MARY "MOLLIE" O'CONNER FOX

     This is a story about my 5th great grandmother, Mary "Mollie" O'Conner.
     She live in a coastal town in Ireland with her parents. A large ship was anchored on the coast and the men on the ship put up a big swing and invited the girls to come aboard to swing. The next thing the girls knew, the ship with them on board was way out on the ocean. They were to far to swim back to shore. All these boys and girls were to be sold as indentured servants in America.
     While they were on the ship, Mollie got awfully sick and they thought at one time that she was dead. She was tied on a plank and they were fixing to throw her overboard but there was a man on the ship who had known her father in Ireland and he would not let them because he did not think she was dead. She really did revive in time to keep from being buried alive at sea.
     This man who saved her life got her a job at a hotel as a chamber maid after they landed in America. The port where they landed was possibly Charleston where Charles Fox's father, Henry Fox III had a law office.. Mollie wrote back to her mother and told her where she was and asked for a passport so she could return home. Her mother was afraid that she might really die if she tried to cross the ocean again so she wrote Mollie that she had rather know that she was alive and be where she could write to her than to risk crossing the ocean again. Mollie is said to have come from a very good family and she was educated. They have proof of this as she could sign her name instead of making an "X" on legal documents in 1785. South Carolina census records suggest that Mollie was most likely born in 1740 to 1750 time period.
     One night John Charles Fox spent the night at the hotel where Mollie O'Conner worked. He left his pocketbook at the hotel and Mollie found it the next morning and gave it to him when he came back. Their courtship began then and there. They were married and had three daughters named Nellie, Betsy and Katy and a son named Matthew was born in about 1766 in Abbeville, South Carolina. Their father fought in the Indian War and was captured by the Indians. The family learned afterwards that he was brought to Alabama and tortured to death. They supposed that it was at the Flat Rock in Clay County, Alabama.
     Their daughter, Betsy, never married and after her parents death, she went to live with a nephew. One day she was left at this home with a little boy while they went to town. While they were gone the boy went to a neighbor's house crying and saying his Aunt Betsy was asleep and would not wake up. When they got there, they found that she had dropped dead.
     In the days of Mollie and Charles Fox, the white people were divided into Whigs and Tories. The Whigs were the better class. The Tories were friendly with the Indians and they went about raiding the cribs and smokehouses of the Whigs. One day they went to the Fox home while Charles was about a mile away from home. They ordered Grandma Fox to fry all the ham and then they started throwing out the corn to the horses. Betsy and Katy would throw it right back into the crib and fought the men until the Indian Chief made the men leave the corn alone, saying the little girls were very brave, and that they needed their corn for bread. One of the Indians picked up little Agnes Ables, who was the daughter of Nellie Fox Ables and marked around her hair with his knife as if to scalp her. Betsy ran for her father and he followed them and killed fourteen Indians. Later, as was told before, the Indians caught him and tortured him to death. The torture was done with pine splinters under his fingernails and setting them on fire.

This original story was by Kaye Stoneking and revised by Frances Parris.
Parts of this story is from Bertie Maude Hayes, the great, great, great, granddaughter of Mary "Mollie" O'Conner and was handed down through the family.

GRANDMA'S APRON

I don't think our kids know what an apron is or was when our grandmothers used them.
The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few and it was easier to wash aprons than dresses cause aprons required less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.
From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. And when the weather was cold, Grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.
In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees along with peaches. I was ready to help gather nuts for candy. Ma Jones made the best hickory nut candy ever. And pecan pies, can't match that taste to anything today. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds. When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that "old-time apron" that served so many purposes.

REMEMBER:
Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.
And in this day and age, they would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron. But I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron-but LOVE...... and I miss all those hugs and teacakes that grandma made and all the tea parties.

My grandmother who I called Ma Jones had 2 dresses, 1 for Sunday and 1 for everyday. But she had quite a few aprons that I dearly loved and she made them out of flour sacks. The first project that I learned to sew in Home Economics was an apron and I never forgot how proud I was when it was finished. My grandma was not around to see it and neither was my mom so I had to show it off to my Aunt Josie and she loved it and gave me some material to make her one. She knew how to sew, but she just wanted to help me learn different ways. I miss her.