Momma

The Road to Grandpa's Farm

Five Mile Run Road, Parkersburg, West Virginia

October 22, 2007

On Saturday, January 10th, 1914, Ethel Mae Stephens took her first breath at the family farm north of Parkersburg, West Virginia.  It was her mother's thirtieth birthday as Estella Espie McAtee was born on Thursday, January 10th, 1884 also in the Parkersburg area.  Grandma always said that momma was the best birthday present she ever received.  Momma was born on the family farm, off Five Mile Run Road, north of the city.  When I researched the property at the Wood County Court House, I was surprised to find that the farm passed from the Jesse Kincheloe family to my great-grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Stephens, née Phelps, and she in turn passed it on to my grandfather, Olin Orville Stephens.  Mother was the fourth of six children, and when she was three, just prior to my Uncle Virgil's birth, the family moved into town, moving to a house that I still think of as Grandma's house in the Beechwood section of Parkersburg.

Momma attended Parkersburg High School, and was proud of the education she received there.  Somewhere I have her senior year portrait, but apparently it's not scanned onto this machine, and I cannot find the large print I made and gave her for mother's day several years ago.  The print I worked from was in black and white, and when I scanned it originally, I gave it a sepia tone.  Mother's reaction, once she stopped crying, was to say "I thought that dress was blue."  How would I know?  I wasn't there at the time.

I believe my parents met when Mother was a senior.  I know the story about the blind date that led to a lifetime love affair, but other than the fact that Mother was 18 years old at the time, I really don't want to go into details.  Most of the pictures I have of her show the two of them together.  This shouldn't be a surprise as Mother lived with Poppa for 54 years, much longer than she lived with her parents, or alone after Poppa's death.

Poppa and Momma as a young married couple

No idea when or where this was taken

My parents were married on February 4, 1934, in Parkersburg, and for the first eight years of their marriage, they continued living there.  Poppa worked for Ames Baldwin Wyoming, and became foreman of the paint division at the shovel manufacturing plant there.  This position allowed my parents to build their own home in Vienna, West Virginia, a suburb of Parkersburg.  Poppa always said that the hardest thing he ever had to do in his life was ask Momma to give up their home so he could go to college.  Both my parents believed strongly in education, and Poppa had felt the call to the ministry, so they sold their home and moved to Buckhannon, West Virginia where both my parents attended West Virginia Wesleyan College.  Poppa graduated in three years, but Momma just completed two.  I'm not sure why, although my guess is that she didn't begin her classes right away.  When Poppa matriculated at Boston University School of Theology, Momma's professors at WVWesleyan told her that if she could somehow scrape together enough money to pay for one semester's tuition and books, that would be all she'd ever have to pay. She'd surely get a full-ride scholarship to finish her schooling.  Unfortunately, that was not possible in 1944.  But mother got her education, if not a diploma.  She read every text book that Poppa brought home.  To this day, Momma remains the smartest person I've ever met, and that includes all the professors I knew at UC Berkeley and The University of Montana.  If only she'd had a chance.

Poppa received his STB (Bachelor of Sacred Theology) from Boston University in 1946, and had every intention of returning to the Mountain State.  Before they could pack up to leave Massachusetts, a District Superintendent recruiting new ministers asked Poppa, "Why do you want to go back to West Virginia?  There's a Methodist Church on every street corner.  Come out to Montana where we have wide open spaces and need people to fill them."  For whatever reasons, this appealed to my dad, and after driving back to Parkersburg to say good-bye to family and friends, my parents moved West.  Poppa's first church out of seminary was in Stevensville, Montana, and both Momma and Poppa fell in love with the Bitterroot Valley.

The Young Minister and His Wife

No idea as to where or when this was taken

It must have agreed with them, because three years later, I was born.  The pregnancy was difficult.  Three different times they rushed Momma to the hospital in Missoula, over thirty miles away in those days.  My parents had been married over fifteen years when I was born, and had lost two boys at birth years earlier.  The story I grew up with was that the doctors had told Momma she couldn't have children after the second son was born blue.  Yet here I am.  When I first saw the movie Steel Magnolias, I immediately caught the line from the Christmas Party scene where the other women surround M'Lynn saying "I thought the doctors said Shelby couldn't have children."  M'Lynn, played by Sally Fields in the movie, responds "No.  They said she shouldn't have children.  There's a difference."  The next time I saw Momma, I asked if I had misunderstood all these years.  That's when I found out parents often change their stories as their children grow.  Momma's response to me was "I don't know why you would think that.  Your father and I never stopped trying to have children."  Well, apart from the fact that no one wants to think of their parents having sex, there was only one reason I had that thought.  Someone (Momma!) planted it in my head.

