By Velma Margaret Rose Smith

I am going to write about the experiences of a little girl from the time she was 6 years old to 10 years old. Her hair was in long brown curls. Her eyes were blue and she was of average size. Her name was Velma Margaret Rose and she was born in 1900. She had a black, curly haired dog called Rex and a tiger cat named Mahalia. She was an only child living with her Papa and Mama Rose in a settlement called Scodac.

The big day arrived when Velma would go to her first day at School. It was a one room, little red school house called the Scodac School. Dressed in her new blue and white checked gingham dress with long black stockings, patent leather slippers, carrying a square lunch box that had been her mothers. She left home and started walking on her two mile walk to school. She got to the neighbors house and was joined by Zuke and Hazel Smith, a little over her age and at the next house by Ross Smith, her age.

The third day she told her teacher she felt sick and the teacher told her to go home before noon. She walked to Sam and Nora’s farm house, stopped and went in and wanted a drink. Nora gave her a glass of lemonade and she walked on home. A very surprised Mother met her at the door. When Velma told her she was sick, her Mother said for her to get undressed and go to bed. She kept her in bed all afternoon, but when supper was ready Velma felt fine and came out to eat, but her Mother said “Oh no, you are sick”, and put her back to bed. But later that night, Papa came in carrying a plate, with a chicken leg and other food. The next morning she went to school, and never had another sick day.

One day later that year she was eating an apple and one of her loose teeth came out and she swallowed it. It scared her and she went up and told her teacher what had happened and asked her if it would kill her, and should she go home. The teacher comforted her and told her she would be ok.

Velma and Ross were joined by Dick Hakes for our primer class. Really, my parents taught me how to read.

One day there was a knock on the door, a man came in to tell a family of children that their house had burned down. They all started to cry and the rest of the school joined them. That night we visited the family. The mother opened a cupboard door, for a minute we saw the dishes, plates, cups, etc and the next minute they were a pile of ashes.

This little girl had learned a lot that summer. She learned how to pick strawberries, and went to the field alone and picked a kettle of berries, and hulled them so they could have strawberry shortcake for dinner. She learned how to pick lettuce, how to pull weeds in the garden and how to use a paring knife. You have heard the tale of the 3 blind mice: Three Blind Mice, Three Blind Mice, did you ever see such a sight in your life, as Three Blind Mice? But, did you ever see such a sight in your life as 12 drunken cows? Papa was working at a neighbor’s place so Mama and Velma went up on the hill to get the cows down for milking. They couldn’t find them in the pasture but had seen some cows in the neighboring orchard, went there. Old Whitey had found an orchard. She could smell an orchard a mile away, Papa said. So they got them back in the pasture and drove them home. The cows would fall down, get up and run with their tails over their backs, fall and roll around. Mama thought they had found a crazy weed, which would poison them. When they arrived home, Papa was waiting. He took one look at them and said they are drunk. None of them died. They had eaten frozen apples. Rex, our dog, went with us.

Rex was everywhere! He was a black, curly haired pup, that Albert and Gussie Jones had given Mama before we moved. They said he was a bird dog. We found out he was a thief. I kept leaving things, just doll clothes and little toys, out. I hunted all over, couldn’t find them. Then I left my doll on the steps and that disappeared. But when my shoes disappeared, Papa and Mama were really concerned. So Papa left my bonnet on the steps, soon he saw a little dog going around the house with it in his mouth. He followed him and found all the loot in a hollow of a tree in the back yard. One day he really got in trouble, Aunt Emma, then a student at Normal School, and her friend, Pearl, spent the weekend with us. She heard the dog crying for help. She found him trying to get out of the whey barrel. Papa took our milk to the cheese factory with horse and buckboard, brought the whey back and poured it in a big barrel, to feed the pigs. Rex had tried to get a drink by standing on the buckboard and fell in. I can still see this little white bundle in Aunt Emma’s arms before they got him washed up.

Shep, a tan colored short haired dog, my pal when I was a baby lived at home with Grandma Rose and Uncle Jay, came to visit us quite often. We would get up in the morning and find him waiting at the door. After a few days he would leave to go home and keep everything straight there.

