The Viola Factor

By Sheridan Brown

"The Viola Factor" takes place at a time when the country faced division and growth after the American Civil War. Viola Knapp Ruffner (1812-1903) struggled with what was just and fair, becoming a little-known confidant for a young black scholar from Virginia. But Viola was much more than a teacher; she was a mother, wife, game-changer, and friend. With her mother's dying wish, a young woman alone, she left her New England roots. This is a story of trauma and love in the South while battling for justice and the rightful education of the enslaved and once enslaved. African American leader Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) called her his friend and model for life.

The Viola Factor is in many ways a journey of life done in baby steps, tentatively stumbling, until a galloping stride is achieved. Viola Knapp wears different shoes on different days. Heavy, mud-trekking boots to allow for aggressive steps, and daintier shoes for more rhythmic and assertive ones. She was a diligent daughter, an outspoken protector, and a progressive teacher.

Like many women in her situation, alone at seventeen, Viola must realize her own principles to fulfill her future goals. With every stride, Viola Knapp Ruffner marches around surprises, over potholes, and dodges folly after folly on her journey to be fulfilled. After ambling in one direction, plodding along in another, and wandering to find herself, a sudden halt pushes her forward until a factor of fate places her in the path of a newly freed slave with a desire to read and penchant to lead. After years of post-traumatic stress and mental uncoupling, she finds herself a woman who followed her mother's dying wish to fight for what is fair and just.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350938357

Sheridan Brown

Sheridan Brown was born in the Midwest and graduated from the University of Michigan. She has been a high school teacher, a fashion and media journalist for international publications, a licensed cognitive behavioral psychotherapist in private practice, an advocate for animal protection for chimpanzees from labs, farm animals and senior dogs. She is an active supporter of the contemporary art community and lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

Introduction

Malden, West Virginia

Spring 1867

Come, thou fount of every blessing.

Robert Robinson, 1758

Viola Knapp Ruffner surveyed the bright spring landscape and shielded her eyes from the early morning sun. Her silvery golden hair gleamed just like the moonlight on the Kanawha River last night. The braided ripples were held under a snood that matched the deep purple of her high-necked, full-skirted morning dress. She rose slowly and rubbed her hands against the striped apron pinned to her bodice. The early lettuce and spring peas were rapidly taking up the allotted garden spots. I love the solitude and peace I find in my gardens; she thought as she capped a withering rose, and I enjoy being in the open air where I have used my own hands to raise new life.

Back in the kitchen, Viola realized that any minute Booker would be coming down the steps to help prepare the vegetables and flowers to sell from the back of the wagon in the Charleston markets. She knew that he understood that punctuality and promptness were expected in the Ruffner household. Never giving into bullies or beggars, he became quite trustworthy about bringing back the monies earned and accounting for each and everything he sold daily. Viola was not surprised to see in his ledgers where he had doubled their profits over the past year.

She noticed the level of oil in the lamp on the kitchen table was lower this morning and guessed he had been up again reading into the night. She caught herself smiling, He certainly catches on quickly and is eager to learn, soaking up unfamiliar words and numbers rapidly. I think I might introduce him to the new book by Charles Dickens called David Copperfield, since some of those characters parallel events in Booker’s life.

It was a serendipitous day for us when that young man came here to work in our home, she thought. She recalled that time when Lewis had been so busy helping recover the mines after both sides of that dreadful Civil War attacked them. She had been in her dark and dreary days then after they moved back here from Louisville, so that now, having a curious and determined pupil who also liked to do the work assigned to him was a delight for her. Because the government finally agreed to allow former slaves their freedom, including learning to read and write, it helped her to practice her former teaching skills all over again where they were appreciated. Teaching also relieved her of the miseries and sorrows she had endured since…

She pulled herself back into the present.

The Negro man, Washington Ferguson, who worked for Lewis in the mines, asked him if he had any jobs for his wife Jane and three children who had just arrived after emancipation from a tobacco farm in Virginia. Ferguson had been one of the rural slaves who was leased at the Ruffner salt works and after the war returned to work for wages.

