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| Magruder family gathering at "Edgemont" June 2010 |
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| The Riggory 2010 |
Things were different early in the 20th century. My grandfather Frank Magruder wrote a journal entry at the end of every day and so did his cousin Sallie Minor. They were the same age and lived less than a mile apart, Frank at "Edgemont" and Sallie at "The Riggory" on the Stony Point Road outside of Charlottesville, Virginia.
The cousins shared a similar approach to writing: just the facts, the weather, the events of the day. They each wrote every evening, without fail and without reflection, with little emotion, no comment on the past or hopes for the future. Here, for example, is Frank’s entire entry for the day that my mother, was born:
July 25 1908 Richmond off—Richard not out. Bill & Simon hoed vineyard. Baby born half past seven in the evening. Dr. did not get here in time—named her Elizabeth Dunbar. Lucy & I helped. Henry & I had been to baseball game at Earlysville—no game as it rained. Uncle Rashe came over.
If hoeing the vineyards took precedence over the birth of a baby at Edgemont, consider this day as recorded by Sallie at The Riggory:
November 9 1910 We killed 8 hogs. Papa rode over to see Cousin Albert. Mr. Thurman came down to take him to Mr. Lynn Goss’s funeral. They got home about dinner. Peter went too & Mr. Lang with him. After dinner Papa walked around some in the yard and not long after he left the house we found him lying in the road dead near the straw stack. Peter came almost as soon as we found him & got Mr. Lang & Dabney Morris who had come in at the gate to help bring him into the house. It was a great shock to us all, as he seemed quite well all day.
Papa was seventy-one.
more to come on the world of the stony point road, 1907-1912...
