when Frank said, “Ellsworth, you are a raker and a son of a raker.” Ellsworth said, “Frank, you are a rake and a son of a rake,” which tickled Frank. He only stayed one summer, when he took a notion to go somewhere else.

When I was teaching up in Taylor County, a man came to me on the bus and said, “Aren’t you Pressy Randolph?” I said, “Yes, but who the dickens are you?” “I am Charlie Gardener, and I am living in Clarksburg and working at Bridgeport.”

We met several times on the bus and talked over old times. He told me one morning that his father was living in Belington and was coming down to visit him soon. He thought they would be on the bus together some Monday morning. One morning I saw a gray-haired man who came up to me and proved to be Frank Gardener. He was just as jolly, good-humored as ever, and we had a nice talk. This was the last time I ever saw either of them.

John Meathrell: The next tenant was John Meathrell. He stayed three years and cleared out about four or five acres and raised crops on it, after which he bought where they now live and moved there. I might say right here that they [John and my sister Callie] were married when I was about ten years old, which was the first wedding I ever saw.

After this, Alva lived on the farm over a year. Then Ellsworth bached on it for a time before he married, after which he bought the farm, and they still own it.

More About the Tan Yard

I will now tell something more about the tan yard. Among my earliest jobs was grinding bark. Two of us children would hitch a horse to a bark mill, which was similar to a mill for grinding cane. There was a long whip hitched to a big log, on which were fastened metal teeth which revolved inside an iron rim with metal teeth. The bark was peeled from chestnut oak trees in the spring when the sap was up. When this bark was thoroughly dried, we would break it over the metal rim. It was ground between the two rims into fine pieces, which were used in tanning the leather.

We would sit there all day in very hot weather breaking the bark and keeping the horse going. Sometimes it took one all the time to keep that horse traveling.

There was a place under the mill where the ground bark dropped. When it filled up, it had to be hauled away. We children hated that work, but we did it just the same.

When the strength was taken out of the bark, we would skim out the worthless bark and scatter it over the ground about the vats. Sometimes the vats would be nearly full of water with bark on top and looked like the rest of the ground. When Delvy was about three years old, he came through the tan yard to a field beyond to tell us to come to dinner. When he got there, he was wet from his arms down. We found where he had walked into a vat. On the other side where he came out, water showed plainly where it had dripped from his clothes on the ground. I don’t think there were any of us children who failed to get into the vats at least once.

Many chickens and geese lost their dear little lives here. In fact a goose would only live a little while when she found she could not get out of the vat. Also, I lifted several pigs out of there. One blind horse which Emza rode from her school one time fell into one of the vats, but luckily got out.

The tan yard soon went to rack after Father left. I doubt if there could be a vat found now.

Working with Oxen

Before I was 16, I sold a horse for Father for $100 at Toll Gate. He had told me to take $80 for it if I could not get $100, but he never offered me any commission on it. This left us with but one horse, and Delvia and I began breaking oxen to work. We had two yoke at one time. Sometimes these oxen were quite wild and would run at the drop of a hat. One yoke would often get away with a sled and run through the woods or pasture until they ran afoul a tree or bush. Then we would go and back them up, get them around the tree, take them back to the road, jump on the sled, and away we would go.

We would often do our plowing with these oxen. In fact, we did all kinds of work. We would sometimes ride one ox we called Buck. But sometimes he would put his head down, snort, and we would land on the ground.

The winter I was 17, we cut a large lot of timber and had it sawed. One yoke of our oxen, which was white, helped in this work. We called them Lamb and Lion. They were very able cattle. I did not go to school this winter, but helped with the logging and stacking lumber.

Mother, Marvel Maxson, was born on Greenbrier in 1832, the daughter of John Maxson. Her mother was one of a large family of Bees, all of whom were Seventh Day Baptists. The most famous of these were Ezekiel, (who was pastor of the Pine Grove Church at Berea for many years) and Ehriam (who went to Richmond to the state legislature before the war).

Mother had one sister, Annetta (who married Grandfather for his second wife), and two brothers, Nathan (who moved to Ohio about 1865) and Elisha John (who spent most of his married life on Otter Slide near Berea). Her father, John Maxson, was a very consecrated Christian and a local preacher. As nearly all the Randolph ministers from West Virginia were direct descendants since their mother or grandmother was a daughter of John Maxson, this, I feel, was inherited from him. Her brother Elisha lived to be past 97 in years.

Father ran a tan yard for Grandfather and had a tan yard of his own until he left West Virginia. I will mention several experiences in the tan yard later in this article.

The chance for schooling was very limited, and Father never got more than three quarters or nine months of schooling until after he was married. He had a felon on the thumb of his right hand which kept his arm in a sling for 18 months. Part of this time he went to school. Later he cut his leg very badly; as soon as he was able to ride, he went to school. He read much and was especially good in figures. In fact, one of his teachers said that he did not need to study arithmetic—he could make one. His interest in education is shown in the fact that of the nine children who grew up, all went to college at least a year, and five have a degree.

Mother was as much interested in education as Father, but she did not have as good a chance as he. I think she could read about like a third grader. She was a very great worker; in fact, I have heard her say that the only request she made of Father before they were married was that he would furnish her plenty of work. She was also an excellent manager. I believe there is no doubt but what she had much to do with his making a success financially.

Father and Mother were married in the fall of l852 at Washington, Pennsylvania. (The grandchildren and the great-grandchildren must skip this.) They eloped! Father said that Grandfather promised him if he would stay at home until he was 21 he would give him the shoemakers trade. But when he arranged to stay, Grandfather forgot the deal; so Father did too. (This should be a lesson to all parents, except me, to keep their word.)

They lived on the waters of Bone Creek for a while, then on Middle Island until 1857, when they bought the farm on the South Branch of the Hughes River, a mile below Berea, where I was born and reared.

My Siblings: There were eleven of us, of which I was the ninth. Two died as infants, but the rest of us grew up and married. There are four of us still living—Virgil, who is 90; Cleo, 80; myself, 78; and Delvia, soon to be 74. We are a long-lived family. Callie lived to be 94, and Alva was 81.

Of the nine, Perie was the most noted; she became a Seventh Day Baptist preacher. She married when she was 35 to Leon B. Burdick, whom she educated and made a preacher. They had one daughter.

Callie married John Meathrell and spent her life on a farm near Berea. They had four children—Julia, Rupert, Conza, and Draxie (who married Ruben Brissey). They are all living.

Emza married the Reverend A. W. Coon and died a few years later.

Virgil taught a few years after finishing college, then became a farmer. He married Mary Wells. They had one son, who is now an engineer.

Ellsworth bought the Hise Davis farm from Father, married Sarah Stalnaker, and settled down on the farm. He had a fine team of horses and did lots of logging in the winter. While logging for Zeke Bee in the spring of 1905, he was accidentally killed. He and I had been more than brothers—we had been companions for years. If one needed help, the other helped him. If there was sickness, the other was there to help in any way possible. Things have never been quite the same since his death. They had one child, Blondie, who is now principal of a school in West Virginia.

Alva married Mary Hoff. He finished college at Alfred with the best grades of anyone who had ever graduated there. He settled down near Alfred and became a famous farmer and leader in farm activities. They had five children—Fucia, Elizabeth, Lowell, Florence and Vida. Florence died in young womanhood, shortly after she married. Elizabeth is an ordained minister of the Seventh Day Baptist denomination. She is now a traveling evangelist.

Cleora (Cleo) went to New York, taught for some years and then married Gene Jordan. Gene died a few years ago, and she is now living in Pennsylvania with one of Gene’s boys, Leon.

Delvinus (Delvia) went through school at Alfred, married and moved to California for his wife’s health. They had two children, but I never knew anything about them. He is retired now and living with his second wife.

The last two mentioned, Cleo and Delvia, and I were inseparable from earliest childhood. Where one went, we all three went. We would go after the cows together until Cleo was almost grown. We had a deal with mother in which we were to feed and care for the chickens and gather the eggs. When we took her twelve eggs, the next one was ours. We made lots of money, for eggs were often worth 5 cents or 10 cents a dozen. We really felt we were in business. Prices are just a little different now.

Mother died when I was 15; three years later Cleo went to New York; and then in 1892 Father took Delvia to New York, which broke up this trio. Oh, that we three could be together for at least a few days! But we are separated by many miles, and none of us has the money to travel so far, I fear, and age is creeping up on us. Blessed are the memories!

Grandfather, Dr. John Randolph

Before I begin the record of my own life, I think I had best give a paragraph to my Grandfather Randolph, as I have already given a short account of Grandfather Maxson. Doctor John Randolph was the son of Jesse Randolph by his first wife, whom he married soon after coming to Salem with the church in 1792. Doctor John was much better educated than most of those of his day. He was a stone mason and helped build the Pike through Salem. He practiced medicine without any special preparation, so was called Doctor John. He had a very keen mind, but I think was very self-willed.

I will give one anecdote about him. Uncle Elisha and he went to a revival meeting down at Bristol. A girl who had worked for Grandfather for years went down the aisle shouting her best, and Grandfather called to her, “Where are you going, Bet?” She replied, “To heaven, I hope.” Just then she reached a young man who had been going with her and threw herself into his arms. Grandfather said, “You have got there now, Bet!”

I was born one mile down river (South Branch of the Hughes) from Berea, West Virginia. Our home was on the opposite side of the river from the road and the Asa Randolph home (later the Amos Brissey home). There was a ford across the river (maybe one-eighth mile above the Brissey house to our home). I was born and lived there about 3 years.

The first memories of this home I really don’t remember but have heard from my parents and Aunt Sarah, who lived on top of the hill back of our home. Aunt Sarah and my parents visited back and forth often, helping each other. There was maybe one-half mile between homes. I do not remember my Uncle Elsworth, who was my father’s youngest brother and his special buddy. Uncle Elsworth was killed in a logging accident before I could remember.

They tell me of my birth, which was at a tragic time. My brother, Harold, 2 years older than 1, died of membranous croup the same day I was born. Old Dr. Bee was at our place trying to save Harold when he brought me into the world. For some reason, probably because of Harold’s death and other business, he never recorded my birth at the courthouse. I know that because of the trouble I had getting my Social Security at the time of my retirement. Aunt Sarah was a big help at that time, they say.

Another time Aunt Sarah was such a special help was when I had diphtheria, probably in my first year. They said they almost lost me then, but Dr. Bee and Aunt Sarah brought me through. Of course, Mom and Dad did their part, too.

Aunt Sarah and Uncle Elsworth’s only son, Blondy, was a little older than I; and we were playmates and buddies from the time we were babies. After my diphtheria spell, Mother and Dad got concerned as to whether I could hear, so they decided to test me by having Blondy in the next room but out of sight. When he said my name, they knew I could hear.

There were two happenings at our first home that I heard a lot about. One was the time I was in the woodlot at the same time our cow was there, and she butted me over the woodpile. They said I didn’t even cry, and they watched me closer to keep me from playing with “Moo Cow.” The other was the time Mom heard me hollering, “Mom, Mom. Come come.” When Mom got to the river at a sand and gravel bar just above the ford, I had hold of a pole with a fish on the end of its line. The fish would pull me a while toward the water, then I would pull it. That may be why I love so much to see my grandchildren and great grandchildren pull and holler, “Help me, Paw.”