Mother and Child (Re)Union

Boulder River, Sweet Grass County, Montana

Summer, 1950

Poppa was busy as a minister.  In June, before I was born in October, Bishop Glenn Randall Phillips appointed Poppa to the yoked parish of Laurel-Park City, Montana, some 300 miles east of the Bitterroot and just fifteen miles from Montana's largest city, Billings.  While Momma was giving birth to me, Poppa gave birth to a new church building in Laurel.  Under his leadership, the Laurel church grew in size to the point where it no longer needed to be yoked to another church.  After five years at Laurel, Bishop Phillips appointed Poppa to Mountain View Church in Butte, a church that had been the largest Methodist Church in the state.  Both my parents were unhappy in Butte, and after a year and a half, Poppa accepted a special appointment as Executive Vice President at Rocky Mountain College in Billings.  And we moved again.  We actually moved three times in the three and a half years we lived in Billings, and my parents bought a beautiful home near downtown, but never lived in it.  In 1959, Poppa again got wunderlust, and we moved to Stockton, California where Poppa took a position in the President's Office at the University of the Pacific.

The job at Stockton turned out to be not at all what Poppa thought he was applying for, and before the year was out, Poppa asked Bishop Phillips for a church.  Phillips was happy to hear from Poppa, saying I need you in Ogden, Utah.  Poppa refused to move to Utah with a ten year old son, but Bishop Phillips would not be swayed.  "You'll take Ogden or nothing.  That's where I need you."  Poppa chose to move his membership to California, and we ended up moving to a small farming community 75 miles northwest of Sacramento, Colusa.

Colusa is in the Sacramento Valley and sits right on the Sacramento River.  In the summer time it's ungodly hot, and even though the community is a very prosperous faming town, raising primarily rice, almonds and prunes, the people have a poverty consciousness--or at least did back in 1960.  When my mother was told "We can't afford the best teachers," she was outraged.  She had a son going into junior high school.  "How can you afford to have anything but the best teachers," she asked.  After two years in Colusa, we moved again.   This time to the San Francisco Bay Area, the town of El Cerrito, to be specific.

El Cerrito did have excellent teachers, and my parents, who would never have considered moving to San Francisco prior to this, were happy there.  They ended up staying in the Bay Area for eleven years, and moved to California's North Coast in 1973, when Poppa was assigned to the church in Smith River.

Smith River is the last town in California as you head north on US 101 toward Oregon.  It sits almost exactly half way between Crescent City, California and Brookings, Oregon.  It was while they were in Smith River, that Poppa suffered a series of cardiac arrests that left him mentally damaged and unable to continue his pastorate.  For the last twelve years of his life, Momma was his sole care-giver.  When he died in 1988, I fully expected Momma to follow him to the grave.  They had been married for 54 years.  Her comment was "I'd gladly give him another 54."

50th Wedding Anniversary

Smith River, California

February, 1984

I stayed with Momma for two weeks after Poppa's death.  Each morning I woke up wondering if I'd find her dead, but toward the end of my stay, she took me aside and said, "I will get better!  I want you to take me to Ireland."  She did get better, but we never made it to Ireland, I'm sorry to say.  Momma lived for another 19 years after Poppa died.  When Poppa became incapacitated, my parents bought a lovely home in Smith River, and that's where Momma lived out the rest of her life.  She lived in Smith River longer than she had lived anywhere.

As long as Poppa was alive, I never heard Momma complain about anything, but after his death I did learn just how hard it had been for her living with him.  More to the point, following him from church to church, town to town, state to state.  All of Momma's siblings died in the same town where they were all born.  Where my grandparents were born.  Where at least some of my great-grandparents were born.  Most of my cousins living and dead never left Parkersburg.  Following her gypsy husband all over the country had to be difficult.  I do remember hearing Momma say "I want to go home.  I just don't know where home is."  I tried to get Momma to go back to West Virginia with me before my cousins Betty Lee and Lucille died, but Momma wouldn't hear of it.  She was settled now, and that was that.

Ethel Mae Spellman died the Saturday after Thanksgiving, November 25th, 2006.  I miss her dearly to this day and I always will.  The best mother anyone could ever have.  By the way, the color photograph above of Mother and me on the Boulder River was taken by my father, a very talented amateur photographer.  It's my favorite of all the hundreds of photos I have of his.