When Booker’s Mother Jane took in some laundry for us and requested that we allow Booker to work in our home, I said, Yes! If he can prove himself, we will pay his stepdaddy five dollars a month for allowing him to do so.

In fact, she reflected, He has become one of our family. Lewis and I both like to converse with him and listen to him read the Bible out loud to us.

Abruptly, Viola flashed back to a not so happy time years ago when her growing up began away from the caring home that was now her life center, far away in Vermont (people here say she pronounces it ‘Vermon,’ dropping the t), far away from individual freedoms and melting snows, far away from a family of sisters, a brother, Father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Booker would know what to do without her for a bit while she rested. Once again, she felt the emptiness and loss that sank upon their family when she was just seventeen years old, and wondered how that harm had affected her into her adult years. The brightness of morning ahead dulled gray, and she staggered to her bedroom to recline against the high sloped settee covered in white silken damask. She stared at the patterned frieze she had chosen in multi colors of floral purples and violet. A silvery thread of light entered the room through the drapery crack, and Viola felt grief-stricken. She rested her eyes and experienced a chilliness. She remembered all the way back to 1829 when her Mother was grinning at the daisy roots in Vermon’ where she was raised.

1 Arlington, Vermont

November 1829

"Be a schooled and tough woman

who understands what is fair and just."

Urania Knapp, 1829

We all stood frozen over the huge hole now reserved for our Mother. It seems like Thanksgiving was all but forgotten that year, just taking place for everyone else three days earlier when Mother had been dying. Oh, how she wished they had been able to enjoy the smells and sounds of Thanksgiving together as a family one last time. She wanted to taste the textures from Mother’s pumpkin custard, smell the aromas from breads and pies her grandmothers baked, and wonder over Elvira’s creative and newly concocted cranberry cornbread. Father even carved wooden turkeys with movable legs for the little children to play with in front of the fireplace.

Viola’s lips were in a cold, terse, straight line as she stood graveside. There was a crease just above her left brow. Her violet-colored eyes were clear but moist. Her skin, the color of Vermont snows, and her long blonde hair topped the aristocratic and statuesque figure, just like the female Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The strength of her character stood out above all the others gathered. She realized the success of this family depended upon her ability to support and defend them. She watched Father shovel dirt over the beautifully crafted coffin he had made with care for Mother. As a local mechanic in the wood shop, he had spent days measuring, hammering, and gluing the white oak taken from the Green Mountain forests to envelop the body of his late wife as she transitioned into heaven.

Figure 2 Vermont Telegraph 1829

Father assigned the scripting of Mother’s tombstone to Viola and her older sister Elvira. They studied Mother’s books for hours and finally chose lines from Reverend Edward Young’s poetry.

Smitten friends are angels sent on errands full of love.

For us they languish and for us they die,

And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?

Ungrateful shall we grieve their hovering shades

Which wait the revolution in our hearts.

It would be a beautiful headstone once we can afford to pay for it and place it in the St. James Church cemetery to mark Mother’s space for eternity, Father told them.

Both Grandmother Hannahs, dressed in ankle length black dresses, stood sniffling and weeping. Viola wondered if Grandmother Hannah Hawley could now rest knowing that the daughter she had named Urania, Rany for short, heavenly patron of astronomy, could float among the stars and planets. Such a worldly name for such an extraordinarily bright and poetic woman.

Viola quietly whispered, Heaven will be where you paint you own stars, dear Mother.

Grandmother said Rany was reading at an early age and always begged to go to the local book groups when she became a young woman. It was at one of those groups that she had met Father, Silas Knapp, and shared her passion for stories and characters with him. She recalled Mother always said Father was much happier with a chisel and a smooth piece of oak or white birch in his hands than a book. Silas, like his father Ephraim, was a wood mechanic and cabinetmaker.

But he hung onto each of my words intently and had the kindest smile! Rany used to reminisce to her children.

