Monthly Archives: February 2004

Audrey: Couldn’t be better. I play Bingo and am always busy. I am looking out the window and the snow covered everything. It snowed for two days and it covered all those big rocks. There is plenty of snow. It seemed like it was ten feet of snow with the wind blowing.

John Johnson Spencer

Audrey: I only know that he was at Libby Prison and I am sure he was there. I never talked with my grandfather. He was an old man with a long gray beard. Ed (John Edward Spencer), my brother, would talk with him. I was quiet. I was busy with art, my own privacy. I don’t remember speaking with Aunt Mandy (Esther Amanda Briggs) and she lived with us. Grandma (MaryJane Vaughn Spencer) and aunt Mandy were great at cutting articles out of newspapers. They would cut out articles about kings and queens, etc. I remember a snuffbox —snuff up the nose was a habit. All rich people had a diamond snuffbox, which was just the thing. Aunt Mandy, she had dates in a bag.

(The obituary in the newspaper does not seem to be correct.  Georgia National Park at Andersonville has no record of a John Johnson Spencer at Andersonville confederate prison.   We know he was at Libby Prison and at Belle Isle prison in Richmond, Virginia. He was in the battles that were around Pennsylvania and Virginia.  Spencer family oral history has him going no further south and we find have no other records of him going further south.)

Mary Jane Vaughn Spencer

Audrey: Milton said that my mother (MaryJane [née Vaughn] Spencer) is the best woman in all the world. He came every night. She was glad to see Milton. He played the guitar. She let him in every night. Grandma loved music. She and her sister, Rachel, were two little girls in blue and they sang in church.

Audrey: Milton’s mother (Annie [née Walton] MacDonald) was a big woman and I wasn’t too happy with her heaviness, but she had a sweet face and she was always smiling and very nice. Dad and I would go to his home late at night after the dances, and Grandma Mac (Annie MacDonald), she would get up and make johnny cakes for us. The johnny cakes were about the size of a half dollar and I loved her johnny cakes the best! She worked for the Coward family and Mrs. Coward was rich and flighty but Grandma Mac, she got along fine with Mrs. Coward.

Audrey: No. When Dawn grew up, she wanted me to travel with her. I feared being up in a plane! I feared the railroad tracks! I didn’t think too much of the trolley either. Even Dad liked to travel. I will always remember when Dawn was a little girl and learning about death, she said to me “When we go to heaven, will you hold my hand?”

Audrey: I remember Ruth Rose, who lived in the little house on the corner of Middle Road, said that when the weather was cold and they didn’t have enough blankets, they would cover up with rugs from the floor. Those rugs were braided rugs made from old cloth cut up in strips and rolled into rags. Women would cut the cloth and roll the cloth together with strings and then braid the cloth into a rug.

Audrey: I’m always out! I go out in the hall. Everything is going along fine.

Audrey: Margaret Mitchell and her husband lived upstairs, and the mothers and babies were down stairs. Seems so I was alone! Her house was upstairs. She let me have her upstairs with the babies. She only let me up there. She gave me all the privileges that she could.

William J.B. Spencer and Audrey Mae Spencer

Audrey: There was much more snow then. I could walk over the five-foot fence and not sink in as the snow was frozen. I could walk over the fence!!

We would get a snowstorm and I was always sick in bed with the croup. I would lie in bed and look out this nice big window by my bed. I’d keep watching for grass. Mother (MaryJane [née Vaughn] Spencer) would shake out the tablecloth on the snow. I would watch the birds come picking up crumbs that were dropped on the snow.

When I was a child, a sled as wide as the street was hitched to a couple of big horses. This sled swept the road of the snow. We used to have five feet snow storms! The people would be out plowing the road the minute the snow started until the snow stopped. Without plowing the roads, the snow on the road would have frozen and no one could even get out of their yard. Everybody got up and plowed their own driveway and then the road. If they wanted to get anywhere, they had to help plow the road.

The mailman came with horse and wagon. The buggy had a little top to keep you from getting wet or you could open it to get the sun (like a doll carriage-canvas to open it up or fold it over back). The mailman came by every day when I was little. My job was to go to the mailbox and get the mail. I was small and didn’t know enough to read.

I played with little stones by the house. I made a little fence and made a stove with stones. I would stand there and pack the stones and play for hours with the stones. I was always out in the yard, but I never went near the road.

The road was for the mailman and mail wagon.

Clara Tarbox would go by. They went down to the Village (Arctic) every day to get groceries or something.

Mother and I went down to Arctic every week to get groceries. Arctic used to be a nice place. Then a lot of hoodlums hung out in Arctic. You had to look out for yourself in your wagon. Mother would say “You stay right close to me now”.

Mother would go catch a horse, hitch the horse to the wagon and drive to Arctic. That was quite a job to go out in the yard and call “Prince”. Prince would come right away. Prince was afraid of hay loads. We tried to keep him away from hay loads. He was the only horse that was afraid of hay loads. When we got to Arctic, Mother would get out and put reins around the hitching post.

I would hang on to my mother’s clothes. Mother would go into the Bedards store. There was one little aisle or hall where I could see two little old ladies there. Mother always sat there and talked with them for a while. I sat there. I was quiet.

Audrey: I took piano lessons until my teacher Lizzy died. She was a nice sweet lady. I had learned one scale but I couldn’t play fast. I felt so bad when she died. I didn’t have any other teacher. We had no way of getting anywhere.

Billy Tarbox always came down and played the organ and piano. He played The Last Rose of Summer.  He sang and played. He grew beautiful dahlias so we called him the Dahlia King. He always had a Sunday each year when he would decorate an iron chair with dahlias that he picked. Every Fall, he would dig them up and give (a bulb) to everybody to plant. The one who brought back the best Dahlia would be the winner. One year he had a doll within the dahlias. I couldn’t wait to see it. I had a plain old doll, the Dahlia Doll was beautiful and fancy and sitting there all summer for the winner to get.

We went to Rocky Hill Chapel and Hannah Barton was the head of the Church. Everyone had a horse and wagon and there was not enough space to park. When I went to Rocky Hill Chapel, my teacher was Hoxsie. She had three or four girls. She taught school and had played the organ. She played the piano in the Sunday school.