My Journey with God

By Mary Lee Reuss

The autobiography of Mary Lee Reuss. The story of her turbulent childhood, nursing training, marriage and family life, career and travels and the faith that sustained her throughout. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacob Asplund
• Release date: Apr 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733789516

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Copyright © 2019 by Jacob Asplund

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published in the United States of America

First Printing, 2019

Paperback

ISBN 978-1-7337895-0-9

EPUB

ISBN 978-1-7337895-1-6

My Journey with God

by Mary Lee Reuss

Table of Contents

Introduction

Family History

My Early Years with Grandma and Grandpa Lee

Hagerstown

School Experiences

The Neighborhood Gang

Berkeley Springs

Paxtang

Brookeville

Brookeville Society

Sarah’s Story

Niagara Falls

Bryn Mawr

Baltimore

El Paso

Clarksville

Back in Bryn Mawr

Richmond

A Trip to Columbus

Cape May

Richmond Again

Hapeville

Return to Richmond

Valparaiso

Working in Valparaiso

Janesville

Summer Fairs

Goat Dairy

My Career as a Nurse

Training Resumes

Mendota

Public Health Nursing

Community Programs

Caravilla

Rock County Mental Hospital

Foster Children

Family Trips

Skaalen Home

Leaving Janesville

Arizona

Stoughton

Return to Arizona

My Husband

My Children

Fred

Tom

Linda

Martha

Noah’s Ark Trip

In Conclusion

Introduction

I will take you with me on my journey through 95 years of adventures as God revealed His plan for my life.

It begins with the adventures that brought my immediate ancestors through their tribulations. It continues with my own survival from a typhoid epidemic, nurturing at first, then childhood experiences, then learning to survive, encounters with death as a child, abandonment, rescue, encounters with death as a teen, maturing, nurses training cut short, marriage, childbirth, rescue of a child, career fulfillment, and encounters with death as an adult. There are experiences with floods, tornados, a downdraft, and a small tsunami. There are trips to Mexico, Alaska, Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Hawaii.

God met me as a child of 6 in Sunday School, He continues to be with me as a real God that I can depend on. He brought my parents back into my life as a teen and an adult and taught me to understand, appreciate, forgive, and love them as they were. He gave me many opportunities to use the gifts He gave me to love, help and serve others through my nursing, community service and care of 22 foster children. He gives me wake up calls when I am careless and coincidences to remind me that He is everywhere all the time.

As a result of this focus on my time as a nurse and foster mother, I have not included some details and occurrences because of privacy concerns. However, I will record the many lessons I learned from them in the situations God put me in.

I will also include a story about Sarah that I wrote for credit in English.

I hope you will look back on your life, see God at work, and pass it on to your family and friends.

He loves you!

Family History

I know more stories about my mother’s side of the family, so I will start with them. I will tell stories about my father’s side when I tell about living in Brookeville with Aunt Verdie.

My mother was Margaretta Stuart Lee. Her father was James Eugene Lee and her mother was Verna Imogene Parsons. The Lees and Parsons came over from England before the revolution.

My father was Stanley Dorsey Owings. His father was Henry Howard Owings and his mother was Elizabeth Dorsey. The Owings family came over from Wales with Lord Calvert before the revolution. The Lees, Parsons, Dorseys and Owings families fought in the Revolution, so I am a Daughters of the American Revolution member.

Grandma Lee told me about a Dr. Parsons who lived in New York City. At that time there was a smallpox epidemic in the world. If it was known that some passengers had it, they were not allowed to land. The ship stayed in the harbor until the authorities thought they were all dead. Then they burned the ship. Dr. Parsons told them that some people had lived through the epidemic in Europe, so it was wrong to kill them. He got permission to make a floating raft and take food to the people on the ship as long as they came, and when all the sick people had died, then the ship was allowed to land. He received an award from the city, as many were saved before the epidemic was over.

This story was important to me because I had the certificate given to me by grandma. At that time we were living in Janesville with no medical insurance. Fred had been sick and then he had a stroke so we had bills we couldn’t pay to Dr. Herbert Snodgrass. He took the certificate as payment and said he would take it to the medical society museum in Madison.

My great grandmother was Margaretta Stuart Lee. She came from France. Her father was a doctor in France where her mother died. Her father placed her in an orphanage there and came to Detroit to practice. He brought her to Canada and placed her in an orphanage there where he could see her often. He became ill, and asked a friend of his, a Dr. Lee to marry her because he wanted her to be cared for. She was seventeen. The first time she saw her husband was on her wedding day. He was quite a bit older than she was. They had two sons, Floyd and my grandpa James.

Because her husband wanted her to be able to support herself when he died, he placed her in a nursing school and she became a midwife. She worked until she broke her hip at 93. I knew her and will tell you more about her later.