Uncle Gene’s in New York

About the summer when I was four, we moved to Uncle Gene and Aunt Cleo Elizabeth Jordan’s in New York at Friendship near Cuba. I can remember some things quite vividly. First, on our train trip we had to wait some at Wheeling. The trains sounded so near that I was expecting them to come into the waiting room. Also, I have memories of the drays and drivers, probably because Mother cut out connected strings of brownies. (Mother was a real crafter and artist.)

While we were in New York State, I went to school a little while. They took me out because I fell deeply in love with an older girl, Agnes Childs. We were together, it seems, all the time at recesses and noons. Often all of us children would go to an orchard maybe 300 yards away (maybe it was farther but seemed so short a distance because Agnes and I always walked hand in hand or arm in arm).

Another thing I remember well was Uncle Gene’s black dog (it must have been a Water Spaniel) and his big and mean gobbler. Romulus, the dog, stayed with me a lot, and he was seldom out of hearing of me. I can remember one time the gobbler spread his tail and wings mighty scarily; I had a hard time to get Romulus to save me, but he finally did.

My sister, Avis, and I had groundhog pets that my older brother, Brady, had caught for us. Brady knew where their dens were in and around a big meadow. He would hide near a den and watch until they would get far enough from their home until he could get between their den and them before they could reach safety. My pet wasn’t really a pet. He would bite and finally got away.

Avis and I played together a lot because she was two years younger than I. Sometimes I had trouble getting her to play my way or keep up when we were going to Uncle Gene’s, about one-half mile from our home. Then I would say, “”Appy won’t keep the snakes off you.” That got cooperation.

Life on Otterslide

It must have been the fall of 1907 that we went to Otterslide near Berea. I am sure that we were sorry to leave Aunt Cleo and Uncle Gene because they were mighty good to us. Our new home was small and just boarded up, but it was close to many of our relatives and friends. Probably we lived on Uncle Lashie Maxon’s place. Then there were Uncle Delvie and Uncle Elsa Maxson who lived near. They all had children who went to school to Dad and played with us what few times we could get together.

A few things are very vivid in my memory. I remember Dad chopping wood by our woodshed. Once he glanced his ax off the shed and cut his foot badly. Then I remember my mother carrying water up a ladder and into the attic to put out a fire that caught from the chimney. Another time at the supper table our oil lamp fell over, and the kerosene caught inside it. Mom grabbed an overcoat hanging near and wrapped the lamp up and put it outside.

The worst thing that happened while we lived on Otterslide was while Dad and Brady were working up the hollow (like they were when Mom put out the attic fire). My younger brother, Randall, choked. After Mom pounded his back and shook him while holding him by the heels, we ran to Uncle Lashie’s. Mother carried Randall, who must have been about 2 years old; and Avis and I tried to keep up. They could not unchoke Randall. It was such a sad time. I remember Dad and me after dark out by the woodshed crying our eyes out.

I have some hazy memories about going to school in the one room school at Otterslide. Of course, I was in the first grade, and my teacher was my father. But really, the next vivid memory was riding in a wagon and entering Berea. Just after we got through the covered bridge, what to my wondering eyes should appear but George Washington’s son sitting on steps in front of a house. His hair was cut just like the pictures of George Washington, and it was white. Later I found out he was my first cousin, Arden Bee. Probably his mother, Aunt Rachel, told him we were coming, and he was watching for us. Arden and I have always been close friends and still are.

Living in Berea

My memories of Berea are so many that I could never tell you about them all and get done in time to go fishing when the weather gets fit. Suffice it to tell about my schooling, my work, my dog, and my friends and enemies. I may make a mistake telling about the happenings with my enemies. My grandchildren and great grandchildren must realize that I was just a boy eight to almost twelve years old–so you do as your dad and mom say, not the way I did.

Maybe you will be interested in knowing what Berea looked like while we lived there. It was located in an almost round bottom of about fifty acres on the south side of the South Branch of the Hughes River. The business consisted of two stores, a post office, livery barn, and a grist mill. There was a two-room school when we arrived, with another added while we were there; and this was in Berea proper. The school was later moved to where Camp Joy is now. (The house was not moved, but a new schoolhouse was built.) The road made a loop around the bottom, with houses on both sides. There were about twenty houses along the loop and three on the road that extended down the river from where the loop joined at the covered bridge. At that junction was the post office, one store, the livery barn, and the blacksmith shop. The other store and the gristmill were about one hundred yards up the river along the loop, by the dam.

My Schooling at Berea

As for school, I remember I was a very slow reader; and I liked exciting stories like Gulliver’s Travels, Indian stories, Greek stories, poems, and wars in the histories. I once printed a big imaginary story about a character similar to Gulliver. I also often felt very sad, fearing I would never have a chance to be a hero because I feared there would never be any more wars. of course, I was wrong. There have been wars, and I am glad I didn’t have to fight in them.

These stories of Jason, Hercules, the Roman heroes and the Christian martyrs, I suppose, influenced me to try to be a martyr. My worst punishment at school came from that desire. In fact, there were two of those experiences–one in the fifth grade at Berea and the other in the ninth grade at Salem High School. After I was teaching, I realized that I needed the rubber hosing I got at Berea and being expelled from the study hall at Salem because I took the blame for other pupils’ mischief.

Play at the Berea School was real fun. We chose up and played base, both draw base and prisoner base. We also had fun playing ball with a twine-wound ball and no cover. (We had never seen a baseball or softball.) I loved to be the catcher. One noon I was catching for a strong eighth-grade pitcher. The ball was wet, which made it like a rock. A batter just snibbed the under part of the ball, causing it to hit my eye squarely. That ended my catching career. There were many other games, like “London Bridge,” “soccer ball,” and in the fall “Hull Gull, Odd or Even,” and in the spring “Lap Jack.”

Maybe you would like to know how we played “Hull Gull” and “Lap Jack.” As I said, Hull Gull was played in the fall. Chestnuts were plentiful, and we would fill our pockets with them before we went to school. Then we would hold out a hand (with some chestnuts enclosed) and say, “Hull Gull, odd or even.” If the other youngsters said “Even” or “Odd” and when we opened our hand there was what they said, they got the chestnuts. But if they were not right, we got one from them to make it odd or even.

We played lap jack in the spring because the willows along the creeks were extra limber. We took a willow switch with us to school, and we would challenge another child to lap jack with us. Whoever hollered first lost the match. Usually this only lasted one day because it caused trouble that mothers and teacher didn’t like.

There were many programs at school in those days. We had a literary meeting each month during the school term. The older people had parts in it, too. I remember being in a debate: “Resolved that water is more destructive than fire.” I don’t remember whether I won or lost. I also remember a Christmas Program with a big tree for the community and a jolly Santa Claus. On that tree was a pair of skates for me. When I got the skates, I left the program and went to the river above the dam, where there were solid ice and lots of skaters (including my older brother, Brady). I didn’t have a period of falling down because I had practiced stroking just like the big folks even without skates on for a year or so.

This is enough about schools at Berea except to say that I was noticing girls again like I did in New York State (but not quite as much). Pearl Buzzard, who later became Mrs. Curtis Simmons, was my special. Pearl’s husband left her when she became a crippled invalid. We were close friends until her death, when she willed me her wheelchair. She also left one son, who took good care of her to the end. Another girl I liked a lot was Beulah Collins, who later married my cousin, Hollie Sutton. Beulah was beautiful and had an especially beautiful voice. She didn’t notice me because she liked the older boys.

One year while we lived at Berea I went to school at the Fair View School. I walked with Dad about three miles each way. That was the last year I had Dad for my school teacher. That was a great experience. Dad was a wonderful teacher, especially in arithmetic and history and on the playground. Among many other games, we often played “Fox and Hound” at noon, which used about all the noon period and a lot of rough country.

Special Friends (and Enemies)–(Wrestling and fighting)

It was not long after we moved to Berea, the summer I was seven years old, that the boy who was to become my best friend and buddy came to see me. The thing I remember most about his visit was that he wanted to wrestle. So Dad cleared a room of furniture, and we went at it. I couldn’t seem to understand what was happening until after he had thrown me three or more times. Then I said it was my turn to yank. To the best of my knowledge, he never did throw me again.

In fact, I can’t remember our ever wrestling again except once, when we got paid to fight in front of a crowd of men at the livery barn. In the first place, the men told Lester (Lester Jackson was my friend’s name) they would give him a nickel if he would get me to fight him. We fought so fiercely that they got ashamed, I suppose, and paid us a nickel apiece to quit. We took the money and hand-in-hand went to the nearest store and bought candy to eat together. The nearest store was the Douglas one.

Lester and I were at the livery stable another time when the front big sliding door fell on Lester. It hardly hurt him any, but we were scared. Lester was a tough boy. Once he had his head smashed when his father’s combination truck and surrey automobile (the first one of any kind owned near Berea) hit a telephone pole with his head between the truck and the pole. It did put him in bed for a while, but he recovered and served in the Marines for many years.

I saw Lester only once after we left Berea at the age of eleven and almost twelve. He came to our place for a visit at Salem, and we went to Clarksburg to visit my cousin, Arden Bee (the one I thought was George Washington’s son). The three of us went above the dam at Hartland, a suburb of Clarksburg, and had a great time swimming. I went back to try to see him at a Jackson and Prunty Reunion at the old Prunty Place, three miles below Berea. They told me Lester had died in Hawaii ten years before.

I must tell you about the time Lester Jackson saved Avis’ life. We had been on the ice of the river down by Creed Collins’. We didn’t have skates, so we must have just walked on the ice across the river. Lester and I had gotten across and were waiting for Avis. She hollered, “Help!” We saw her sink to her arm pits through the ice. Lester ran to her. They broke the ice in front of her, and Lester led her to the bank. I was ashamed that I didn’t go to her, but no doubt it was meant for Lester because I was so heavy. I might have drowned both of us, or all three. Those of you who read this, beware of thawing ice. It is treacherous because it can have hidden rotten spots.

I remember one other wrestling match, and it was with Odbert Bell, a mighty husky boy my age. Our wrestling was done with one arm over the shoulder and one under for each. When one was down and couldn’t get up, the other had won. We squeezed each other’s back and thrashed around, trying to bend the other’s back in until he would fall. Finally Odbert got me. I think that was why I never cared much for wrestling.

My memories of Berea have many fights in them. Suffice it to tell you of a few. One boy I fought with was Harry Wade. His father bought our home place, and he lived in the same house where I was born. He and I were very good friends, but some of the big boys got him to start a fight after a program at school. We fought with our fists, only quite evenly and so entertainingly that the watchers cheered loudly enough to attract an older person, who stopped the fight and sent us on home (for which I was thankful because I wasn’t sure of the win).

Our next-door neighbor was the village blacksmith, Mike Jett. He had two sons and two daughters. The son Dewit was my age; and the daughters, Pearl and Judy, were older. Leo was the youngest son. There was practically a feud between our family and Mike Jett, along with the men who came to his drinking parties.

Once I was coming home on our horse at night;, and they rocked us, which almost made Nellie run off with me. Another time, I met Dewit, Pearl, and Judy in front of the school house. I got on the school house porch against the house so they couldn’t get behind me. I guess I was pretty desperate because I hit Dewit so hard that I heard a loud crack. Dewit went down. I saw some folks coming who heard it from the post office porch, so I ran home.

