Nearly a century, trusting in God
By Patricia Collier
How many of us can say we remember the Titanic, two World Wars, Prohibition, hobble skirts and seventeen U.S. Presidents? At the age of 98, Florence Agnes Smith Bailey Mitter is one of the few who can. A true all-American in every sense of the term, Florence Mitter witnessed almost the entire 20th century and grew up while her country did. And now, in the 21st century, we are most fortunate to hear her story.
Florence Agnes Smith was born around 4 p.m. June 20, 1904 in Bradenville, PA, to Bertha Florence Dovey Smith and William Duff Smith. Her birth year was also marked by Wilber Wrights first airplane flight and the invention of the ice cream cone.
The third of five surviving children, Florence had four brothers: Martin, Solomon, George and William. Another boy, who was never named, died when he was six months old. He was so small, family members would carry him around on a small pillow. Florence’s mother fed the infant from a bottle with a hose that lay above his head.
It was not unusual for babies to die in the early 1900’s. Bradenville was at least 100 miles from the nearest hospital and there was only one doctor for the towns 4,000 residents. It was a coal mining area and many people in Bradenville were employed by the Ducanne Coal and Coke Company. As was common in those days, the towns big employer also owned a large store in town known as a company store, which sold big-ticket items, like furniture and cookware.
Being the only girl in the Smith family proved to be challenging for Florence at times. The boys weren’t mean to their sister, but they occasionally tormented her. Florence once suffered a large cut on her head when one brother got into a scuffle with another brother, threw a loose railroad headlight at him and accidentally struck Florence in the process.
On another occasion, Florence and a couple of her brothers were in the woods, collecting burrs that the children used to make toys. The three were horsing around a bit and some burrs got caught in Florence’s long, brown hair. Her mother had to spend hours removing the burrs rather than just cutting them out because it was disgraceful for a girl to have short hair back then. The burrs mysteriously disappeared after that.
All adult women of good repute kept their hair long as well and Florence’s mother only trimmed her hair once a year. Every Good Friday, she would sit in the kitchen, unwind her long braid, and cut exactly two inches from her mane.
The Smith family never enjoyed electricity, indoor plumbing, or in-house telephones. They used oil lamps and Florence often did her schoolwork by only their flickering flames to illuminate the pages of her books. If an emergency came up, people had to call for help using one of the pay stations scattered around town, which had crank-style phones.
Families had outhouses and folks would pay a small fee to have the tanks emptied periodically. In all the years Florence traveled to an outhouse, she only had to make a hasty exit once. She was chased out by a black snake.
Even though the Ford Model T made its appearance in 1908, trains and, later streetcars, were the main form of transportation while Florence was growing up. A three-mile streetcar ride would cost around a nickel. Horse and buggies were also used. Florence’s father worked out of town during the week, returning home every Friday. When he arrived, he would rent a horse and buggy from the livery stables for the weekend.
On Sundays he, Florence and her mother would ride the buggy back to his job site and then Florence and her mother would ride back to town and turn in the horse and buggy.
The stables were across the street from where young Florence lived and during the winter, the stable owner would water the yard and allow the towns children to ice skate there. Outdoor skating was a popular form of entertainment with the young people and it was an activity Florence enjoyed. One day, she was with a cousin and a couple of her brothers at the towns reservoir, another location where the kids would often gather to skate. The boys made Florence go home not long after she arrived because the ice was starting to crack.
The next day, several children pulling a wagon ventured back onto the ice. The ice broke and the children fell into the frigid waters. A nearby resident heard their cries for help and jumped in to attempt a rescue. Unfortunately, he drowned and when officials pulled up his body, the bodies of some of the children were still wrapped around him. It was quite a traumatic event for the town.
The early 1900’s were the hay days of circuit rider ministers. Many preachers had to attend to six churches within a 10-mile radius and most had to cover their circuit, or district, on foot. It was also the time of horseback rider mail carriers. The riders would have saddles on the front and back of their horses, with mailbags thrown over them. They would ride into town and deliver the mail, house by house. Mailboxes were similar to the rural route boxes mounted on posts still seen today.
Food was simple and often came from the family garden, which, in Florence’s family, was planted and tended by her father. He would lay out boards on the ground to help him plant the crops in perfectly straight lines. Florence’s mother would shop once a week for oleo, which came in two or five pound kegs. There was a capsule inside each keg, which had to be punctured before the oleo could become the color of butter. Florence’s favorite foods included beans, potatoes, fried green tomatoes and vegetable soup. On Saturday nights, the boys would often get oysters and Florence’s mother would fry them up if they would first crack the shells. It was never a particularly favorite meal for Florence.