It's All Relative -- Part Deux

As time goes on
I realize
Just what you mean
To me
And now
Now that you're near
Promise your love
That I've waited to share
And dreams
Of our moments together
Color my world with hope of loving you

--from Suite for a Girl from Buchannon by James Pankow

John Wesley
The Man who has had the most influence over me
(other than my father)
Taken 10/8/07 in Buckhannon, West Virginia

This post is a continuation of my post of 10/10/07. Parts of it may not make sense if you have not read the previous post.

Leaving the state hospital, I saw a sign for the public library and headed that way. Faced with a spectacular Victorian building, I read the historic marker sign and learned that the Lewis County Library had been built as a private home. With the loss of father-in-law, husband and son, a fighter pilot in World War I, Mrs. Louis Bennett gave the building to Lewis County to serve as a public library and memorial son. Entering the Louis Bennett Library, I headed for the reference desk. “My great-great-great-etc. grandpappy founded this town according to family history, and I’m just wondering what you might have on Henry Flesher?” The librarian looked me over and said that they really didn’t have much of any local history or family records, but I should try the Central West Virginia Genealogical Library at Horner, a few miles east of town. Directing me past the Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies, past Walmart and McDonald’s, past the I-79 interchange, the librarian told me I couldn’t get lost unless I made a wrong turn. “Terrific,” I thought. Still, it was on the way to Buckhannon, and so I figured I’d check the place out. Since it was open until 8 pm, even on this holiday (Columbus Day), I decided to note its location and continue on to West Virginia Wesleyan College (WVWC).

Pedestrial Bridge
Taken 10/8/07 in Weston, West Virginia

Once I got to Buckhannon, I faced the choice of which exit to take from Corridor H of the Robert C. Byrd Appalachian Highway System. I trust you remember the senior senator from West Virginia, and all the ways he has of promoting his name to a grateful populace. Fortunately there was a sign directing me to take the second exit to reach the college. This I did, and spent the next half hour driving in circles looking for anything that resembled a college—or any other type of institution for that matter. Buckhannon isn’t so large that a college could hide itself easily, or so I thought.

Eventually, I looked down a side street and said “That looks like it could be a college building,” and indeed it was. The next question was where to find the bookstore so I could get some WVWC paraphernalia. Pulling into the Faculty only parking lot in front of the administration building, I asked a woman where I should go. She gave me directions, telling me to park in front of the Wesley Chapel, but warned me that the bookstore was already closed.

Parking where I was directed, I found a student and asked for further directions. He too told me that the bookstore was closed, but that I could look in the windows. Just what I wanted. I did find the store, after a few wrong turns, and it was, as indicated, closed. “You can call in an order, or use the web,” a snack shop worker told me. Looking through the windows, I can’t say that I saw anything that I couldn’t live without, and frankly, orange just isn’t my color.

Wesley Chapel
West Virginia Wesleyan College
Taken 10/8/07 in Buckhannon, West Virginia

The campus looked inviting, but most of the buildings seemed quite new. Founded in 1890 by the West Virginia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, WVWC was the college my parents attended (and Poppa graduated from) in the early 1940s. The more I looked around the campus, the more I became convinced that my parents would not recognize much of anything here today. For this I blame a distant cousin, Jay Rockefeller. (Since this is all about my genealogy, note please that the wife of John D. Rockefeller I was a Spelman from central Ohio. Family legend has it that she was my great-great-grandfather’s cousin.) In the spirit of fairness, I feel obliged to point out that the college’s website gives credit for the current look of the campus to Dr. Stanley H. Martin who served as President from 1957 to 1972. Still all the money had to come from somewhere. In 1884, John D. Rockefeller visited the Atlanta Women’s Seminary, a school for Black women, and liked what he saw. He was generous in his gifts to the school and it was renamed Spelman Seminary, and later Spelman College in honor of his in-laws who had been active in the anti-slavery movement. In 1973, John D. Rockefeller IV, known as Jay, was chosen to be President of WVWC. He served as President until 1976 when he was elected Governor of West Virginia. After two terms in that office, he was elected to the US Senate in 1984 and today he remains the junior Senator from the Mountain State.

Entrance to the Physical Education Center
West Virginia Wesleyan College
Taken 10/8/07 in Buckhannon, West Virginia

I gave up on the idea of finding any roots at WVWC and started the return trip to Parkersburg. It was now past 5 pm and I had an almost empty tank. Still I thought I could at least make a stop at the Genealogical Library to see if it would be worth my while to return when I had more time at my disposal.

