Annie Ada Collier Harris loved her husband dearly. He was a farmer, and she went to the fields each day just to be near him. She took him his lunch, sat with him, watched him eat, and the two of them talked.

I never saw them do this. I never met my Great Aunt Annie or her husband, Grover Lee Harris. But my mother, who is 93 now, and who is Annie’s niece, tells me these things. “She was deeply in love with her husband,” Mom tells me.

Before he got old Grover went blind. He could no longer work, or go to the fields. Annie read to him. And he sat with her while she tatted her lace. Her fingers moved quickly, and every few stitches she ran the needle that someone had made for her through her hair, and that oil helped the needle glide through the threads.

Her hands were never idle, and her home and the homes of her family members were never without lace. Lace doilies for the tables, lace antimacassars for the backs and arms of chairs, lace trim on the sheets and pillowcases, on sleeves and collars. Her sisters laughed about it, but loved her lacy gifts.

Annie and Grover were married for 39 years before he died. Annie buried him near their #2 Furnace home, at the Koontz Cemetery at Naked Creek.

Their children, Wilma (Wilmy) and Agnes were grown and married by that time. Wilmy married Clarence Blose and Agnes married Joseph Merica. Joseph was the grandson of George Strother Merica, who was the grandson of Johannes Merkey. Johannes was also my third great grandfather from the line of Mericas that reaches down through my grandfather, Thomas Austin Merica, who was married to Aunt Annie’s sister, Florence.

That’s just the way it works in the Blue Ridge.

After Grover died, Aunt Annie was alone for the first time in her life. Sure, she had her daughters, but she had been deeply in love with Grover, as my mother keeps telling me, and missed him terribly.

There’s an English proverb, Need makes the old woman trot. The 1917 Dictionary of Proverbs explains,

“it intimates the great Power of Necessity, which does not only make the young and lusty go a trotting to relieve their necessities, but also makes old People, who have one Foot in the Grave, to bestir their Stumps. Necessity makes the Weak strong, the Decrepid active and nimble, the Cripple walk: It gives Vigour and Life to the most languishing and feeble Starveling, makes the Lame find his Legs, excites the most Obstinate to lead or drive at the Will and Pleasure of his Master.”

Aunt Annie had a need, and that was to be with people after Grover was gone. And so she took to visiting. She visited her sister Florence, my grandmother, for days or weeks at a time. They were both widows and enjoyed each others’ company. That’s what widows did. Used to the hustle and bustle and needs of busy households during their earlier years, the walls of their now-empty houses crept in on them if they did not get out for happy, long visits. Always to family.

Aunt Annie and my grandmother used their time together to make quilts. Their favorites were crazy quilts, those Jackson Pollocky riots of colored bits of stitched-together cloth. They chattered and gossiped and quilted their days away, never hurrying, never impatient to be somewhere else or doing something else.

Annie visited her daughters, and I imagine that she visited her other sister and her brother. She visited nieces and nephews, too, like my Uncle Jesse Merica’s family in Waynesboro. My cousins remember her visits.

She took the Trailways bus from Elkton to Waynesboro and Jesse’s wife, my Aunt Emily, picked her up at the station. Aunt Annie stepped down from the bus carrying her two paper shopping bags with handles made of twine, her thick stockings rolled to just above her knees, and wearing heavy black shoes with two-inch heels and three eyelets for the laces. Everything she brought was in those two paper bags. She didn’t need much, just the company.

When she arrived the first thing she did was to count out enough money for her bus ride home and put that back in her coin purse. The rest she had for spending, mostly on supplies for lace-making that she stocked up on before going home, although she always took out a nickel or a quarter for the children.

No matter who she was visiting, Annie kept to her routine. At night she put on her nightgown and let down her long, white hair. Then she brushed it. Many strokes, till it shined like silk, or like starlight. She took off her glasses and set them on the night table, tied a black scarf around her head so she wouldn’t get earaches, then she reverently got down on her knees to murmur her quiet prayers to God.

I don’t know what she prayed for. Maybe for the soul of her beloved husband. Maybe for the safety and happiness of her daughters. She probably prayed also for her sisters and their families. That was her world.

The next morning she pulled her hair up again into a tight bun worn at the back of her head. She put on her stockings, rolled them to her knees, tied her black shoelaces, grabbed her tatting bag, and was then ready for anything.

Annie Ada Collier Harris loved her husband so much that she visited his family after he died, my mother tells me, even though they lived over the mountain in Greene County.

One day she was visiting my grandmother, Florence Collier Merica, and as she readied to leave she said, “I’m going to visit Grover’s family, so I’ll have a lot to tell you when I come next time.”

But before she went on her visit she needed to rest up. She went home, took off her bonnet,  lay down on her bed for a nap, and never got up.

My cousins tell me Aunt Annie was “a sweet old woman.” Their stories, and my mother’s, make that clear.

