Helen D.
Gaines
Kenosha,
Wisconsin
Dear Barbara,
Little stories my mother, Mary Andrews, told me about her life in Kentucky with her grandmother, Mary "Polly" Bennett.
My mother spent a good share of her childhood living with her grandmother in Kentucky. She was born in Plymouth, Michigan and her parents maintained a home there as long as they lived. Why she lived with her grandmother so much of the time, I do not know.
She evidently adored her grandmother and living with her was a happy time, as there were many aunts and uncles and cousins to visit. There was also Aunt Ciller, an ex-slave who was the cook, and Uncle John, also an ex-slave, the houseman, also Lucy, Aunt Ciller's granddaughter, who acted as nursemaid and companion to my mother.
During the war between the States the family was divided, part of the sons fighting for the North and part for the South, and during the reconstruction years, Polly Bennett suffered hardship. She was widowed by that time, she had lost sons in the war and her slaves were gone. Finally the Home Place was burned by raiders while she watched from a nearby hill. Only the huge chimney was left standing. She saddled a horse and rode to Sparta to ask her brother, John O. Hamilton, for a loan of $600 which he gave her in gold. With it she built a small house around the old chimney. She lived to pay back the loan and re-establish herself financially, dying at the age of 94, after a few days' illness of pneumonia, which she contracted while riding horseback overseeing her fields. Just before she died she told one of her daughters that life was as sweet at 94 as it had been at 16, and that it was hard to die.
During the war, her son Alfonzo came home on a secret mission. Worn out and exhausted she put him in the front, downstairs bedroom to sleep while she kept watch. A group of soldiers came looking for him and one with whom he had grown up came to the door and called "Lonnie, Lonnie". Alfonzo stumbled, half-asleep, out of the bedroom to the door, where one of the men in party shot him and he fell dead in her arms. This was her first born and a terrible shock to her.
One summer Grandmother Polly decided my mother should learn to cook and put her under Aunt Ciller's wing. I guess she had a terrible time finding out how to make anything. Aunt Ciller was an excellent cook who never measured anything. As mother said she told her "When you cook you use jus' nuf cordin". Meaning if you had six eggs you made a six egg cake and adjusted the other ingredients accordingly. Anyway, my mother finally caught on and turned out to be a good cook too. An could she fry chicken!
All the women in the family could sew too and they learned while they were children. Every day at a certain time they had to come into the house and do a "stint" under the supervision of an older person. Thus linens were made, lace crocheted and knitting and quilting done. As a result there were trunks full of extras and when my grandmother (America Jane) died, mother inherited a great deal of these. I have a beautifully quilted quilt that was made by Polly Bennett.
Mother used to tell me what handsome uncles the BENNETTs were. I remember reading an old letter written about the time of Rueben's marriage to Polly describing him as "over 6 feet tall, blue eyes and red-brown hair, a handsome young fellow."
Mother's days in Kentucky seemed to be full. Church on Sunday, dinner at home or with some relative, horseback riding and picnics in the woods. She was going to school in Detroit when her grandparents died and thus ended a very happy time of her life. I don't think she ever went to Kentucky again.
Later on a cousin, "Dora " (male) Bennett came to visit her at Plymouth. He was from Bluffton, Indiana and I think his family were jewelers. At any rate they rented a horse and buggy and went to a party down in the country. All went well until they were on their way home when the horse shied at a hooting owl and ran away. They were dumped out of the buggy and left sitting on a rail fence until other homeward bound party goers came along and rescued them and caught the horse a mile or so down the road. When Dora returned home he made a lovely gold pin about the size of a half dollar concave, with a rail fence across the bottom and two owls with emerald eyes sitting on it. A diamond set in the upper half for the full moon shinning on them. As a child I was fascinated with it.
This is the gist of what I have remembered over the years.
Helen Gaines
Submitted
by Barbara Wilson. If
you have additional
information
on this family or questions, please -email Barb.
Used
with permission.