Reminiscences Racine, Ohio January 21, 1898 By Mrs. R. M. Beaver (Mary Graham, dau of Ronselier Graham and Cynthia Ann Selby) Ed. Leader: As you have given your readers an opportunity to indulge in reminiscence, I gladly embrace the opportunity. I shall try to write for those who were deprived of this grand privilege and now lie cold and motionless in their graves. I shall speak of my grandfather, Gabriel Graham, and my grandmother Mary Graham, whose maiden name was Bickle, and who lived in Rutland. At the beginning of the late war, my father went to help defend his country. My mother breathed her life away in a log cabin, with the beautiful words on her lips, I am going home to die no more. After mother s death I went to make my home with my grandparents whose names I have mentioned above. In those days we had prayer meeting once a week in our log cabin homes, for churches and schoolhouses were then almost unknown. I have sat hours at a time listening to the touching tale of hardships, which the old settlers had to undergo. Grandfather was bitten by a rattlesnake and grandmother by a copperhead. Their lower limbs became terribly swollen and turned spotted. As a result of the bite, grandmother could never afterward bend her knee. Grandmother was once attacked by a bear. The animal lacerated her arm and would have torn her to pieces had not her father effected a timely rescue by cutting its throat. Grandmother and a young brother went for the cows one evening, when they thought they heard their mother calling them. They answered, and presently a panther came and jumped upon one of the cows, tearing the poor animal s skin so that it dragged the ground. Grandmother went a long distance from home to spin flax when she was a young woman. Among other things, she rode on horseback one moonlight night, passing a graveyard, which everybody said was frequented by a ghost! There was a curious notion prevailing in the neighborhood about a woman dying and wishing she might turn into a coffee mill. Grandmother alighted from her horse, tied it to the fence, entered the graveyard, and there sat her pet cat. At the back end of the graveyard where had been heard so much moaning and groaning, which sounds had filled the minds of passers-by with the most alarming fancies, she found a nest of restless hogs! What woman in this day and age of the world would venture into a graveyard on a bright moonlight night as she did? I am not sure, but I believe the Mr. Thompson who wrote the first number of your Log Cabin Reminiscences was a relative of my grandparents. I will now say a word for myself. I was born at Brashears, Adair County, Missouri. While moving to Athens County, Ohio with my parents, I was stolen in the city of St. Louis, Mo. by a wealthy slaveholder. I was recovered in short time by my father, who covered the abductor with revolvers. At St. Louis we took the steamer Warsaw, engaging passage for Pomeroy, Ohio. At the age of fourteen I moved to Mason County, WVA, and two years later I was married. My mother s father was John Selby, who, born and reared in Athens County, moved to Missouri where he died at the age of 84. I will send you his last letter he wrote me. It will speak for him. It is a good one for a person so old as he. Mrs. R. M. Beaver {We are thankful to Mrs. Beaver for her contribution, and her effort to help make this department interesting. Her willingness is worthy of emulation. She has given us some points unlike anything we have had, all of which will command the attention of her friends. We should be glad to hear from her again. - Ed.} [Note: Ronselier (many spellings!) Graham born 1829 Son of Gabriel Graham b 1792 in PA. son of James Graham b 1756 Mary Bickle b 1794 in VA, dau of Jacob Bickle Renssalaer, NY Rensselaer Poly Tech Renssalaer William Foote, Amer. Army Officer lived 1815-1862]