My Grandparents

By Pearl Eggleston Berryman

Note: Pearl Eggleston Berryman was born in 1979 in Knoxville, Tennessee, where her father was a physician. He later went back to Oberlin College’s school of theology and emerged a Methodist minister. The family lived in many towns and states, as it is the Methodist way for their clergy to change congregations every few years, but every summer while growing up Pearl returned to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, to visit her two sets of grandparents. Pearl wrote this biographical essay in 1966, her 87th year.

When I was a little girl I lived in new England. Nearly every summer my mother and I would visit my grandparents in a little town outside of Cleveland.

As the little train rattled its way to the Station I could see Grandmother Brown in her doorway wildly waving something white at us. Then at the Station was Grandfather Eggleston with old Nell – the old white horse – and the carriage “with the fringe on top.”

With Grandfather’s hearty greeting a feeling of peace and security came over me such as I’ve never had since.

The mansion on the hill overlooked the little village and the river. Grandfather Eggleston’s home was admirably constructed for a child’s pleasure – inside and out! The broad stone sidewalks were perfect for rolling hoops or playing marbles with my cousin from the town in the valley; and as the years passed there was croquet and tennis.

There were so many interesting things to see! The barn, carriage house, tool shop, woodshed; the hitching post – a little negro boy! And on the back porch was the “old oaken bucket” itself. One turned the crank and received the best water in all the world. Would that I had a drink!

At the foot of the long grape arbor was the privy: stiffly starched white curtains, upholstered seats, and a stool for short legs; pictures from “Godeys” on the walls; and a pile of S.S. papers in the corner, if I wished to rest awhile and amuse myself.

Saturday night was the time of the Great Ritual – the weekly all over bath in the big kitchen by the big coal range, in the tin wash tubs.

There was always a jar of cookies in the pantry, as I remember now – after eighty years.

Grandmother took care – immaculate care – of this house of twelve big rooms. No heat except three huge fireplaces and the kitchen range. She was a Lady. No bad words must pass our lips. A leg was a limb.

Grandfather was a fine figure of a man – I best remember him in a flowered “weskit” with a big gold watch chain across his chest, singing “A Frog he would awooing go” to me.

Grandfather Brown’s little white cottage in the little village held many delights. Grandmother was a pretty old lady with pink cheeks: wooed by Grandfather for his first wife and won for his third. After every meal Grandfather – with a bow – would say, “Many thanks for this good meal, Mrs. Brown.”

But the best at Grandfather Brown’s was a little room at the top of narrow, winding stairs. Grandfather’s den I guess we would call it now. Two sides of the room had glass cases filled with insects (dead, of course), birds and specimens of stones. (At Grandfather’s death they were given to some college and considered quite valuable.) Then there was a machine into which you inserted strips of paper with holes in them and put them in the machine and made music! A mystery to me then – and now! Then there was a little music box. If I could hold it and hear its sweet tones I’d be a little girl again.

Grandfather proudly considered himself an Agnostic, but wouldn’t allow a pack of cards in the house – “the Devil’s game” – and firmly maintained the earth to be flat.

Across the street was the village Graveyard, presided over by a huge angel over a grave occupied by a young lady said to have died of “unrequited love.” It was a lovely place to play with neighboring children, jumping over the gravestones, studying the inscriptions, or playing hide and seek.

Beyond the graveyard was the cheese factory run by my Uncle Parly Fliminus Brown. I enjoyed watching the farmers bring in their great loads of big cans of milk, and listening to their entertaining and instructive conversation re politics, religions, etc.

Now they all sleep peacefully in the little graveyard.

Pearl (Peg) Abigail Eggleston Berryman had her beloved daughter, Priscilla. No matter how unsettled the rest of her life had become, no matter how many times she had to pull up stakes and move, no matter how many times her husband changed his chosen career, she had Priscilla.

Through the desolate years in Oklahoma, the contented but too-brief time in Virginia, the happy days spent at her parents’ home in Oberlin on their months-long visits, and now, living with Robert’s parents in Lima until they could make other arrangements, Priscilla nourished Peg as much as Peg nourished the seven-year old.

When a friend of Peg’s asked if Priscilla could spend the night, Peg said, “I can do without Robert now and then, but I could never stand a minute without Priscilla.”

Her life had been so perfect until Oklahoma, and then so shockingly bad in that bone dry wasteland of dead grass and starving sheep. But that was just her living circumstances. She had her adored Robert, and then Priscilla. That was all she really needed, anyway.

Robert toiled day and night to make the ranch work, and there were no neighbors for miles. It was lonely there, but Peg had Priscilla, and she poured all her love and hope and dreams into the bright child.

Then the sheep ranch failed. The farm experiment in Virginia didn’t last. They returned to Ohio to regroup, rethink their next move, what they wanted to do with their lives.

Maybe it was time for Robert to use his innate gifts, his intelligence and mental dexterity. No more of these adventures. First the Philippines, then Oklahoma, then Virginia; it was time to move back to the society they knew. But how, and what? They had to think of something soon, because Peg was pregnant, nearly ready for her second baby to come, and they needed a home for the new baby and Priscilla.

Then Priscilla got sick, horribly sick. She vomited, cried out in pain, sweat with fever, and sometimes stared blankly at her parents and would not let them touch her, or slept and could not be awakened.

