Growing Up in Williamsport, Ohio

​Leaving Williamsport
 
In my Sophomore year at Circleville Bible College, I no longer had a ride to get there. I had to move into the dormitory. I didn’t want to leave home and Williamsport, so it was gut-wrenching for me.
 
After college, I married, went to Missionary Internship in Farmington, Michigan, then to Brazil. When I came back to the States for good in 1973, the town’s decline was evident and became even more so as the years went on. I thought it was heartbreaking when the school and Horch’es Red and White Store were torn down. I couldn’t repair my parent’s house, so it was demolished. Then Archie Rawlinson’s IGA Store, where my brother had his flea market, was torn down. That is just mentioning the few structures that I know about.
 
My hope for Williamsport was that it would have been made into a tourist attraction like West Liberty or little Ohio Amish towns. The attraction might have been Clarence Harmount and his Uncle Tom’s Cabin troupe. Ohio State University has a collection of articles related to that. I would like for my parent’s house to have been made into a boutique with flowers inside and out. But none of that was to be. Psalm 103:15 and 16 state, “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone: and the place thereof shall know it no more.” 
 
I guess the moral of this story is to enjoy and appreciate your parents and family, your home, your friends, your lifestyle and the place where you live while you have them.
 
309 South Water Street, Williamsport, Ohio
 
My mother loved her little home in Williamsport, as did all of her children and grandchildren. I asked Wellman Funeral Home if they would drive past the house and stop for a few minutes in front of it so my mother could pay homage one last time to the place that she had lived and loved for sixty-one years. They did.
 
Epilogue to follow next week.
 
©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2021
Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck