I recently got a note from one of my loyal readers, Alice Edwards, concerning winter weather. Alice's father apparently kept crop notes in his Bible, which included information about a particularly cold winter that took place here more than a century ago.

According to the Bible, which had notes for several years, in 1886 the area suffered horribly with "frost every month of the year" and "no crops." We've had a few late frosts here, but I can hardly imagine frost in July and August.

As a point of reference, this newspaper was founded in August 1889, some three years after the note in question. There's no doubt that such records are valuable in many ways.

Anyway, Alice, who happens to be an excellent gardener herself, noted that she'd like for me to mention that in the column. She wrote me a letter on Feb. 20, which happened to be her 84th birthday. So, I hope everyone will join me in saying, "Happy belated birthday, Alice!"

Alice said she wonders if this could be another 1886 year. On the dairy farm she and her husband Rudolph call home on a ridge above Little River, there's no doubt that this has been a long, cold winter. I certainly hope it doesn't turn out like that one her father wrote about.

With the weather finally warming up these past few days, it certainly feels less like it now that it did last week. However, I suspect that we've not seen the last of this March lion that came roaring in a little over a week ago. As the old wives tale goes, it's supposed to go out like a lamb. But there's still a couple of weeks here in the middle to deal with, aren't there? I'm hoping that things turn out just like the old story goes and we can move forward into warmer days with a new perspective on how much firewood to have cut for next year.

I almost forgot: Alice has asked if anyone else has data on season's past. If I recall correctly, there are no ‘official' weather records for 1886, only those like Ms. Edwards has recorded in her father's Bible.

As I read her note, it made me think of the few old family documents that I have collected. I have the letters my father wrote home as a prisoner of war in Korea, as well as his dictionary. The letters are scrawled out lines that obviously were written under duress. Anyone who understands the situation in North Korea at that time and the conditions under which U.S. prisoners were kept would understand. I'd love to find a Korean War museum to donate those to where they could be displayed with other artifacts related to that time in history.

I have a letter written to me by my great grandmother and a few other things of value only to me, but still I store them in a safe deposit box like priceless treasures.

I also have my grandfather's Bible, which was given to him by my uncle. It is an old Gideon edition from the 1940s (as I recall) that has survived a couple of fires.

My grandfather lived in a store building, where he also conducted business. A fire at the store blackened the building and much of his merchandise, but he stayed on. I don't know if he was that stubborn or if he just didn't have anywhere else to go.

Either way, he didn't keep any crop notes that I've found. Mostly he highlighted sections of the Bible he had read by underlining the words. There didn't appear to be any particular rhyme or reason to his ‘notes', which include a few marks on the edges of the pages.

I never got to know my grandfather, who died when I was still very young. He and my grandmother didn't live together later in life, but no real good reason for that has never been spelled out. I am glad to know he was a Bible reader.

Inside it also was a lock of brown hair, possibly from the head of my grandmother when she was a much younger woman. She always had white hair as long as I could remember.

The only words in the Bible that I've found are a dedication from my late uncle, John. Granted I've not really searched it page for page.

I realize now how much of my family's history has died along with my grandparents and even with my father and his brothers.

My father's last living brother will definitely have the advantage of being able to put his stamp on family history, sine he's the only source for it now. I haven't seen him in a good while, but we've always got along pretty well.

John, who I mentioned earlier gave my grandfather the Bible in question, just happened to be the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Danville for many years. He was a dedicated Southern Baptist and an educated man who went to Wake Forest University Seminary and received his doctorate in theology. As you might imagine, he didn't exactly fit in with the rest of his brothers—a square peg in a round hole. His proper diction and soft hands made him like the prodigal son, only the one who went away to be educated rather than live like the others. He always was my grandmother's favorite, probably because all the others weren't pastors and definitely didn't act like it most of their lives.

Anyway, these resources like Mrs. Edwards won't be with us forever, their generation one day will join the others before it, as will yours and mine. It's kind of a sad, yet reverent thought. I hope one day to join my forebears who went on before me. Maybe we'll be so lucky as to be remembered here as well, even if we're only listed as footnotes in an old family Bible—or a wayward column.
 

Get the whole story - read this week's edition of The Alleghany News!