The staff was very helpful, and I soon had more citations on the Flesher family than I really cared to go through. Of more interest to me was the family of my great-grandmother whose maiden name was Sarah Rebecca McCalley. I knew, or at least thought I knew, that her father’s name was Solomon P. McCalley and that he came from Lewis County, whose seat, Weston, was just a few miles west of the library. The first book I pulled off the shelves was a McCalley family history that listed both Sarah and Solomon and gave me two generations further back plus a lot of juicy gossip about the family.

Captain James McCalley was a Scottish officer in the Royal Navy at the time of the American Revolution. Instead of fighting against the insurgents, he joined them and stayed in America after the war. The sixth of his seven children was Henry who was born in May, 1790. Henry and his wife Sarah Alkire had eleven children: Solomon P. was the eighth, born in 1828. He married Jane Blackburn and they had three children, of which Sarah Rebecca was the second. I had found more family ties.

Remember where I am. West Virginia is considered a “border state” in American history. The state was created in 1863 when the trans-Allegheny counties of Virginia found a way to free themselves, not from the Confederacy but rather from Richmond, Virginia’s capitol. As folk in outlying areas often do, the mountaineers of the western part of Virginia felt that their needs were not being addressed by the state government. Taking advantage of Virginia’s secession, the people of the west in turn seceded from Virginia, forming the state of West Virginia. Sentiment for the Confederacy was high in the hills and hollers of the new state, but not so high as to keep the people tied to the rest of Virginia.

The McCalleys were Virginians. One of Henry’s nephews, Jonathon McCalley Bennett was state auditor in Virginia and his picture and signature appears on the five dollar Virginia Treasury Note issued during the Civil War. Because of his “act of rebellion,” Bennett was branded a traitor and his lands in Lewis County were forfeited. One of Henry’s brothers, James McCalley, Jr., was the attending physician at the birth of the man who would become known as “Stonewall” Jackson.

Solomon, apparently, did not share his family’s love of the South, or at least of the Confederacy, and his father, Henry, disinherited him. Henry did give a tract of land to Solomon’s brother with the provision that Solomon could live on the land, but that it was to be held in trust for Solomon’s children, including presumably, my great-grandmother.

One of the questions I asked the library staff was just what “Central West Virginia” meant. “Lewis County and those counties surrounding it,” I was told. Most of my family comes from Wood, Jackson and Roane Counties, which do not surround Lewis County. Still, the library had records from those counties as well as from several other states. I made use of what I could find in the limited time I had before the library closed for the day.

One question that had always bothered me concerned my great-grandparents on my mother’s side of the family. Family records said that Great-grandpa Stephens was born in Frederick County, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. The same records said that he married Mary Elizabeth Phelps in Wood County in the Ohio Valley. But I had death records showing that their first two children had been born and had died in Clarke County—back in the Shenandoah. It made no sense to me that Great-grandpa would cross the mountains (and the state) to marry a woman, then take her back across the mountains. At the Central West Virginia Genealogical Library I found the record of the marriage—in Wood County. I guess Grandma had that one right. Still I’d love to know the story behind the peripatetic Henry L. Stephens. This is the same man who took his young family to western Missouri only to return to the Ohio Valley within a few years.

I grew up three thousand miles away from all my blood relatives. What I find amazing today is as I drive around the state, I see family names on all sorts of topographical features. This, of course, is always the case. Bass Creek in Montana is named for the Bass family. Haight Drive in Smith River, California, is named for the Haight family. But the difference here is that when I see McKown Creek, as I did yesterday, or Alkire Hill Road, as I did on Monday, I know that the chances are good that the McKown or Alkire for whom these places are named are probably my ancestors. I’m in a constant state of awe.

Then, of course, there’s my contention that there are only fifteen family names in Jackson County and they’re all in my family tree. For the past two days I stayed at Longfork Campground in rural Roane County. As I started comparing names with the staff there, sure enough, we have lots of common names. West Virginia, it really is all relative.

Chew Mail Pouch
Tobacco Barn in the West Virginia Hills
Taken 10/10/07 in Wirt County, West Virginia

And as for that. Back in the early years of this decade, the clothing chain Abercrombie and Fitch came up with the clever idea of putting out a line of t-shirts with new state mottos. I don’t know what happened with their other mottos, but the one they used for West Virginia was “It’s All Relative.” This created quite a stir. The Governor tried to get a boycott of A&F. Nasty letters were posted on bulletin boards and in chat rooms. The t-shirts disappeared from the stores. Everyone I’ve talked to tried to get one of the shirts before A&F pulled them. Some people just don’t have any sense of humor, I guess. Deliver me from Political Correctness.