VOLINIA: A Tale of a Mail Order Husband

By Marilyn Kay Stout

Beth and Papa have farmed and milked together in lower southwestern Michigan since Mama's death ten years before. Now, in the spring of 1868, Papa is crippled from an accident, and Beth is left to do all the work herself. Until, that is, Papa writes and asks Uncle Justus in New York City to send a young man of good character to learn how to farm. If he can do the job and likes Beth, and if she likes him, he can marry her and inherit the farm. Beth is infuriated by this arrangement and is determined to hate the man who comes. The day she meets her uncle's choice sets events in motion that will alter her life, and those of many others, forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781644680421

Book preview

One

It was a warm afternoon for late February 1868, in southwest Michigan, and perspiration tickled down Beth’s neck and back. She whipped the flat sheet, and for a moment, it rode the breeze from the window and hung like a cloud of white cotton over the bed. Then it settled and was only a sheet again, that Beth must straighten and tuck. She finished the bed and stood for a moment staring out the paned window into the fields beyond.

Beth loved this cabin, back from the road and north of her parents’ frame house in Volinia Township, Michigan. Her best childhood memories centered around this fireplace with its colorful and interesting stones and the heavy wooden table on which Grandma had created wonderful meals and tasty treats for a little girl. Beth had always felt warm and safe in this house with Grandma. But those memories had come to a halt when Grandma died one winter evening when Beth was six. She had thought that the darkest day in her life, until two years later, when Mama got sick. She was very sick for five days. The doctor from Dowagiac could not come; many people were ill and needed him. Mama gave birth to Beth’s little brother, Thompson Garner Sawyer Jr., two months early. Then Mama and baby Thompson had died.

Life after Mama was hard for Papa and Beth. At eight years old, Beth had learned to milk the cows and drive the wagon. With the help of neighbor women, she learned to cook and clean and launder. She learned to set seeds in rows and pick the vegetables. She learned to preserve the harvest by canning and drying.

These days Beth used the cabin to get away from everything and cry when she could spare a moment. There just had not been a moment for a long time, and now she had to ready the cabin for him!

As she turned back to her tasks, her irritation made her carelessly slam her hand against the stone hearth, and she sank into the rocking chair nursing her wound. The tears that sprang to her eyes were not for the pain, though. She was angry. Angry that Papa had gotten hurt. Angry that the work never ceased. Angry that sugaring season would soon arrive. But those were only facts of life, and Beth knew that life could be cruel in its bestowments. What really angered her was what Papa had done.

He had sent to New York City to her Uncle Justus for a man to come and work the farm.

Why not hire somebody around here? she asked when he had told her.

He’s not gonna just be a hired hand, Papa had said. He looked away from her to the fire as he softly added, If he can do the job, and if you like him, he’s gonna marry you and inherit the farm.

What! Beth had screamed, and she had been screaming in her heart ever since. Papa had set his mind on it, and, even with her ten years of education, she had not had the words to put a dent in his reserve.

I’ll never work again, Papa said, the bitterness like sharp edges to his words. You need a husband to work this land.

I don’t! she had insisted. I can work this farm by myself! But even as she claimed it, her heart doubted her words.

It had been a nightmare when Papa had been carried home all broken and bleeding from the tree that he was felling last November. A nightmare from which Beth never awoke. His left leg had been crushed, and there was no saving it. She and others held him down on the kitchen table as the doctor from Dowagiac had amputated his leg just below the knee.

Papa had suffered with fevers and chills, day and night, for weeks. He cried out often every night and woke Beth to run to him to bathe his brow with water. Often, day and night, he complained of foot pain, or pain in his shin, which were no longer there.

For a couple of months, neighbors and friends from the Volinia Farmers Association had come and helped. They cut and stacked firewood. They milked morning and night, and carried the milk to the creamery. They fed the stock and gathered the eggs. And the women had brought meals.

But, finally, the men had to devote themselves to their own farms, and the women had their own families to feed. Beth was on her own. With too little sleep each night because of Papa’s night terrors, she rose before sunup every day and washed her face with cold water. She descended the stairs from her upstairs bedroom and checked on Papa. Dressed in her barn dress and boots and accompanied by their dog, Trogger, she slogged to the barn through the wind and snow and rain. It took her some time to milk the ten cows by herself as they stood in their stanchions and munched on sweet hay. Then she fed the horses, the pigs, and the chickens, and gathered the eggs.