Her parents sent for the doctor, but there was nothing he could do. Priscilla had spinal meningitis, and it was too late, and she died, right there, at her grandparents Berryman home, on December 22, 1915.

The baby came two months later. But the virus was still present, and baby Roberta didn’t live more than a few weeks.

Like many workers around the country in 1916, gravediggers were on strike. It was the birth of America’s labor union movement, and Robert had to dig the graves for both his daughters himself.

Peg was inconsolable. Her heart was broken, she felt only numbness, then pain. She gave away Priscilla’s fine dresses, her little doll and her books.

Grandfather Eggleston neatly folded the letter Priscilla had recently sent him, the one with the poem about the little seed, and he placed it alongside his own poetry.

Peg packed away the christening gown, and the silver baby’s drinking cup engraved with Priscilla, and she swore never to have another child, ever.

Pearl Abigail Eggleston Berryman was not about to have her first baby on a farm somewhere out on the Oklahoma prairie. So she went home to her parents, and on August 7th of 1908, in a tidy Victorian home on a tree-lined street of Oberlin, Ohio, Priscilla Harriet Berryman was born, the daughter of Robert Fulton Berryman and Pearl (Peg) Abigail Eggleston Berryman.

So named Priscilla because her mother thought it beautiful, and Harriet because Robert’s sister was Harriet, Priscilla here began what her grandfather called, “her bright life.”

Her parents and grandparents doted on the baby, who was by all accounts a beautiful and gifted child. Peg only wanted ever to have girls, and here was her first, a darling dumpling of a baby, expressive and alert, with curly hair atop a broad, round forehead, and wide-set eyes that Peg could gaze into forever, bonding as closely as any mother ever had.

Peg put Priscilla in a christening gown of fine cotton and handmade lace with petticoats beneath make it plump and full, like the adorable babe who wore them. She brushed Priscilla’s soft curls on her forehead, tied her brimmed bonnet against the sun, delicately lowered her into the carriage, and strode to the photographer’s studio for portraits.

In the studio Peg could not pull her eyes from her cherished babe for long enough to look at the camera. She gazed in awe and adoration at what was hers, what she and Robert had created.

Of all her life’s joys, this was by far the greatest. Who can know what a new mother feels? Only her adoring gaze, her utter awe could express it. She forgot any woes she ever had, and if she thought of it at all, she recalled Oklahoma’s wide plains and soft grasses, and was eager to bring Priscilla home to Robert.

When it was time to return, Pearl packed up the baby’s blankets, gowns, and cloths; she boarded the train, found her seat, and never once let her baby go until she reached Robert.

Even in that wilderness of dust, Peg dressed Priscilla in white cotton and lace, and bought her a silver drinking cup engraved with her name.

Peg may not have had a carriage to stroll Priscilla in, or a boulevard to parade her up and down on; she may not have had much more than a new home on a lonesome prairie, far from anyone or anyplace she ever knew – far from anyone at all, really – but no matter, with her precious baby she was in heaven.

Priscilla was her salvation from the deadening sun, her refuge from hard farm work she had never known before.

As her father said, Peg could do without the necessities of life as long as she had the luxuries. Priscilla was both necessity and luxury.

But even with her heavenly baby, Oklahoma was draining, and so she and Priscilla went to her parents’ home in Claridon, Ohio for extended visits. Robert stayed behind in Oklahoma to try and make his struggling ranch work. Drought was going on three years now.

The sheep were dying, and there was nothing he could do, but he was never one to turn from a challenge. He toiled till his fingers were raw, till there were few sheep left, till there was nothing else to be done, and nothing left to lose.

Ultimately, the ranch failed. Robert closed the door, turned east, and went to Pulaski, Virginia, where he undertook “a farming project.” That is all I know of it.

Peg came from Oberlin with Priscilla to reunite with her husband. By that time, Priscilla was seven years old and Peg was pregnant again.

But it wasn’t long before the farming project was complete, or went bust, but either way, the little family packed up and returned to Shawnee, Ohio, where Robert’s parents lived.

Priscilla missed her Grandfather Eggleston, with whom she and Peg had been staying before Virginia, and so wrote him a letter on stationary of her Uncle Waldo Berryman’s company, typing it herself, though no doubt with her mother’s patient help.

“Grandmother is geting as fat and harty as can be,” she wrote. And then, “I made up a poem. And I will write it to you.” 

The poem goes, “Just a little seed/Very small indeed/Put it in the grown/Make a little mond/See what I have fond/Peeking out of the grown/Soon it will be seen/Just a little been/Very small and gren/Just can be seen.

Today Priscilla’s silver cup sits on my mantle, tarnished, dented from the 100-year journey that brought it through 17 states and countless homes, being packed and unpacked, carefully at first and then less so as time’s distance grew.

“Priscilla,” it says in delicate, perfect script, enveloped by loops and flourishes that surround the cup, much like Priscilla’s tiny fingers once did.

How did the cup come this far, when Priscilla didn’t?