The neighbors, Clarence and Bell Smith, kept a big bull. Every little while he would break down the fence and come down to our house. Papa was afraid of him, Smith’s would come down and with pitch forks, get him back home. This one morning Papa looked out and saw the bull by the porch. Shep looked up from where he was sleeping on the porch. He thought this don’t belong here, so he said BOW-WOW – go home, but the bull bellowed and made for Shep. Shep didn’t like the looks of the angry bull’s face, he made for the other end, grabbed the tail, bit in and held on. The bull tried to get him off but no luck, so he decided to go back home. Shep held right on and they went up the road. Shep came back, tired but happy. Papa praised him. That bull never came back again.

I haven’t mentioned our neighbors to the south of us. Wallace and Kate Sherman, the big white house at Sherman’s Corner. They had Harold 14, Winfred 11, and Howard who was my age and Bertha 3. They were a nice family. They went to the Bullock School. I played a lot with Howard. Kate was a sister of Mate, Clarence’s wife, and Cora, Bert’s wife. Ross’s Mother. They were Clevelands, Lyle Cleveland’s aunts.

It was a very nice community and Mama loved it there. They had a lot of parties and church and entertainments held at the school house.

An old log house and barn were still standing across from Shermans, in the hollow by the creek on the Scodac road. Howard and I used to play around them. I was interested in them but never found out their story.

I haven’t told you of the third Smith girl, 4 year old Nevah, and the fun we had sliding down the cellar door, until we upset the hornets.

Uncle Jay Rose married a very nice girl, Anna Collins, we went to the wedding. It was my very first wedding. I remember what a beautiful couple they were.

Someone drove in, it was the owner of the farm, Steve Day. He said he wanted to go back to farming, that meant we had to move. We found a place on the State Road in Mainesburg.

It was March 1st, 1907, I, Velma am a tired 6 year old girl. Clarence and Bill Smith have helped all day to pack and load furniture on their wagons, everything is picked up. Papa and the men left in the morning with the wagons, as they had our three cows to drive. They were Whitey, a large cow with wide spread long horns, and a little Jersey named Almeda and another one Papa had brought from home. They would look funny today, loads of moving and driving your stock through Mansfield. We had chickens and pigs in crates on one of the wagons. Mama and I stayed to clean up the house. In the buggy at our feet was Rex and I held my tiger cat, Mahalia, on my lap. I don’t remember the long ride to Mainesburg, I must have fallen asleep, when I woke up, I asked Mama “are we almost there?” It was dusk, she said for me to watch for a big white house, we should see that, then drive through a little woods and we would come to a red barn on our left and red house on the bank opposite it. We passed the white house and soon came to the red barn, and looked and a lamp light shone through the red house window. They were watching for us. Papa took the horse and Clarence and Bill carried boxes to the house. I remember that first look at the kitchen. There was the familiar cook stove, with a fire in it and the teakettle boiling. The dining room table and chairs set up. But Mama said “What’s all that?” Papa explained that the cellar hadn’t been cleaned, so they had to put all the stuff in the big kitchen. Bags of potatoes leaned against the wall, crocks of pickles, boxes of canned berries and vegetables, etc. We were soon all seated at the table, Mama must have prepared supper in the morning. I can’t remember what we had, but it felt so good, and I watched as the men ate. They were tall, big men, and they were hungry. I remember Mama saying “That is the best cup of tea I ever tasted”. The men had the beds set up. There was a living room on the front side of the house, and back of it was a small bedroom and a large one and two or three others upstairs. It wasn’t long before the house was dark and quiet. The next morning I was awakened by a rooster crowing. I sat up, there on my window sill sat our rooster.

We were renting one of the Warren Rose farms. He lived in Mansfield. He was a dealer that bought and sold cows. On this farm he had three cow barns. When he bought this place, they had started to build an addition on the house. They had the frame all up, floor and roof. When the men came the night before, the chicken coop wasn’t fit to put chickens in, so they put them in the addition. I don’t remember how long it took to get things where they belonged.

The next morning I walked around the house with Mama and Papa. Mama said I am not living in a house painted with red barn paint. A short time later men showed up, tore down the addition and Warren gave Papa white paint. It wasn’t long and we were living in a neat little white farm house, with a nice lawn where several peony plants showed up and blossomed.