When she was done, she changed out of her barn dress and into her house dress and fired up the cook stove for breakfast. Papa needed Beth to help him out of his bed and get dressed, and to use the chamber pot. He leaned hard against her shoulder as she helped him hop to his overstuffed chair in the front room. She fed the fire in the fireplace and coaxed the coals back to life. Sometimes she had to fetch wood from the pile outside, which she tried to keep up with split logs. Then Beth shaved Papa’s face and cleaned his wound and covered it with a clean dressing. When he asked her to, she bathed everything that Papa could not reach. After she had given him his breakfast, she situated the stool by his chair and propped the pillows. She made sure that he had a cup of coffee, a glass of water, and the newspaper from the day before.

On her way outside, Beth emptied the chamber pot at the privy. Then she hitched Frank and Fergus, their big brown Belgians, hefted the milk cans, only half full, out of the milk house onto the wagon, and took the trek to the outskirts of Dowagiac to the creamery. There she picked up the newspaper, and unless she needed to do banking or stop at the grocery in Dowagiac, she urged the horses back home.

By then it was usually late morning or almost noon. Beth hurried to fix a dinner for Papa. Then there was laundry and ironing, baking and cleaning, splitting wood, and carrying it inside. Papa liked his supper before she went out for the evening milking, so she fixed his meal and gave it to him. He always wanted her to sit and talk with him about the things he had read in the newspaper, which she usually did. Until one day she told him, Papa, I’ve got to do all the work. I don’t have time to sit and talk. After that, he did not ask for her time, but she saw a sadness and hopelessness in his eyes that had not been there before.

Beth waited until after chores for her own supper. She milked the cows and carried the large milk cans to the milk house, where they were bathed by the water from the windmill pump. The water kept the milk cold until she added the morning milk to it and carried it off to the creamery. In freezing temperatures, the constant movement of the water kept ice away. The water ran out the overflow into a tank outside for the cows and horses to drink from, and then it formed a small stream that meandered along the fence line and all the way to the Dowagiac creek.

At last Beth sat to eat her own supper and often fell asleep at the table until Papa called to her. She helped him to his chamber pot once more and then helped him hobble to his bedroom. There she slid him into his nightshirt, and once he lay in bed, she again cleansed and dressed his wound. Then she emptied his chamber pot in the privy and replaced it in his room.

By then she was aching with tiredness, but she wrapped the leftover food and washed the dishes. If she did not clean each day’s mess, she’d have no time for it the next day.

This was her schedule every day. She knew that when maple sugaring came, and planting and gardening, she could not do it. But a hired man would do. She did not need a man coming to take over her farm and think that she would marry him.

When the cabin was swept and tidied, with clean sheets on the bed and a pitcher of fresh water set inside the basin, Beth closed the window and carried her cleaning supplies back to the house. The day had been warm for the end of February, and Beth knew that would awaken the sleeping maple trees. The most recent snow lay in dirty piles and drifts, and the path was soggy. She glanced at the lowering sun and knew that it would soon be milking time. She mentally prepared Papa’s supper: some slices of cold beef on thick slabs of buttered bread, some boiled potatoes and carrots, and a slice of apple pie. She smiled to herself. Papa loved apple pie, and she had made it to use up the apples in the cellar that were wrinkling like the faces of old women.

Deep in her thoughts, Beth collided with someone standing just outside the back doorstep.

Lizzy! her best friend, Jinny, cried, clutching Beth’s arms to keep from falling over.

Jinny! Beth said, dropping articles about her on the muddy ground. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you!

Where were you? What were you doing? Jinny asked, helping to retrieve the cleaning supplies.

The girls climbed the five steps to the back porch. I was cleaning the cabin, said Beth. She laid everything down on the porch, and they went into the kitchen, wiping their feet on the course rug and hanging their coats on pegs by the door.

Why? Jinny asked, settling her small frame into a chair at the table. She smoothed the layers and laces of her skirt and folded her delicate hands in her lap to watch Beth deftly snap the sprouts and pare the peelings from some potatoes.

Beth loved Jinny. They had been best friends since childhood, but they were as different as a thoroughbred and a mule. Jinny was beautiful, with her dark red-brown curls and shining green eyes and dimples which creased her cheeks when she smiled, which was almost always. She wore pretty clothes and shoes, and her interests were new clothes and dainty foods. They had found a confidant and listener in each other at school when they were six years old, and now, at eighteen, they still shared their hearts with each other freely.

However, it was difficult for them to understand each other’s worlds. Jinny lived a mile away, in the big brown brick house. Her father hired several men to work his farm. Her mother had maids and a cook, and Jinny had never worked a moment in her life. She would sit and watch Beth work as they talked, but she had no understanding at all of Beth’s life.

