We lived in a log house & the cracks would be pretty open. My mother had an old kettle that she put hot coals in to warm her feet by. I remember picking the burrs out of the wool for my mother to wash and picking the seeds out of cotton for carding and spinning. She then spun it to make into stockings or whatever she wanted. She made towels- spun them or wove them- & blankets & stuff to make our linsy dresses. We was proud of them for we couldn't get much else them days. I had a good time them days.

I thought our school was close. All I had to do was to go down one hill & go up another & I was at the school house. Twas called round school because it was up on a hill & there was hills on every side. We had whats called the old blue back speller & I new it by heart from cover to cover. They use to have spelling matches & they would choose the best spellers & they most generally chose Calista Ellsworth & Etta Pigg, one of my school mates.

She is living today down at Mulberry Grove. She married Jim Koonce but he died years ago. She knew lots about the old school. Her uncle John Pigg taught one term of our school & my other teachers were William Redding, Lewis Crutchley, Eugene Vest, Wesley Woodard, & Amy Morton. We had a good warm frame school house & good seats & places to put our books & they had a good box stove that burnt wood. The teacher made the boys bring the wood for the stove, and there was plenty of it. I have had to wade in snow up to my knees lots of times to get to school. Believe me them were cold days & people had sleighs & sleds & you could hear the sleigh bells jingling all around them days in winter.

That was the days of the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln freed the darkies. He sure was a good man & done a good deed. He was a good Christian man & had but little learning because he had no way much but he got to be President of the United States. It was cruel that he should of been assassinated for he was such a wonderful man & was a wonderful president.

That is the only school I ever went to because my father died & I had to quit going. I was 14 years old but my mother passed away when I was but 8 yrs old. I had 5 sisters & one brother & one brother & sister dead. I had one deaf sister- deaf from childhood & lived to be 78 years old. My sisters are all dead - 6 of them & one sister living at 99 yrs old & one brother 88 yrs old. I am the youngest of the family of 10 & I am 82 years old. I married a farmer in the year 1882, my husband dying in 1927. We raised a family of 8 children, 6 of them living, 4 girls & 2 boys. 1 girl & 1 boy died. The boy was 3 yrs old dying with diphtheria and the girl was 10 months old with measles.

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