Late that summer I remember an old iron frying pan, filled with water, setting on the ground with little snakes floating. Some one had told me, if I put hair from a horse’s tail, kept in water they would turn to snakes. Papa told me to try it. I went by myself to the horse stalls and cut off black horse hair. It sat there all summer. I kept water in it. Sure enough by fall they changed into snakes. HONEST!!

Another thing I remember about the back yard is a lane led from the upper barn into a yard that was fenced in and in summers they moved the cows into this barn yard. One day they turned that big bull out with the cows. I was playing in our yard. Mama heard this big bull bellowing, came out and he was pawing and trying to break the fence down. Mama told me to come over to the porch and she started throwing stones at the bull. She kept on pelting him, finally one hit the right spot and down went that bull. She thought she had killed the farm bull, but after awhile he got up. He never bothered the fence again.

One day Papa said he had to go up to the upper barn to take a new calf away from it’s mother and get her back in her stanchion, so I decided to go see her calf. When I started in the door, the mother saw me, Papa was behind her with the calf. She met me at the door, I started to run back, she caught me with her horn and tossed me over the fence. I wasn’t hurt. Mama said for no reason at all she had come out the back door, she saw me going up the lane, and followed me. She got there in time, grabbed a stick and put the cow back in the barn.

In those days, it was the habit that the farmer’s wife have the egg money to spend herself. One day a man came along selling organs, Mama had always wanted an organ, so she decided to buy this for herself. It was a beautiful organ. She knew how to play hymns and she had a good voice. She would play evenings and I often went to bed and fell asleep listening to her play and sing. She sang in the choir at the church. One day someone asked Papa who the red headed girl in the choir was. He said “that beautiful red head is my wife”. Papa was janitor of the State Road Baptist Church.

I had a bantam hen, she was a pet, followed me around like a dog. One day Mama walked into the living room and there in a basket like trim on her organ, sat my bantam, she laid an egg there. Mama saved her eggs and in a short time she decided to become a setting hen. Mama fixed a box on the back porch and Banta hatched out a brood of baby chicks. She was so proud of them. She would strut around the back yard, calling her babies to follow. They were so cute. She lived to be an old hen.

Another time a man came around and left a Victrola and some records for us to try out. One record, Old Uncle Ned, got cracked, “so it lay down the shovel and the hoe” was where it stopped and I thought it was great fun to play with – and later it played to lay down the shovel and the hoe, hoe, hoe, hoe, hoe, hoe…

Back of our yard and the barn yard there was a steep hill, it was farm land. Papa was mowing hay there one afternoon when the upper horse kicked and fell over the tongue, under the other horse. Mama just happened to go out on the back porch, hear Papa yelling, the machine tipped over, mower was in gear and Mama was scared Papa would be hurt. She told me to stay at the house and she ran up. After a long time, the horse on the lower side, Nellie, came running as fast as she could down past where I stood, across the road and into her stall in the big red barn. All the harness she had on was a horse collar. They had to unfasten all they could and cut the rest to get her loose. After a little time Papa, leading Molly, and Mama came down. Papa wasn’t hurt, he had jumped clear of the mower. He was scared, three scared people and two scared horses.

The other side of the hill was just as steep. Papa planted buckwheat on it. It grew very short, the man that lived at the foot of the hill kept honey bees. One day Papa and I walked over to see him, Ed Welch, he told Papa he was going to sue him. Papa said “What for?” and he said his bees were ruined, they had worn all the fuzz off their undersides getting the sweet out that buckwheat so close to the ground. He was a little man with a big black mustache, French I believe.

The first spring that we lived there, on a warm morning, I went down to the bridge that was across the creek. On my way over to see the Hilfigers, the hired man, Oliver, and Priscilla. He was a Civil War Vet, and had been shot several times. That bridge was covered by snakes, hundreds of them, crawling all over the place. I went back to the house and got Mama, she hated snakes and used a hoe to chop them, but this was too much. Mr. Hilfiger told us they were water snakes, harmless, they came out like this every spring. So we learned to live with these snakes, and left each other alone. Mahalia liked to catch snakes, she brought them to Rex, then watch out, he would shake them until they flew to pieces. We watched this several times. One night when there was a full moon, we heard a howling. Mama called me to come look out the window, there sat Rex and Mahalia, side by side, both looking up at the sky and howling.

