Chronicling Family History

Great Great Aunt Mary

If you’re lucky enough to have a family association or members of your family who have kept archives and records, you will be able to dig up stories about many generations past. The following is based on information I found in a book written about my Parsons Family, on a narrative written by my Great Aunt Martha about her childhood, a journal kept by my Great Aunt Marion, and on the many stories about the “Olden Days” told to me as a child by my Grandmother and her two sisters, Marion and Martha. Perhaps this will inspire my readers to write their own, either for publication or for your great, great, great grandchildren. They will be grateful if you do.

Dateline: Worthington, Massachusetts, January 25, 1865, my Great, Great, Great Grandfather, Maurice Parsons, wrote: “My first nine children have all except one been teachers of primary schools, and I believe very successful in their occupation.” His Great Granddaughter and my Great Aunt, Marion Parsons, upheld the Parsons tradition in the years to come, turning a hen house in her father’s cherry orchard into one of the highest-ranking schools in New York State. (I would write a book about this 150 years after Maurice wrote those words and call it The Brass Bell.)

At the time Maurice Parsons wrote the letter, his eldest son, Edwin (my great, great grandfather) had left Worthington for Syracuse, New York, where he taught school for a while before taking up farming full-time. Having saved his money, he was able to purchase property and marry his love, Julia Armstrong, in September, 1846. They had six children, and as these children came of age, the farm grew in size. Their sons had inherited their father’s love for making a living off the land. Their eldest daughter, Mary Amelia, married James Schuyler Jerome, a cousin of Jenny Jerome who had left the country for England where she married Lord Churchill. They had a son named Winston.

In the spring of 1890, my Great Grandfather, Willis Parsons, the youngest of Edwin and Julia’s sons purchased a sixty-some acre farm just up the road from the family farm. The road back then was a dirt turnpike connecting Eastern and Western New York State. Over time, Willis added another 138 acres to his holdings and became one of the most respected fruit growers in the state. All along the Turnpike there were the farms of cousins, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, creating a widespread community of Parsons and Jerome relations. Though Willis dedicated his life to farming, serving as long-time President of the New York State Fruit Growers Association, the family regard for the importance of education was intact.

Children and grandchildren—including Willis’s three daughters, Grace, Marion, and Martha—attended school every day, in blizzard or sticky heat, at a small one-room schoolhouse donated by cousin Guy Parsons. Though the school eventually became part of the local public school system, the day came when the old school could no longer hold the children or keep them warm during the frigid winters. Several of the Parsons and Jerome families opened their parlors for classes. When the Parsons girls finished school, Willis Parsons insisted his daughters attend college, become teachers.

By and by, the people of the farm community that came to be known as Westvale were wise enough to look into the future and see where the industrial revolution was heading. They knew that in order for their children to be successful in the changing world that lie ahead—the two-lane dirt turnpike had been paved and horse drawn buggies were replaced with fancy buggies that motored themselves—only the best of educations would serve their off-spring and save their community.

Marion Parsons returned to Westvale after college and after teaching for a year in a rugged frontier town in Washington State, and people in the community came to her and asked if she would consider starting a new school to serve their growing numbers.

Though she had loved her travels out west—the trip back home on the train through California, her voyage to Catalina Island on a glass-bottom boat—Marion recognized and honored her duty. That summer she approached women who were picking fruit in her father’s orchards and asked if they would help her clean up an old chicken coop near the cherry orchard

A local judge and an attorney joined Willis and other members of the extended family to form a school board. They helped raise money, donated property, and lay the legal and financial groundwork for what would become the Cherry Road School. On its first day of school, Marion was presented with the brass bell from the old schoolhouse. Tears sprung to her eyes as she held the bell whose resounding clang had once signaled her and her sisters, cousins and friends to the long wooden benches in a tiny one-room school. As she raised the bell for the first time, she could not have imagined that nearly 100 years later, Cherry Road School would be the alma mater of thousands who would remember her fondly as Miss Parsons, their first and greatest hero.

If you would like to purchase a copy of The Brass Bell, it’s available through Sahalie Publishing:

http://www.sahaliepublishing.org/Brass-Bell-order.html

Mining Your Family Stories

When I was researching and writing The Brass Bell, my richest and most interesting stories about the “Olden Days” came from those who are still alive and willing to share what exists only in their memories. I talked to cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends of the family.

Here is a sampling of the precious and fertile stories that contributed to the narrative non-fiction account of my great aunt, my family, and the community in which they lived ordinary extraordinary lives:

“My father, Uncle Bob and Aunt Sara were all sent home from school one day because they smelled of skunk. Seems that the muskrat trap line that they had out had caught a skunk instead of a muskrat and the kids got sprayed when checking the line before school. My grandmother got the kids clean up and soaked in tomato juice, but they couldn’t return to school until the next day.”

“I was born and grew up on my family’s 60-acre farm. On the 10^th of September, 1897, a crew came with a steam engine to fill the silo with ensilage….There had been a long, dry spell, so when the steam engine blew up for lack of water, the flames shot into the hay-filled barn; the fire spread rapidly. Soon the house caught fire, and in about half an hour both buildings burned to the ground. The County Fair was being held that day, and many people on their way to it hitched their horses to the roadside fences and rushed to help. There were no volunteer fire companies, no telephones to summon them had they existed; no water except what was pumped from the well by hand, or had accumulated in cisterns from rain running off the roofs.”

“My Uncle Ned delivered milk out of his car during the early days of his dairy farm. It was a 1930s Studebaker. Aunt Betty’s sister used to walk to the farm to get raw milk in a container. She tells about drinking the whole milk and the wonderful taste compared to pasteurized. Then they had a milk wagon and horse. Folks wanted it delivered by breakfast and they would be up long before sunrise. The milk was kept in the milkhouse at the farm.”

These are simple accounts of life during a time when children played in fields and streams, when life was lived without modern conveniences, when amenities and services we take for granted today were all but unimaginable. Future generations will never know what came before without the humble stories told by unworldly people whose lives will be lost with the passing of time.

Use your writing skills and your curiosity to excavate and write the stories from those who will soon be gone, those whose childhoods exist only in their memories.