She took in an Irish immigrant 15-year old girl who had been raped by her employer and put out on the street. She delivered the baby and placed them in a Christian home. Because she had the two teenage boys living with her and her husband had died, the church that she belonged to at that time made my grandmother and her two children stand up in front the congregation and excommunicated them – because she had allowed her two sons to associate with a woman of ill repute. That meant a lot to my grandfather because he believed that he could not go to church – and he never did again. His brother married a Catholic lady and joined that church. Great Grandmother, however, said, God gave man the power to say who could go the church, but no man is keeping me out of heaven! She read her Bible and I am sure that she is in heaven today.

My great grandma Parsons was born in born in Buffalo, New York. She married my great grandfather who worked in a factory there. She was a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. One winter my great grandpa came home wearing his big heavy overcoat. For a joke, someone had put an empty bottle of whiskey into his pocket without his realizing it. He hung his coat up by the fireplace and Great Grandma found the whiskey bottle. She got her two children, my grandma Verma and her brother Seymour, out of bed that night and took them to her family, asking her father to take them in. Her father said, No, you are married. Turn right around with your children and go home! The next morning she and her children left their home and started on foot on a journey that took them to Wichita, Kansas. Along the way she stopped at farm houses and taught people to read, write and cipher in exchange for room and board.

My grandmother Verma’s childhood memory includes getting a piano from people who were going west. Their wagon had broken down and the piano was too heavy so they sold it to my great grandma. Great Grandma made my grandma sit by the hour with a board up her back to make sure she sat up straight doing the scales over and over. She hit my grandma on the hands with a ruler if she didn’t hold her hands correctly. Grandma had to play perfectly so that she could be an example to bring in music students for her mother. Grandma eventually became a concert pianist in Detroit when she lived with her mother. However, when she married she made her husband promise her she would never have to play again.

They lived on the outskirts of Wichita, next to Indian territory. Because of the danger, the sheriff taught Great Grandma how to shoot a pistol and told her to fire it if she needed help. One night they were coming home from a prayer meeting and saw drunken Indians in their living room through the window. Great grandma told Seymour to go to the kitchen and bring her the broom inside the back door. He said, OK, Momma. You going to use a broom? Why not the pistol?

Get the broom! she ordered and she chased them out with that broom! My grandma said she would never forget how scared she was, hanging on to her little brother.

Grandma remembers cowboys driving through the streets and filling the bars. Decent people stayed home until they left. The streets were mud and when they walked on the boardwalk she had to hold on to her mother’s skirt while Great Grandma made the men get out of her way. I took grandma to a cowboy movie once and she said the scenes were ok, but the cowboys weren’t that good. She liked Jesse James, though, because he helped people.

Great Grandma heard that her husband had died on a cattle drive. She was told that he had been killed by Indians, but that was not true. He had tried to follow his wife and children but lost them. On the way, he took a job on a ranch driving cattle to market. On a cattle drive, they were attacked by Ogalala Sioux Indians. He was injured and left for dead, but he had rescued the son of the Chief, so the Indians rescued him and adopted him into the tribe. He had heard that his wife and children had died, so he married a squaw and had a child. When the war was over, he was put in jail so he would not be able to follow his Ogalala family on their forced march west to a reservation. Many died on the journey and my great grandpa never found out what became of them. After being released from jail, he got a job in Detroit as a shopkeeper. My Grandfather Lee found him many years later, old and sick, and brought him home to live with him in York until he died. I was a baby then and he died before I was two.

Great Grandma decided to move to Detroit because oil had been discovered in Indian Territory and the Wichita area had become too rowdy to bring her children up in. She bought a rooming house and put Grandma to work. Grandma earned money playing piano in the orchestra and writing out bills for businesses. One day, when delivering the bills downtown, she saw a typewriter in a window with a sign that said the owner would teach someone to use it and then would give them a job. She signed up. Her mother told her that it was not a proper job for a young lady living in her boarding house. Grandma left home and went to live in another boarding house that was near.

On her birthday, Great Grandma invited Grandma to her birthday party to play the piano and she agreed. She also invited Grandpa James Eugene Lee, who lived in a boarding house across the street, because he played the violin. With Great Grandma’s permission, he invited Great Grandpa Springstein, who lived across the hall from him, as he played a mouth organ. The stage was set – Grandma met Grandpa and Great Grandma met Great Grandpa!

Great Grandpa Springstein was born in New York City. His family decided to join a wagon train headed for the west. They gave some money to the wagon train leader and promised to work off the rest when they got to their destination. A disease broke out and only his six-year old sister and he were left of his family. When the train got near where Chicago is now, the train leader sold him and his sister to a family who were clearing land. He promised to work for them and clear land as long as they did not sell his sister. They agreed and he went to clear land a day’s journey away. When he returned, he found that they had sold her. He ran away and followed the wagon train with his sister as it headed south. He traced her to St. Louis, but she was shuffled to a new train to be sent farther west and he was unable to find her.

