The Wise Woman: A Perry County Tale

By Janet Taylor

Immediately after the Civil War, Bess Hauser, a herbalist-midwife, and David Adams, a former Army surgeon, struggle to find a new balance for their lives. David learns to survive in a rural, Pennsylvania Dutch world, and Bess learns to love again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477111352

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Janet Taylor.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012908388

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4771-1134-5

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4771-1133-8

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4771-1135-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

108722

Contents

Prologue

July 1866

August 1866

September 1866

October 1866

November 1866

Late November 1866

December 1866

January 1867

February 1867

March 1867

April 1867

May 1867

June 1867

Postlude

Glossary

Endnotes

Prologue

Early Spring 1866

David Adams was born in Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania, on January 8, 1840; he was the third son and seventh child of George and Margaret Twinning Adams. He was the last child of the family; his father died when he was only a few months old.

Always a good-natured, happy child, David was rather spoiled by his family. His aunts and uncles, and his sisters as well, doted on the fatherless child. His brothers were less forgiving and tried to make a man of him. His mother, fully occupied with raising a lively family on her own, tended to let the girls see to little Davey. Luckily, George Adams had been an excellent business man and left his family well provided for.

Smart and sociable as a child and teenager, David realized all the beauty of the family had passed him by, but he could get his way by being charming and agreeable. His sentimental aunts were inclined to predestine him for the ministry. His uncles and brothers thought that with his ease with strangers, he could get a horse trader to buy the most spavined old nag around. They were just branching out from quarrying into construction and had David earmarked as their chief salesman.

Naturally, the whole family went into convulsions when David announced he was going to be a doctor; what’s more, he had enrolled in Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia. His mother and aunts thought that a bit common, his sisters thought it might come in handy to have a doctor in the family, and his brothers said that damned Davey was letting them down.

They argued, they cajoled, they threatened. The charming, agreeable Davey proved to have an intractably stubborn streak. He was going to be a doctor, he flatly stated. If he couldn’t use his inheritance to pay his fees at Jefferson, he’d work his way through playing the piano in bars on the Philadelphia waterfront. His mother nearly had the vapors at that suggestion, and money for his tuition was forthcoming.

He worked hard, and studied hard, graduating near the top of his class in June 1861. The war was on, with the first Battle of Bull Run a few weeks off. He enlisted along with several other classmates, sure the war would not last long and they’d profit by the experience. David Adams went into the crucible, determined to maintain the standards of modern, scientific medicine, and emerged four years later as a dedicated pragmatist. Stop the bleeding, and then we’ll see what we can do to keep the man alive became his motto.

His family was horrified when he lost his right foot early in the autumn of 1861. He came home to recuperate, and his brothers assured him a one-footed salesman would have no problems in the family firm. They were quite ready to fit him in.

But by early spring of 1862, David announced he was ready to get back to work, and the army didn’t care how many feet one had. The family was aghast. The war had come entirely close enough to them, and surely Davey couldn’t be serious about reenlisting. He told his family he’d been stupid last fall and knew enough now to watch out for himself. So at twenty-two, with a wooden foot he hated to wear, David Adams was back in the army and headed for Tennessee. He remained in that theater until early 1864, when a large part of the western army came east to finish off the Rebels.

In March 1864, he came back to Kennett Square on his first furlough, and his family hardly recognized him. Young Davey had become a lean, driven man who’d seen more horrors than anyone at home could begin to imagine. After a few days, he relaxed a bit, and a few traces of the young and charming Davey were noted. Then he went back to Virginia as General Grant started the final campaign, and the casualty lists surpassed everyone’s comprehension.

In December 1865, the war finally over, he decided he did not want to be an army surgeon the rest of his life. He resigned his commission and began to look around. Of course, his uncle and brothers wanted him to join them. David said his heart was not in stone and declined. His aunts suggested the ministry again; David said after four years of each side declaring the Almighty was in their camp, he didn’t think he wanted to be there. His mother said her distant cousin in Perry County, Dr. Samuel York, was not at all well and was looking for someone younger to help him and maybe take over his practice.

