Judy Anderson: Over a Century of Family Life in Bluemont

By Susan Freis Falknor

From interviews Summer 2009

Judy Anderson’s tale of family life in Bluemont, going back more than a century, began with her great-grandfather Volney Osburn purchasing a farm off what is now Route 7, on the north edge of Snickersville. The story continues, with Judy’s grandmother Pearl Osburn Jones (“Granny Jones”), Judy’s father and mother (Robert and Ellen McClaughry Jones), memories of a free and adventurous childhood in Bluemont in the 1950s, Judy’s marriage to classmate Bud Anderson, and the way the newspapers took notice when Judy donated a kidney to Bud a decade ago.

When I visited Judy and Bud Anderson in their farmhouse near Bluemont, they shared many stories, photos, and news clippings. Judy explained that some of the documents were brought to light a few years ago when plans to install a new heat and air conditioning system required her to clean out the attic of the farmhouse. Through this website www.BluemontHeritage.org, the Andersons have shared more than a century’s store of pictorial treasures: an 1849 receipt for William T. Osborn’s tuition, doctor’s records from the 1880s, a signed letter by Senator Harry Byrd, a 1937 monthly phone bill (amount: $1.90), an ad featuring Winnie Davis “the Daughter of the Confederacy,” and Virginia script from the Civil War.

At the Osburn-Jones-Anderson farmhouse

Osburn-Jones-Anderson farmhouse with women dressed in white, ankle-length skirts on the lawn

We first looked some large photographs of the Osburn-Jones-Anderson farmhouse with women dressed in white, ankle-length skirts on the lawn.

Judy. Here are some pictures to show to you.

Susan. Oh, that’s wonderful. Are those taken before the turn of the century?

Judy. It is, I would say, in the 1900s, because this place was a guest house once the railroad, you know, came to Bluemont. So these ladies are probably some borders. As you can see, our place really hasn’t changed that much. They came for the cool weather, though, as you know, we have hot weather too up here now.

Susan. The long dresses!

Volney Osburn

Judy. Here’s a picture of Volney Osburn. My father’s grandfather. My kids are the fifth generation to live in this house. Everybody called him “Von-ley,” but his name was “Volney.”

Judy. Now my great grandfather Volney raised hogs, Tamworth hogs. He was very intent on getting the railroad here, as you can tell from all the paperwork upstairs in the attic because that meant he could ship these hogs. And he shipped hams to places like Iowa and the midwest – there are letters from people ordering hams.

Susan. Really! And what’s this? 

Judy. This flyer was the beginning of getting the Southern Railroad Company to extend their line to Snickersville. He was very active in doing that. And Dr. Plaster. This handbill tells you that the citizens met in Snickersville, at 2:00. What they needed was the right of way and “funds sufficient to construct a suitable depot. ” So the landowners actually gave money, had a lawyer, gave land for the right-of-way, everything. All to get the railroad to come to Bluemont. They knew it would be a big bonus for Bluemont.

Susan. You know, I’ve never heard of the local push-or pull-to get the railroad here. This is the first time I’ve heard of this. That is so interesting. I’ve always heard it more of a sort of top-down thing-“oh, the railroad decided to come to Bluemont.”

Judy. No. They persuaded the railroad to come to Bluemont. It would bring the tourists. I think the general consensus over this is, well, the railroad came to Bluemont, but it didn’t come without a lot of work. Anyway, that’s my history about the railroad.

Volney lost his arm in his 60s. And it was right on that porch when he decided to make it into a room. He was working in there and evidently got hurt. He never told us as kids, but we found it in letters and put it together as to what happened. He got caught on a nail, it got infected, and he ended up losing his arm. Most men then if they lost an arm lost it in machinery. He was working on the house. He outlived his wife by quite a number of years.

Susan. So this is the man who first bought this house at auction.

Judy. Right. We have a lot of papers because Volney saved and filed everything. We have a lot of papers that don’t belong to our family but that he dealt with as executor. And some other receipts in here too.

Susan. This is interesting: “The Bureau of Efficiency.” Sounds like a joke.

Judy. It’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? I forget what the Bureau of Efficiency was sending to him:

“Dear Mr. Osburn, Thanks for return of the money…it would be impossible for us to come on June the 2nd when we thought we would be able to come….”]

My guess would be that they were going to reserve a room here, but would not be able to come. Overnight or short stay. 1929. May 22 is when he mailed it. So we did have people stay here, I know that.

Volney’s wide correspondence concerning business of various kinds including this letter from Leslie Bagley on California DMV stationary

In 1923, Volney Osburn was an executor of an important bequest for the Bluemont community. This was James Rufus Humphrey ‘s legacy of $4,000 to build an auditorium in Bluemont. This letter reads: Received of William L. Humphrey and Volney Osburn Exors [executors] of James Rufus Humphrey, check for four thousand dollars, which is in payment of the legacy provided under the codicil to the will of James Rufus Humphrey of four thousand dollars, to be applied towards the building of the audit- orium to be built by the school board of Mt. Gilead District at Bluemont, this 9th day of May, 1923. A.B. Richard Treasurer of Loudoun County

Today, a memorial plaque to the gift is posted on a wall of the auditorium of the Bluemont Community Center, formerly the Bluemont school.

Volney was also something of a family problem solver, as the following Depression-era letter attests.

Wednesday Afternoon
March 22, 1933

Dear Cousin Volney:
In your letter sometime ago you mentioned something about being able to get some money for Mother and myself. I wonder if you could collect any from Mr. Stipes now since the banks have opened? We would appreciate very much if you could send us a nice check as we are in need of same.
Hope all are well.

Very Truly yours,
Alice T. Martin

Susan. (Looking at another document.) Is this the deed of this house?

Judy. No. This is just something I pulled out because my husband knows this one guy out at Hillsboro, and it actually mentions him in this deed. So I think he would like to see it.

Susan. I’m sure he would. That handwriting is beautiful.

Judy. And they had a seal on the paper. This is dated 1879. And I like the way they “are conveying the following property and one mouse-colored”-I can’t tell if that is “horse” or “house.” One something wagon, looks like 60 acres of wheat sown by …. The Edwin Potts farm near Hillsboro – and that’s the friend of Bud.Now this is something that we were kind of proud to achieve. [Virginia.Century.Cert. Osburn10-24-1997] And that means that this farm has been owned and farmed by the same family for 100 consecutive years. There’s not a lot of them. There’s a few. Henry Plaster has one, and Sam Brown in Purcellville.

Susan. That’s a hard criterion to meet.

Judy. In the little bit of research that I’ve done, I found that there was a family living here and the husband passed away. The wife had to sell the place at auction. And the sons objected, but they couldn’t come up with the money. So Volney bought it. And at the time he owned (and it’s still in our family ) a farm on Route 711, Williams Gap Road.

I have several of these – these are receipts from the Bluemont Mercantile Company, now Bluemont General Store. Across the top it says “Frank Wynkoop and J. Scott Beaver. James Osburn, manager.” I don’t know who he was. 10 pounds of sugar, 53 cents. Bread, 10 cents. Corn flakes, 10 cents. The receipts are to my great-grandfather, Vonley. This one is 1934. It says: ‘fancy goods, groceries, dry goods, notions, shoes.’ And what is this: ‘Queensware and Hardware’? [Note: Queensware was white table dishes and pottery imported into America from the middle of the 1800s on.] All of these are from the 1930s. They bought a lot of bread. They must have been getting ready to do some farming and have hands in.

Judy. Anyway, in 1898 when my great-grandfather Volney Osburn bought this house, they moved from the farm over on William’s Gap to this house

Susan. And where did they come from?

Judy. Well, we think, Ohio, Pennsylvania area. But they were here a long time, because he owned the property over on Williams Gap. I don’t know how far that goes back. But I would feel confident to say that the Osburns and the Thomases, who still own the adjoining farm, have been neighbors since the Civil War at least, and are still neighbors.

Here is how this happened in the family. First, we had Vonley Osburn and his wife Virginia (Jenny) and they had the one daughter, my grandmother, Pearl Osburn Jones.
And then my dad was born. His father came in on the train and went out on the train. I never saw him. I mean, they got married and everything but…

Susan. But he didn’t stay around?

Judy. No. He was an accountant for the railroad. She probably met him because people stayed here a lot of times. His name was Charles Robert Jones. But he didn’t really live here. They moved to D.C. before my Dad was born. So then when he left, my grandmother, with son in tow, that is, my father, Robert, came back here to live. Later my father married Ellen McClaughry, and there are still McClaughrys in Pine Grove. So at one point we have living here, my great grandfather Volney and great grandmother Virginia, my grandmother Pearl, and my mother and father. And then my great-grandmother Virginia passed away and mom had the three kids and we had my great grandfather, my grandmother Pearl, my parents, and us 3 kids. Then my great-grandfather Volney passed away when I was six months old. He passed away in that room next to the front door, that is my office now. I can’t remember, obviously, at six months old. But my brothers can remember coming down that morning and them saying, “Don’t come down the steps, stay upstairs.” So they sat on the steps. He had passed away in that room. They said he never knew who I was. He was ill. He might say, “Who is that baby crying?” My brothers are six and seven years older than I am.

