(Look Back with Bob Enoch - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

The early life of Mrs. Celia Jane Miller, born in 1855, and a feature for the Parkersburg News in 1939 by Cordelia Moellendick, concludes:

Made Own Shoes

“Once upon a time I manufactured a pair of shoes for myself when I was only a young girl. Our father was planning to make all of his nine children shoes for winter and had gone to the village cobbler and had borrowed a pattern. He and my mother were called down to Kentucky to see my grandmother, taken suddenly ill. I could not wait for my shoes. I took his sharp shoe knife, cut the soles and uppers and put them together with wood pegs, making the holes for the pegs with a paginall. I sewed and pounded away in a hidden spot, so the other children could not find me. When father returned he was pleased with my handicraft.

“I never liked housework. I preferred work in the cornfield, although housework was not difficult in those days. First we had earth floor, later puncheon floor which required no polishing. A solid block of wood for a chair needed no dusting. Later my father erected a fine home on the site of the little old windowless cabin, but alas, as was the case of so many country homes in the long ago, it burned to the ground in a few years.

Skillful Hunters

“The first Sunday school in Ripley was a Baptist Sunday school organized by Davie Farrow. We were taught to worship and live devoutly but it seemed we children were always using Sunday as a day in which we go hunting. We visited the woods nearby and pretended we were stalking the wild beasts. A man-eating lion would often turn out to be the lowly rabbit and it was just too bad for him because children were all skillful in throwing stones. One day we killed five squirrels on one hunting trip – killed them all by throwing stones.”

During Mrs. Miller’s girlhood a woolen mill was built at Ripley and young Celia Rhodes went to work in the mills, remaining there eighteen years. Her work at first was combing burrs from the raw wool. Later she was promoted to grinding bugs for the dye vats – yes, bugs is what they were, great big, dry imported bugs with heads, legs and wings intact. A coffee mill affair was used for the grinding, about eight boxes of bugs were enough to make the right redness for the vat. When the mixture was dumped into the dye vat, the water became a beautiful red that made dye for the flannel that babies always wore in those days. No amount of washing or boiling ever dimmed or faded this lovely red flannel, without which no baby was considered properly clothed.

While employed at the mill Celia was married to William Miller, but Mrs. Miller continued her work. By that time she had become a skilled weaver and was finally given charge of two machines. She wove “jeans,” a material for men’s pants, for three cents a yard. For flannel she received 2 ½ cents per yard but was able to weave five times as much flannel in a day as jeans. “I could weave four cuts a day of 35 yards each,” said Mrs. Miller, “but the same amount of jeans would take 3 ½ days. I finally got to the place where I made $100 a month in the mill, but I worked from six in the morning until six in the evening and stood up all the time. At first I did all my own housework after I got home in the evening, but after my first child came I hired a girl to do the work at home.

Mrs. Miller is now 84 years old, but she cannot sit with idle hands. “I wish I lived near a woolen mill today,” said she. “I could be busy all the time. At least I could comb the burrs from the wool.” This dear, sweet-faced, Mother of Israel walks to her church (the First Brethren), a distance of over half a mile every Sunday, with slow and feeble steps, but just to see her sitting there is an inspiration and a challenge to the rest of us.

The Parkersburg News,

July 2, 1939

Closing note: Celia Jane Miller died May 30, 1945, in Jackson County, WV.

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Bob Enoch is president of the Wood County Historical and Preservation Society. If you have comments or questions about Look Back items, please contact him at: roberteenoch@gmail.com, or by mail at WCHPS, PO Box 565, Parkersburg, WV 26102.