In June 1866, David Adams arrived by Rice’s Stage at the village of Germantown in Toboyne Township, Perry County, and liked what he saw around him. The people were a mix of English, Scotch-Irish, and German who had learned to get along fairly well. David did not speak Dutch, but most of the Dutchmen spoke English as well. At least the men did. Occasionally, David had to get a younger member of the family to translate for him when Granny was in need of the doctor.

The skinny, homely little boy grew into a rather scraggly man, whom no one ever described as handsome. Pleasant was the best that could be managed, and that was more due to his temperament than looks.

Elisabeth Magdalena Hauser was born at the Old Christ Place in Perry County on October 27, 1842, the younger of Philip and Catherine Hauser’s two surviving children. A gentle, placid child, she was much loved by her parents, who had suffered the loss of so many children. She was a pretty child with glossy braids, rosy cheeks, and shining dark brown eyes. From early childhood, she was attached to her brother’s classmate, young Ed Shearer.

Nobody in either family expected this youthful affection to last, but it grew into a deep and abiding love on both their parts. But Edward Shearer could not bear the thought of his beloved Bess as a widow struggling to raise children, and so they delayed their marriage after he was drafted in 1862. Both assumed this was only a temporary delay. Bess continued in her self-appointed work as a wise woman or healer, guided by Aunt Julia, and Edward went to war.

After Edward’s death in the spring of 1863, followed so soon by that of her father and brother, Bess and her sister-in-law, Amelia, struggled to keep the farm running, as well as taking in wounded soldiers to care for. She became a midwife as well as a healer and never thought to charge for her services. People paid her if they could, or her cousin Micah Miller shamed them into it.

By 1866, the war over and her sister-in-law remarried, Bess found herself alone on the family farm, and she settled into a quiet, though satisfying, existence, sustained in a large part by the teachings of her grandfather Erb, a well-known and highly respected Brethren preacher.

She was still gentle, placid enough in appearance, but the harsh years had taught her much. There was little she was afraid of; she felt she had survived the worst that could happen to her and expected little save a mild happiness over the coming years.

July 1866

Interior%20Images%20n%20placement%2012.jpg

Grandfather Erb’s House

It had been a hot, dry day. The sweet grass hay was cut in Top Meadow along the mountain woods, and Bess had been out all day helping rake windrows ready for loading tomorrow. She had watched the clouds over the Round Tops at the end of the valley piling up into halfhearted thunderheads, wondering if the heat would break early with a storm and wet the hay. But a breeze sprang up late in the afternoon, and the clouds drifted off.

Jake and his boys left off at supper time to go home and do their own evening chores, promising an early start in the morning. Bess shouldered her rake, gathered her basket and jug, and left the glare of bright sunshine by the lower corner of the meadow. As she walked downhill on the Old Wagon Road, she savored the velvety shade of the maples lining the road and making a tunnel of dim coolness. She unloosened the ties of her sunbonnet and let it hang down her back. A few yards farther, she passed the graves and stood at the upper orchard gate. She pushed it open and went in. The cherries were turning nicely, nearly ready to pick, and the apple trees were heavily laden. Bess left the orchard by the lower gate close to the barn and went on to the kitchen door, leaving her rake propped against the summer kitchen door. More tall maples, planted for shade as well as sugar, lined the road in front of the log house, shading the front and keeping it cool despite the July heat.

It wasn’t necessary for her to help with the fieldwork; Jake Gutshall rented the fields after James and Amelia Thurston, Bess’s former sister-in-law and her second husband, left for Iowa last summer. He had a flock of upcoming boys, but Bess liked being part of the cycle of seasons, and it was, after all, her land.

She had left a fresh set of clothing in the kitchen, knowing a day of haying would leave her sweaty and itchy. She stripped off the old print dress in the kitchen and had a cool sponge bath followed by a refreshing wipe of witch hazel on her face, arms, and hands. She was a small woman but sturdily built and stronger than she appeared at first glance. She had the round Erb face, bright dark eyes, and nearly black hair just beginning now to show the most becoming tiny wings of grey at the temples. She dressed again in a plain brown dress that to a stranger in the valley carried no message but, to native born, placed Bess firmly in a modestly liberal Brethren congregation. Her mother was an Erb; Bess had the characteristic mole on her upper lip; no more needed to be said.