Susan. What about your mother’s family?

Judy. My mother’s mother was Nannie Virginia McClaughry. My grandfather was Thomas. And they lived in a house right across from the Pine Grove restaurant. There was a little school right before the restaurant – you can look at it and tell it was a school. She was the oldest of seven. There’s only two left and they still live in Pine Grove. One is Frances Ballenger and the other is Max McClaughry. Then here is my grandmother, who was Pearl Jones. She was Volney’s daughter. Volney had one child.

Susan. She was your father’s mother?

Judy. Yes. I have two brothers. Carroll and Robert (above). It’s funny. In that day, my mother named the first one after the doctor and the second one after the father.Carroll Allen Ide n was the doctor’s name, and she named the baby Carroll Allen. He was the family doctor.

Susan. That sounds like a Maryland name.

Judy. There are several Carrolls around but usually as a middle name. It’s a family name. We were born here, well, in the hospital, but we lived here, grew up here, and there were four generations living in this house.

Judy: When I asked Bobby about Foxy’s [Robert Jones was a young entrepreneur who in 1952 opened Foxy’s Sweet Shoppe in the Old Dance Hall – more recently, Corchran’s Millworks. He offered a pinball machine and a jukebox for entertainment, as well as ice cream and treats. Judy recalls working there at age 10 or 11], he recalled that his best customers were Betty and Sonny Colbert, who were practically newlyweds at the time. They still live in Bluemont and recently celebrated their sixty-first anniversary. Bobby began his teaching career in Delaware, then at Loudoun Valley, and, after retiring from the State of Virginia, at Sacred Heart Academy in Winchester. [Regretably, Bobby Jones died of a longstanding illness shortly after this interview.] My older brother, Carroll, retired after 40 years with the Social Security Administration and is currently Mayor of Brunswick, Maryland.

Right out of high school, I went to work at the Dept of Agriculture in DC. Winnie Kelley and I roomed together on 16th Street for a while sharing an apartment with two other girls. I got married in August 1961 in the Bluemont Church and Winnie was a bridesmaid.

My grandmother was Pearl Jones. In her later years, she was known in Bluemont as “Granny” to everybody. So we had Aunt Freddie [Winifred Osburn Foerster, Winnie’s Aunt] who was everybody’s aunt. And my grandmother was everybody’s granny. She was known as “Granny Jones” and all of the kids called her that. She was a little old lady, a real short lady. And she had a time with us kids. She always took care of us because my mom always worked. I have just a couple of memories of this house because we moved when it was time for me to start first grade. We moved into town.

Susan. So that was about when?

Judy. It was 1946. We moved into the house next to the E.E. Lake Store. On Railroad Street, then called Elizabeth Avenue. When we moved to the house in Bluemont there was no bathroom. I still remember going to the outhouse. How times have changed. That’s where my parents lived until my mom’s stroke in 1983. I think we sold that house to Tim and Judy Hall in 1984 or so. So we lived right across the street from the old post office. We still continued to farm. This became a tenant house and we still had the other farm. Also, my dad carried the mail until he retired in 1976.

Susan. And what do you remember about going to school?

House on Rail Road St next to the E.E. Lake Store, where the Bob and Ellen Jones family lived while Judy was growing up

Judy. Oh, it was great. We’d walk to school. We had three classrooms: first and second grade together, then third and fourth grade in another room, and the next classroom was fifth, sixth, and seventh. And the year that I was to go to seventh grade, they sent us to Round Hill. We had three teachers, one of whom was the principal, Mrs. Welsh. The bathrooms were in the basement. The boys had to walk around the building, go down those steps on the right hand side of the building. The boys’ bathrooms were in the basement but didn’t have an inside entrance. You know, in the winter, it was hard. We had a cook named Mrs. Iden. She rode the bus, she didn’t drive. She lived in Bloomfield. She was an excellent cook. And after we had all got our plates and had sat down and everything, she would come around to the table with more servings, does anybody want seconds? She made everything — cookies, the whole thing. She did all that cooking in the kitchen at Bluemont. Her sister was the cook at Round Hill School. But I don’t know what her sister’s name was because Iden was her married name.

Susan. What bus was this?

Judy. Mrs. Iden rode the school bus with her son. He went to school in Bluemont. They lived in Bloomfield. They rode the school bus in and then after school they went back home.

