Writings about Ma and Pa Gann
We called our maternal grandparents Pa and Ma Gann. Ethel is their oldest daughter. I’m Clara the eldest daughter of Ethel. Ma Gann was only 15 years old when mother was born at seven months gestation. She had no hair, fingernails or toenails. Ma Gann tended that tiny girl with love and tenderness.
She hand stitched dresses for that little baby and saved every scrap. She’d spend the winter nights hand stitching every piece of those scraps making a quilt. She gave the top to mother because it contained scraps from many clothes – all of us children slept under that quilt – Mother would often tell us which scrap came from whom the clothing came. It was a joy to us to hear the family history.
Ma Gann worked in the fields, just like the men. She even plowed the mules. When Mother was a toddler Ma Gann would lift up the bed leg, put it down on Mother’s dress and go out to the fields to work. Mother was such a quiet and humble little girl she didn’t complain.
They didn’t have a water well until later years – so they took their laundry down to the spring with a heated water in the black wash pot. They scrubbed their clothes on the old scrub board with homemade lye soap. For the heavier dirty clothes they had a board where they actually beat the clothes that were wet and soapy. They called the board of a “battle ax.”
All their household water had to be carried in buckets from the spring up the hill to the house (but they were conservative with the water!)
Mother learned to cook when she was very young and had to stand on a chair to reach the pots on the wood-burning stove.
They didn’t have much money – at times they would cut firewood in their woods. Ma Gann and Mother cut wood while Pa Gann drove the team of mules with the wagon load of wood to sell to the townspeople. Mother said they could always know when Pa Gann had been successful in selling the wood because they could hear his singing as he drove the team back home.
They didn’t have much to eat. Sometimes they had only potatoes to eat that they dug out of their garden. Having flour to make biscuits was a treat – most of the bread was cornbread – an orange at Christmas was very special.
Ma Gann learned to read and write when she attended school with mother in the winter months.
Ma Gann gave a great service to womankind when she became a trained midwife. It was during those years of segregation, but it didn’t matter to Ma Gann. She willingly took care of any mother who needed her services. The African-American mothers appreciated her so much. Probably some of them wouldn’t have had any assistance at that time. The fathers would drive up to her house in wagons to take her to the expectant mothers.
As I was growing up I didn’t know much about the “birds and the bees.” When Ma Gann came to our house when the new baby arrived I thought she was there to take care of us kids. I didn’t know she was there for the “main event.”
Ma Gann could do so much with talented and nimble fingers – she could make her own patterns for stuffed animals, clothes, dolls, bonnets, doll clothes, children’s nightgowns, quilt tops and many other things. One time she was at our house. We had play dough. She shaped that dough into real looking animal shapes.
At one time she raised geese. We snuggled down in the featherbeds that she had made for us. When I was married, mother made me two pillows from one of those feather beds. We still use those pillows and have during our 49 years of marriage. Mother called Pa Gann, “Pop-pe.” She loved him so much. He came to visit us a few times and we’d take him to the “picture show” in Amory. He liked the chicken so mother would cook that for him.
On 4 July Pa Gann and would make a big washtub full of homemade lemonade with lots of lemon slices loading in the sea of sweet lemonade and large chunks of bought ice. Oh good! And cold!
They were always so willing to take someone into their home and give them a home. When mother was a pre-teenager they took care of a little lady, Martha Brazel. The lady gave them some property in exchange for her board and room. Mother became very close to this dear little lady.
Pa and Ma Gann always had Christmas gifts for us. I always loved to go to their house, to receive the gift and eat the hardtack Christmas candy. Christmas candy will never taste that good again. She continued to give us Christmas gifts even after I was married. I still have her last gift to me – it is quarters tied in a green nylon scrap of material and it’s in our safe— each time I take it out and look at it, warm fond memories flood my mind.
I’ll always be thankful to her for taking such loving care of that tiny baby girl 102 years ago – and all the things she taught that daughter through the years.
She taught Mother how to make handmade dolls. Mother received so many pleasant hours making dolls during her later years.
We appreciate all the hardship Pa and Ma Gann endured during their lifetime. We appreciate the warm welcome they gave when we visited them.
One thing I did learn – was not to complain about being sick around Ma Gann. I didn’t want to have any of her remedy-“castor oil.”
We’re thankful for our maternal heritage.
With much love,
Clara
For more images and stories about Ora Ethel Gann Kennedy, click here.