This day the wind was coming up, it blew hard where we lived. Papa said he was going out to shut the big barn doors of the big middle barn. Just then the phone rang, it was Charlie Miller’s hired girl, she called for help, they had a chimney fire. Papa ran out of the house and Mama and I went to the barn where she tried to shut the doors, she told me to run over to Hilfigers to tell him to go help Millers. Mrs. Hilfiger said he was in the barn up in the field behind their house, so I ran for the barn, but before I got there the roof raised right up and sailed out into the field. I was so scared but I kept on toward the barn. He came out and met me, the straw scaffle had protected him and the cows. He ran for Millers and I went back to Mama, who had finally managed to get the barn doors closed and was bracing them. The men came home later, they had gotten the fire out. Leon Scouten who had run from the other direction said he thought he never would make it, he had to face the wind. I think this is why I have always hated the wind.

The summer I was 8 years old, there was a big 4th of July picnic planned at Bungy Town, not too far from us, and we were looking forward to going. The night before Papa took a measure of salt and went to the pasture to give some to the colts. They ran at him and knocked him down. Mr. Hilfiger saw him and got to him. They got him to the house and called the Doctor from Mainesburg. He said it had hurt his kidneys. At the hospital they said he had a floating kidney and should be operated on. But Papa wouldn’t have the operation. He always had a backache and when he walked he always had an arm across his back. I felt so awful for Papa being hurt, and I felt bad to miss the picnic. The neighbors thrashed the oats and later cut his corn and filled the silo. Mama and Mr. Hilfiger milked 21 cows by hand.

One summer day a thunder and lightning storm came up, Papa was in Mansfield, he was driving Mr. Hilfiger’s horse and buggy. Mr. Hilfiger was working in the big barn, so Mama and I went over to stay with Mrs. Hilfiger during the storm. When it was over, we started for home, we stood on the bridge watching the water. It was high on that little creek, and trash began showing up, trees and boards, etc. All at once Mama said “look at that!” Away up the creek we saw a wall of water like the side of a room, curled out at the top. We ran up on the barn bridge, where we could watch. It took out the bridge and covered all the pasture back of the barn. The cows had just decided to come to the barn, they were caught in it and the whole herd was swimming, trying to get to dry ground. They all made it out, none drowned, but we sure thought they would. There had been a cloud burst above us. Papa had left Mansfield, at Mainesburg they told him he would have to come home on a different road. On what is Rt 6 now, he turned off at the Ernest Webster farm. There was a farm road from his farm to ours. When he got back to Hilfiger’s house, he and Mrs. Hilfiger stood and looked across the expanse of water to see Mr. Hilfiger, Mama and I on the other side. It was really funny. Mr. Hilfiger called out for Papa to ride the horse across and he would ride her home. So that is what they did. For weeks after we walked a beam across the creek, until they could get a new bridge built, which I thought was a lot of fun.

When Mrs. Hilfiger wanted to go to Mansfield or Troy to visit her daughter, Mama drove the horse and buggy, so we often made these trips. When we were in Mansfield we visited Alice Rose, Warren’s wife. They lived in the big house where Marks Restaurant is now. We often had dinner with them. She tied the horse on the barn floor. One day when she went to get her, the floor had broke through and the horse had fallen through, and had fell straddle a cross place, there she hung. Alice called some men, they came and got her back using a pulley and ropes. Mama was real upset and I was afraid they would kill the horse.

Not long after this Mama got real sick. I didn’t know until years later that I had a baby sister, she died at birth. Doctor didn’t get her out, she smothered. Papa buried her on Grandpa Rose’s grave in the cemetery across from the Baptist Church. Somehow I think she would have been named Alice, we all thought so much of Alice Rose. Maybe it would have been Mary Alice.

Papa was janitor of the Church. One day when he went up to clean, Rex followed him, so he let him in the church. The choir was having practice at the same time. They thought Rex was so cute. I took him up in the choir and had him sit on a chair. When Mama played the mouth organ at home, he always got up on a chair and howled while she played. Then one of the choir got an idea and put him in the Pastor’s chair, stood him up with his front feet on the pulpit. They all laughed and he thought he was pretty cute. The next Sunday we went to church and left Rex home as usual. He decided he would attend church. Papa sat next to the aisle and when he noticed Mama motioning from the choir, he looked just in time to catch Rex as he was headed for the Pulpit.