We had one boy, I won’t mention his name, but he was always in trouble, and had to stay in a lot after school. And– this was my worst memory of Bluemont school– I was walking to school one morning and he said to me, “Boy, you’re in trouble!” Something like that. Well I was very shy, and I reacted, “Why, what could I be in trouble for?” Well, what had happened was that the older kids cleaned the bathrooms. And I was one of the ones finishing up the bathroom, cleaning up at the end of the day. When I finished I locked the basement door, like we always were supposed to, and went home. I didn’t go into the classroom where he was being held after school for misbehaving. If he hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened. He heard this hollering. Mrs. Welsh, our teacher and the principal, had gone down to check the furnace room and I had locked her in the basement. Fortunately, he had to stay in that day, because he was around to let her out. I was scared to death to go to school. He tells me this while we were walking to school. I had locked her in the basement. It was the worst thing I ever did. I never got into trouble. I was so scared. Thank goodness he was there, he heard her hollering and he went to see what was going on and she was locked in. That’s my worst memory. It’s funny but it wasn’t at the time. I didn’t really get into trouble. The principal knew I would never do anything like that on purpose.

Susan. Do any other kids stand out?

Judy and Winnie Osburn with pet dog, in front of Aunt Freddy’s house, around 1945

Judy. Oh gosh, all of ’em do.  The Lloyd boys, who lived across the street from us in the house that is beside the old post office. And we all hung around together. And Emily Reid lived beside me. She and I were really good friends. And Billy and J.D. Dawson, they lived in the house next to you, on the left as you face your house [33710 Snickersville Turnpike]. And Libby Dawson (now Stearn) lived in the house next to it. Bonnie and Connie Smith lived next to the store and of course, Winnie Osburn (now Kelley) was there on weekends, visiting her Aunt Freddie at 33718 Snickersville Turnpike. One other memory I had was about Ruth’s Home on Railroad Street. Miss Alley had the first TV in Bluemont. Some of the kids in town used to go up there and watch TV with “her” children. It was a very small screen and it seems like it was round, but I’m not sure. Anyway, she had a glass bowl on top of it and we had to put in coins to watch. I don’t remember a set price, but whatever change you had, I think. It was quite exciting at the time!

I have an “Out of the Attic” (and literally, it was out of my attic) article with a picture of that house when it was Willow Brook Academy, prior to being a hotel and a home for mentally and physically handicapped children. It’s a great picture.

Susan. Have you ever heard any weird stories or legends about houses in Bluemont?

Judy. Well, I don’t know of any, what did you say, legends. No. But we had some characters in Bluemont, Mr. N ____ was one of them. And we were always kind of leery of him. And one time Emily and I were trick or treating and we came to his house and he insisted we come in and he started giving us stuff in our bags. And then he went over and locked the door. We were really nervous. A lot of the young girls weren’t really sure about Mr. N_____. But he just wanted company for a while I guess. He unlocked the door after a short visit, but we were two nervous girls!

And there were some bootleggers. There were a couple of those I remember in Round Hill.

Then there was Luther and Henry Starkey. They were characters. They still have relatives here. They lived above the E.E. Lake store in an apartment. And kids loved ’em, loved to come around and hear their stories. They always had lots of stories and they wouldn’t harm a flea. They were great, but they were characters.

Susan. By character, you mean older fellows who had been around and knocked around a long time?

Judy. John Hyland was a character. He lived there in the house that is still there beside Betty and Sonny Colbert, the dilapidated one. He was a single man. Just strange… different. He was somebody people would talk about because he was so odd.

One of the biggest characters was Kitty H. She lived in Florida but she came up here back to the little cabin back in the woods. Her real name was “Catalina,” but I didn’t find that out until much, much later. Everybody called her “Mrs. H.” or “Kitty.” She was quite a character. She never threw anything away. She lived up there in that little cabin with snakes and whatever around her. She loved it. And in later years she ended up staying, first with Isabelle Dawson and later with the Colberts. And she was just so unique. She would pick apples, for example, that may have been too over-ripe and ship them to Florida. She was the original recycler. She didn’t throw anything away. She would use these coupons that came in the mail for note paper. She’d write on the back of them. And one time she gave her notes to the minister to read, something she wanted him to announce or whatever, and we all laughed because, when he held it up to read it, it was written on a coupon for some kind of lingerie-real sexy lingerie. We thought, of all things to pick to give to the minister. But that was Kitty. She was an amazing person. She knew her Bible, she was a strong woman, but she was eccentric. And everybody around Bluemont knew her.

Susan. Was this the same cabin called the Snickersville Academy? The first schoolhouse?

