Bios: Euell Thomas Javins, Elizabeth Jane Smith: Boone County, WV

Copyright © 2006 by Charles Perry. This copy contributed for use in 
the USGenWeb Archives.  perydise@tabletoptelephone.com


HISTORY OF
ELIZABETH JANE (BETTY) SMITH
AND EUELL THOMAS JAVINS
      
      
      My mother was born and raised in a farming community near Hamlin, Lincoln Co., West Virginia.  She was the daughter of Robert and Jane Paul Smith.  There were two girls in the family: my mother, Elizabeth Jane and Aunt Liza.  There were six boys: Archie, George, Toliver, Robert, Floyd and William.
      Mother got her schooling in Lincoln Co., West Virginia by walking three miles across a mountain to the school both morning and night and the school opened at eight in the morning and closed at four in the afternoon.  They were poor folks and the children got only one pair of shoes each winter, and they went to school bare footed in the frost and light snow as did the rest of the students.  Mother said she would run a little way and then sit down and wrap her feet in her home made linsey dress to wana them.
      Linsey clothing was made from sheep wool, carded and spun into fine yarn, then woven into cloth, all by hand.  Linen was made from flax grown in the fields and cut like wheat and when dried then cut by a spear-like tool, then carded and made into cloth as they would wool.  Cotton was also raised and worked into cloth by hand by all the mothers.
      When mother was about twenty her parents moved to Dawdy Creek., Boone Co., W.VA. near Peytona.  In those days the only means of travel was walking, riding a horse or by wagon over a rough road.
      Mother met a young man, Will Stone and had become very much in what she thought was love with him when a neighbor took sick just across the mountain and they sent their son, Euell Javins to see if mother would help them for awhile.  The close association., working with this young man and living in the same ,caused her to wonder if she really loved Will Stone.
      The day came that Grandmother was improved in health so mother must go home and help her own folks.  So this young man saddled two horses to take her home and while riding side by side, this young man asked her this question, “Betty, did you ever see a man that you loved well enough to eat mush out of his shoe?” She laughed and said, “No, indeed.  Did You?”  He said., “Yes.”  “Well, for goodness sakes, who?" He said, “You.”  Then he proposed to her.  She told him she liked him very much but was not too sure for she had another boy friend, and when she saw him again she would give him an answer.  Well, as you know the answer was, "Yes."  They were married June 24, 1882 and were the parents of three girls and two boys and I am the baby girl, being three years of age when my father died.
      My Father lived on White Oak Creek, just below Peytona, and Father built himself a home on his father’s land and they went to church in a little log school house.  They belonged to the Missionary Baptist Church and Father was a Deacon and Sunday School Superintendent of Sunday School.  He farmed in the summer and worked in the mines in the winter for the Winifrede Coal Co.
      In the spring when heavy rains came and the river came up, he would fasten saw logs together and ride them in to St. Albans to be sawed into lumber.  On one trip he was thrown into the river and as he was so far away from any home his clothes froze on him which gave him a severe cold which hung with him till he contracted T.B.  He would plow with a team of horses while he could only whisper.  He would lie on a bench on the porch.  He died Jan. 26, 1896 and I was only three years old.  My parents had been married fourteen years.
      
      Three years after his death, my mother married Whitten Turley in order to raise her children.  Mother had much executive ability as her new husband had children and her own with the two they had after marriage she had a mixed group to handle but she never wavered in her ability in handling them and generally there was, peace in the home.
      Mother died Feb. 8, 1945
      
      					Written by her daughter, Hattie B Foster.