Later came the saddest day of my childhood. I was playing across the road from the house, by the roadside on a grassy plot under a maple tree. I was sitting on the ground with my dolls in my lap. Mahalia sat on one side and Rex on the other side nearest the road. A car came down the dusty road, swerved off the road and ran over Rex, killing him instantly. I screamed but they drove away. Mama came running and she called Papa but there was nothing they could do. We all felt so badly.

I don’t know when I got the idea but the next day I found Mama’s box of carpet tacks, took them down to the road and scattered them in the dusty road, so they would puncture any car tires if one drove by. Mama made me go pick up as many as I could find. Also I had to wash my dusty clothes that night. It was a lesson I had to learn, you don’t seek revenge.

Later I got a ride in one of those awful machines. Warren Rose and Alice stopped and took Mama and I for our first automobile ride. The women wore dusters and a hat with a big scarf to tie it down over their heads. The car had no doors and the top was down. They had a chauffeur with goggles and gloves.

I saw my first movie in the Grange Hall in Mainesburg. It was “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”. That horse ran right at me, I think, as I remember I dodged it so it wouldn’t hit me.

I attended the State Road School and made many friends. Nellie Squires and I wrote to each other until her death 2 years ago. She married Evan Williams who was a school teacher. Their son Evan became Judge of Bradford County. Mabel Hilfiger who married Oswald Benson, we wrote to each other until her death a few years ago.

Raymond, Velma and Morgan Hilfiger, Luva and Bill Connelly, Mildred Reynolds, Alfred and Alberta Cleveland, Lottie Swan and Gomer Cleveland. Gomer didn’t talk plain and called me Va and Warren Warr, so we called him Gome. There were three Wood children, Myrtle was one.

It was a little red school house. The men hauled a lot of wood, cut and piled it so neatly. We made forts out of it for snow fights in the winter.

Mama had a birthday party for me on my 8th birthday. It was my first party and I was thrilled. The children from school about my age came. Each brought a present and I still have some of them. She made ice cream and cake. When she called us in I remember we locked arms around our necks and all walked up to the house. We must have looked like a rail fence. Too bad she didn’t have a Kodak.

One winter, after a long snow storm, the men worked for days opening up the roads. One morning, school opened, I rode with Mr. Hilfiger when he took the milk to the cheese factory. We went through a drift that was 20 feet deep. It didn’t melt for weeks.

One day when Warren and I were getting home from school, we talked about the little Swan girl, Lottie, sister being so sick, we decided to go and see her. We walked right into the house and Mrs. Swan was busy with the little girl and didn’t see us for a few minutes. When she did she told us to go back outside. When I told Mama she was terribly upset. The little girl had diptheria, very catching and most often fatal. Mama had nearly died with it when she was 4 years old, and suffered all her life with a bad throat. The school found out what we did and wouldn’t let us attend school for the remaining weeks of school. That didn’t hurt our feelings but I did feel sorry we did it, for it scared, Mama, and Nellie, his mother.

One night Mama got really worried. The teacher kept me after school, she was determined I would learn to spell lantern, house and horse before she would let me go home.

Our nearest neighbors were Charlie and Nell Miller. Nell was from Cherry Flats. Nellie Kelly and Mama were childhood friends. She had cancer and Mama visited her often. Warren and I became very close friends, we played together nearly every day. In summer, he had a pony and cart, we went up from his place to Armenia Mt. We picked strawberries or went to the woods for flowers. We played around the foundations where the Roses and Millers settled when they came down from Conn. together. In the winter we rode down hill, a long ride, over fences. One day our sled hit the top of a stone wall, and stopped. We didn’t stop. We flew through the air for quite a distance. We were bruised and scratched but no bones broken. When stormy we played upstairs in their woodshed and with the old furniture we set up housekeeping. We spent many hours playing house. Nell had us babysit his little brother, Paul, a baby about 1 year old at the time.