Holidays were also simple, but festive. The family Christmas tree was adorned with strings of colored popcorn, usually assembled by the children, and candles that clipped onto the branches. Florence’s mother was always close by the tree while the candles were burning.
Independence Day always brought picnics in the park and music. Florence’s father, William, and her youngest brother, named William after her father, were members of a band that often played at town functions and holiday celebrations. Her father played the base horn and her brother served as bandleader.
Eventually, Florence’s father got work closer to home. He was a supervisor and could hire and fire people. One day, a black woman who washed and cleaned for a living and her two young sons were at the mines where he was employed. The boys had found some onions and were holding them over one of the mine ovens to heat them up to eat. A few of the workers grabbed the onions and threw them in the oven, destroying them.
Florence’s father witnessed this and admonished the men, saying the boys didn’t have enough to eat as it was, and that the men should not have thrown their food away. The men told him they were just having some fun. Florence’s father told the men he’d give them some fun, to go to the office and collect their pay, that they were fired. Later that day, Florence’s mother fed the boys breakfast. One of those boys later became a lawyer, the other a preacher.
World War I began in 1914 and American got involved three years later. Florence’s oldest brother, Martin (named after her father’s father, Martin Smith), wanted to join up, but was not old enough to go without parental permission. Bertha, or Bert as some people called Florence’s mother, told him there was no way she would ever sign papers allowing him to go off to war. One day Martin brought her some forms, explaining they were insurance papers and Bertha signed them without questioning her son.Martin then told her he was going away for a while. When Bertha asked him what clothes he wanted her to pack, he told her he would not need clothes where he was going, that he’d be given uniforms. Bertha again told Martin she would never sign papers for him to enter the service. Martin told her she already had. Florence’s mother sat down and cried, but there was nothing she could do. Her son was headed to the war.
Martin ended up on a ship in the Atlantic. Shortly before the war ended, a cannon accident, in which sabotage was suspected, left him disabled, with a silver plate in his head, one shoulder and one kneecap.
Florence started school at age seven. A year later, news headlines carried the story about the Titanic sinking. One of her classmates had a sister on the ship. People could not believe what had happened as the Titanic was supposed to be the boat nothing could sink.
Florence dearly loved school. Some of her teachers were Miss Court, Jenny Shirley, Sofie Covlies, Ethel Lyons and Edith Sheffler. The teachers played outside with the students at recess and Florence became quite fond of all of them.
A good student, Florence would do her own homework and that of one of her brothers. Surprisingly, her school was not a one-room structure. Grades 1-7 were housed in one brick building, with the higher grades in a separate building. After Florence completed the seventh grade, she and her father moved to Austen, West Virginia where they stayed in a boarding house.
Her father went to work at a local coal mine as a supervisor. He was called a Master Mechanic and sometimes had to take emergency jobs on weekends. Florence would often go down into the mines with him, where she would visit the workhorses and mules kept in the mines. The animals, indispensable to the miners hard labor, were well treated and were blindfolded when taken out of the mines so the sunlight would not harm their eyes.
What is known in the nation’s history books as The Great Flu Epidemic started in 1918 and hit the area where Florence and her father were living in 1919. The illness would end up killing between 20 and 40 million people. Although it did not take the lives of anyone close to Florence, she herself nearly died from it.
The boarding house where Florence and her father lived was located next door to the town doctor and Florence and his daughter had become friends. The doctors daughter was one of the first in town to get the flu, but she recuperated fairly quickly. Florence got permission from the doctor to visit with her once he felt she was no longer contagious. A couple of days later, Florence got the flu too. Quite ill and out of her head with fever one night, she threw up a green-colored discharge. The doctor said it was the actual flu itself and that Florence would have died within hours had she had not vomited it out of her system.
In 1919, the 18th amendment to the Constitution was ratified, making alcohol illegal in the United States. Florence knew many people in town who started spending time in nearby woods and caves making moonshine. Although she learned the recipe, she never tasted the brew herself. It had been curious to Florence that men who drank whiskey never got the flu the year it hit Austen.
Also on a national level, the Women’s Movement was just starting to simmer and equality was becoming an issue. Events while Florence was in her early teens led up to 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote, was finally signed into law. Florence was not happy about the change. She, like many women in the area, felt men, not women, should do the work of the country. She did not cast her first vote until 1923.