The civil war had begun and he was a runaway indentured servant, so he headed north and joined the Union Army. He was sent east where he got a leg wound. He lost the leg below the knee. He found his way to Detroit where he was a storekeeper when Great Grandma found him. After they were married, they lived in Detroit until they were old and needed help. Then Grandpa Lee moved them to live with him in York.

When the Spanish American war broke out, Grandpa Lee joined the army because he was in the National Guard. Grandma did not want him to go, but married him when he came home. They continued to live in Detroit. Grandpa worked with Henry Ford as fellow workers. He bought a car, but left it home when he went on a business trip on a train. He called Grandma and told her he would take a cab home from the train station. She decided to drive the car to meet him. She had never driven, but thought she knew how. No license was needed then. She did fine until she got to the station. There was a round road in front of the station with a watering pool for horses in the middle. Pandemonium broke loose as she drove up and didn’t know how to stop the car! Grandpa jumped on the running board after she had circled around the watering pool several times and stopped the car. She never drove again!

My mother, Margaretta, was their first child. When Grandma was eight and a half months pregnant, she was on her knees cleaning the floor when she got her first contraction. She crawled to the bedroom, climbed onto the bed and held on to the bars at the head of the bed. The contractions came very hard. She heard the knock on the front door and yelled. The door burst open – Great Grandma Lee rushed in, looked at her, ran to the bathroom rolling up her sleeves, ran back, put her fingers in the baby’s mouth, pulled down, and delivered the baby. The baby’s head had been caught on her mother’s pelvic bone. Great Grandma Lee breathed into the baby’s mouth, cleaned out mucus, turned her over, and slapped her on the back – then the baby cried. Then she cut the cord and handed her to Grandma. She told Grandma that God had given her a dream to come right away even though the baby was not due for two weeks. My mother was named after her – Margaretta Stuart Lee.

My mother was called Peggy. She was very imaginative – a favorite of her father and a puzzle to her mother. She was a gifted artist, drawing charcoal portraits of many people for fun and income. As a child she pretended to be other people or animals for days at a time, Grandma said. The family moved to York and her sister Virginia was born five years later. As a teen, my mother rebelled, cut her long hair, wore makeup and short dresses, smoked, and drank liquor. She met my father at a party. He had rebelled against his parents, too. Both sets of parents objected, so they eloped. They lived in an apartment in another town where my father worked. When my mother became pregnant and sick, she came home, delivered me, nursed me, weaned me, and went back to my father. She did the same with my brother Jim.

My dad was raised in a Christian home. All the family and their slaves attended a small Christian church. He had six brothers and two sisters. He told me that his father whipped the seven boys every night at the dinner table. Each boy had to confess each sin he had committed that day. If he couldn’t think of any they got whipped twice with a buggy whip. The two girls had to watch as their punishment. The whippings ended when the boys were able to take the whip away from their father. After supper their mother would take them into the living room and tell them Bible stories about love and Jesus. Their father was stern with them and taught them good behavior at home and in church.

Now I know why my father tied my brother up to the bathroom door and whipped him when he was naughty and made me watch, he was imitating his father. He whipped me on my legs when I was naughty, but otherwise he was nice when he was sober.

All the children got scarlet fever except my father and his brother Jim. They were the two youngest of the children. They were sent away to relatives so they wouldn’t get scarlet fever, therefore they didn’t see the gentler side of their father taking care of the boys that got sick. He fed, bathed, and took care of them until they survived. He hired a teacher that came and lived with them until they were old enough to go away to school for the seventh grade.

When my father went away to school, he told about how grandpa took and left him at a cross-road. He said his father pointed out two farms that his older sons had worked for, gave him his choice and said I want you to go and find yourself some work. Take these letters with you. I will give you a good recommendation and so will your older brothers but you will have to find a place to work. And my father did. He graduated from high school when he was 14 but even though he was a genius in math they didn’t recognize it back then. When I lived Brookeville, later, I went to that high school and saw a plaque with Dad’s name and Sarah Chitchester honoring them.

My Early Years with

Grandma and Grandpa Lee

Great Grandmother delivered me, but my mother went to the hospital to deliver my brother Jim where she dislocated her hip which caused her trouble ever after. While Great Grandma Lee was there, a typhoid epidemic broke out that killed thousands of people. Babies got it and then whole families. They found out that a man who put caps on the milk bottles was a carrier. I contracted the disease. The family doctor came to the house and told my grandma that they could not save babies. She was to take my body and wrap it in a blanket or sheet and put it in a wagon that would come down the street every day. The driver would ring a bell. Then she was to call him because he had to keep a record and give it to the people who would put my name on the wall