who was Sallie Minor?

who was Sallie Minor and why am i interested in her?

i am interested in her because i am transcribing her journals from 1910/12 and one from 1949. every day i spend a little time with Sallie. i too write a journal everyday. like a good country woman, she started almost every entry with the weather, and now so do i.

i like history to be personal. i transcribed my grandfather's journal from 1907/1910. he and Sallie were cousins and lived on country estates no more that a mile apart. virtually the same cast of characters appears in both. would i be as interested in the exact same material, had it been written by an unrelated neighbor? yes, because they describe the same world, and complement each other. no one in my grandfather's journal ever cooks, cleans, washes,irons, sews, or puts up pickled peaches.

and i am interested in her because Sallie raised one of my favorite cousins, Bill Minor, from the time his mother died of tuberculosis. Sallie moved to Kentucky to care for her nephew when she was fifty-six. Bill was eight months old. now he's eighty-two. probably he is the last person alive who remembers her.

i am interested because i live in the country myself, and have a casual interest in farming.

why should you be interested in her? you don't have to be, it's okay. stop reading. i'll put different kinds of things into this blog.

Sallie Cook Minor lived from 1868 to 1949. by chance, her nephew Bill found three of her journals and i've offered to transcribe them. i have begun to feel quite close to Sallie. i try to imagine her life. what she doesn't say is often more interesting than what she records.

Sallie and I would have been distantly related, but kinship among the Virginia clan of Minors is hopelessly confusing. for example, i am doubly Minor related because my maternal grandfather, Henry Minor Magruder, married his second cousin, Sarah Gilmer Minor. that's enough to stop you right there. they were both Sallie's second cousins. they and many other family members all lived near each other, in separate estates on the Stony Point Road outside of Charlottesville. They were very much involved in each other's lives, constantly socializing. the men helped each other on the farms, sharing teams of mules and dynamiting stumps together. the women sewed for each other and helped "put up" sausage when the hogs were slaughtered in november.

in 1910, Sallie was 42, unmarried; her mother had died a decade earlier. Sallie was running the rural household. her father George was 71. he had fought in the Confederate cavalry "from the first Bull Run all through the bloody war," as his grandson Bill puts it. George's brother was killed in Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg in 1863, as was my great-grandfather's brother. i imagine they were in the same 57th Virginia Regiment.

Sallie had a mysterious apparently invalid older sister Ann; a younger sister Mary who was married; and another unmarried sister Eliza; and three younger brothers, Peter, Frank, and Tom, who mostly lived at home. they had no electricity, no running water, no heat besides firewood and a coal oil stove, no phone, no radio, no car. Sallie walked to church and to visit the nearer cousins almost daily and drove a horse and buggy to see others in the neighborhood a few miles away, or to go the six miles into town.

Sallie must have been educated at home. she wrote in pencil with a strong, clear hand and never missed a day nor made a single spelling mistake. she mentions that they read to their father in the evenings, but never mentions a book. probably they read the bible. they did have a subscription to "The Southern Planter," an agricultural monthly offering practical advice. i've looked at some issues in the University of Michigan library, as my great-grandfather (the above mentioned Henry Minor Magruder) wrote a series of strong letters to the editor in the early 1890s, arguing for a hands-on approach to teaching farming at the new state agricultural college.

the family made almost everything they used or ate. In the early journals, Sallie bought only salt, pepper, sugar, vinegar, "western meal," oil for the stove, a pair of rubber shoes for 75 cents, a hat, and some "outing," as cotton flannel was called then. once she noted that she lent Peter 40 cents to buy a curry comb and brush. Peter was often riding off to see some young lady or other, so i suppose he wanted to keep his horse looking spiffy.

that world seems so very far away, as i sit in Michigan, writing my blog on my laptop in 2008.

yet, on August 9, 1949, Sallie wrote "Elizabeth Henshaw came to call and brought ice cream." My mother. i would have been eight. i remember going to the house on Park Street where Sallie then lived with her sister Mary, so i'm sure i must have met her. my mother used to drag me around to call on many ancient lady relatives; usually i would be sent outside to play while they chatted on and on about their ailments and passed along endless uninteresting family and neighborhood news and gossip.

i can't say that i really remember Sallie, but Sallie wasn't so distant after all.

check the blog for more on Sallie and her world to come. i promise to post a few of the most interesting entries of her journal.