During her childhood, the world of women’s fashion emphasized propriety over comfort and Florence, like all ladies of the time, wore corset-like undergarments that fastened at the waist, with stiff supporters on the sides. Florence found them uncomfortable. When she was younger, her mother had made most of her clothes.
Skirts above the middle of the leg were considered disgraceful, even while the flappers were coming into vogue. Florence didn’t particularly like the new fashions. She once watched a woman try to get on a streetcar wearing one of the newer, tight garments known as Hobble Skirts. Try as she might, the woman could not get her leg lifted high enough to board the streetcar. The conductor told her to either get on, or he’d have to move on. The woman couldn’t get on and missed her ride.
The year Florence was born, a woman could purchase a lady sports suit from the National Cloak and Suit Co. for $7.50 by mail order, shipping included. The suit skirt was floor length and had full-length sleeves, a tight shirtwaist and a high collar, hardly fitting today’s idea of sporting. Florence didn’t keep any articles of clothing from what was known as the Victorian era, but there is a coat she wishes to this day she’d never let out of her sight.
Her grandfather Smith had been a soldier in the Civil War. Before joining the service, he had been a music teacher and played the piano. When he returned from duty, he never spoke of what he had been through, but he gave Florence the buttons from his uniform for her to sew onto her coat. It was a red, fuzzy coat and Florence left it in her trunk at her grandmother Smith’s house when she later traveled to Detroit to join her second husband in his quest to find work. She could not find the coat when she returned to West Virginia, but it turned up a couple of years later. Someone had borrowed it, but had thrown away the old buttons, not knowing they had belonged to Florence’s grandfather.
It wasn’t the only time Florence lost a precious, personal possession. Her parents gave her a ring one year for Christmas. What happened to that ring taught her a big life lesson and it happened, of all places, in Sunday school.
Florence had worn the new ring to church and her classmates were admiring it. There were two sisters sitting several seats away from her who wanted to see the ring up close, so Florence took it off and passed it down to them. A few minutes later, she asked for the ring back and suddenly, the sisters were gone and so was the ring. After that, Florence never parted with something to show someone; she simply let them look at the item while she wore it.
Not long after her 15th birthday, Florence attended a party where she met her future husband. World War I had ended the year before. One of the party goers was Augustus Ira ‘Gus’ Bailey, a handsome young man on leave from the Navy. He served aboard the USS Saranac. Florence danced the Strip the Willow with Gus and other couples at the gathering. The dance was similar to today’s square dancing.
Florence must have impressed Gus with her dance steps and her pretty face, because the two dated for a while, then married December 29, 1919. Gus had to ask for her hand twice because Florence first told him no, that she was too young. Gus kept assuring her no one would find out her age. Gus’s persistence paid off. Florence finally accepted his proposal.
She wore a white satin skirt and a tan Georgette blouse for the wedding. She didn’t get cold feet until after the ceremony.
A few months after the wedding, Florence and Gus bought a house for $950.00. The deal was $750.00 down, with the balance of $200.00 to be paid within six months. The young couple officially set up housekeeping in May of 1920, just a month before bootlegging would start making national headlines.
Their purchase included a four-room residence on five acres of land near Austen, in an area known as Chestnut Ridge. It was within those walls that Florence began her career as a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, a career that would span over eight decades.
The young couple enjoyed life together. When Gus had returned from the service, he sold his car, a 1917 Partin-Palmer, to one of his brothers and had used some of the money to buy the couples house. The two planted a garden, visited family and Gus worked hard for the B&O Railroad in Morgantown, WV. For a time in 1920, Florence worked in the town’s country store. She made $15 per week.
Gus’s mother, Ida Bailey, taught Florence how to milk a cow. During her first try, the cow kicked over the bucket and Grandma Bailey, as she was known to Florence, told her daughter-in-law to trim her nails, that she had just pinched the cow.
On April 14, 1921, a son, Lyle Edward Bailey, was born to Florence and Gus. Life was good until the bitter cold evening of November 3, 1921. Gus was not scheduled to work that night, but got called out because another man could not make his shift due to bad weather. Florence asked Gus why he had to go and he told her he was a younger man and would lose his job if he didn’t.
That would be the last time Florence would see her beloved Gus. While the details were never clear, it seemed Gus was hit by a train that night and suffered a severed leg and arm. The doctors said the injuries themselves would not have killed him, but the weather was so brutally cold, he may have frozen to death before anyone found him. It seemed Gus had tried to flag down a passing train, but simply lost too much blood before help arrived.