Good Times With Cousins and Hunting Dogs

My time at Berea was also very pleasant–especially the visits to stay all night with my cousins, Blondy Randolph at Aunt Sarah’s and Oma Sutton at Uncle Herman’s. Blondy and I played climbing and swinging in the big spreading chestnut tree that had grapevines in it. Aunt Sarah’s big barn had lots of hay and straw in it, where we did tumbling stunts. Most fun of all was training and using a pair of calves to pull a cart our Uncle John Meatheral had made for us.

The times I remember going home with Oma were in the fall during the hunting season. Uncle Herman had hounds. Most of them were foxhounds, but one was a dandy night-fur-animal hunter. He would tree opossums and hole skunks, and we would have fun shaking the possums out and digging out the skunks. We sometimes built a fire to warm ourselves and roast apples wrapped in clay mud, and once a young chicken.

Speaking of hunting dogs, I had a red short-legged dog, Rover, that was a real pal. He used to go with me all the time. Many were the times I grabbed his hind legs and helped him pull groundhogs and rabbits out of their dens. He had such short legs that he would go back in their holes and pull them out.

I remember one time down at our old home place that Rover ran a groundhog into a hole. I heard it whistle before it went in; then, as it came out a back door of its den, Rover grabbed it. They fought over and over on a smooth path; then they got off the path, so Rover just rolled over and over with it until they got to a small flat place at the edge of the river. Rover wanted to do his fighting on level ground. They fought there; but before I could help Rover without hurting him, they got into the river. I was really scared for Rover then, so I went in, too. We finally got it out and quieted, but I had an awful time finishing it off with a club.

There is a story about this hole–in fact, there are two–where Rover and I finished off the groundhog. This hole in the river was just below our ford and between our place and Grandpa Randolph’s. The story goes that another dog, Bruno (a big, ugly bulldog) got revenge on a deer for butting his friend and playmate, Ring (the tall greyhound), with a quilting party of ladies watching.

Bruno’s barking brought the women out to see the trouble just in time to see a big buck send Ring rolling with its horns. Bruno, even though he was fat and lazy, seemed to get determined to pay that buck back for hurting his playmate. He chased it to the river. While it was crossing on the ice, he caught it by the nose. He turned it a somersault and broke its neck. After quite a while, a man on a horse came along and claimed the deer, claiming his dogs had been running it. Grandpa gave it to him.

The other story also happened before I was born and while Dad was a young man. He and his brothers built a fence across the lower end of this water hole, just about where we fought the groundhog. They built it of rocks and put a room below it at the swiftest side. When the river would rise because of grinding grain and using water from the dam at Berea, they would open the door into that room. When the water went down, they would close the door and go in and catch fish with hands and clubs. Sometimes they got mighty nice ones.

Once for a few days we couldn’t find Rover. After worrying and inquiring, we heard that a teamster about 15 miles down river had him. Dad, Brady, and Clee Wagoner went down to get Rover. They walked and took turtle-prodding sticks similar to gaff hooks because it was spring before the turtles got out of the mud. They spied Rover at a house a little way from the road. Brady and Clee waited at the road, and Dad went to the house. Dad told the man he had his dog and he was going to take it home. The man said he would wade through blood before he would let that dog go. Dad said, “Start wading”; and he went back to the road, where Brady had called Rover and had him. We were a happy family when they came home with Rover and two sacks of nice snapping turtles. I think Avis and I were the happiest. Mom let me sleep with Rover in my bed for some time. That was very unusual. I never knew of her allowing a dog in our house at any other time.

My Work at Berea

Besides this fun, I did do some work while living at Berea. One year, we raised a cane patch (probably two acres) on top of the hill near Aunt Sarah’s. I remember that so well because I had to thin it. Dad was afraid the seed was poor, so he put plenty seeds in each hill. I think they all came up. I got a terrible headache.

We also had a garden au the old home place besides the big one we had at Berea. One day Brady, Dad, and I were working in this garden when we heard loud splashing in the riffles at the ford. We ran down and got a fish in a little open place among the seaweeds. Brady hit it with a club, and we had a twenty-four-inch bass. I remember we couldn’t eat it all in one day with Grandpa and Grandma Sutton visiting us.

There were a number of farmers around whose children had grown up and left home, so I got to ride their horses for cultivating, harvesting, etc. One of these farmers was John Meredith. He had a queer way of paying; he would feel in his pocket after I had worked a half day or so and find a nickel, dime, or once or twice a quarter and give it to me.

One day Mr. Meredith got me to help him drive two cows down to Wolf Pen, about 10 miles down river, in order to sell one of them. He thought they would drive easier. I rode behind him on a horse, (a rather sharp-backboned one). When we were coming to a branch road, I got off, ran ahead, and made the cows go the right way. We ate dinner there; then we drove the one cow back. It took about all day. I remember so well because I was so disappointed; he only found a nickel to pay me.

When I was ten and eleven years old, I had a regular job of driving the milk cows for our village to a pasture in the morning and to their home lot in the evening. They paid me by the month, twenty-five cents. I thought I was rich. There were deep hollows and patches of brush. Sometimes it took me until after dark to find the cows and get them home. Dad let me buy a little hand ax, similar to our Scout axes now. With that ax I never was afraid, even if a stump or bush would look like a bear.

That night hunting makes me think of the stormy night when Nell got out, and I went up the river to hunt for Nell while Dad went down river. Dad forgot to tell me how far to go. I kept going and looking in every possible place. She meant about as much to me as Rover did. It was extremely dark except when the lightning flashed, which I learned to appreciate. I must have hunted two miles where there was not a home in sight of the road before I gave up and went home discouraged. Dad had found Nellie, so I was happy; and Mom and Dad were glad to see me.

Another kind of work was hacking. That was cutting brush from one- to eight- or ten-inches in diameter and piling it. At first I wasn’t big enough to use an ax, so I piled. Once in a while when they would find a nice branchy bush, they would let me climb it before they cut it. I would get on the side up hill. When it fell, it would bounce up and down a while, giving me a thrilling ride.

When I was ten years old, Dad let me use a pole ax. I saw my first copperhead that I remember. When stepping up to a bush, I spied a copperhead all coiled up. I yelled, “Dad!” He came and made a quick end to its life.

They also let me use a scythe that same summer to cut weeds and small brush and briers. I went down to the place Dad bought from Grandpa Sutton, which was just across the river from the lower end of Berea. I was feeling big and important. No doubt that made me careless whetting my scythe. I cut my hand, which stopped my using the scythe for a while.

My Colt, Tony

Our horse Nellie finally had a colt that Dad let me call my own . Nellie and the colt pastured in the round bottom where Camp Joy is now. I loved the colt and began petting it whenever Nellie would let me. Finally I got a halter on it and would lead it around near its mother. Then I would get it into the box stall in the church barn, where I would feed it apples, etc., from my hand and put my hand on its back.

One day I led Tony down to Berea. He must have been about one year old then. I took him to drink at the watering hole in the river where the liverybarn horses drank. Tony started jumping up on his hind feet and pawing, so I started him back toward pasture. He gave me a hard time. Once he managed to scrape my back some with his front hoof. Dad (or maybe it was Mom) wouldn’t let me bother Tony for a while. As soon as I could, I got him back in the box stall, fed him, petted him, put my hand on his back, put a blanket on him, and finally would hang onto the top of the stall and sit on him.

About that time, Dad moved him to a pasture at the top of the hill toward Pullman. The Berea cows were being kept in that pasture, so sometimes I would find Tony and ride him bareback to round up the cows. One time just as I got on him he jumped a ravine. It caused me to fall, but Tony stopped and waited for me to get back on his back.

The first time Tony had a saddle on, Avis rode him (with Dad on Nellie) for a visit up Otterslide. They said he was as good as could be. The second time was when I took him back to pasture. I was at the foot of the hill when I met two young men. They had white straw hats. They threw the hats in front of Tony. He wheeled, and my saddle turned. I fell and broke my arm. I took Tony on to pasture without letting the boys know I was hurt. Then I went home and let Dad and Mr. Wagoner set my arm.

More Injuries

Surely you are getting tired of happenings at Berea. Suffice it just to say that Avis got her arm broken while riding an old buggy coasting down the road in Berea. I got one arm broken jumping over a cliff when they were turning off maple sugar at Uncle John Meatherell’s.

At still another time, a young fellow cut my shoulder; and Minter Fox, the veterinarian, sowed it up, which hurt like blue blazes. (I still have a scar on my back that looks like a lizard.)

At another time I was riding to Pullman, and Nellie jumped over the bank and a fence because she saw her first car. When cars first came around, they must have seemed like dragons to the horses. Most car drivers would stop when they met a horse, turn off the engine, and lead the horse or horses past the car.

Fishing at Berea

When the ground was too wet to work and we didn’t have other work we could do, Mom and Dad were real good about letting us have fun–like fishing.

Once we (Brady and I) went fishing in the same hole where Mom helped me catch my first fish, only this was on the road side of the river and two or three hundred yards farther up stream. We went down a steep bank from the road to a small flat where we could throw our baits into the water near an old brush pile. We began catching fish. Brady was catching them faster, probably because his pole was longer. I started stringing his fish, and he caught them as fast as I could get them strung. We had the stringer about full and decided that was all we could carry home. They were nice black and yellow sunfish and catfish. Just as we got up on the road, along came Uncle John Meatherell in his surrey pulled by two spirited horses. He took us home, and we were thankful.

Elmo’s Birth and The Last Year in Berea

August 31, 1913, was a day of many anxieties at our home. Aunt Sarah was there. So was Julia Meatherell, our cousin. Our family doctor was there. Everything was hustle and bustle, so Avis and I stayed out of the way, mostly outside of the house. I have heard the story over and over since–how Dr. Bee could not take care of Elmo when he was born because he was busy saving my mother. Aunt Sarah said she thought Julia and she could save him, and they did. They had to use a medicine dropper to feed him because he was so tiny. It was touch and go for both Mother and Elmo for quite a while. Elmo’s birth, Mom’s being sickly, and Brady’s going to Salem College caused Dad and Mom to decide to move to Salem.

Another reason for the move was our troubles with unfriendly neighbors–like the time Brady came home from school at Salem one evening. Since Dad was staying at school for a program, Brady and I decided to go to the program and come home with him.

As we went by Mike and Dinah Jett’s home, we noticed they were having company. When we got through the covered bridge, we heard loud hollering (“We’ll murder them!”) and a lot of swearing. We knew they meant us. We quickly gathered a good club and a handsized rock. As we went up the steep path (which was a short cut for walking toward Pullman), we planned to wait for these young men and have the downhill advantage. We tried that a number of times before we got to the top of the hill; but even though they were drunk, they wouldn’t fall for our trick. Our plan was for Brady to get them down and me to crack them over the head with the club.

When we started down the hill that would take us to Dad’s school, we traveled on the road. These men (there were five of them about Brady’s age, seventeen years old to twenty) came up to us, trying to shove each other against us, then backing off and rocking US. They didn’t get the fight started that way because we weren’t going to fight unless we had to.

Finally one of the largest ones of them took hold of Brady’s lantern and said he had lost his cap. (He had his cap on his head.) While they argued, two of them went past us and two stayed above. I tell you, I was scared and had my club tightly in my hand. Brady told Luther to let loose of the lantern or he would take him over the rock cliff (which was just off the road); he let loose. The two in front of us stepped aside, and they all left us. Probably Luther’s scare brought them to their senses. Anyway, we were mighty glad to get to Dad’s school.

