Aunt Beth is my great aunt, my grandmother’s older sister. She lived next door to us and helped raise me til I was 14. That little white house next to my mom and dad’s on Lincoln Avenue, Halfway, that was her retirement plan. I learned that later.

Today is her birthday. She was born the 27th of August, 1886 in Foxville, Frederick County, Maryland, and died on 8 April, 1965 at home in Halfway, Maryland.

Aunt Beth taught me to knit and to play the piano. She taught be how to behave. She was big on manners, could be strict, loved music, and had a loving nature. She and Mom taught me to sew. Aunt Beth was a seamstress, a master. She could type really fast and take shorthand. I don’t know if she loved sewing or typing. They were skills that got her through. Gardening I know she loved.

She also loved to read. In retirement she subscribed to the Doubleday Mail Order Book Club, receiving a hardback book in the mail every month or so. I was visiting with her sometimes when the postman delivered the book wrapped in heavy brown cardboard. I read a lot of those books she received from Doubleday. Those hardcovers got passed all around to her sisters and nieces I remember this because Aunt Alice’s daughter Esther used to write “Esther read this” on the corner of a book’s cover page. My great aunt Alice sometimes wrote “Alice” on the corner of a page too, at the back of the book. So when the sisters were looking for a book to read on Aunt Beth’s bookshelf, they’d see that note and remember.

Aunt Beth had a fireplace in her living room, like we did at home. A rocking chair sat off to the right if you were facing the fireplace. Her drop leaf dining room table she’d brought from St. Louis was right in front of her picture window looking out on East Lincoln Avenue. He cat Betsy liked to lay on the table in the sunshine. At the end of the table with the drop leafs down, sat the “secretary,” where Aunt Beth sat to write letters and postcards and pay her bills.

I’d go next door to visit Aunt Beth every day after school to visit. She kept a pack of Hershey’s chocolate bars in her kitchen cupboard, six to a pack and wrapped in cellophane. She’d put the kettle on and make us hot black tea with sugar. When I got old enough she let me put my own sugar in. That’s where I learned to drink hot tea and eat a chocolate bar at the same time. The hot tea made the chocolate melt in my mouth. Pair that with reading a really good book, while Aunt Beth’s in her chair at the other end of the picture window in her living room, doing the same (chocolate, hot tea, good book). We read novels. Things like Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maughm and lighter books too. She kept books from her younger years on that bookshelf too - Harvester, Girl of the Limberlost, and so on. This was a big deal to me cause I loved to read by the time I was in the 3rd grade. Then I was reading Trixie Belden mysteries. Some liked Nancy Drew better. But for me, it was Trixie. So this was later, maybe around 11 and 12 that I’d be reading books of Aunt Beth’s. I wish I had a picture of her bookshelf filled with books. It now sits in my living room, still filled with books.

Aunt Beth and my grandma came from a huge family. Beth was the 5th girl , and Gram was the next to last girl. All together their parents had 11 girls and 4 boys. Aunt Bessie was the oldest, born in 1882, then twins Mary and Sarah, born in 1884. Sarah died when she was just 5 months old and is buried at Mount Bethel Cemetery in Garfield, Frederick County, Maryland where many of my ancestors are buried. Fannie was born in 1888, Jennie in 1890, Marjorie in 1891, Alice in 1893, Orville in 1895, Reuben in 1896, Stanley in 1899, Paul in 1901. Paul died when he was 4 years old. Gram was born in 1903, and Eva in 1905. My great-granddad, David died in 1907 from tuberculosis, just 50 years old, a few months before his wife’s 48th birthday. She never re-married.