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Note: From an unnamed and undated newspaper clipping in the Price file Edna Messick Edna V. Messick, 78 of Rt. 2, Timberville died Monday, Aug 25 at Rockingham Memorial Hospital at Harrisonburg. The funeral was Wednesday and burial was in Rader's Lutheran Church Cemetery at Timberville. Mrs. Messick was born Aug 20, 1902 in Shenandoah County and was a daughter of the late Joseph M. and Wally Wolfe Vetter. She was a member of the Bethany United Methodist Church near Broadway. She was proceeded in death by her husband, Paul Messick. [actually, Timothy Paul Messick] She is survived by four stepsons, Marshall Messick of Culpeper, Jacob Messick of New Market, [this is Woodrow Paul, called "Jake"] William Messick of Pennsylvania and Truman Messick, of Lakeland, Fla; two stepdaughters, Mrs. Helen Campbell and Miss Velma Messick, both of New marker, and a brother, Stanley Vetter of Timberville. A second unnamed and undated newspaper clipping in the Price file Edna V. Messick Edna V. Messick, 78 of Rt. 2, Timberville died Monday, Aug 25 at Rockingham Memorial Hospital where she had been a patient five weeks. Mrs. Messick was born Aug 20, 1902 in Shenandoah County and was a daughter of the late Joseph M. and Sally Wolfe Vetter. She was a member of the Bethany United Methodist Church near Broadway. Surviving are four stepsons, Marshall Messick of Culpeper, Jacob Messick of New Market, William Messick of Pennsylvania and Truman Messick, of Lakeland, Fla; two stepdaughters, Mrs. Helen Campbell and Miss Velma Messick, both of New marker, and a brother, Stanley Vetter of Timberville. The funeral will be conducted 2:30 PM Wednesday at Rader's Lutheran Church at Timberville by the Rev. John Yeich, the Rev. Lawrence Prickett and Dr. E. E. Miller. Burial wil be in the church cemetery. The family will receive friends 7:30-8:30 PM today at the Theis Funeral Chapel in New Market.[pencil notation: (Tue.) Aug. 26, 1980] My grandfather, Timothy Paul Messick 1887-1959 always called "Paul" by the entire family, had six children by Sara Agnes Baker 1891-1963. The oldest of these children was Harry Truman Messick 1910-1988, known to us children as Uncle Harry but to all his sibilings and contemporaries as Truman. My mother Elizabeth McDonald b. 1921 tells me that Velma Messick 1912-1985 told her that the family all knew that Timothy Paul and Sarah married because Sarah was pregnant. My parents always assumed, and told me when I was old enough to consider such things, that they had thrown away or hidden their marriage license to protect the parties from public knowledge of this fact. I have since come to doubt this explanation. I have seen no copy, no record, no listing of a marriage, sanctioned by church or civil authority between Timothy Paul Messick and Sarah Agnes Baker. There is no such record in the Harrisonburg court house, and my father and I spent over 40 hours in the hot, dusty, stuffy record room one summer in the mid 1970's looking for any information on any family member. We found a great deal, but not this document. The obituaries of Timothy Paul Messick and of Sarah Baker (Messick) Crist do not mention each other, though they do mention the children as Messicks, with no explanation of the "Crist" name. Edna Vetter's obituary names Timothy Paul's children as her "step children." This term would curl the hair of any of my uncles or aunts. When I pointed it out to my mother, completely unrelated to Timothy Paul, Sarah or Edna by blood, she wanted to know if we couldn't demand that the paper print a retraction or "so obvious a slander." This was in 1999, nearly 20 years after the death of the last person involved. Why this great animosity toward Edna Vetters? Ah! Another tale! Timothy Paul worked as a foreman in the orchard of Mr. Crist (I don't know his first name.) As part of his salary, he was supplied with a house and allowed the use of the toolshop and woodshop of the orchard. He lived in this house with Sarah and their growing family. To supplement his income, he made furniture for his home and sold extra pieces on the side for extra income. He was a passing accomplished carpenter. I have a roll-top desk he made that is both more beautiful and more functional than many I have seen in stores. Coat racks, tables, bookcases, and "fancies" (spice racks, book ends, kitchen shelves, pigeon-hole mail sorters) were all over the houses of my aunts and uncles when we were growing up. For all this, he was not a very pleasant person to live with. My father, who loved and respected him deeply, said that Pop-pop Messick never talked unless there was something that had to be fixed, something he wanted done differently. Indeed, I can say he was at least "laconic." Sitting at the dinner table, a group of more than 20, (I have 5 brothers, my father's family was 6, all married, with 4 children among them) Timothy Paul was always at the exteme end on the left hand side. We were all told to eat quietly. Conversation was kept to a minimum, but my uncles usually spent a good deal of time goodnaturedly teasing my aunts. When Pop-pop wanted something, more meat, the salt, the newspaper, or to leave the table, he would rap his spoon on the table and point. One time my