Both Rany and Silas, descended from Vermont lineage and identified with all the people in the town. Poor Father had only twenty-two years with her before she perished. Now at age 42, Rany’s strength had declined with the seventh child. The new-born baby, Juelma, was motherless and in the care of aunts and neighbors as they gathered.

Baby brother Orpheus, age two, began to wiggle in Elvira’s arms. She set him down and knelt with him to throw star-shaped dahlias into the earth. His dark and narrow eyes widened and starred back at her as if to ask, Why are we throwing away flowers?

Viola gripped the hand of curly-haired Florina, age 4, while a long-faced Uretta, 12, knelt with solemn Salina, 9, to whisper to her that Mother was in the stars with God and would not be there when they returned to their house. They all moved back to stand beside Father as the service began.

Viola felt a shiver skitter through her as she struggled not to cry and listened to the words of Reverend Perkins. Mother would have loved his choice of words about her. She thought about the meaning of his eulogy and the terms of endearment he communicated with all of them. He praised Urania for being a fine wife and Mother, a scholar of literature, and for her passion for poetry and writing. Viola remembered the plays they wrote and performed for each other and the stories they crafted all day long to share with Father after dinner in the evenings.

Grandmother and Grandfather Hawley stood long faced and tall and pulled their coats and cloaks tightly to them to protect against the chill. Urania, the second Hawley child, their verbose and vibrant daughter, was now gone. Grandmother’s youngest son, Rany’s little brother, Norman stood at her side.

Viola gazed over at him, Uncle Norman. He was more like a big brother to her than an uncle and one of her best chuckaboos. He could usually cajole her into laughter with his witty sense of humor, like telling her You look right ripsniptious! But not today.

An unwavering reaction to helplessness prevented Viola, who was from old stock Yankee beginnings, from succumbing to tears. She glanced around at who was in attendance. Inside this graveyard, marked with Hawley predecessors and family, Viola was reminded of just how important the Episcopal faith and Yankee Protestant roots had been in forming her life and beliefs. She thought back to the early stories her grandparents shared with her about this deep devotion that forged their town.

The Charter for Arlington as a town, six miles square, was issued July 28, 1761. The first settlers arrived in 1764, fifteen years before Vermont entered the Union. Among these people was the first Lay Reader of the church, Captain Jehiel Hawley, Viola’s great grandfather. After these predecessors had settled in their new homes and began to conduct Episcopal services, the Revolution served to isolate them further as Tories - those loyal to the King of England. During the Revolution Captain Hawley left Arlington and served on the staff of General John Burgoyne until Burgoyne’s defeat at the Battle of Saratoga, then, he started for Canada. Great Grandfather Hawley died en route in Shelburne in 1777 and was buried at sea. Captain Hawley had built the first framed house in Arlington. There the services of the Church were first held and became the birthplace of the Episcopal Church in Vermont. It was where Viola’s Hawley grandparents continued to live and where many important Hawley family celebrations took place.

In 1803, two wooden churches were established in Arlington. One, a Free Church where attendees did not have to buy their pews and where Viola was christened in 1812. The other was where today’s church stood. Just this year, 1829, the cornerstone of this new stone church was laid on the foundation of the old wooden church and called St. James where the children attended school and the family now gathered.

The Churchman Magazine published in Connecticut in 1805 stated,

Although much encumbered with many things, Captain Hawley did not forget ‘the one thing needful,’ but with unrelenting zeal for his Master’s glory and the salvation of his fellowmen, he commenced the worship of the Church at Arlington upon settling there, and with the blessing of God upon his unrelenting and pious labors he so spread the doctrines of the Church that until the time of the Revolutionary war almost the whole town consisted of Episcopalians.

Viola, lost in historical thought, was distracted for an instant by the busy hum and clang of the nearby saw and grist mills. Florina tugged at her hand. Viola bent and whispered a rhyme into her ear to help her stay still. Then, her reflections drifted back to Mother.

Mother had cherished words, the flow of lyrics, the placement of adjectives and adverbs in sentences, the rise and rhythmic falls of verses, the poems of Reverend Edward Young, the characters in