A COURAGEOUS WOMAN

Chapter 1: The Beginning

The beginning for me started when Mother, assisted by her good friend, Beth Dickerson, acting as midwife, delivered me soon after midnight on Sunday, March 7, 1915, into this sometimes wonderful and sometimes not so wonderful world.

At birth, the newborn gets rid of any mucus in the air passages by crying. Instead of crying, I laughed and have laughed ever since as long, as loudly, and as regularly as possible. It is the best medicine I know for emotional as well as for physical well being.

Many, many years later, Mother said, "When you were two years old, and the three older siblings at home had whooping cough, the older kids would be very upset with a siege of coughing whereas you would try to make a funny out of it instead of becoming upset."

Mother, also, many many years later said in a birthday letter to me, "You are my seventh child born the seventh day of the week, and the seventh day of the month makes you special because there are so many sevens written in the Bible." She read the Bible from front to back many times in her ninety years of life. She had very strong religious convictions which she and I very often did not agree upon. However, we remained staunch friends caring for and loving each other--each respecting the other's views and beliefs. That is as it should be.

I cannot recall the 92-acre Frank Dickerson farm (Carroll County, Virginia) where I was born which Dad sold to Millard Wade. Neither can I remember when we moved to Mother's, which we always called the Celia Dalton, farm. Celia Dalton reared Emmanuel Largen, Mother's first husband, whom she married at the young age of l5 years in 1897. He was 19.

After a daughter, Trudie Jane, born in 1899 and a son, William McKinley, born in 1901, and having received intolerable treatment from her immature, young and handsome husband, my grandfather, William C. Quesenberry, took his daughter, my mother, and his two grandchildren home to live with him and grandmother Victoria.

Emmanuel, after deeding mother his farm, the Celie Dalton farm, east of Dugspur, Va., and promises of reformation, coaxed Mother to return with him. When he did not keep his promises and returned to his old intolerable ways, Mother went again to live with her mother and father and divorced Emmanuel.

I was told Emmanuel was 11 years old when his mother, Mahala Marshall Largen, and father, William Largen, died from scarlet fever leaving four young children. A maiden lady named Celia Dalton, who owned an adjoining farm to Emmanuel's Uncle Eli, reared Emmanuel and Dave Fields, son of a slave. Emmanuel and Dave inherited the farm. Dave sold his part and moved to a black community near Willis, Va. Eli Largen, whom we kids called Uncle Eli, was Emmanuel's uncle and reared Emmanuel's brother, Virgil. Relatives reared the other two children.

While living with her mother and father, Mother met my father, Joseph V. Horton. They were married June 2, 1904, and my sister, Ella Mae, was born June 17, 1905.

I know we were living at the Celie Dalton farm when I was two years of age. I have a picture of sister Mae, brothers Dennie, Guy, and me holding my doll that brother McKinley had given me. The only way I consented to be in the picture was to get a picture of my pretty doll.

Dad talked about buying a farm in Pulaski County, Va. I suppose to be near his brother, William (Billie) Horton. They were always very close, respecting and asking for the other's opinion. March 1, 1918, Dad, instead of buying a farm in Pulaski, bought the Posey Quesenberry 153-acre farm for $7,000 in the adjoining Carroll County, Va., west of Dugspur. It also adjoined Gordon Dalton's 154 acre farm which he had purchased from Uncle Billie Horton.

Of interest to me, Uncle Billie in 1899 paid $1,500 for 154 acres--nice house, reasonably level farming land, partly timbered, only 1/4 mile from school. Gordon Dalton sold it in 1919 to Gall and Viney Huff for $6,700. Gall and Viney Huff's daughter-in-law sold it in 1979 for $125,000. It supports the teaching, "hold on to your investment".

Since Dad talked of a farm in Pulaski Co., I naturally assumed we were moving from Mother's farm to Pulaski. I had just turned three when we moved. Mother had made me a pretty new red candy-striped dress which I wore on moving day. Consequently, forever after, I called it my Pulaski dress.

Mother and Dad must have been very much in love even though he was eighteen years older than she. I never heard them argue or raise their voices toward each other but once. I asked Mother many, many years later if I remembered that one time only because it involved me. She replied, "That was the only time."

I was considered a tomboy, preferring to play with the boys or be out in the work field with the men. One morning, I pleaded with Dad to let me go to the work field with him as he had sometimes allowed before. Now I was nearly four years old. He said, "No, You are too small. You get tired early and someone has to stop work to bring you to the house." When Dad said, "No," he meant "No." Even knowing by that young age that Dad did not like crying, standing closely to him, pleadingly looking up to him, I began to cry. He promptly reached down and gave me a swat on my rear end.

Mother, just as promptly was on her feet, shaking a finger in his face, saying, "I have told you different times not to smack one of the children high up on the butt because you might injure the kidneys, and especially not Ruthie."

Dad replied, "If you shake your finger in my face one more time, I will give you a smack." There was no further finger shaking or threats. Neither did Ruthie go to the fields that day! It was probably discussed later that night when all the children were in bed asleep.

As a kid, I sometimes wet the bed so I guess Mother thought I must already have weak kidneys. I suppose it was nerves. Brother Dennie, many years later, said, "You were a nervous child."

There is much to be done on a farm and those chickens go to roost early. Therefore, the cocks/roosters started crowing incessantly in the early morning until the lamps were lit. Mother would never have permitted us to call roosters "cocks"! The cocks must be really anxious for every fowl to fly from its roosting place so they can get fed and start copulating as many hens as possible throughout the day. Firstly, the rooster has to win a fast footrace to be able to copulate with the hen without any ritual dance or foreplay.