Life at Salem: Boxing at Salem

Among my first memories at Salem are of boxing at the Pennsylvania Dormitory of Salem College. I guess we lived there while we waited to get in our home on top of the hill back of the college. Some of the boys who lived in the dormitory, including Ruben Brissey, got Otho Randolph and me into a boxing match. It was the first time I ever saw boxing gloves. Otho, my cousin and the chief of police’s son, gave me all I could handle; but I must have done fairly well.

About once a year Otho and I would have a lively boxing match until the summer we were sixteen. I remember that one extra well. We boxed in Uncle Joel’s yard at the mouth of Pennsylvania Avenue. Otho was giving me a mighty hard time, mostly because he kept stepping on my toes with the spikes on his running shoes. I got afraid he was going to get me, but Aunt Gertie came out and stopped us. We never boxed again, but I will tell you of our farming together at Uncle Al Glover’s later.

Of course, that was not all the boxing I did at Salem. Some of us boys stopped at Jennings Randolph’s home on the way back from church (probably a Junior Christian Endeavor meeting), and Jennings brought out his gloves. First Gene Lowther put them on with me. I happened to get him some pretty solid blows, so he quit, never to box with me again. (I never did see him box with anyone again.) Then Jennings boxed with me. We enjoyed many bouts for two years. We never tried to knock each other out, but he was a mighty worthy opponent.

When I started to Salem College Academy, I boxed often in the Rec Room. These were just for fun. But one with Offet Collins was for real. Offet told me he was going to stay with his father at a saw mill in Kentucky the next summer, so he wanted to practice fighting. I agreed to fight with him, even though I was fifteen and he was eighteen. He also had much longer arms than mine. Of course, we put gloves on. We sparred a little; then Offet rushed. He kept on rushing. I hit him, but he kept on. Finally he caught me an extra good one. I went sort of numb. I felt some other blows, first on one side and then the other. The next thing I knew I was wakening up on the floor. I got up and held him off for a while; then he did the same thing again. When I got up the next time, I stayed with him until he wanted to quit. Either the sting had left his blows, or I had learned how to keep them from landing.

This match with Offet probably helped me when I boxed Fay Bunnel, the carnival boxer, before a crowd at Salem. I was eighteen at that time. I only agreed to fight three rounds as a wrestling and boxing card. For some reason the wrestling didn’t happen, so they asked me to go six rounds with Fay. I agreed. About the second round Fay caught me a glancing blow in one eye. The gloves were six ounces and badly scarred. The blow almost blinded me the rest of that round. I had a hard time covering up. His blows came fast. They seemed to come from everywhere. He had a style I had never seen before; his gloves were down at his sides. I seemed to do better after that second round but was glad when the sixth was over. Fay had a good professional career.

My Twelfth Birthday

By the time I had my twelfth birthday, we had -moved into our own house on the top of the hill behind Salem College. Mom had a party for me with some ten or twelve of my friends. Gene Lowther, Jennings Randolph, Russell Jett, and Otho were among them. Among other things we tried to see who could chin himself the most. I could chin myself only once, while a lot of them could go up four times and some more. After that I developed the ability to chin-up more than eight times.

Scouting (Boy Scouts)

It wasn’t long after my twelfth birthday that Oris Stutler started a Boy Scout troop. My, but we enjoyed learning in the Scouts. Oris was a great Scout Master. Jennings saw that he got a Congressional Medal for it.

I remember two camping trips. In the summer of 1914, we camped on Ford’s Place four miles below West Union on the Middle Island Creek. It was a wonderful experience; but my buddy, Russell Jett, almost drowned while taking a swimming test. He was swimming beside me, and I saw him sink without saying a word. When I realized he wasn’t fooling, we pulled him out; and Oris brought him around.

The next summer we camped one mile below West Milford on the West Fork River. One of the things I remember most about the camping was the great food. I even learned to like rice that was cooked with water and sugar (I never liked it before). I also remember catching big frogs.

I meet Ruth Bond

.Another thing I remember about my scouting was meeting the prettiest girl I had ever seen–on the walk by the side of the College Administration Building. She had blond curls, lots of them, hanging over her shoulders. I was wearing my scout suit. I tipped my hat as nice as I knew how. It must have made some impression because I now have her as my own queen and mother of my seven children.

In the scouting I took a special interest in fire-building, cooking, and bird watching. I made many trips back up the ridge from our home, where I would watch and listen for new birds. When eating time came (I could only tell by my hunger because I had no watch), I would prepare a spot carefully and build a fire. Sometimes I had some kind of meat. More often it was a vegetable or just a sandwich to toast on a forked stick. I would wrap corn or potatoes in clay mud (we did not have aluminum foil). My birdwatching was more listening and stalking than watching. I kept listening for new songs or voices. Then I would stalk the bird that made the sound or sang the song until I could get a good look. Sometimes I found it was an old friend but just a different song. That led to my recognizing many birds by their voices.

Some Fights

During the first summer I was at Salem, I had some interesting experiences. One of them was after a ball game on top of the hill back of Jennings Randolph’s home. A gang of boys led by Tad Graham were playing, and my friends (Russell Jett and Dana Williams) and I joined them. After the game Tad and his friends grabbed me. They threw me down. I looked for help and saw Russell and Dana heading for safety and home. Tad said, “Let’s make him eat this cow manure.” (It was real dry.) I broke loose and grabbed a club that happened to be handy. I said, “The first SOB that gets near me is going to get this.” (I used the real words, which I had never done before.) They believed me and finally gave up and went home. I had a few other hard times because I was a country greenhorn.

Many times while on the Main Street I would pass a dray wagon hauling things to or from the railroad station. Mr. Davis and some of his three boys would be on it. The boys got to hollering, “Baby, Baby,” each time when they passed. It got annoying. One day I met one of them with an Ash boy. I just started swinging my fists. I backed up against the side of the Ford and Swiger store so they couldn’t get behind me. We were trading blows hard and fast, especially the Ash boy, when a man came along and parted us. That didn’t satisfy me or the Davis boys either.

Another day I met the three of them walking in front of the college. We started swinging. I remember college students gathered to watch on the lawn. I knew them, and many of them knew me because I went to the 7th grade there where they practice taught. I soon got the Davis boys separated. I would knock one into the street. Another would come; I would roll him. They soon had enough. Later they were good friends.

Tad Graham hadn’t had enough to suit him. One day Jennings brought his boxing gloves up to that same ball field for Tad and me to have it out. I beat him thoroughly because his arms were shorter than mine and he wouldn’t quit trying to clobber me. Tad was a friend from then on.

Working at Salem

I always had a job during the summer. The first summer after my 7th grade, I took office telephone calls for the Salem Block Company (they made cement blocks). Sometimes when they had train cars of sand or cement that had to be unloaded quickly, I would help with that. They had one man laborer besides the owners. I could handle more sand and as much cement bags as he did.

I did not wait until school was out to peddle bunches of onions. They were green onions from sets that Mom had brought from Denver, Colorado, when she and Uncle Waitie went there to see their brother, Uncle Elzie. These were called winter onions because they would be good eating-size by March. We put 5 or 6 onions in a bunch, and I sold them at 5 cents per bunch.

We had a hard time making a living. Dad taught mostly one-room schools and sold life insurance in the summer. His pay was not enough to keep us four children and Mother. Mother took in some washings to help. My father and I took filth jobs the summer after my 8th grade. Some of them were hacking jobs, and some were scythe jobs (like briers). I did not have to worry about copperheads. Dad could distinguish a copperhead smell as well as I could a bird song. Once when we were hacking brush on Dr. Davis’s farm on Tarkill, he said, “There’s a copperhead around.” We looked for a likely place and spied a big rotten stump. When we got it turned over, we killed two big rusty ones.

The next year was my first year away from Salem College for schooling. I went to Salem High School as a freshman. Among many exciting things, about the last of February, I took the measles. With other subjects that I did all right in, I had Latin, which kept me hustling to understand. These measles kept me out of school two weeks. Mother taught me to make flowers out of crepe paper and to tat so I could pass the time. Maybe I should have been studying Latin. When I got back, they had learned about verbs; and I was having an almost impossible job to catch up.

Along came the offer for high school boys to leave school to work on a farm to produce food for England and France during their war with Germany. I jumped at the chance. I went to Uncle Al and Aunt Martha Glover’s dairy farm on Route 23 one mile north of Salem. I had never milked a cow, and all milking was by hand then. The first morning at four o’clock Aunt Martha (she was not a real Aunt but acted like a sweet one) called, so Uncle Al and I went to the barn. While Uncle Al milked seven cows, I milked six. I was mighty proud, but my fingers were almost too tired to hold my knife and fork while I ate breakfast when we got to the house.

There was lots of good healthy work to do on the farm. We prepared the ground and planted the corn, harvested the meadows, and cut filth. If it rained, there were always things to do in the barn, like cleaning up and caring for the machinery.

One very hot evening I heard a buzzing while getting the cows out of the woods. After listening and watching a while, I located a bee tree. The entrance was about thirty feet up in the main trunk of a red oak. When I told Dad about it the next Sabbath on one of my weekly visits, he planned to come over and help me cut it. Uncle Al agreed to our cutting it. We sawed it down with a cross-cut saw (there were no power saws then). When it fell, the tree split lengthwise, leaving the honey entirely open as pretty as could be. The bees did not think we should take their honey. After burning some rags, we managed to get four water buckets of honey and a few stings.

I learned a lot about farming from Uncle Al, and Aunt Martha fed me so very well. One unusual thing I learned to eat was clabber milk from her cold spring house. The milk would be soured into a solid called clabber. When it was in my glass, I would take my knife or fork and chop it up some–then drink and smack my lips. Try this some day. You may find a drink much better than Coke.

Another drink I liked especially well was buttermilk. Often I enjoyed a supper of buttermilk and corn or light bread. Now, 1981, Grandma doesn’t churn; but she makes buttermilk by putting about four tablespoons of vinegar in a quart of milk or powdered milk (or until it starts to curd as you stir it–it might take more than the four tablespoons). I am having some buttermilk and cornbread flapjacks on this my 79th birthday for dinner or supper–or maybe both.

After school was out, my cousin Otho Randolph came to work with me. One of our biggest jobs was the harvesting. I had never done anything but help build shocks and ride the horse to haul them in. This summer I helped build the shocks and pitched it up to Uncle Al while Otho hauled it to us. It might interest you to know that my pay started at $10 for the first month and then raised to $20 per month.

Flinderation School: I was to write insurance, but it did not work out as the insurance men fought us both fair and foul. So I got the school at Flinderation that winter. When the district superintendent proposed my name as the teacher, one of the board turned around and asked if I thought I could hold Flinderation down. I told him I did. The fact is I thought I could hold anything down, but I have had some doubts since. When virtually all of the patrons, as well as the children, do everything they can to be mean, it is hard to make a success in any school, as I found in Taylor County a few years later. Flinderation proved to be a very nice school. Every one seemed to be entirely satisfied and wanted me to teach it again. I thought they would ask the board for me, and they thought I would ask; so I did not get it.

I got a job of Uncle Preston the next summer. He was building a house, and I had all kinds of work to do. I can tell you he was hard to please. I then worked at other places after I quit him.

