Chapter 29- Part 4

It is circa 1904-1905 on the “The Ridge” and the McCoy family after many years of scrimping and saving have finally reached a financial stage that they feel they are now able to purchase more land. Ellis will be coming of age in a few years and will be a big help on the farm. After all the farm will be his one day and great excitement is in the air!

There was much revived discussion about buying more land now that the barn was built. It seemed to me that both mother and Ellis had become more interested in land. Our cousin Dell Wickerham, near Ellis’s age, was taking no interest in music. Both he and Ellis recently seemed to have the attitude that playing an organ was only for girls.

That our next land purchased would be the woods from “Uncle Billie and “Aunt Mary Ann” was settled. Then came the day when father went to talk to a money lender about borrowing the needed money.

Ellis was practicing lassoing a calf, a pastime at which I had given up all thought of ever becoming proficient. I was sitting on a stump in the barn yard watching Ellis as he grew more skilled at lassoing. From my pocket I was throwing corn to a frizzly chicken, with feathers turned backwards. I was working at it and it looked lonesome, dodging here and there.

“Aunt Mary Ann” who had dropped in on an errand, came out through the barn lot with mother. “A frizzly chicken!” exclaimed Aunt Mary Ann. “I have one and I didn’t suppose there was another one within miles.” Quickly, then, she asked mother, “Will you sell it?” “You may have it. I’ll catch it when it goes to roost and put it in a coop for you,” mother replied.

Mother was putting the chicken in a coop when father came home. “I suppose she is going into the frizzly chicken business,” he remarked when mother told him why she was catching the chicken. “Maybe this will be the breed of freaks that will lift the mortgage, he added, in a disgusted tone of voice.”

“What mortgage?” asked mother. “The one on the woods. Blair’s are foreclosing,” replied father. “Oh, no! That woods and that old oak tree have been in our family ever since this community was settled over one hundred years ago,” almost wailed mother. “But of course, we can buy it from the Blairs,” she added quickly, that thought evidently just entering her mind.

“No, we can’t. Blairs do not want to sell,” father answered.

“Oh, you have already found out about that.” Mother’s tone of voice sounded as if she accepted this as final.

The Blairs belonged to our church and were rated as rich by the standards of the community. They would not need to sale to get their money back.

The next day “Aunt Mary Ann” came for the chicken and seemed as pleased over it as had father over his first red polled calf.

Aunt Mary Ann probably sensed that I might want to keep the frizzly chicken so she had brought me a dress pattern of lovely cream cashmere. My best dress had been of calico since I had out grown my red cashmere and I was thrilled.

Mother said Aunt Mary Ann had just scads of dress patterns of lovely cloth in her bureau drawers. Some were many years old.

Uncle Billy and Aunt Mary Ann had had two daughters. Elsie who was married and lived near, was the outdoor type and cared nothing for fancy dresses. Olive, the dainty, dressy one, had died at the age of eighteen. Elsie didn’t want Olive’s material. Still, Aunt Mary Ann had kept buying and laying away more dress goods patterns all the time.

This was put down by those who knew about it as an unwise way of spending money, as was the collecting of useless animals and fowls; but I have wondered since older and know that grief often finds comfort in odd ways.

Mother’s long weakened condition had rendered her unable to make anything for me except that absolutely essential. A calico dress for best and, after a brief respite, the despised hickory shirting dresses, they wore a long time, saving much labor of sewing.

How I longed to have the cream cashmere made up! But it was laid carefully away in a bureau drawer. There was much more material in it than I needed for a dress at that time. I knew mother would figure in her thrifty way that it would be just as well not to make it up until I grew bigger. That decision was final, I knew, so I just opened the drawer often and looked at the pretty soft material and daydreamed about how it would look when eventually I would be wearing the finished product.

Aunt Mary Adeline “Ann” Ralston was the daughter of Robert & Rosanna (Glasgow) Ralston. She was born in 1845 on “The Ridge” and was Victoria’s mother’s first cousin. Mary Ann married Wm “Billy” Baldridge McCreight, son of Jonathan & Isabel Jane (Pyles) McCreight. Billy was a member of Company E. of the O.V.I. in the Civil War of which he was very proud. Uncle Billy chewed tobacco and loved to tell Civil War stories. Uncle Billy and Aunt Mary Ann had several exotic animals e.g. peacocks on their farm. They eventually lost their farm and had to move in with their daughter, Elsie. Elsie had taught school before marrying Adam Richter in 1903. They lived near Buena Vista in Adams County, Ohio. In 1908 after five years of marriage, Elsie passed away. Uncle Billy died in 1916 and Mary Ann followed in 1923. They are all buried in the Tranquility cemetery. Mary Ann lived to see the loss of her family’s homestead, the death of her beloved husband and both of her children. What great sorrow she bore!

Idelma “Dell” Wickerham (1891-1988) (Ellis and Lena’s first cousin) was the son of Cargill (Victoria and Lois Ann’s brother) and Mary Elizabeth (Sharp) Wickerham. Mary Elizabeth’s grandfather, Daniel Sharpe (1791-1875) was a Conductor on the Underground Railroad. Mary Elizabeth’s aunt, if you remember, was Rhoda Sharpe who eloped with James Mitchell in Chapter 12. That would make Mary Elizabeth and Mary (Wickerham) Newman’s mother, LuLu Belle (Sharpe) Wickerham first cousins, but who is keeping track of all this. LOL! I know several of you are.