Judy. I’m not sure. But we used to go walking up that way. I remember one time Emily and I walked up that way to that foundation, it used to be a Black church, I believe, and we climbed up on it. And we were walking around it, just doing our thing. And we looked down. Now as I remember, maybe it wasn’t that big -but in the memory of a child it seemed big, all these black snakes were coming up that wall. We were petrified afraid to jump, to do anything. There were snakes everywhere on that mountain. And that was one of our adventures that we had to tell about when we got back. We were scared to death. We were scared to come down, we were scared to stay up. And it seemed like in my mind, that snakes were everywhere. It seemed as if they were just coming up out of the earth and swallowing up that stone foundation. Standing up there, we were scared to death. Finally we just jumped and ran.

House on Rail Road St next to the E.E. Lake Store, where the Bob and Ellen Jones family lived while Judy was growing up

There was one other adventure where we got really scared. There was a man that lived as a caretaker in the house right after the new post office. I don’t remember who lived there then, but this man was a black man and his name was F_____. And we were all scared of him — the story was he was an ex-convict. Whether he was or not, I don’t know.

But he had a really mean dog — it was a German Shepherd I believe. And one day when we were walking over in those fields, where the post office is now, this dog cornered us. And he had a very silent mean look about him. We were all afraid of him. We just stood stock still. We didn’t know what to do. He just stood there going “Ahrrrrrrrrrr.” A deep, deep growl, and we were so scared. Finally we tried to get close together, and one of us started moving and then the other one. And he actually backed down. We were just in awe. We didn’t know what had happened. We went home and that was another one of our stories of what happened to us during the day.

It was really amazing, looking back. We were just on our own as to where we went and what we did.

Judy. Sometimes we’d pick berries and sell them. And Mrs. Costello who lived across from the old mill would buy them sometimes. I guess she was a widow, it was just her living there. I’ll never forget one day, when we picked a whole bunch of berries. We were out there for a while. But when we got to her house with these berries, had gone down so much in this bucket, just from the heat, and they were ripe, you know? And it was so disappointing, because she always gave us a couple of dimes. We thought we had treasure there. She said, “That’s not very many berries.” And we said “Well, we thought it was a lot of berries, but we’ve been walking with them,” and this and that.

And one time, we were coming back from picking berries and we were scared to death, because we came across a man lying in the grass. And we thought he was dead. We were petrified. We went running, to tell somebody about this. I guess we went to Emily’s house. They got a man to go with them to take a look and he said, “He is just dead drunk.” And he was. But we thought we had found a dead man, just laying out there in the field. That was a big day.

Susan. Where did Mrs. Costello live?

Judy. She lived in the house near — facing — what we call the old mill. She was a very strict person, she was very upright. But always, when we went trick or treating, she had homemade cookies, I remember that. She always had cookies.

Susan. So she had a soft spot somewhere.

Judy. Yes, but we didn’t see it very often. Of course the trains had quit in Bluemont before I was a little girl. But I was there the day they cut the station up. And all the kids were there. We went up to watch that. It was sitting where you go up on what is now Railroad Street. We went past where Miss Alley’s was — the big house that was a hotel at one time and was a home for what we now call disabled and mentally challenged children. So it was the field across from that, and the station was there. There was a little road there that went back to the house. When Earl Iden bought that station, they cut it up into three houses. And one of them went in the field back from the station and two of them were on Railroad Street side by side. They were identical. And he rented those for years and years. But that day we were up there waiting to watch them cut up that station.

Susan. How did they do it?

Judy. Well, I don’t really know, I don’t remember that part. But I remember sitting there watching. That would have been about 1951. It was a pretty big deal at the time.

Susan. Was it just you kids? Were there other people from the town?

Washington Post photo from 1951 shows the tree between the EE Lake store and Post Office

Judy. I think it was just kids. I think we just decided to go up there. We were always into whatever was going on. In that day, when we went out in the morning, we had our bikes, and we probably would show up to eat lunch, but our parents did not know where we were going. It wasn’t an issue. We picked berries, we explored, we went up in the mountains. We just did whatever. And there was no fear or concern about it. It was great. It was like what we would call the “lazy, hazy, days of summer.” But now everything is scheduled for kids. And we would just pick up a game down on the playground at the Bluemont School (now the Community Center). We would just go in the back there and have a game of ball. Just whoever wanted to play – black kids, white kids. We’d all get together to play ball. Everything was just sort of – it wasn’t like it was planned. We’d just get up and do, and it was great. And we would sit sometimes at the E.E. Lake Store, there on the porch, and just watch what was going on. There was this huge tree – not sure if it was a locust or what now- but there was this big tree in the middle of the street, between the E.E. Lake Store and the old Post Office. (Washington Post photo from 1951, above, above, clearly shows the tree.)