Black Lick School,  A Bout with Rheumatism: I taught at Black Lick in Doddridge County this winter. I felt miserable most of the late fall, and by Thanksgiving I felt so bad that I let Brady teach a day or more as it was vacation for him. By the first of the next week, I was down with rheumatism. For two weeks I lay on my back and could move but one foot a little bit and neither hand. They fed me for five weeks because I could not get either hand to my mouth. The pain, at times, was terrible—but not all the time, for we found a remedy that would stop it in an hour. (Ring a woolen cloth out of very hot water with a tablespoon of Epsom salts for every quart of water, changing it as soon as it begins to cool. This may be of use to someone.) I did not get to go back to school till late in January; even then I felt miserable. This was not a very interesting school, for the most of them were not very bright students .

I did not get steady work the next summer for two reasons: I was not very able to work, and work was very scarce. I got some work about town and went out in the country and did some harvesting.

This winter of 1916-17 I taught at Buckeye, three miles out of Salem. This was a fairly good school, and enjoyed it fine.

Working for Virgil in New York, 1917

When school was out, I went up to New York to work for Virgil as I feared work would be scarce in Salem. I started about March 20. I had a cold when I left; by the time I got there, it had developed into grippe. I was not able to do anything for two weeks. We put out a crop of oats, about ten acres of potatoes, and an acre of corn for ears. Virgil had a bottom that would mature corn; but oh, it was so hard and flinty. Virgil told me later that the acre produced 125 bushels of corn.

Soon after I got there, World War I started. Potatoes were over $2 a bushel; flour went out of sight, but it soon went down some. They asked everyone to plant all the potatoes they could as they would be needed. Virgil feared there would be so many raised that they would not be worth raising. He need not have been scared; they started off in the fall at $1 a bushel and soon went up to $2. In the spring they went still higher. The farmers, both grain and stock, made big money during the war. The next year the price went way down and did not go back up on farm products until about 1940—twenty years later. I’ll tell you, it was hard times for the farmers. No wonder the farmers rose up in their might and crushed the party, in 1932, that had ruined them and that it has not returned to power in twenty years—but I am getting in ahead of my story, so I had best go back.

I worked fairly hard that summer but did not hurt myself. I did not get wages like others were getting because I began work before the war started. Elizabeth was at Virgil’s that summer. We had a great time together. She was a fine friend and did everything she could to cheer me up when I’d get home sick and lonesome. Vida came out a while that summer and was very nice to me, which I will never forget.

We had a near neighbor who had bad spells with his heart, which scared the family very much. They would come after Virgil in haste, and he would go over and stay for hours sometimes. He was a very good neighbor. One day they came after Virgil at noon, and he wasn’t at home. So I went and stayed till he got better. They told Virgil I was very helpful, which made me feel good. It is really very good to feel you are useful.

Mary was a fine motherly woman who was as good as any could be. Winston did nothing of any amount for he was not strong and did not dare do much.

Back to Salem, Fall 1917

I came back to Salem the last of August so I could go to Teachers’ Institute and got steady work at three times the pay I was getting. I was very glad, for we needed the money very much. I got a lot of work at the lumber yard.

I taught at Dewey Town that winter. It was one of the coldest, iciest winters one need ever want to see. It was a very rainy fall; in fact, once or twice it would rain till I would be wet from my waist down. My rubbers and shoes would be full, and I would wring out my stockings and put them back on. By 4 p.m. my clothes would be about dry; by the time I got home, I would be wet as ever. Between Christmas and New Years it got very cold. For six weeks it was seldom above zero and as low as 17 below. Most of the time the snow was covered with ice, so you were constantly in danger of falling and crippling yourself. I boarded over there the last week of the severe cold weather. All my eighth grade got promoted, which was very good.

When school was out, I got a job on a farm at Glovers and Kings for the summer. They were very good to me except Mrs. King, who hated me, and there was no love lost. She had two girls whom she was trying to bring up to be as big snobs as she was.

I taught at Flinderation again this year. The flu broke out after I had taught a short time, and all schools were closed for about six weeks.

Railroad Work at Grafton I got a job working on the railroad at Grafton. A train came to Salem at 6:45 a.m. and was supposed to come back at 6:45 p.m. We got pay from the time we were supposed to leave Salem until we did get back. We got time and a half after 10 hours, and we always got 11 hours. Once we got 13 besides the extra time. This wasn’t the worst of it; they wouldn’t let us do half work. You wonder why? The railroad companies were running the railroad for the government, and they wanted to make it cost the government so much the government would have to give it back to the railroad companies.

I will give one example of the way they worked. One morning when we got into Grafton, we found that McAdo (the big boss) was there, and he was mad. He told them there were men enough on the job to have done three times the work they had done. That was really an understatement, but I suppose he didn’t want to be too hard on them. The super came out and told us to get tie hooks and go to carrying ties. He said, “Any one found loafing while the government men are here will be fired.” Of course, that meant when they left we could loaf all we pleased.

The men began to carry ties, three hooks, six men to a tie. I was left without any hook or buddy. There was one hook and two men extra, so I told them to catch back a little from the end and I would carry the back end. I could carry my end, but it was heavy. The second tie we carried a boy ran up and grabbed a hold. On the third tie a man came, too. This made me so mad that I let loose, and my end of the tie dropped to the ground. They were pulling down instead of helping. Just then the super came back and told us to carry some old ties. I started for them, and three more came after me. When I got there, I tipped a tie on end, put it on my shoulder, and walked off with it. Several began to curse and rave. I stopped and told them that I didn’t object to help in carrying ties but I’d be hanged if I’d carry the ties and drag two or three with it. Some of them talked saucy, but no one laid hands on me, so it soon died down.

Sometimes they would go over into town and stay for hours. One boy from Salem slipped out at noon and didn’t come back till 3 p.m. They fired him, but he came back the next day and worked right ahead. I’ll bet he got full pay for the day they fired him. It was the greatest swindle I ever saw. I got over $4 a day for six to eight hours play; the rest of the time we put in on the train, part of the time going and part of the time on switches waiting for a train to pass us.

A few weeks after I got my pay, a man came to me and asked if I had got all my pay. I told him I got what they gave me. He said there was more at the depot. I went down and got enough to make me about $5 a day. This was the best job I had ever had.

Teaching Again

About the first of November I began teaching again. This was the great flu year of 1918. I had a very nice school, but it got quite small and they sent the scholars to Bristol the next year. I never taught in Harrison County again. The chief reason for this was that the board of Ten Mile decided about this time to hire no one unless he had as good as a Normal certificate.

The summer of 1919 I worked on Evander’s farm for Brady and Ashby and for Wardner Davis on some city jobs. This was a fairly good summer, but not as good as I had a couple years later.

Teaching in Ritchie Again: I had no school until late in the fall, when they sent for me from Ritchie to teach the Upper Otter Slide School. This was a new school; the district was formed and the house built late that fall. The Moonrise School house had burned down the fall before, and the school had been taught in an empty farm house. This fall they got the board to cut off part of Upper Otter Slide and a part of this district, build a house, and form a new district on the head of Otter Slide with me as teacher. I found it one of the best schools I had ever taught, although they said it had been no good at all the winter before. In fact, the large girls told me they had acted so badly that they were ashamed of themselves every time they saw their teacher that summer.

There were 26 scholars, made up of the following families: 7 from Lee Campbells, 6 from Port Campbells, 2 from Jack Hudkins, 6 from Elva Maxsons, 3 from Dow Maxsons, 1 from Art Brisseys, and 1 I can’t remember. One of the Campbells and two or three of Elva’s girls went through high school, and Maynard went one year.

I stayed at Uncle E. J,’s and worked nights and mornings and Sundays to pay for my board. It was a very good winter except Jennie had a very severe sick spell. I went to see her and found her getting better. A few weeks later Conza said a friend from Salem told them that Dr. Bond said she was going with T. B., so I went home to see about it. I went to see Dr. Bond, and she said there was no sign of T. B., which made me feel very good.

The first trip I made in a pouring rain. I was wet from head to toe. I waded several creeks to my knees. I did not know when the train ran, so I walked very fast and was tired when I got to Tollgate. I had to wait an hour. The station master said I was the wettest, worst bedraggled man he ever saw. He built up a good fire, which dried me out a little. I got quite cold on the train, but it had no bad effects.

Before school was out, the scholars got up a petition to the trustees asking them to hire me next year. I told them before I left that I would try to come back. Some of them were in Salem to a church meeting and came to see me about teaching, and I told them I would. But before time for me to go, Jennie got quite sick and had to go to the hospital for an operation. The surgeon said she would be no better until she had another operation in about a year, so I couldn’t go. I went three years later and taught two terms, but I will write of it later.

Selling Books in Pennsylvania: That summer I sold books in Pennsylvania. I went up there with three other Salem boys. I did quite well in the small towns but could do nothing in the country. You couldn’t sell a $5.00 gold piece to a Pennsylvania farmer for $4.50. They were the sorest, worst disgruntled, sourest people I ever saw. They said the young people had all gone to the factories; they had to pay two prices for anything they bought and could not get half price for what they raised. They were just mad. This was in 1920.

Before the season was nearly over I had to come home, for Jennie was quite sick. She got some better so I could go out for a few days. She soon got worse and had to go to the hospital for an operation. The surgeon performed only part of this then, and she had to go back for a second operation a year later.

Buckeye School and Picking Apples: I taught at Buckeye that winter and had a very nice school. Before the school began, I worked in the lumber yard for Evander a while. Then he sent me to pick apples. He had a man picking peaches that he thought was the fastest picker in the country. He got the peaches picked by noon and came to pick apples that afternoon. I was then 48 years old, but I still thought I could pick as many apples as the next one. So I went to work.

Now the trees were medium sized young ones, loaded down with fine, large, smooth Ben Davis apples. The Ben Davis is not the best eating apple; but when it comes to picking and filling a bushel measure, they are hard to beat. I had plenty of bushel boxes handy to fill, so I went to work. I would stand on the ground and fill the picking bag I had over my shoulder. Once I wanted to see how soon I could fill a bushel box; so I got under a limb that I thought had at least a bushel of apples that I could reach easily, looked at my watch, and went to work. In just two minutes I had a bushel box of apples picked (pretty fair, wasn’t it?). When we quit, I found I had picked three to his two bushels all afternoon. Pretty good, wasn’t it?

This was on Friday before my school began. Alexander asked me to pick apples for him Sunday, so I went out and worked for him all day but did not get done. He asked me if I could find some way to finish them, so I started to school early and picked a while and then picked after school was out. That way I finished picking them.

I saw Elmus Bee one evening as I came from school. He told me he had picked all the apples that were easy to get at and that I could have the rest if I would gather them. So I did and got several bushels of fine apples which lasted till way in the winter, for which we were very thankful.

Cutting Filth and Blackberry Picking: It was in the spring of 1922 that I began to do a lot of work for Lee Davis. I hoed some corn and did some other work for him. Then he wanted me to cut a big field of filth for him where there were lots of blackberries. I was to have all the blackberries on the patch I took to cut. We agreed on what I was to have for cutting a part of the field, and I picked the first day of July. I found I could pick six gallons of berries a day, which was about all I could carry into town, four miles away, and I could get 65 cents a gallon. I soon asked for more filth to cut so I could have more berries to pick. We agreed on a price (a little too cheap), but I was to have all the berries on the entire field. I picked every day and carried into town until my arms ached all the time. I would carry a three-gallon pail in my right hand, a two-gallon pail in my left hand, and a one-gallon pail fastened to the suspenders of my overalls. My arms would ache that winter from carrying my dinner pail, but it paid. I cut the filth on the whole field, which with the berries I picked made me about $100, which isn’t hay!