Beth, with her long straight brown hair that she wore in a braid down her back and dark brown eyes, considered herself to be quite plain. She wished that she had been born a boy so that she could become the farmer. At five feet, eight inches, she thought that she would have made a good man.

Jinny just laughed at her when she told her that one day. Don’t be silly, she had cooed. You are absolutely beautiful! You’d make an awfully pretty man!

Coming back to the moment, Beth looked at her friend and said, Because Papa has sent for a man from New York City! He’s going to live in the cabin.

What! Jinny exclaimed, jumping up so suddenly that the chair toppled to the floor.

Who’s here? What’s going on, Betsy? Papa called from the front room.

It’s Jinny, Papa!

Well, what’s she doing?

It’s okay, Papa. We’re just talking.

Jinny stifled a giggle but clutched Beth’s arm. Tell me about the man! she whispered hoarsely.

I’ve got to fix Papa’s supper, Beth informed her. So Jinny stood beside her and leaned her elbows on Beth’s work table so she could hear about the man.

Papa thinks I need a man to help me farm. He sent to Uncle Justus to send a man.

Well, Jinny said thoughtfully as she snatched a bit of the bread Beth was cutting. You do need help on the farm. Why doesn’t your papa just hire someone locally? Why New York City?

Beth stopped her task and turned to look into her friend’s eyes. If the man who’s coming to work the farm can do the job, and if I like him, Papa says he can marry me and inherit the farm.

Oh, Lizzy! Jinny cried, an expression of horror on her face. What if he’s old or ugly!

Beth sighed, then related grimly, Papa says he’s twenty-two. He fought in the war. He goes to the same church as my uncle. His name is Paul Conrad.

Hmm, Jinny said, touching her well-manicured finger to her dimpled cheek. Well, he’s not old. And Paul is a pretty name. Maybe he’s pretty, too.

I don’t care if he’s the most handsome man in the world! Beth exploded. I’m not going to like him! I am not going to marry him! He can’t come here from New York City and think that he can have this farm! She knew Papa would hear, but she wanted him to. Jinny, what am I going to do?

Beth broke down in tears and sat on the chair next to Jinny’s upended one. Jinny set the chair upright and sat beside her, caressing her hands. I don’t know, I’ve never heard of such a thing.

There was silence for a few moments. Then Jinny asked, When is he coming?

Beth sniffed and stood up to resume her supper preparations.

Next week, Wednesday.

Two

Beth could almost hear the sap running up and down in the big maple trees as she walked, with Trogger at her side, along the road toward the Volinia Stagecoach Station a quarter mile from the farm. She had walked this route so many times in the years since Mama died. Josephine Walters had been Mama’s dearest friend, and when Beth’s Mama died, Josephine had taken little Betsy into her home for several weeks to let Papa grieve alone for Mama, even though she had three children of her own and the coach station to care for. Beth had walked with the Walters children to school each day, and then she had been Josephine’s shadow as she cleaned guest rooms, washed sheets and towels, and fixed meals for guests.

Through the years Beth had gone often to ask Josephine how to do household chores, how to bake and cook, and how to can vegetables. Once Beth had thought Josephine quite pretty, but she was now tall and gaunt with grey hair, and fading gray eyes. She seemed to have no joy left in her life since her son, Chester, had been killed in the war. She was kind and patient with her four younger children, but there was always a vacant, faraway look in her eyes.

Ben, who was two years younger than Beth, had always been sweet on her, although she had always liked Chester, who was two years her senior. They had all three played together and gone on adventures together, but it was Chester who was her special friend. She had supposed that they would fall in love when they were older and someday marry. It had pained Beth when he went away to fight the war against the South. She had written him letters and had received letters from him, not as a sweetheart but as a good friend. The news of his death was a great blow to her, and one more sorrow to add to the many fate had cast her way. She had decided, then, that she would never marry; she would farm with Papa the rest of her life.

Cassie, at twelve years, was a hard worker, helping her Mama with her chores and looking after eight year old Tord, who did not speak, and Little Grant, who was five.

Josephine’s husband, Grant, was balding, his gray hair like a monk’s tonsure. He was quiet, with a somber expression always on his face. He worked hard caring for the stage horses and keeping the coaches in repair, with Ben as his assistant. For several years, Grant had bought hay and corn from Beth’s Papa, and she wondered how long that arrangement could survive.

The stage coach station was a busy place when a stage was in, and most people in Volinia visited there at least a couple times a week, for Grant Walters was the Post Master as well. But today, all was quiet at the station.

Today Beth was not coming for a visit. Today’s stage was bringing Paul Conrad.