We took lots of rides with the pony and cart, our favorite ride was to go up to the foundations on the mountain as I mentioned before. The stone foundations of the houses and barns were there and the old stone mill stone was there, the dam was gone. It was a flat basin like. I don’t know how they found that place, but the men came down from Connecticut and built their houses before they brought their families. When they moved, driving oxen on the wagons, they mostly walked, driving cows and sheep. Warren and I picked strawberries, filling our pails, then go up by the woods and fill our stomachs with wintergreen berries, delicious. I remember on day it was terribly hot in that basin so we went up by the woods first. Then when it got cool, we picked berries, filling our pails. It was dark when we got back to Millers, where we were met by a couple of irate Mothers. I had a feeling that Mama wanted to give me a spanking, but then looking at the pail full of strawberries she let me off with a good scolding. The last time I went by the old foundations place someone had put in a very large pond there. Too bad, I am sure the old mill stone would still have been there.

The month of February was coming to an end, the last Sunday we attended Church and Sunday School as usual and said goodbye to friends. We went to Millers for dinner. Mama helped get dinner on. I even remember we had chicken and dumplings. We spent the afternoon. Warren and I played with Paul on the living room floor so Mama and Nell could have a little time together. Then it was chore time. Papa called to me and said those pesky pigs are gone again. Would I see if I could get them? We raised lots of little pigs and they liked to get out of their yard and go up the hill, where there was a group of oak trees. They liked to grub in the ground for acorns. I had helped Papa chase them home before, so I went up. I found a branch and swinging that and doing a lot of yelling, I got them headed home, down past the house, across the road where Papa headed them into their pen under the red barn. Goodbye Pigs. That was my farewell to Sullivan Twp. I was 9 years old.

In the spring of 1910 we moved back home. Uncle Jay and Aunt Anna moved over to Millers, where Uncle Jay helped Charley farm and Aunt Anna cared for Nell. After she died, they came back and bought the farm where Paul Beuter lives. Warren came over to visit them so we had a few days to see each other. I went up everyday and we played games. He came down with the mumps and had to stay inside.

While we lived in Sullivan Twp. Papa went huckleberrying up on the mountain on what he called the Old Prospect, a settlement where a group of farmers from Connecticut and Vermont had come to settle. Foundations of the houses and remains of a church could be seen. He picked around old stone walls, left from the farms they cleared. They found the soil was thin and all was rock underneath. They had to move off the mountain and scattered around the lower country. The Millers and Roses families grew up and the young folks found other places to live. Our grandfather, Daniel, married a Baity. They had a farm on the Old State Road, coming west. They had 4 children. Ella who married Tom Landon, a barn builder. Leon who married a Bennett. Roland who married Nellie Dartt. Luna married Dick Burnside. The had these children when they lived on the State Road. One night they had their team of horses stolen from the stable. The Sheriff found one of them and brought it back. He got it from a man who had bought it, not knowing it was stolen, so he was out of his money.

Daniel’s wife died when Luna was a baby, I don’t know her age. He came to Charleston Township and bought the farm next to his cousin, Warren Miller. The farm you know as Bill Krolls upper place. It had a large white house, large barns. They piped their water from a spring on Miller’s farm. Warren Miller’s wife was Anne Webster, they owned the big field across the road and sold it to Tom Jones. When I was a girl there was a barn there, they called the Rose barn. Maybe there was a house there, I never heard. I wonder if he got Mary Bowen to keep house for him and married her when Luna was 4 year old. Papa and Uncle Jay were both born there.
Grandfather David Bowen died and David, Mary’s brother and wife Emma Wheeler lived with his mother. They wanted to move in with the Wheelers (where Jimmy Bowen lives) so Daniel sold their farm and moved in with Grandmother Bowen (where Merritt lives).

Grandpa died in 1892. Papa was 16 years old. Uncle Jay was 9. Papa was going to Normal School boarding at Julia ??? home. He had to quit school and come home to take care of the farm. No one knew he would have to pay up debts too. Grandpa had loaned money to Leon to get the store in Cherry Flats, where he was at that time, and to Uncle Rollie to get his farm. Neither one would pay these debts so Papa had to. He was still paying when he and Mama were married. Grandma worked as a midwife and helped what she could.

Papa and Mama were married July 5, 1898, in New York State. Mama was 18 July 26th. Clark Mudge and Rose Zittle stood up with them at Presho.