I taught the Long Run school that winter, and they all wanted me back. But a girl slipped to the board and got it away from me.

The next summer I cut the same field of filth of Lee, built a lot of woven wire fence for him, and worked for some others. So I had another busy summer and a fairly prosperous one,

Trouble in a Taylor County School: I had more trouble getting a school than I had ever had, but I got one in Taylor County and never taught near Salem again. In fact, I never spent a winter there again. This was the hardest school to teach I had ever struck. The children were taught, the most of them, that they had a right to do as they pleased. I only saw two of the trustees when I went to contract for the school. They told me they had been having no school for several years and that they wanted me to teach it and see that they behaved. When I saw the other trustee, I found that he was a ruffian and didn’t want the children controlled.

I got along fairly well until the first of December, when I found the children in the house and the door locked. They refused to open the door, so I went to the trustees (I boarded with one of them). They said that they thought the children should have a little fun. I told them they said they wanted me to teach the school and let no one else run it. They said that they forgot to tell me that the children were to have some fun before Christmas and lock me out. (If they had told me about that, I would have told them to keep their school.) The next morning they did not try to keep me out, so I went on with the school.

The week before Christmas, I found the door fastened again. That evening the trustee where I boarded and I went to see the other trustee, a very nice old man by the name of Taylor. He said that he thought it was all right for the children to have some fun and that they had been locking the teachers out for fifty years. My reply was, “Mr. Taylor, when you were first married, you would get on a horse and Mrs. Taylor would get on behind you when you went anywhere. But now you have an auto.” Mrs. Taylor was in the kitchen listening, and she spoke up, “That’s so, and you men had better go over there and stop those children acting the fool.” They came over the next morning and found the door with one end of a rail against the stove and the other against the door. They opened the door and told the children not to lock the door anymore.

I gave them a treat at the end of that week (they knew I was going to treat them when they locked the door the second time). I hoped that would stop it, but it didn’t. The other trustee put the children up to being mean and came to the school house after school was out and told me I didn’t have sense enough to teach school and that I must never punish any of his children in any way.

Shortly after this the spelling class his girl was in missed every word in their lesson. They didn’t try to spell but would look at each other and grin when they missed. So I told them they would try it again in the morning. It was the same in the morning, so I told them to stay in at recess. The girl said her father told her not to stay in. I told her she could stay in or take her books and go home and stay till she would mind. Just then her father came roaring in. He dared me outside (he was about 35 and I was 50) and said he would be there and get me that night and that he would follow me till he did get me.

I called the two trustees in, and they told me to have him arrested. I dismissed school and went to Grafton and took out two warrants for him, one for assault and one for breach of peace. The squire told me if I could prove what I told him, he would step on him. When I left he told me to go back to my school and take care of myself. I asked if he meant any way, and he said, “Any way.”

I had known I was going to have trouble, so I told the trustees the week before that I was going to quit, for the children would tell any lie. They said they wouldn’t believe anything the children told, but I told them someone else would try the case so I thought I would quit. When I got home, I told them I had quit. Ashby was teaching out in the country, and I told him when he came in that I had quit. He told me, “Dad, you’re not quitting. You have taught the worst schools in the country, and you managed them. You are not quitting this one.” I said, “All right, kid, if you say so, I’ll go ahead. But there will be trouble.” And there was. Just the same I have always been very glad that he told me to go back and that I did.

McDonald was the man’s name (this was the second McDonald I had had trouble with in school, and I could not trust one of that name as far as I could throw a bull by its tail). He did not come back to the school house, but he went over to Mr. Taylor’s and bragged about what he had done. He said I had started the ball rolling and he intended to keep it rolling and that he was going to follow me till he did get me. In fact, he told everything he did, so Mr. Taylor was the only witness I needed. But I took the other trustee and his boy, 12 years old. McDonald took his mother to go his bond, if necessary, his children as three witnesses, and the best lawyer in Grafton. We also got a good lawyer.

I told what happened, and Mr., Taylor told what he knew. When they cross-questioned me, they asked if McDonald whispered. When they questioned the boy, he got along well till they asked if the defendant was mad. This stumped him for a minute. Then he said. “He did not whisper.” When we rested, the lawyer moved to quash the warrant. The squire said, “No.” The lawyer said we had not proved what they expected, so they would have no witnesses. The squire said he would render his verdict. He turned to McDonald and said, “You have done entirely wrong, and I won’t stand for it. I will fine you $25 and bind you over to keep the peace for a year and a day under a $200 bond.” So you see, it didn’t pay him to get extra smart. I finished the school without any more trouble, but I feel it was one of my poorest terms.

Why This School was Called Robinson: I think it might be well to tell the story of how this school came to be called Robinson School. A man by the name of Robinson and his wife lived in a house near the school. They got in debt and borrowed some money of McDonald, the father of the man I had trouble with. Robinson gave him a deed for his farm with the agreement if they could pay the money back within a year that they could redeem it. They scraped and saved and got the money. When they went to redeem the farm, he said, “No, I have the deed for the farm, and I am keeping it.”

McDonald lost a dog and accused Robinson of killing it. Every time they met, he would throw it up to Robinson about killing his dog. One day Robinson said to him, “The next time you say dog to me, I’ll kill you.”

Sometime before the year was up, McDonald came down and ordered Robinson to move out. Robinson told him he would move out the day the year was up and not a day sooner. McDonald came down the morning he was to move and found him loading up to move. “Well,” McDonald said, “I reckon I can keep a dog now.” Robinson got his gun and shot him dead.

They sent to Grafton for the officers. When they came, Robinson was in the house and refused to let them in. He told one of his friends who was with the officers that when he was ready they could have him, but not till he was ready. He also said he had a rifle, a shot gun, and a revolver in the house; and if they thought he couldn’t shoot, to put a penny on top of a post 25 yards away. In a half minute the penny was shot off. They waited around till evening. Soon after the lights went on, they heard a shot. They went in and found he had shot himself. A man may be so annoyed that he will do awful things.

Two Pupils in Robinson School: I believe I will write a little about two of my pupils in the Robinson School before I forget it. The family where I boarded moved away about two months before school was out, so I boarded with her brother’s family the rest of the term. The name was Stark. There were two little girls—Ruth was 8, and Jinnie was 6 about the middle of the winter. Jinnie did not come to school until the last two months. She may have known her letters; if she did, that was all. Neither of the girls came in bad weather, for it was a long trip and Ruth was not strong.

One rainy day when I came from school, Mrs. Stark told me Ruth had tested Jinnie to see how many words she knew at sight anywhere. I told her about 100. She said Jinnie knew 125. Pretty good for a six-year-old girl in less than two months! I think she was a little above average in ability, and she really tried. Ruth was a very sweet little girl. She wrote for two or three years but finally quit. I think I just forgot to answer one of her letters.

Summer Work in Salem: I came home Monday evening, finished my school reports, and went to work for Guy Davis on the school house at noon Tuesday. I leveled off the dirt floor in the basement, cut two holes for sewer pipes through the 18-inch wall (Guy said it was the hardest concrete he ever saw), and laid a concrete floor. I had worked on this school the year before when they were building it.

After finishing the school house for Lee and Guy Davis, I went to work on farms and did not lose any time for rain for six weeks. One rainy morning at about 8 a.m. Lee raised the window of the school (it was right below our house) and wanted to know if I wanted to work. I went down and cleaned up and carried lumber for them. Then for some time, whenever it rained, they would call me down. Then for a while I got no work., Then one Sabbath evening Guy came to me and asked if I could work the next day. He said a man had promised to come Friday but didn’t, so he was through with him. After that I did all the common labor for them. Besides the other work I did, I got a job teaching some children at night who had not passed their grade. I made over $1200 that year, which was a little the best I had ever done up to that time.

Besides the Central School building, I had also worked on the East School building. In 1920 I had worked for several weeks on a glass plant at Bristol. I am telling this to show I had worked on a number of big buildings in Salem. I am sorry to say I was not the contractor or head man on any of these jobs, but I did a lot of common labor on each of them.

My Last Teaching in Ritchie County—1923-1925

The summer of 1923 went by rapidly. In the late summer I was offered the Upper Otter Slide School, so I was fixed for the winter. I boarded with Guy and Mamie that winter. I had plenty to eat and was treated very nicely. In fact, I had a very nice winter. Harold Brissey, Jesse Kelley and some of the other boys would go out hunting at night. We caught several possums and a few skunks. When I left in the spring, the patrons petitioned the board to hire me again. All but one of them signed the petition, and he went to the board and told them he wanted me. They hired me, so I was all set for the term of 1924-25.

This year I did not find as much work about Salem as I had been doing.

As there was a big gas line being laid in Ritchie, I went out there the 4th of July and worked for Elva till they got the line near enough to walk back and forth. I got $4.08 a day, and my board cost $l.35 a day. This saved me some, as I worked for Elva on Sundays. Digging ditches is hard work, but I liked it fine except for a few days when it was so terribly hot. One day I had to go to the shade for over an hour, but they did not dock me any.

I dug in the ditch till we got to the center, where the Italians were supposed to meet us but didn’t. Then I went back and filled in till a mile beyond the center. Our super said he could take 100 Americans and lay more line than 175 Tallies. I finished the job just before time for school to begin.

Jack offered to let me live in a vacant house he had. This was a real good four-room house with a bed and bedding which he said I could use. He didn’t charge me anything for it. He also gave me some beans and apples, which he said he would not pick. Of course, they were not high quality, but they were good enough for me. I surely enjoyed them very much. I helped Willie Jett fill his silo, and he let me have a lot of corn beans. So I had beans for a long time.

I will mention right here that Jack, May, and Ova were very nice to me, and I won’t forget them.

Elmo Stayed With Me and Attended School: I stayed by myself and did my own cooking until I went home to vote. When I returned, Elmo came with me. We had a grand time. Jesse Kelley and I had been hunting some, so we went out in a short time after Elmo came. I could see that Jesse did not like very well for Elmo to go, but I would not go without Elmo. About 11 p.m. the dogs treed something, and we had no ax. Elmo said to give him the lantern and he would go to Jesse’s (which was about one-half mile away) and get an ax. He was back in a little while. After that Jesse was glad for Elmo to go every time. We had lots of fun and got lots of possums. We had a few to eat. Elmo enjoyed them very much.

The girls liked Elmo and got along with him just fine, but the boys were inclined to be jealous of him because he could beat them at almost any of their games. When they played “hide and seek,” he would lie down and be still. They would pass by him, and he could come right in. When they played “keep away” with the volley ball, he could beat them, which made some of the Campbell boys mad. They tried to do Elmo the same, but they didn’t have any success.

When we went home for Christmas, Elmo wasn’t sure if he would come back. When the time came, he was anxious to go back. We bought a quarter of beef of John Meathrell and had beef about all winter. We bought potatoes of someone there and plenty of groceries from the store. We lived fine, and it didn’t cost nearly as much as they (Jennie and Dow) asked for board for me only. They wanted $20 per month, which at that time seemed rather high.

I did not have quite so good a school this winter, as several of the boys decided they were too big to study or behave. The most of them did well, and several got diplomas from the eighth grade.

This finished my teaching in Ritchie (24 winter terms). In fact, I have been in Ritchie but little since the spring of 1925.

