Tucker County, West Virginia          Biography of Abbie CARR HEDRICK

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Subject: Abbie Carr Hedrick

Straight up the crooked sixteen miles in Tucker County (perhaps in the world)
in the small community of Red Creek lives an 86 year old woman who has never
traveled more than eighty miles from hom and declares emphatically, "That's
fur enough!"
Left motherless before she was old enough to sit alone, little Abbie Carr was
shuttled from one relative to another until she was old enough to state her
own feelings. She returned home with her father and remained there until
shortly after her marriage.
The only living child of the late Thomas and Elizabeth Pennington Carr, one
small sister "cried herself to death" after her mother died. The other two,
Mrs. Ellie Showalter and Mark Carr, lived to adulthood.
Abbie Carr was born April 12, 1886, just three houses from her present home.
she married Thad Hedrick, also of Red Creek, when she was just fifteen years
old. They had met at Sunday school. For a short time they lived at Gladwin
while he was employed by a railroad, but soon returned to Red Creek where he
joined his father working in the blacksmith shop. Blacksmithing was an
important business at the turn of the century as most families needed the
service for the shoeing of horses and repairing of wagons and buggies.
"My husband did a little of everything in his lifetime. Farming paid big
prices them days, fifteen cents a hour!" she chuckled. Her home, once a
combination post office and store with an apartment upstairs, holds several
mementos of their early married life.
A chiming clock sits on a shelf in the living room; it is more than fifty
years old. Her children go it for her as a gift by taking orders from a Lee
catalog. Also in the living room is a hand-carved organ, operated by foot
pedals. This, too, was purchased by one of the children. It is in good
working order and stands about six feet high. Other antiques include a large
framed portrait of her father, several old canning jars with glass lids and a
wine bottle with 1835 molded into the glass.
Mr. and Mrs. Hedrick were the parents of seven children, six of whom are
living. There are more than one hundred direct descendants.
Mrs. Alvin (Dessie) Sponaugle of Hendricks had ten children, has twenty-six
grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren; Lee Hedriack is also a resident
of Hendricks; Mrs. John (Hazel) Cousin of Davis is also the mother of ten
children, and has about fifteen grandchildren; Alvin Hedrick, deceased, was a
resident of Short Gap, Maryland, and had one son; Mrs. Albert (Elizabeth)
Johnson of Cassity, like her two older sisters, has ten children, and is the
grandmother of eleven; Mrs. Rebecca Allender, with whom Mrs. Hedrick makes
her home in Red Creek, is the mother of one son, Howard; Mrs. Paul (Freda)
McCrum of Louisville, Ohio, has two children and one granddaughter.
Another relative who lives nearby is Mrs. Maudie Hedrick, 89 years old, who
was honored as a Senior Citizen August 6, 1970. Their husbands were brothers.
Mrs. Hedrick leaves her home only about once a year, but is able to be up and
around and was overseeing the making of blackberry preserves during her
interview. She always has a garden, and apparently, is determined to have a
crop of beans this year. Although they were frozen four times this spring,
she has her fifth planting under a watchful eye and is anxiously awaiting the
first "mess of beans." She has also planted tomatoes, onions, and lettuce.
Her fine white hair is braided each morning and the "plaites" wound round her
head. "It has only been cut once, the other women talked to me into it and
afterwards I went out into the berry patch and cried and cried. I never did
it again! I can't stand the stuff falling down into my face."
Mr. and Mrs. Hedrick never owned a car and she is "glad of it" She is content
now to just stay at home.----August 24, 1972, by Mariwyn McClain Smith

From the book: ... and live forever A Compilation of Senior Citizens Articles
from the Parsons Advocate by Mariwyn McClain Smith
Pages 339-341