brother Donald said "Pop pop, don't you know it's not polite to point?" Conversation died. I thought Donnie would shortly afterwards. But Pop-pop made a little laughing sound through his teeth (I would say he tee-hee'd if it disn't sound ridiculous) and said under his breath "yeah, for you it n't." and every body laughted. I didn't understand this until years later. Well, this kind of "don't talk unless it needs fixed" attitude doesn't make for marital accord. Sarah, alone all day with the kids, in a house with no electric and no indoor plumbing, did not have a "How was you day, Honey?" evening. He ate and went to the wood shop where he worked by kerosene lamp light till after midnight when he came back to his wife already asleep in their bed. My Aunt Velma told me that she remembered day on end that she did not hear him speak. "When he talked," she'd say "we listened." Well, I guess so. When my father was 16 (1932, the oldest, Truman, would have been 22, the oldest girl, Velma 20 and the youngest my Uncle (Shelton) Marshall 11) Sarah made the evening meal as soon as dinner was over, got dressed in her best clothing, packed a small suitcase and told Velma to take care of the babies (Marshall 11 and Helen 14) and left. She was not seen again in "the holler" for a long time. At the same time, Mr. Crist's son Lee left the area. He had been down to the house in the holler many times over the recent months, and had taken Sarah to town once or twice on errands in his car. The next thing my aunts tell about is hearing that she was in Ohio with her sister Ada Rinker. Indeed, the obituaries of Sarah and Ada's father, mother, and brother all mention as survivors "Sarah Crist of Tiffin Ohio." My father and mother married in 1946. After their marriage, at which my Aunt Velma was a bride's maid, Dad and Mom went to Virginia to see Dad's family who had not come to New York City for the wedding. He went to the house in Broadway where Lee and Sarah Crist had been living for more than 10 years, married, with an elaborately written marriage license with a gold seal framed in gold, hung on their living room wall, right behind the front door. He walked in with my mother and said "Hi. This is my wife Elizabeth." My mother did not know that these were the first words my father had spoken to his mother in 14 years. We called her Grandma Crist. We never questioned why our father's mother was not living with and married to our father's father. That was just the way it way. Edna was another story. We were told, scolded, threatened with Edna. She was, we were told, a witch. This was not some king of euphemism, some kind of put down or insult. It was a statement of fact. Now my mother is a well-educated woman. She was the chief bookkeeper for the Naval Shipping Barracks in Brooklyn NY throughout WWII. She did not believe in witchcraft and spells, etc. But she did not contradict Velma's warnings, or Helen's testimony that Edna knew magic and black arts. One year my Aunt Lou's entire crop of green beans developed strange black spots after they were canned. There must have been 50 or more quarts of green beans. No one could understand what was wrong, and while they were putting off dumping the beans and washing the jars and lids, Helen pointed out that Edna had come with Pop pop the day they were all canning. Velma looked at Lou, and the three women took the entire two days work, jars, beans, lids, and all, and hauled them to the dump behind the barn and broke and buried them. Edna was given every black name you can imagine. She was after Pop pop's money. She was after his land. She had always been after him, even when he was a young man. Recently I received from a cousin, Steve.Pence a photocopy of an old photograph of a picnic in Bristersurg VA taken in 1926. Edna is at Timothy Paul's right, smiling at him. And now, well, we were told that if we didn't be good and quiet in church and not get dirty before dinner or if we went out in the dew-wet grass or chased the cows or pegged rocks at the chickens, we would be dropped off at Edna's. One time, I did visit the Vetter farm with my father. Edna was in the barn. Her sister was making soap over an open fire in the front yard, in a big, round-bottomed, cast-iron pot. Edna came out of the barn holding a burlap sack tied with a knot at the top. She put it in a rain barrel that caught the run off from the chicken house next to the gate to the yard. I was told on the way home that it had had a littler of new born cats in it. When I told Aunt Velma and Aunt Helen about the soap making and how interesting it all seemed, Helen said "Yeah, well, they may tell you it's soap." Velma giggled and wrinkled her nose at her sisters, a private communication between them in progress, and said "Yeah, but just you don't wash with none of what they pour out of that pot." So, you can see why your comment that you had Helen's parents as Timothy Paul and Edna Vetter, that there was much for me to tell. I hope this hasn't bored you, nor horrified you about my side of the family. It has taken me years, decades, to piece it all together, and over the past three or four years, details have come up, none of which gainsay what I have written.
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