Susan. Really?

Judy. Yes. There was this huge tree there in the middle of the road. And everybody turned around that tree. They came in on the right [as you faced Railroad Street] and drove around this big tree to turn around. They came into the Post Office and they left with that big tree on their left. And I don’t know when that was ever cut down. But we’d just sit there watching. There were two stores: the Snickersville Store [now the Bluemont General Store] and a store where the new post office is now, and that was Mr. Iden’s store. So Bluemont was actually supporting two stores at the time. So people were coming in and out of the store and we were just sort of hanging around watching what was going on. I remember one day there were a few kids, we were lying back on the porch there of the E.E. Lake Store. And all of a sudden this lady – she worked at the Iden store- you know, where the new post office is– she came out and screeched and started screaming, “I’ve been robbed, I’ve been robbed.” Oh, that was the biggest excitement of the whole thing. We were like, “What!”

And the police actually questioned us – – we thought that was so neat. “Did you see anybody — did you see…” We hadn’t seen anything. We were just lying up there on a summer day. And they never did find out who did it. But the rumor was that it was a put-up job. We all laughed about the “three-armed bandit.” Because when she told the story to the police, we ran down there so we heard everything that was going on. And she’s telling the police how he came in and he had a gun in one hand, and he grabbed her cash register, with the other hand, and pushed her out of the way. Anyway, he’d have to have three arms the way she was telling the story. With one hand he did this, with one hand he did that, and then he… and we’re all standing there thinking – “What? That’s three hands!” Well, nothing was ever discovered, other than that the money was gone. So it was an exciting day. We had adventures like that.

And — these ladies are no longer living but Sarah Campbell lived in the house — you know on Clayton Hall Road near where Bootsie and Libby Sterns live? She was a remarkable lady. She was crippled and had children. And she washed windows and cleaned and everything, but this was the way she was. The whole time I knew her. Whether she was born like that or not, I don’t know. But she carried children. She had five kids. And one day her son Allen, who lives near Pine Grove — now that was a big exciting thing but it was terrible — he was just playing around and doing things, he was up there in the Old Mill, and he fell. Fell inside, not outside. He fell down through the mill. And we had all the rescue people up there. They put him in a big cast. It’s a miracle that he lived.

The grain elevator

Susan. The Bluemont grain elevator.

Judy. That was terrible. But we did all kinds of goofy things then.

Susan. Horsing around?

Judy. Yeah. I don’t know what he was doing, but he was up there.

Judy. These portraits are my mom and dad– not together, obviously — but when they were little.

Ellen McClaughry at 1 year

Robert Jones as a toddler

And I was just kinda fascinated to see that they took him to D.C. to have his pictures made. Isn’t that nice to have buttons on the side like that?

But Dad had polio as a child. He never talked about it. One leg was just about this big. And it was a very serious thing at the time. I don’t know how old he was. My grandmother took him into DC all the time to have him treated.

But he farmed anyway. I mean, he suffered, he had pain, had his hip replaced later in life. Also he was pretty spoiled. He was the only child, he was sick. Everybody did everything for him. Then when he married my mom she did everything for him. Then she had her stroke and couldn’t do for him and he just went completely downhill. He didn’t last very long.
About my mom and dad — how do you describe them without sounding like you are bragging?

My mom was the oldest of 7 children and grew up in Pine Grove. She was perhaps the most generous person I have ever known. We always had a houseful and everyone was fed well. She could open her refrigerator and literally make a meal out of leftovers — a little bit of this, a little of that — and she was a great cook. Our home was pretty much an “open house” all the time. We had people staying there from time-to-time from the 1940’s. There was a Mr. Ellmore and J. B. Throckmorton that I remember. In the 1950s we had three of my cousins living with us and finishing school. After I was married and gone, there were 2 young men who found a home with her. We always were open to friends coming and staying as long as they wished. This was especially true of the 12 grandchildren who loved to come to Grandma & Grandad’s where they could help cook, regardless of the mess, and they brought friends with them as well to spend weekends. There wasn’t a friend, neighbor or stranger who my parents wouldn’t help in any way they could. “Granny” Jones was great too, and spent lots of time darning socks and making sure everyone had what they needed for their day at school and even at college.

Both my parents were hard-working with the Post Office jobs and the two farms to run. They had cattle and hogs and butchered hogs here on our farm. My mom spent hours after working all day making lard, canning and making every kind of jelly and jam. Dad learned curing hams from his grandfather and his sugar-cured hams hung in the meathouse here at our place. They were delicious, as well as the sausage he made.

