Recollections of William Ferris Cann about his mother, Rebecca Pearce Cann

 

     My arrival in this world must have been a terrible disappointment to my mother - another son, the fifth. I feel sure she had prayed with all her heart that I would be a girl. The one daughter born to her, lived only eighteen months. After my appearance she gave up all hope of having a young lady in the family. When Lawrence, her fourth son, started to school, she was relieved, except for me, of taking care of small children - a never ending job that she had had nearly all of her married life. Now, she was free, except for me, and I assure you I was no trouble. She could come and go as she liked. I was her traveling companion on her visits around the countryside. Mother became quite active in the organization of the New Century Club, and a few years later was elected State President. I have been told that I was considered a “Honorary Charter Member” of the Middletown Club. My sharpest memory is of the chairs which were too hard for a comfortable nap.

 

     As we drove along the dirt road to Middletown, Elkton or some other place, she would comment or tell little stories about the people and places we passed. For example; when we crossed Fiddler’s Bridge, she would tell of the old colored fiddler who fell in the creek and drowned; and if you passed there at midnight and threw in a silver dime, his ghost would come out and play a tune; or tell the story of a man who lost a part of his ear in a fight, and charged that his opponent bit it off, but the complaint was that he chewed it up and swallowed it, and therefore, he was a cannibal. It is almost unbelievable the number of these stories I remember, and, when I go down these same roads, I find myself retelling them for my own pleasure.

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     No comments on this part of my mother’s life would be complete without some mention of the horse she drove. My grandfather had a horse named, “Alamont,” that he had never broken to work, but had kept to please the nice young lady horses. When he became about eight years old, my grandfather thought it was time for him to earn his oats. However, Alamont proved to be too spirited for farm work - nearly killed himself - and for the same reason, of limited value as a carriage horse. He acted mean, but it was all bluff; he never hurt anyone; always impatient to go, usually started with a jump and he was off down the street or road as fast as he could go. In short, Alamont was a “lot of horse.” When grandfather discussed the problem with mother, her answer was short and to the point. “Give him to me. I am not afraid of him.” Her self-confidence calmed his fears for her safety. Thus, the horse became mother’s proud possession, and the three of us, Alamont, mother and I spent many happy hours traveling the country roads to any and all points within ten miles of Kirkwood.

 

     As time went on and mother became continually more and more released from the care of small children, she began to develop other and wider interests - the Middletown New Century Club, mentioned before, Missionary Society of the Presbytery (Presbyterian Church), and its Treasurer, and at the suggestion of some of her Middletown friends, the Colonial Dames. This, of course, required that she spend many summers with her grandparents, John and Injuber Stidham Frazer, at Glasgow, Delaware. Injuber Stidham was, I believe, the youngest daughter of Isaac Stidham, and had inherited much of his furniture and the old Stidham Bible, which included Jonas Stidham (1724-1795). This gave her a good start. The genealogical work of E. Jaquett Sellers, an accepted authority, the Records of Holy Trinity (Old Swedes), Church, Wilmington, Holcomb’s, History of Immanuel Church, New Castle and the tombstones of the Frazers in the churchyard of Glasgow, Presbyterian Church furnished most of the required basic information to meet the requirements for membership in the Colonial Dames.