Did you ever read Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor? This blog post is a little bit about an ordinary pastor, one of hundreds of thousands that have lived and died and are not even remembered today.
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My dad's three aunts attended The Asheville Normal and Collegiate Institute, a higher education college for future women teachers in the mountains. It was formed in 1892 (as an expansion of the Home Industrial School) with the goals of providing higher education for young women from the southern Appalachians and of training teachers, particularly for rural schools.
My dad found postcards in our house from his aunts, describing their Sunday afternoon train rides out to see the progress on the construction of The Biltmore! (Google tells me that Biltmore was constructed between 1889-1895. My dad was under the impression that the train tracks were built to carry construction materials to the building site.)
His other two aunts returned home, one to teach locally. Aunt Rebecca then taught in a rural school in the mountains of western North Carolina.
I wish I could remember the name of the school or community where she taught. My Facebook feed is filled with primarily news from WNC and the flood relief efforts. Today I read where Micaville School in Avery County is closing permanently because of the flood damage.
That rang a bell, and I wonder if that is where she lived and taught. That history is now lost. As a local man said at my dad's visitation, "It's as if a library burned down." True.
At any rate, she met a widowed minister while there, and in 1905, when she was 29, she married 46 year old Uncle Rob. His first wife had died, and their children would have been 15, 12, and 8. I am unclear of the details, but I don't remember hearing that they lived with Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Rob.
For a short time, Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Rob lived in Missouri, and I think their four children (three who lived past infancy) were born there.
From 1916-1932 they lived in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where Uncle Rob pastored a church there. At some point after that, they moved back to Aunt Rebecca's childhood home and built a retirement cottage on the farm. Uncle Rob died when my dad was 14, and Aunt Rebecca when my dad was 19. He walked by their house going to and from school every day.
The main story in family lore from that time period is of Dad walking home from school one day and stopping to see Aunt Rebecca. Mr. Hershey or Mr. Reese (whom they would have known from their church in Hershey, PA) had just stopped by on his way to Florida and left a case of Reese's cups. And ever since, Reese's have been the favorite chocolate for many in our extended family. :)
In March 1933, the area had some tornadoes, and the church building was destroyed, as well as the second story porch of the farmhouse. I was delighted to find this pastoral letter that Uncle Rob wrote the "folks at home" after receiving a letter from them, assuring them of their safety.
And that is basically all I know about Uncle Rob & Aunt Rebecca. I wonder about so many details of the ministry they had, how his older children fared, the souls that are in heaven because of their faithfulness, and so much more.
We have lost touch with Uncle Rob & Aunt Rebecca's family. Their children were older than my dad. Two never married, but kept in touch until they died in the 1980s. One passed away in 2013 at 99, and my parents and aunt attended his funeral in Atlanta. I hope his children and grandchildren share the faith that their great-grandparents had in the Lord Jesus.