Alone with a seven-month-old son, Florence simply pressed on. She had family members to help, but nonetheless, it was a very hard time for the young mother. She found a lot of strength from her faith in God, a faith that has endured to this day.
Florence was married for the second time on February 3, 1923 to Ross Brownie Mitter, a long time friend. It was a year of Charlie Chaplin silent films, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the discovery of the whooping cough vaccine and the first time Florence ever cut her hair!
Florence and Brownie remained in the house she and Gus had bought, but employment opportunities in the area were dwindling. Brownie worked in the mines, but the coalmines had shut down in Austin. Brownie found work in Charleston, West Virginia for about a year and later, more temporary work was found in Thornton, West Virginia. Finally, Brownie and one of his brothers decided to go to Detroit, where they heard there were plenty of jobs.
After several months, the men had not found work so Florence decided to join them to see if she could find employment. She sent a telegram to Brownie before boarding a train for Detroit. A couple of days after her arrival she sat in the employment office of the Chrysler plant all day, waiting for them to call her name. Finally, about an hour before closing, they called for her.
Now in her mid-twenties,Florence found herself as one of the few women in the nation on an auto assembly line.
She learned just about all the jobs, from the soldering bucket, to the stripping and cutting machines. She once asked a supervisor why they kept moving her around from job to job, while other people just worked at one station. The man told her he wasn’t supposed to tell her, but by learning all the jobs, she would be one of the last to go in case of a layoff. Florence earned 33 and a half cents per hour, and 50 cents per hour if she got a bonus. She worked there for three years before returning with Brownie to the house on Chestnut Ridge.
Florence and Ross’s first daughter, Vivian, was born in 1923, before the couple’s adventure in Detroit. Vivian, also known as Jean, had been with Florence and Brownie in Michigan but, due to the family doctor’s concerns about Lyle’s health, Florence had decided he should remain in West Virginia with her mother until they returned.
The couples next daughter, Kathryn, was born in 1931, the same year Congress made ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ the U.S. national anthem. The third daughter, Frances, was born in 1934. The youngest, Mary Margaret, was born in 1940, just one year before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, sending the United States into World War II.
Mary Margaret had been a twin but the other baby, a boy, died at birth. It was not the only occasion of twins in Florence’s family. Her mother had been a twin and her oldest brother had three sets of twins. Surprisingly, there have been no twins in the family since.
The year 1949 was very important to Florence, who was by then 45 years old. It was the year her daughter Katherine got married, and it was also the year Florence finally got indoor plumbing and electricity. The first electrical appliance she bought was a toaster, and then she got a Philco refrigerator. Electricity cost $2.00 a month, plus a bit more if one used more than a certain amount.
The Mitter family owned the house on Chestnut Ridge until 1960. But jobs became scarce once again and they moved to Vienna, West Virginia where Brownie found employment as a custodian for a church. They moved back to the area in 1969 where they lived on Water Street in Newburg, just a few miles from Chestnut Ridge. Brownie died March 6, 1980 and shortly after, Florence moved in with Katherine.
All of Florence’s children are still alive. She lost one grandchild, John, to cancer when he was 22 years old. During her lifetime, she has witnessed events encompassing three centuries, from the first time man flew an airplane, to today’s near-routine travels to a space station. She has watched 17 U.S. presidents take their oath of office, including Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt,Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. Florence did not care for Herbert Hoover but she liked Ronald Reagan.
Florence has outlived many other people born in 1904, including Cary Grant, Dr. Seuss, Glenn Miller and Count Basie. She may not have enjoyed their national fame, but she’s had their fortune ten-fold.
Florence has belonged to the same church for over 25 years. She still lives with Kathryn, enjoys good physical and mental health and is able to fully enjoy her life. She lives within ten miles of most members of her family. She faithfully commemorates the birthdays of all 9 grandchildren, 16 great grandchildren and 7 great, great grandchildren, the youngest who is two years old. Certainly no one will forget her upcoming 99th birthday in June of 2003.
It will be a true celebration of life, one during which Florence has followed the advice she still offers younger family members:
Do what you should do, go to church, and have faith in God.
Authors note: Sadly, within days of the completion of this biography, Florence Mitter suffered a massive stroke. She passed away Sunday, February 23, 2003, just four months shy of her 99th birthday. The strong woman who spent most of her life in the beautiful mountains of West Virginia will now rest high on His mountain, with no pain or worries. At the time of her death, she was surrounded by numerous family members who will forever heed loving advice she always gave them: do what you should do, go to church, and have faith in God.
Sincerely,
Patricia Collier
Published U.S. legacies April 2003
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