Summer Work at Salem—1925

This summer I took a job of filth cutting of Lee Davis. Before I finished it, Leonard Jett came over and wanted to help. He had been working for the city and got his hand badly mashed. He wanted to work some to get able to do a day’s work, and then go in with me and be able to make something. I took him in. After finishing that job, we helped Alexander in his hay. We took a job of cutting four acres of hay with scythes and also helped him put up all his hay.

Work was getting scarce, and we had heard that they were going to build a concrete basement for the Ritchie Church. We found what the sand and stone would cost and what the lumber and labor would cost. When we got there, we found Amos Brissey thought it could be built for less than we could build it. I made a bid, but I have always been so glad we did not get it. There was a big racket over it, and there would have been a much worse one if we had got it. And I hate a racket.

Aunt Sarah was the widow of Ellsworth Fitz Randolph, Papa’s much loved brother. Uncle Ellsworth was killed in a logging accident in the woods when their only son, Blondie, was very young. Aunt Sarah was a very courageous and enterprising woman who made a good life for herself and her son until he left home for college. Blondie had a successful career as a teacher and administrator in West Virginia’s secondary schools. Aunt Sarah moved to a home near us in Salem for the last years of her life.

The farm was across the Hughes River from the Asa Fitz Randolph farm where Papa grew up. A swinging bridge for walking crossed the river but fording the river was the only way to reach the farm on horseback or by buggy. The road from the river to the farm was rocky and rough.

Uncle John and Aunt Callie Meathrell’s farm bordered on Aunt Sarah’s. They communicated by shouting across the hollow between them.

Looking back over the years, I feel very privileged to have lived on a West Virginia hill farm without telephone, running water or electricity. Water came from a dug well reached with a bucket on a windlass. Kerosene lamps provided light at night and heating and cooking was done with wood burning stoves. Two horses were the mode of transportation and power to work the land. Roxie was Aunt Sarah’s horse–dependable and slow. Blondie prided himself on his horsemanship and rode a spirited horse, Rowdy. I enjoyed many happy rides around the farm on Roxie.

Aunt Sarah “mothered” me perfectly. Being a “Mama’s boy”, I’m sure I was homesick some of the time. She was a happy person who often sang as she worked. One song she sang is still fresh in my memory:
Will you always love me, darling, as you did once long ago,
As we sat beneath the maple on the hill.

The words of another song she taught me, “Sleep on, Lazy John” escape me now.

The food Aunt Sarah cooked from a variety of farm produce was delicious. I do remember not caring for a dish she prepared called “thickened milk”.

Going to church on Sabbath by horse and buggy was a unique experience. The church was on Otterslide, probably a three or four mile trip. I was interested in the stomping and whinneying of the horses tied up outside during the worship service. Going to church was the social event of every week.

Aunt Sarah took me to the funeral for Mrs. Kildow. I had never attended a funeral or seen a corpse. The grief expressed in the funeral was troubling to me. They sang the hymn, Nearer My God, to Thee” and it has never been on my list of favorite hymns since.

In Salem during my childhood it was the custom when there was a death in a family, to have the body in the home until the funeral–and often the funeral was in the home. A large black crepe bow on the door of the home signified that a death had occurred. I felt awed and mystified seeing the crepe on a door.

Back to the summer with Aunt Sarah, it was fun to visit Uncle John and Aunt Callie’s home and play with Carl and Lowell Meathrell. They were second cousins (Rupert Meathrell’s sons) about my age. Their home was in Clarksburg where I sometimes visited them. (My first bath in a bathtub was in their home.) Some years ago I met Lowell by accident at a small airport in Indianapolis, Indiana. He has had a career in aviation.

Once Uncle John sent me to get water from the spring at the bottom of the hill below their house. When I was delayed, watching frogs in the spring, Uncle John called, “Elmo” I answered, ‘I’m coming” and he replied, “Yes, so is Christmas but it’s a long way off!”

Judd was Aunt Sarah’s big, shepherd-like dog. He became my constant companion. While hunting with Judd by the brook below the barn, he chased a chipmunk into rocks where I was able to pull it out by the tail. Fortunately for me, he grabbed the chipmunk quickly, doubtless saving me from being bitten. My excitement knew no bounds when I rushed to the house to tell the story and show the dead chipmunk. Afflicted as I was by stammering, my telling of the adventure bogged down uncontrollably with a series of “tail-tail-tail-tail”. From that time on when I would stammer Aunt Sarah and Blondie would stop me by repeating, “tail-tail-tail-tail”. It was painful speech therapy for me, but it worked. One can say that was a “water-shed” experience in my life and I am most grateful for the help they gave me.

An exciting experience with Blondie comes to mind. He and I were crossing the river at the ford in a buggy when the horse reared up in the buggy shafts. Blondie pulled back sharply on the reins and the horse fell on his back in the water. I was very frightened but no serious harm was done. (Blondie had taken the Barry course in training horses and was something of an expert.)

You can imagine the stories and experiences I shared with family and friends on my return to Salem from Aunt Sarah’s farm. I cherish those memories and want to share them with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

These lines written by Ann and Jane Taylor (1782-1866) certainly speak for me. For, reviewing the trauma of my birthing, it is entirely credible to say, “but for the grace of God, I would not have survived.”

I was born August 31, 1913–on a Sunday afternoon at six o’clock. I was the sixth child of Alois Preston and Jenny Mae (Sutton) Fitz Randolph. (Two brothers had died in early childhood.) The Ritchie County, West Virginia hamlet of Berea was home to my family. Part of the house was built of logs, I have been told. Mamma was attended during ray premature birth by two doctors, Aunt Sarah Randolph and cousins Conza and Draxie Meathrell.

Interesting accounts from my nativity have come through the years, some of which I will record here but cannot verify. Cousin Conza asked the Doctor, “What shall we do with the baby?” and he replied, “Never mind the baby, just take care of the mother.” How thankful I am that Conza did care for me by putting me in the oven. (I’ve wondered if the stove burned wood or gas?) My birth statistics include weight of three pounds (in a shoe box with cotton batting). A tea cup would fit over my head and a ring could be placed over my wrist. Papa reports in his autobiography that I was not fed for a day, at which time I took a bottle of Eskey baby food and fell asleep. In the first week I gained five ounces.

I understand that Conza and Draxie were given the privilege of naming me. They had recently read the novel, Saint Elmo, and so passed the name to me, sans the “Saint”.

Mama has told me a neighbor friend came to visit and, seeing me, said, “Jenny, he has pretty eyes”. After the visitor left, Mama cried. It was several weeks before Mama recovered from giving me birth.

On April 1, 1914 our family moved from Berea to Salem, West Virginia. Brother Brady, seventeen years old, would attend Salem College Academy. Ashby, twelve, and Avis, ten, would attend the college teacher training elementary school. I was seven months old when we moved to Salem.

Our first home was high on the hill north and east of the college. My parents organized a group of neighbors who pooled orders for stable groceries from Sears, Roebuck Company. (Today it would be called a neighborhood coop.) The order from the catalog came by railroad freight so was slow in arriving. There was excitement when the orders were opened, sorted and delivered. I remember our family getting a keg of salt cod, along with other staples like flour, sugar, etc. Sometimes we got “store bought” cookies topped with pink marshmallow, when we could afford them.

I must have been four years old when we moved to the house next to Salem College. (The house stood on the exact present location of the Senator Jennings Randolph Library.)

How blessed my life has been through the years by the influences of Salem College to 1935 when I graduated from college. From 1917-18 on I idolized the college students. The coaches and athletes were my heroes. When the students tired of my visits to the campus they would say to me, “Go home an tell your mother she wants you.” I developed a romantic attachment to Byrl Coffindaffer, a popular girl on campus. When sister Avis played on the Academy girl’s basketball team, they chose me as their team mascot.

As a small child, I spent many hour leafing through the Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs fantasizing acquiring many items. I believed the teams of horses came with the harnesses shown in the harness section. A circus of cutouts pasted on cardboard, complete with tent, was fun to play with. And Mama’s spools from her sewing were as good as boughten toys.

Two happenings in Salem–one in fall, the other in summer–remain vivid in memory. The autumn cattle drive down the main street to the railroad shipping point was high excitement for a small boy. Picture the street in front of our house a sea of bawling cows with every now and then one escaping from the herd into the lawns and beyond. The drivers on horseback were the nearest to cowboys we ever saw.

There were years when summer brought a caravan of Gypsies to Salem. With them came a high level of community excitement and anxiety. They traveled by horse and buggy though I remember times when they had automobiles. They would set up a camp west of town and then return to the stores to shop. Their reputation for stealing caused local merchants to be suspicious and wary.

About the year I started to school my folks bought a house on the hill across Pennsylvania Avenue west of the college. There were forty-eight steps up to the house from the street and climbing those stairs, often two-at-a time, was great exercise through the years.

The house had four rooms of about equal size plus a sleeping porch and a very small toilet room. A porch extended along the east side of the house and there was a good cellar under the south east corner of the house. (We took baths in a wash tub in front of the kitchen stove.) The south side of the house was on concrete block pillars four or five feet above the ground, allowing cold air to circulate under the house. Because the house was not insulated and there were no storm windows, it was difficult to keep warm in winter. Frost was often caked around the door and intricate frost patterns covered the windows. My bed in the sleeping porch would be cold at night so Mama would heat an iron on the kitchen stove, wrap it in cloths or newspaper and put it in the bed for warmth. That made going to bed in winter bearable.

Once Ashby was in bed with flu and Mama put a hot iron at his feet. When the wrapping came off and his feet touched the hot iron, he exclaimed, “Hell’s fire” I was shocked but now realize his response was appropriate.

Our home was heated and lighted with natural gas. There was a stove in each room and the fragile gas mantle lights burned with a hissing sound. Furnishings in the house were basic and minimal. A piano was the exception. Avis played the piano and Mama a played a small accordion well.

I had a special tree-seat in the large oak tree at the head of the steps leading to our house. There I whiled away many hours and the swing in the same tree offered breath-taking sweeps out over the steep hillside.

Most of the sidewalks in Salem when I was a child were built of wood. It was common practice to walk carefully on them saying, “Step on a crack, you break your Mother’s back. Step on a nail, you put your Dad in jail.” I learned to walk a two inch steel rod used as the railing on the walk approaching our house. That is close to walking a tight rope.

When I was six years old I started to first grade in the college teacher training school in Huffman Hall. Miss Perine was an excellent teacher. (She later married attorney Oscar Andre, an outstanding Salem College alumnus.) Miss Childers was my second grade teacher and equally outstanding. Although I was left-handed, I was pressured to write with my right hand. Today’s teachers would not consider this a good thing to do.

The thrill of the first day at school is memorable. Meeting the teacher, being assigned a seat and reacting to the other children around me was both exhilarating and frightening. It is my impression that I was a sensitive, nervous child who was afflicted with a serious stammering speech impediment. Shopping for school supplies with tlalia was a big part of’ the excitement of starting school. We bought pencils, crayons, ruler, scissors, paste, paper et al. Do you remember the fresh smells of the room your first day at school?

An epidemic of diphtheria struck Salem while I was in first grade and I fell victim to that dangerous disease. Dr. Edward Davis was our family Doctor and injected a final shot of antitoxin when he had nearly given up hope of my survival. Wondering aloud where he might place the injection, the response he got from me was, “You can put it in the bed for all I care” My exclamation gave the Doctor new hope for my recovery.