Afternoon, Betsy, Josephine greeted in her usual monotone, using the appellation which Mama and Papa called Beth. Looking for your mail? she asked, walking to the pigeonholed wall where mail was filed.

I’ll take ours if there is any, thank you, Beth told her, sitting on a rattan chair on the porch, but I’m here to meet the stage. Sit, Trogger, she commanded, and the dog lay at her feet.

Josephine handed her an envelope and sank to the chair beside her. Sun feels good, she said, raising her face to the afternoon rays. Then she looked at Beth. Got company coming?

Beth looked away from her eyes. She could not lie to Josephine. But she would not tell her all the truth. Besides, even though Papa planned for Beth to marry this man, she would not. So the partial truth was enough.

A man to work the farm, was what she answered.

Where’s he coming from? Josephine asked, raising her arms to the sun’s beams.

Beth knew this to be the difficult point. New York. She left the City part out, but New York City was in New York.

Josephine raised her eyebrows for just a moment. Good, she said. You work too hard. Need help for sugaring and planting. Glad your Papa decided to hire a man.

Beth could not explain to her that the man was not being hired. His work through harvest would pay for his passage to Michigan. And that would be the end of that.

With a groan Josephine pushed herself up to her feet. Better not sit around, she said, too much to do. She went back inside, leaving Beth to sit alone, dreading the coming of the stage, dreading meeting the man who thought that he was coming here to marry her and take her farm.

Hi, Beth.

She pulled herself from her determined self-pity to see Ben leading a team of fresh horses to the harnessing area, ready to switch when the stage arrived.

Hi, Ben, Beth returned. Stage just going on? she asked, rising and walking to stroke the neck of the near horse. Ben reached to greet Trogger, rubbing his head.

Just dropping off one passenger. Supper stop is all. Going on to Dowagiac for the night. Ben at sixteen was taller than she. He smiled down upon her with his boyish smile that said, I like you, so loudly without words. You here for mail? he asked, his eyes still smiling.

She lifted the envelope in her hand. Got the mail, she said. I’m here to meet a passenger.

First time I ever remember you meeting a passenger here, Ben said, a hint of question in his statement.

It is, she agreed, then hurried on, a man to work the farm.

Ben just nodded, then tethered the horses, and, smiling, stepped away to his work.

A few more minutes of dread and the stage arrived. Beth hung back as the passengers spilled out and into the station for supper and a short rest. Grant began unhitching the horses, and Beth wandered toward the station. Had the man gone in?

Miss Sawyer? Beth heard a man’s voice say her name.

She turned, and there he was, standing beside the coach, wearing a heavy coat and holding a Gladstone bag. He was tall, maybe over six feet. Wisps of straw-colored hair showed below a flat, strange hat that slumped over a brim in the front. His expression was grave, but there was a light in his blue eyes that Beth did not want to look at.

I’m Elizabeth Sawyer, she told him.

My name’s Paul Conrad. I’m here to…

Yes, I know, Beth cut him off. We live a quarter mile that way, she said, pointing. "Where’s your luggage?

This is all I have, he said, looking toward his bag.

Beth turned and started walking, and Trogger followed close on her heels. Paul followed her, too. Turmoil was raging in her heart as he hurried to catch up and walk beside her. She was angry. This man did not look like a farmer at all. He was clearly a city boy. Why had he come? She set her face into a scowl, and she hoped he thought her ugly. Maybe he would go back and leave on the stagecoach. But he did not. He said nothing, and she was quiet, so they walked in silence, until Paul asked, What’s the dog’s name?

Trogger, she told him, and said nothing else.

Hi, Trogger, Paul told the dog and fell silent.

Beth turned in at the driveway between two huge maple trees. The frame house, white with black shutters at the windows, stood far back from the road, the front yard not yet awake from the winter. The big red barn loomed behind it. Beth heard Paul catch his breath. So he likes the look of the place, she thought. Well, he can like it all he wants, but it’s’ never going to be his.

She led him to the back porch and up the steps. She opened the door and led Paul through the kitchen and into the front room.

Papa’s chair faced the fireplace and the two front windows, so he had seen them come. When he heard them enter the house, he called to Beth, Come in here, Betsy. Let me meet him.

They went in to stand before Papa, and Trogger lay on the rug by the fire. Papa instantly smiled and reached his hand to Paul. Welcome to our home. I’m Thompson Sawyer.

Paul set down his Gladstone and took Papa’s hand in a firm grip. I’m Paul Conrad. I’m very glad to meet you, sir, Mr. Sawyer.

How was your trip? Papa asked.

Beth realized that she had not queried