One of the advantages of living alone, now that James and Amelia and the children were gone was no one to fix meals for except herself. She could be as leisurely as she wished without a clamor for food from starving children. After redressing freshly from the skinout, she fetched some soft cheese and apple butter from the spring house built into the slope behind the detached summer kitchen and, spreading it generously on a slab of bread, had her evening meal. Another advantage of living alone was a light meal after a long day when she was too tired to cook for anyone.

Shadows lengthened and deepened around the house and barn; patches of dusty sunlight shone through the old maples along the road. The Christ maples as they were called, now fifty years old and in their prime, rival even the pines Grandfather Erb had planted at his place near the west end of the valley. Bess tidied up her few supper dishes and went out the kitchen door. Two steps across the worn paving stones brought her to the summer kitchen, now rarely used for cooking. The clump of black of hellebore in the shady spot between the two buildings was looking a little sad with the heat. Bess dumped her washbasin of cool water on it. Keeping it flourishing was natural good insurance, not that she put too much reliance on its powers against evil spirits hovering around the place. Hellebore was one of Aunt Julia’s favorite remedies, and she was adamant about having it nearby for its protective powers. Bess could not entirely agree with Aunt Julia on this, but it was spreading into a handsome clump, thriving in the damp shade.

Bundles of herbs and flowers, some still on their stalks, hung from the ceiling beams of the single room of the summer kitchen. Instead of preserves, jars of dried herbs and extracts stood on the shelves between the windows. Bess’s willow splint collecting basket and shears were ready on the old chestnut table in front of the wide fireplace. The fireplaces in the main house had all been boarded up and replaced by ten-plate stoves. Pap had insisted; what was the use of having a new forge close by if you didn’t make use of its products? In the old summer kitchen, Bess kept the open fireplace with its small bake oven. There was a larger, covered bake oven right beside the summer kitchen, sharing an extension of the catslide roof. Bess used both, more for slow drying of herbs than baking enormous amounts of breads, pies, and cakes she couldn’t possibly eat.

It always seemed a little dusty in the summer kitchen. With the door open, the low rays of the evening sun accentuated the golden haze. The square room had a tangy scent—herbs and flowers drying but not losing their essence, roots in flat baskets along the walls, her favorite lavender bunches dominating the air. Closed after a long hot day, the room was a little stale. The remedy was to leave the door open through the evening and let the sweet evening air circulate.

The summer kitchen, she had often been told, stood where the original cabin had been raised in one day after Phillip and Eva Maria Christ walked across the two mountain ridges from the big valley to the south. There weren’t so many children then; the two youngest made the trek riding in pannier baskets on the family cow. The young husband and wife with the first few children fit very snuggly into the new cabin for several years. A barn went up first, of course—a sturdy double-crib log barn with an overshoot to the south east. Placing the barn properly on a mountainside farm was always a problem. After the barn was complete and filled, Phillip Christ began to think about a bigger house. By this time, there were seven children and the twenty-by-twenty log cabin was getting a mite crowded.

The new log house was of corner post construction and required more planning and preparation. Old Phil Christ and his sons cut and shaped the timber on their own land—black walnut and chestnut. When all the logs were sawn and seasoned, there was a grand house rising, and ever since, the Christ family sheltered in the new house. But it was the old house to Bess Hauser, a granddaughter of the last Christ to live there.

Bess sometimes wondered what Phillip Christ would think were he alive today. He’d come across the mountains with his bit of backpay in his breeches pockets, ready to tell anyone how they’d run the Redcoats back over the sea. The future lay just over the next ridge in 1781; now in 1866, it seemed to Bess to lie in ruins. Widows and orphans; old people struggling to understand why their sons were dead and their neighbors’ sons weren’t; men maimed in body and mind, trying to take up the reins of life again in a world of profound changes. Losses all around with life hurtling forward. The restlessness after every war had hit Shermans Valley as well; Bess and her sister-in-law had sheltered on the Old Christ Place after the cataclysm of the summer of 1863, and now Amelia, her new husband, and the children were gone to Iowa.

