My grandmother, Addie, was born in Mountain City, Tennessee on 28 March 1883, the youngest daughter of Noah Jacob Wagner and Nellie Irvine King Wagner. She was named for Nellie's sister Addie who was married to a Frank Boyd. She grew up in Mountain City, not leaving until around 1912.
"Granny" was very small as a child, when she was about twelve she cut up all pictures of herself because she thought she was too skinny. One of her chores as a child was to daily clean all of the oil lanterns, probably because she had such a small hand.
She loved to read and continued this delight all of her life. She borrowed books and loaned books to friends. As a child she would make brown paper covers to protect her books. One year, according to one of her diaries written around the forth or fifth grade, she read 35 books and belonged to a book club.
She loved to visit family and friends. Spending many nights at her Aunt Fronia's. (Fronia lived in her father's house, i.e. Matthias Miller Wagner's.) She also had friends and relatives in a constant stream visiting at her home. She would go with her mother in the community to visit and attend church services at neighborhood churches when her own church was not having services. They enjoyed the "Love Feasts" held at the Methodist Church.
She started sewing at an early age, making doll clothes. Once while sewing and sitting on her brother Charlie's bed, she lost her needle. (She had been told not to sew sitting on a bed.) Needles were valuable and purchased singularly and one often had only one needle. She tried to get everyone to help her find her needle with no luck. Her mother scolded her, but it would be what happened to her brother that broke this bad habit. Charlie jumped into his bed and felt a sharp pain in his toe. He had his mother check his foot and she only saw a little blood on the end of his toe. Months later he came home with a terrible pain in his heel. Again he had his mother look at his foot. She found only a boil on his heel and decided to squeeze it gently, out comes the needle.
Addie went from sewing doll clothes to making her wedding dress, trousseau, her daughter and granddaughter's clothes. I still have many of the baby clothes she made for my brother and me, linens, and even a night gown she made and placed in her hope chest prior to her marriage to Robert Patterson London on 23 December 1903.
She loved Christmas. Her siblings and she decorated their tree with homemade paper ornaments and strings of popcorn and cranberries. The latter were grown in a bog down the creek from her house. They placed galax leaves around the edge of the glass curtains in their house and hung paper accordion style bells from the doorways. Everyone, even Papa and Mama, had stockings, hanging up their own stockings on the night before Christmas. The children tried to snitch old stockings from their mother so they could get more nuts, candy and fruit, or so they thought. The story, The Night Before Christmas, was published in 1822 and was frequently read for the holidays, Addie had her own copy which she cherished.
One Christmas, Noah gave Addie one dollar to spend. She had to buy presents for her six siblings, Papa and Mama, and a cousin or two. She knew that brother Hugh wanted a book and found that it cost thirty-five cents, a lot of money, but she bought it anyway. Sister Carrie loved handkerchiefs. She visited Papa's store to check them out, they were pretty but too expensive for her dwindling budget, the cheapest was twenty-five cents. So she would just have to make her gifts. She went to her mother and asked her if she had something she could sew. Nellie offered her the scrap bag. She thought and thought, what could she make. Papa's chair cushion was soiled and worn. She would make a new cover for it, keeping the cover hidden until Christmas. She decided to make her mother an emery bag. She went to the creek and got some sand. She found some red material and made two hearts, sewing them together and stuffing the heart with sand. She begged needles from sisters, Aunts and friends to stick in the emery bag.
For brother, Charlie, the gift buying was easy. Charlie loved stick candy and you could get a lot of candy for a dime. Then, Charlie could eat all the candy he wanted without being teased. When see got all of her gifts together she still did not have one for Carrie. Back to Papa's store she went to look at the handkerchiefs taking her last dime. She again examined the handkerchiefs. She found that customers doing their Christmas shopping soiled one from all the handling. Addie told the clerk that the handkerchief was soiled and could she buy it for a dime. Addie took the gift home, laundered it and wrapped it in a nice box.
Birthdays, holiday celebrations, weekly dances, picnics, berry picking, church activities, reading books, writing letters, as well as, visits and sleep overs with family and friends filled the days of the young people in this small town. It really was a community that raised their children.
This page updated March 8, 2005
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