Growing Up In Williamsport, Ohio

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