Dr. Edward Davis was a good physician and a wonderful man. He never hesitated to minister to the poor and underprivileged in our community, often without pay. He was an officer in World War 1 and I remember seeing him riding a spirited horse in an Armistice Day parade.

Mama’s physician during my early years was Dr. Xenia Bond. She was a robust lady with a caring spirit and a hearty laugh. Her office was on the second floor of her home. As we sat in the waiting room on the first floor, she would come to the head of the stairs and call out, “Ready for the next.” Dr. Bond and Miss Elsie Bond, registrar for Salem College for many years, were maiden sisters who lived together. (They were Aunts of Ashby’s wife, Ruth.)

High top boots that came up almost to our knees were a status symbol among the boys in grade school. We tried to waterproof them so we could wade in deep water but inevitably our feet got wet and we hung our stockings on the radiator in our school room to dry. The odor of drying stockings lingers in my memory. With the coming of spring we looked forward to the day when we could go to school bare-footed. Walking with tender feet could be painful, especially on the railroad tracks. Springtime also brought a search for the first violets. Digging sassafras roots for tea was another spring rite.

I digress from my own story now to bring some light on Mama’s life and character. Her story, of course, is closely interwoven with my childhood. This may be the only written record of her life experiences shared with me through the years. (In his seventy-eighth year my Father wrote his autobiography documenting his and Mother’s lives together through more than fifty-five years.)

Papa began “going with Mama in June 1892 when she was twelve years old and he twenty. (A tin-type picture shows her attractive and mature for her age.) She was a scholar in Papa’s Berea school. (Papa always called his pupils, “scholars”.) They were married in March, 1895, when Mama was fifteen years old. So her formal education must have ended with eighth grade or before.

Mama has told me that she aspired to further her education by attending Salem College Academy rarner t[idll Lidrl’y.-LLie,. Olie ii%)p@ -Lo use aoiiey froj a calf she was raising to help finance her plan. To win her Mother’s approval for her plan, made a hat and took into her Mother’s sick room. (Grandma Sutton was terminally ill with tuberculosis and died at the age of thirty-eight.)

It is understandable that Grandma Sutton did not want to die leaving her daughter unmarried. The Asa Fitz Randolph family was the most educated, influential and affluent in the community. It must have been comforting to have Jenny Mae married to Alois Preston Fitz Randolph.

Writing of his Mother-in-law, Papa said, “She was one of the noblest women I ever knew. I could never have had a better or more loyal friend.”

i-lartin Sutton, Mama’s Father, was a talented craftsman. I remember a hickory splint clothes basket and kitchen chair designed and crafted by him. Brother Brady knew Grandpa Sutton well and had high praise for him.

“A good wife (and Mother) who can find? The writer of that question in the Book of Proverbs would have found his answer in Mama’s character and life. “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her. Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”

Mama was many-talented. She learned photography in Berea and continued taking and developing pictures after moving to Salem. An expert seamstress, she sewed for our family, community families and college students. Wedding gowns were not above her level of skills. During the depression years I wore underwear and pajamas she made for me from muslin flour sacks. Crocheting, knitting and tatting were in her repertoire of skills and she crafted beautiful paper flowers.

Cooking was her career specialty. For many years she ran a boarding house for Salem College athletes, charging twenty-five cents a meal. Her bread, pies and cakes were legendary with family and guests. What a treat it was to come home from school to eat a slice of bread (maybe the heel) fresh from the oven–with butter, of course.

Music was high on Mama’s agenda for pleasure. She sang with a fine alto voice and enjoyed entertaining us with her accordion music.

Children and young people were a major love for her–and they loved her. For our church, she was a leader of the Junior Christian Endeavor. Her Christian faith was real and deep. She did not wear it her sleeve.

Mama would certainly qualify as a “workaholic” though her health was poor throughout her adult life. “Sick headaches” sometimes felled her for a day or two. Today they would be diagnosed as migraine headaches. Brother Brady suffered with them as does our son, Daniel.

With all her talent and creative drive, Mama was almost painfully humble and self-conscious. To sum it up I must say, “What a wonderful Mother.”

The influence of my brothers and sister was a great blessing for me. Brother Brady married and left home when I was four or five years old but he continued to demonstrate an interest in me through the passing years.

Ashby and Avis often invited friends to our home for evenings playing Rook, singing around the piano and enjoying fudge and pop corn. They seemed not to mind having me around listening to them until my bedtime. (The friends who came oftenest were Russell and Mildred Jett. Avis’ best friend was Ruth Davis.)

It was frightening to me when their conversation turned to ghost stories–an exciting topic for them. Rumors of a ghost at an old house on Long Run was reason for college young people to visit the -site at night, hoping to witness an “appearance”.

Ashby was an outdoorsman and nature enthusiast. He was happy to share his knowledge and experiences with me. An aquarium he set up, with minnows, tadpoles and natural water plants, was of great interest for me. In hunting season he sometimes brought home squirrels that Mama cooked for us. When I constructed a model airplane, powered by rubber bands, Ashby carved the prop for me and then enjoyed flying the plane with me.

Having Mama or Avis read to me was a special thrill. Among the books that made a lasting impression on me were: HURLBURT’S STORIES OF THE BIBLE, BEAUTIFUL JOE, BLACK BEAUTY and JUST DAVID. (Mama and I would both cry in the sad parts of the books.)

Music was so important in our family that Mama started me taking piano lessons at six years of age, first with Mrs. Ogden and then with Mrs. Wardner Davis. Mrs. Davis inspired me with accounts of the great composers, helping me greatly in my musical education. Avis taught me sing the tenor part for the hymn, “Blest Be the Tie That Binds”. Unfortunately, boys my age in Salem thought playing the piano was for “sissies”– a problem difficult for me to overcome. Nonetheless, I am eternally grateful to Mama for insisting that I study piano through those childhood years.

Childhood playmates brought joy and excitement into my life early remembrances. Sandford Randolph, my cousin who lived at the Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue shared ray play experiences in my recollections and continues loyal to the present. I recall making and cakes that we actually offered for sale (one cent a piece) on a front of Sandford’s house. At one time we experimented with smoking–trying corn silk, bean and grape leaves. Sandford, a year older than I, was able to frighten me at times. Once, when we were playing quite a distance from home, he told me the world was expected to end that day. In such an event, I wanted to be with my Mother so I hurried home fearfully. I was playing tag football with Sandford in his yard when I broke my left arm below the elbow. Aunt Gertie took one look at my arm and said, “Run home to your Brother, Elmo.”

Sam Swiger was the third member of our friendship triumvirate. He, too, was older than I, but it made little difference. It was quite a regular happening for the three of us to stay overnight in one of our homes. Paige Lockard taught us how to set a rabbit snare on college hill and, to our surprise, we caught one. Then we paraded to each of our homes, displaying the catch. (Time has dulled my memory on what we finally did with the rabbit.)

Sam’s father, Otis Swiger, owned the grocery store where our family traded. There was a pipe from the floor to the ceiling in the middle of the store. The pipe was probably four or five inches in diameter. They kept the pipe greased with lard and offered an ice cream cone to any boy who could climb to the ceiling. I never made it to the top but I did try.

Another painful grocery store episode comes to mind. Kelly’s store was about a block east of Swiger’s and our family kept a charge account in both stores. One day, when I was very young, I checked out the candy counter and asked for a yellow marshmallow banana (or was it a peanut?). Mr. Kelly handed the candy to me and I said, “charge it”. Before I reached the door he caught me and took the candy from me. It was a humiliating lesson in “credit”.

I often played with the Oak Street boys, too. They were: Chester, (Check) Zinn, Faud Ilaught, Wilson Davis and Edgar (Huck) Finley. Chester had a dog that would pull him in his wagon. I played “crokenoll” at Edgar’s home and listened to piano numbers by Harry Snodgrass on the victrola.

When I was eight years old I had my first traumatic confrontation with a policeman. The policeman was Uncle Joel Randolph, Sandford’s grandfather, who for a number of years was Salem’s sole law officer. He really looked the part of a western lawman, as I remember him.

This is how it came about. On my way down town to the post office I joined another boy and ended up playing “train” by climbing up on tire empty box cars on the tracks by the depot.

***********f rom my corner of earliest mud pies stand in*******

Uncle Joel, the Policeman, caught me on the ladder of a boxcar and, with his firm hand on my shoulder, led me toward the town jail. At the doorway of the city hall, where the jail was located, he stopped to reprimand me severely and release me. At home, Mama knew there had been some dire happening and sat with me on the front porch swing until the whole story came out. That’s probably the closest I’ve ever come to being in jail.

Telling of my friends and playmates, I have neglected to include girls. Actually, during my first twelve years girls had little importance in my life. I was invited to birthday parties where they played “kissing games”-Post Office and Spin the Bottle. I was not popular at these parties. Carla and Lorraine Dennison lived on the hill above our house. They were close to my age and we played Hide and Seek, with other neighborhood children, on summer evenings.

Our family was always “temperance minded”, so it not surprising I would join the LTL (Loyal Temperance Legion, sponsored by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.) In the LTL program, we were encouraged to step on cigarettes on the ground and twist them with our shoe. Perhaps the WCTU was a century ahead of its time. (I still feel an urge to stomp out cigarettes.)

The coming of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference to Salem College in 1925 was a major event for young and old alike. I made my first appearance on a Conference program that year. The story I told was of a boy who drove a nail in side of the barn for his every misdeed. Later, he was permitted to pull out a nail for each good deed performed. Sadly, he discovered that the nail holes were still in the barn.

During those Conference meetings a kindly man sat with several children on the college front lawn and taught us The Twelve Tests of Memory. Let’s see if I still remember them: “Twelve Egyptian fiddlers that played at the marriage feast of the indomitable heliogabulous; Eleven sympathetic, synoreous, cutaneous gudgeons; Ten lopsided, clinkerbuilt, flat-bottomed flyer boats; Nine patent practent periwinkles; Eight pharmaceutical tubes; Seven quarts of lymeric oysters;; Six canal boats laden with sugar and tongs; Five imperial goblets; Four pair of corduroy trousers; Three squawking wild geese; two ducks and a good fat hen.” He also taught us another memory ditty.

The Rogers family from Florida came to Conference in 1925 in a big automobile. I was thrilled to meet Clarence and Crosby Rogers and take them home to eat grapes at our grape arbor. This was the beginning of a friendship that has been rich through the years.

Junior Christian Endeavor was an organization for the children of our church that met on Sabbath afternoons in the church. Mama helped with the memorization program when I was a member. Each of us was given a ribbon on which we attached cardboard symbols representing the portions of the Bible we were successful in memorizing: the Lord’s Prayer; the twenty-third Psalm; the First Psalm; 1 Corinthians, chapter 13 and others.

Pastor George B. Shaw was our greatly revered and loved minister of the Salem Seventh Day Baptist Church during my boyhood and until I graduated from Salem College in 1935. His wife, Nellie, was a dear and wonderful lady. Their daughter, Hannah, married Professor H. 0. Burdick. Miriam, their second daughter, had an outstanding career as a missionary nurse for Seventh Day Baptists in China. Pastor Shaw was a brilliant Bible scholar who regularly quoted the Sabbath morning scripture from memory. What a profound and lasting influence and inspiration Pastor Shaw was to the members of his congregation.