The Essence of Mary By: Annie May
Pictured above is Annie’s grandmother; Mary Mueller
With the advent of DNA testing, one can glimpse into their past for an understanding of one’s ancestry. If I took the test, I might be guilty of wishful selective gene splicing when it comes to my heritage, as I decided as a young girl that I wanted to be like my grandmother, Mary Mueller.
Mary Mueller was a stoic fugal German. Her ancestors came to homestead a farm near St. Libory on the western border of Washington County Illinois in 1863. They survived blizzards, droughts, plagues and the loss of the farmhouse to fire. Mary (nee Weber) married Fred Mueller. They worked their homestead and had five children when tragedy struck.
The story I was told was that Grandpa Fred was a diabetic who fell into a coma and died when the insulin was lost in the mail. Pregnant with their sixth child, Mary was alone. Can you imagine mourning the death of your husband, carrying a child and having to face the future alone?
There were no social programs back then, so no Social Security Income payments per child, no help save that of family and your church community. My father was her only son and he assumed the management of the farm at age nine. One source of their income, my grandfather’s beloved orchards were slowly lost as he had not passed on the knowledge of caring for an orchard before his death. But my grandmother was not to be defeated.
She set to making a living for her family even though it meant frequent hardships. One way she brought in money, along with her egg and chicken sales, was raising holiday turkeys and geese. I can’t imagine how bone chilling it would be to dress out Christmas geese in sub-zero weather!
An artist when it cam to “marking” a quilt, she used her talents to generate extra income which meant she always had a quilt frame loaded in her small parlor. We kids would lie on the thin carpet under the quilt frame and try to be very quiet when Grandma came in to rest in the heat of the day and watch The Edge of Night.
As a woman of strong faith, she turned to God for guidance when making important decisions. My grandmother made the heart wrenching choice concerning her eldest daughters; sending the four older girls off to work in the city. My Aunt Clara shared with me how hard it was as a teenager to leave the comforts of home to go work for an aloof wealthy family in St. Louis.
One legacy of most of our ancestors is a strong work ethic. A mere life of east is not in the end a satisfactory life, and above all it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world, is an excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s The Strenuous Life that is still true today. My grandmother and parents gave me a lasting gift when they instilled in me the dignity of a job well-done. Grandma Mary was always working but she managed to draw you into helping her without it feeling like drudgery.
My grandmother taught me to never complain about what comes your way in life but to always be thankful when you can make ends meet. She taught me how to live a frugal life that appreciates simple pleasures like sunsets and flowers. Her roses and peonies, both were laden with sweet scented blooms.
When my grandmother’s home came up for sale, my husband purchased it for me so that I could once again sit on the back porch where she and I used to shell peas and visit. I am home. Back to gale force winds and a host of predators after my poultry and squirrels and rabbits in my gardens, and endless projects that will fill the rest of my days, but it fits like a glove as this is my heritage. It’s in my DNA.