Three years of rigid discipline enabled Bess to shunt dreary thoughts to the back corners of her mind. She left the summer kitchen and shooed the hens toward the henhouse for the night. Noah was munching sweet grass in the orchard with contentment. Bess scooped a bucket of water from the outflow of the spring house and carried it out to the patched kettle in the near corner of the orchard, should the old horse be thirsty in the night hours. She opened the gate and chucked; the swayback white horse came over for a nuzzle and then trotted down to the run behind the buildings for a good evening drink. He was so old; nobody could even remember just how long he’d been around; Jake threatened the glue factory, not that there was one nearby, and Bess stepped in. Noah was just what she needed to get around. So old and slow, he’d never run away with her, just able to pull her light wagon if needed, with plenty of rests along the way, and if she needed to go across the mountain to Aunt Julia’s in Henrys Valley, she could always borrow a younger mare.

It was cool and darkening along the run behind the barn and outhouses of the farmstead. In ages past, the small mountain-born stream had cut a sharp rocky bank on the far side and left a gentle slope on the west side. Bess had gathered rocks in its bed and dammed the run in two places to make wet gardens where she could grow sweet flag, foxgloves, bee balm, and other plants that loved the moist shade. The golden flags and dark red bee balms were in full bloom now, lighting the shadows under the willow and buttonwood trees. After a long, hot, dusty day in the hay field, it was refreshing to walk along the edge of the ponds, checking the growth of the sweet herbs flourishing here.

Right behind the summer kitchen, she had another sloping garden with herbs that liked a bit more sun but did best in a well-drained spot. Her lavender plants grew at the corners of the cut stone foundation, and hollyhocks ringed it. Jake kept young stock in the barn sometimes, and Bess borrowed a spade full of manure every so often to fling on the flower beds around the summer kitchen. Other than cutting back every so often, they throve on neglect.

She strolled along the run, picking off old blossoms and crushing leaves between her fingers just to savor their smells. The bee balm was just finishing its bright red bloom, and the coneflowers were turning into seed heads. She snipped off enough heads to assure a continued bloom because she enjoyed the tall pink flowers, glowing against the dark foliage of the steep hillside on the far side of the little run.

Then she worked in her vegetable patch for an hour or so. There had been enough rain this summer that weeds shot up, and she liked her garden tidy. It may have seemed to the casual passerby on the old mountain road that there was a disproportionate amount of onion and garlic in this garden. Aunt Julia had firmly planted the idea in Bess’s head that onions were vital to a healthy life. In addition, she liked them in almost any manner. In another month, they’d be ready to dig, and she would make braids of onions to dry in the summer kitchen. When she finished in the garden, she threw a forkful of weeds over the fence to Noah. The orchard provided perfectly adequate forage for one elderly horse, not worked very hard, but weeds from the garden gave him a treat. The chickens liked to scratch around in the weed pile as well, hopeful in their brainless fashion of finding delicious treasures among the weeds.

Bess left the orchard gate open while she worked, never worrying about Noah running off. Once his belly was full of water and sweet meadow grass, he ambled up the gentle slope, had another nuzzle, and put himself to bed in the front corner of the orchard. He liked to sleep, sprawled out on his side, seemingly dead, close to the road. More than one traveler across the mountain road had stopped at the house to report to Bess that she had a dead horse in the orchard. One day, she thought, that would be so. Until then, Noah roused himself every morning for a breakfast of oats and a day of leisure unless needed. Bess and Noah never hurried; if anyone needed Bess in a rush, they came with their own buggy and fast trotter.

By nine o’clock, the sun had set, and Bess was growing sleepy. She cleaned off the hoe and put it away in the wood shed. The hens had retired to the hen house of their own accord, so she shut the door against a stray fox, closed the summer kitchen door as well, and went inside and to bed. The moon was in its last phases, and it would be a dark night at the old farm high on the side of Bower Mountain.

About midnight, Bess was roused by a rapping on the side door below her bedroom. She stepped out on the bare floor, opened the window, and leaned out. A man stood there, and he lifted his lantern so Bess could see his face.

Oh, Rob. Is it time? she asked sleepily.

Yes, came an anxious voice. Emmie said she needs you.

All right. I’ll be right down. She dressed with practiced speed, having left her clothing out on the end of the bed. Emmie was