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The 1944 Move My parents, Bert Francis and Virginia Elizabeth Skaggs were married on December 1, 1926 in Lancaster, Ohio (Fairfield County). My oldest sister Kathleen “Kat” was born near Stoutsville on September 7, 1927. My brother Robert “Bob” was born there as well on April 14, 1929. My sister Evelyn “Jean” was born in Williamsport on August 22, 1933. I was born next on May 3, 1938 then my sister Betty Ann was born on July 18, 1940. A few years ago, my sister “Jean” tried to show me the house where she, Betty and I were born in the south end of Williamsport but she was unable to identify it. It is on the edge of town and faces a cornfield. My mother said it was owned by the Pancake family. My parents bought the house at what would later become 309 South Water Street. It was likely built in the late 1800s. They purchased it on February 28, 1944.The deed states that my Dad was to pay $400 in the next six months. It looks like he paid it by June 28. I don’t know if that was the entire cost of the house or just the remainder. I also don’t know if we moved there in February or later. If we moved there before May, I would have been five years old. My first memory of living there was walking through the yard with my Dad. I was carrying a little red rake. Daddy always had us doing yard work. The back yard and garden were low lying. When it rained they filled with puddles of water. The soil was mostly yellow clay so over the years my Dad trucked in dark soil. It made for a fine garden. There was a coal house in the back yard. In the fall we would have ½ to a ton of coal trucked in for the winter. The coal was shoveled into the small window of the coal house. We filled the coal bucket and carried it through the kitchen to the iron, potbellied stove in the living room. My Dad worked for the Dunlap Company as a farm hand/manager and got up about 5:30 every morning. He started or rekindled the fire in the stove so it would be warm when the rest of us got up. Of course, my mother and we had to keep it going during the day. The only place that was truly warm was the front of the house. As far as I know, we had electricity but the only gas in the house was a gas light in the downstairs bedroom. It was functional though we never used it. I don’t know when we got our gas Warm Morning Stove. Both, the gas light and the stove, were still in the house when it was torn down on April 2, 2014. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2019
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck
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 Our History in Williamsport While I do not want to dwell on the history of Williamsport here, I do want to tell about our family’s history there. I don’t know why my parents moved from Stoutsville to Williamsport. In recent years, I have realized that many of the people who lived in Williamsport were of German descent. Many of my family’s ancestors came from Virginia then moved to Kentucky and up into Ohio. My recent DNA test indicates that we came from England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany and Scandinavia. The mode of transportation for my grandparents was horses and trains. Then my parents lived through the transition from horses to automobiles. When my mother was young, she went to the Circleville Pumpkin Show with her Dad, Isaac Skaggs, in a horse drawn surrey with a fringe on top. My Dad’s father, Amos Francis, was a horse trader. They were a family that was always involved with horses. My Dad had a crooked little finger from hitting the rear end of a horse. During that transition time, not everyone had a car so some of the necessities of life came to them. One of my first remembrances of living in the south end of town was the bread man. Every time he came, I would be waiting. He always gave me a big oatmeal cookie. We also had a milk man, an ice man and a dry cleaner. Unlike today, we didn’t have to pay them $5 to deliver. My Dad’s employer, the Dunlap Company, paid their workers at Archie Rawlinson’s IGA Grocery Store. We bought things all week long and put it on the store’s tab. When my Dad picked up his check, he paid for the groceries. My mother often made a list of things she wanted and dropped it off. Archie or his workers would gather the groceries up in cardboard boxes and deliver them to the house at no charge. Life was good….at least for me. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2019
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck |
Marilyn Francis FergusonGrowing up in Williamsport, Ohio is a blog by Marilyn Francis Ferguson which describes small town life in the 1940s and 1950s. Blog Categories
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