My dad retired in 1976, but my mom was still the postmaster in November, 1983 when she had a major stroke. She was paralyzed on the right side and had speech difficulties and was confined to a wheelchair for 15 years following the stroke. My dad had a stroke in December 1983 and we had 24-hour care provided in their home. I had just started my job at Farm Credit in November and had to juggle their care, a new job and my family. It was the busiest, most stressful time of my life. My dad passed away in 1986 and we sold the Bluemont home and moved my mom in with us. In 1987 we built an addition on our house for Mom. We also sold some farmland to provide for her expenses. A few years later we had to find a home providing more care. But I would pick her up every weekend and as soon as we got close to the Shenandoah Bridge, she would say “Home, Home.” She passed away in May 1998.

I used to ride with my Dad on the mail route sometimes on Saturday-which may have been illegal even then. But the mail route, you would not believe how different back it was then. I was probably 9 or 10 years old I guess, maybe a little bit older. Back then, people waited at the mailbox for the mailman.

Susan. Really.

Judy. Remember, you didn’t have any television, and they kind of waited there to catch up on things. We’d drive out through Bloomfield and we’d see them standing by the box. It would take my Dad a long time to get the mail delivered, believe me.

A couple interesting things that happened. There was one lady whose house we had to go by twice. I won’t mention her name because she still probably has some family here. But Dad would just kind of moan, because we had to go by her mailbox twice, and some days she would stop him coming and going. She couldn’t read, and he would have to read the mail from her son to her. Sometimes she would bring pop bottles when we would go by. She’d stop us and ask him to take it to the store, because you got 2 cents a piece for ’em, and bring her the money the next day. And sometimes he’d pick up chicken feed for her and bring it by when he delivered the mail.

It was a whole different world.

At one time up on 601. (this was later, I wasn’t with him. It was a story that he would tell at different times.) How things have changed. One day he stopped at a mailbox up there and heard a ticking sound. He opened it and there was a clock. Now in today’s world you would think somebody put a bomb in there — right? — but it was a clock. And a note: “Mr. Jones, our electricity has been out and we don’t know what time it is. We’ve lost track. The clock ran down, so would you please set the time?” Can you imagine, you don’t know what time it is?

With all this going on, Dad had been, I guess you would say, criticized by the Postal Department about how slowly he delivered the mail. He retired in 1976. Soon one of the patrons wrote a letter. “The mail is coming a lot faster now that Robert Jones isn’t carrying it. However, we’re not getting our mail-we’re getting other people’s mail. At least when he got there we had our right mail.” So he was very popular on his mail route.

Susan. That’s funny.

Judy. I grew up in the post office, because my mom and dad worked there. Baby chicks would come in. And when people didn’t pick ’em up we’d bring ’em to the house, next day take ’em back to the post office. Or maybe they’d pick ’em up at the house. This is my Mom and Dad’s marriage certificate, and a picture taken at their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1983.

Mr. & Mrs. Robert Jones July 31, 1983 50th wedding anniversary Parents of: Carroll Allen Jones Robert V. Jones, Jr. Judy Jones Anderson

Robert Jones showing off the skin of the rattler he killed

Robert Jones later made the Loudoun Mirror July 31, 1980 when, walking around the farm with his grandsons, he killed a huge rattlesnake

Pearl Jones saved some of her son Robert’s report cards from second grade. Children seem to have participated in the ritual of getting mother to sign the report card monthly. The report forms are interesting for the advice to parents and to children. As a second-grade pupil, Robert Jones is given some rather grown-up advice:

1. “Be clean in person, dress, habits, thought and speech.
2. Be dutiful, polite, and respectful to parents, teacher and all whom you meet.
3. Strive to build up a good character and your reputation will take care of itself.
4. Be earnest in play in the time for play and equally earnest in work in the time for work.
5. Cultivate promptness energy and patient industry. They are worth more than money or influence in securing success in life.
6. Finally, be courteous, obedient, thoughtful, earnest, attentive, studious and industrious, if you would win the highest esteem of your teachers, parents, and the general public.”

As part of the “boilerplate” on these monthly reports, parents putting down their signature are advised that “…the teacher and parent must co-operate with each other in securing the interest, regular attendance, excellent deportment, and proper efforts of the pupil.”

The year end report for 1919 sees Robert with good grades, good deportment, no days absent, no half days absent, and promoted to the third grade.

