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| Life began for me when I went to live with my Aunt Virginia. Then and there is where I met my future husband. He was a nephew of my Uncle Elijah's, Charlie Edgar Smith. It was love at first sight, and a very young sight. He used to come down to visit his grandparents -- who lived in the house with Uncle Elijah. Charlie had two sisters around my age and we did have lots of fun going to school and to community parties and dances together and that is how Charlie and I met and saw so much of each other. Those were in the gay nineties and I think the horse and buggy days were the days we didn't have all the new-fangled things that the children of today have. But, I think we were just as happy and enjoyed life just as much and perhaps more. Charlie and I were married September 15, 1896 and we lived in the same house with Charlie's father until our first little girl came to live with us, Hallie Irene -- 27 August 1897. Then Charlie built our first home on father Smith's farm a few feet south of his home. Charlie was a carpenter and a very good one. So we had a comfortable four room house and we had plenty good things to eat and as good and comfortable home as any common folk had in these days. I gave birth to eleven children of which all were born in our mountain home. Namely Hallie, Emory, Haven, Mary, Virginia, Robert, Joseph, Nancy, Walter, Guy, and Margaret Louise. Those were good old days but, hard ones too, trying to rear a large family. |
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