Judy. This is one of my memories that was so fun. Farmers went around “thrashing,” they called it. And they would go from one farm to another. They all worked together. And they would come, and whoever they were working for that day would have just a huge dinner ? lunch? to feed the hands. And it was a big production. It was almost like a contest -who could feed ’em the best!

So they actually used this where we’re sitting-what used to be a porch. And when we lived in Bluemont that was a big day for us. We had to get up early, a lot of things to cook. I was just a kid, but we could set basins out on the cement patio, so they could all wash up. And they’d all talk. They’d all sit at the table and pass everything down. And we’d bake pies, and everything would be homemade. And you’d feed them till you’d think – how could they go out and work in the heat after that– but they did.

There was this one women and we were just amazed by the fact that she worked just like a man. She was the only woman in that group that would come.

Susan. You said they went around. But were these local people but not people with farms?

Judy. Yes, they did have farms. You would go to their farm. They were beautiful farmers.

Susan. So it was like a joint effort. We’ll take care of you and then take care of me and then take care of him.

Judy. Yes. And it would be the farm hands-you’d have hired hands on the farm as well as the owner of the farm, but you would all travel together till they got everything done. And as kids, we would be filling up ice tea glasses, running for the dessert things. It was a big deal for us when they came to our house. And then they would move on to the next farm. And no money changed hands. It was bartering.

Susan. And what time of year was this?

Judy. Well, it must have been in the summer because we were home from school. I don’t really remember. Well, my husband would know a lot more about the farming part of it, because I was more on the inside than the outside. That was when they had the hay ricks, you know, the big clumps of hay, and the corn-cut the corn and then tie it in the bundles to dry. They called it thrashing and he could tell you more about it. It was a fun time. It was a lot of hard work, but everybody worked together.

Judy & Bud Anderson

Bud Anderson comes in and Judy introduces him.

Judy. I was trying to tell her what “thrashing” was-but I couldn’t tell her exactly when they did that or what they did. But I told her you would know.

Bud. Well, you had a big machine, and you went out first and cut your wheat and barley and oats, whatever. Chopped it up. Course you had to put it in the wagon, and this big machine there you had to feed it in to, that separates the grain from the straw.

Susan. Sounds like all that is happening in the fall, or late summer.

Bud. Yes. Late summer.

Judy. And I was telling her about how they just came together and they would go from one farm to another. No money was changing hands, just going from one to another.

Bud. Yes. Everybody trying to out- feed everybody else.

Judy. Very exciting, actually.

Bud. Oh, yes.

Judy. Fifteen to twenty people.

Bud. And we all raised hogs and killed beefs, so we had plenty of food. So pretty well self-sustaining. Potatoes, tomatoes, gallons of applesauce. Two or three families would get together to make applesauce and apple butter.

Susan. Can you tell me how you two met, and did you always know each other…

Bud. We met in seventh grade at Round Hill School down there.

Judy. Because they sent us to school there. They didn’t have enough kids to form a seventh-grade class in Bluemont so they sent us to Round Hill. And Bud and I were in the same grade.

Bud. I sat right behind her. She was something. She completely ignored me. Very quiet.

Judy. I was very shy.

Susan. Well, that’s a long time-a long time for a girl-next-door friendship.

Bud. Yes. I went into the service, I came back again. We got together. I came back, she finally talked to me. Later we got married.

Judy. When I married, we moved to Baltimore as Bud was stationed at Fort Holabird there. We were there five years and after commuting by train to DC for a while, I transferred as a secretary to the Coast Guard in downtown Baltimore. When Valerie was born in 1963, I quit working to be a stay-at-home Mom. Bud went to Vietnam in 1966. I stayed with my parents in Bluemont until he got back. Upon his return left the Army after 9 years of service. We moved to Alexandria where he went to work for the Postal Service. Our two sons, Todd and Eric, were born while we lived there.

In 1971, we bought our current house from my grandmother, Pearl Osburn Jones, and began an extensive remodeling project that continues to this day! This had been a tenant house for all of this time.

Bud. It was a shell.

Judy. A dirty, dirty shell. But we started working on it.

Susan. It’s so beautiful now, and so comfortable. It doesn’t seem like a place that had really been run downhill.

Judy. It was ready to be knocked down. I don’t know if we would have started working on it if we had known the extent of it?with a 6-month old baby, Eric. Todd was 2, and Valerie was in second grade. It was very challenging.

Judy. It’ll be 10 years in July [2009] when I gave him one of my kidneys — that was one of our big adventures. We had a lot in the paper about that. It was not so common 10 years ago.

Bud. We had a reporter from the Washington Post. We had a party.

Truly a compatible couple.