Viola Factor (eBook)

Sheridan Brown (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
300 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-3835-7 (ISBN)

Viola Knapp Ruffner was a woman who left home early to support her family, bravely traveling alone to teaching positions in the pre-Civil War north and south. Her quest to uphold her mother's dying wishes leads her through challenges that end in traumas and distort her hopes for contentment and happiness. After the war, she hired a young, emancipated boy, Booker T. Washington, and taught him to read and write. Over time her post-traumatic stress is appeased, societal norms challenged, and a friendship forged that spanned decades. This is her story and the factor she played on this man who became a nineteenth century leader.

"e;The Viola Factor"e; takes place at a time when the country faced division and growth after the American Civil War. Viola Knapp Ruffner (1812-1903) struggled with what was just and fair, becoming a little-known confidant for a young black scholar from Virginia. But Viola was much more than a teacher; she was a mother, wife, game-changer, and friend. With her mother's dying wish, a young woman alone, she left her New England roots. This is a story of trauma and love in the South while battling for justice and the rightful education of the enslaved and once enslaved. African American leader Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) called her his friend and model for life. The Viola Factor is in many ways a journey of life done in baby steps, tentatively stumbling, until a galloping stride is achieved. Viola Knapp wears different shoes on different days. Heavy, mud-trekking boots to allow for aggressive steps, and daintier shoes for more rhythmic and assertive ones. She was a diligent daughter, an outspoken protector, and a progressive teacher. Like many women in her situation, alone at seventeen, Viola must realize her own principles to fulfill her future goals. With every stride, Viola Knapp Ruffner marches around surprises, over potholes, and dodges folly after folly on her journey to be fulfilled. After ambling in one direction, plodding along in another, and wandering to find herself, a sudden halt pushes her forward until a factor of fate places her in the path of a newly freed slave with a desire to read and penchant to lead. After years of post-traumatic stress and mental uncoupling, she finds herself a woman who followed her mother's dying wish to fight for what is fair and just.

1 Arlington, Vermont

November 1829

“Be a schooled and tough woman

who understands what is fair and just.”

Urania Knapp, 1829

We all stood frozen over the huge hole now reserved for our Mother. It seems like Thanksgiving was all but forgotten that year, just taking place for everyone else three days earlier when Mother had been dying. Oh, how she wished they had been able to enjoy the smells and sounds of Thanksgiving together as a family one last time. She wanted to taste the textures from Mother’s pumpkin custard, smell the aromas from breads and pies her grandmothers baked, and wonder over Elvira’s creative and newly concocted cranberry cornbread. Father even carved wooden turkeys with movable legs for the little children to play with in front of the fireplace.

Viola’s lips were in a cold, terse, straight line as she stood graveside. There was a crease just above her left brow. Her violet-colored eyes were clear but moist. Her skin, the color of Vermont snows, and her long blonde hair topped the aristocratic and statuesque figure, just like the female Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The strength of her character stood out above all the others gathered. She realized the success of this family depended upon her ability to support and defend them. She watched Father shovel dirt over the beautifully crafted coffin he had made with care for Mother. As a local mechanic in the wood shop, he had spent days measuring, hammering, and gluing the white oak taken from the Green Mountain forests to envelop the body of his late wife as she transitioned into heaven.

Figure 2 Vermont Telegraph 1829

Father assigned the scripting of Mother’s tombstone to Viola and her older sister Elvira. They studied Mother’s books for hours and finally chose lines from Reverend Edward Young’s poetry.

Smitten friends are angels sent on errands full of love.

For us they languish and for us they die,

And shall they languish, shall they die, in vain?

Ungrateful shall we grieve their hovering shades

Which wait the revolution in our hearts.

“It would be a beautiful headstone once we can afford to pay for it and place it in the St. James Church cemetery to mark Mother’s space for eternity,” Father told them.

Both Grandmother Hannahs, dressed in ankle length black dresses, stood sniffling and weeping. Viola wondered if Grandmother Hannah Hawley could now rest knowing that the daughter she had named Urania, Rany for short, heavenly patron of astronomy, could float among the stars and planets. Such a worldly name for such an extraordinarily bright and poetic woman.

Viola quietly whispered, “Heaven will be where you paint you own stars, dear Mother.”

Grandmother said Rany was reading at an early age and always begged to go to the local book groups when she became a young woman. It was at one of those groups that she had met Father, Silas Knapp, and shared her passion for stories and characters with him. She recalled Mother always said Father was much happier with a chisel and a smooth piece of oak or white birch in his hands than a book. Silas, like his father Ephraim, was a wood mechanic and cabinetmaker.

“But he hung onto each of my words intently and had the kindest smile!” Rany used to reminisce to her children.

Both Rany and Silas, descended from Vermont lineage and identified with all the people in the town. Poor Father had only twenty-two years with her before she perished. Now at age 42, Rany’s strength had declined with the seventh child. The new-born baby, Juelma, was motherless and in the care of aunts and neighbors as they gathered.

Baby brother Orpheus, age two, began to wiggle in Elvira’s arms. She set him down and knelt with him to throw star-shaped dahlias into the earth. His dark and narrow eyes widened and starred back at her as if to ask, “Why are we throwing away flowers?”

Viola gripped the hand of curly-haired Florina, age 4, while a long-faced Uretta, 12, knelt with solemn Salina, 9, to whisper to her that Mother was in the stars with God and would not be there when they returned to their house. They all moved back to stand beside Father as the service began.

Viola felt a shiver skitter through her as she struggled not to cry and listened to the words of Reverend Perkins. Mother would have loved his choice of words about her. She thought about the meaning of his eulogy and the terms of endearment he communicated with all of them. He praised Urania for being a fine wife and Mother, a scholar of literature, and for her passion for poetry and writing. Viola remembered the plays they wrote and performed for each other and the stories they crafted all day long to share with Father after dinner in the evenings.

Grandmother and Grandfather Hawley stood long faced and tall and pulled their coats and cloaks tightly to them to protect against the chill. Urania, the second Hawley child, their verbose and vibrant daughter, was now gone. Grandmother’s youngest son, Rany’s little brother, Norman stood at her side.

Viola gazed over at him, Uncle Norman. He was more like a big brother to her than an uncle and one of her best chuckaboos. He could usually cajole her into laughter with his witty sense of humor, like telling her “You look right ripsniptious!” But not today.

An unwavering reaction to helplessness prevented Viola, who was from old stock Yankee beginnings, from succumbing to tears. She glanced around at who was in attendance. Inside this graveyard, marked with Hawley predecessors and family, Viola was reminded of just how important the Episcopal faith and Yankee Protestant roots had been in forming her life and beliefs. She thought back to the early stories her grandparents shared with her about this deep devotion that forged their town.

The Charter for Arlington as a town, six miles square, was issued July 28, 1761. The first settlers arrived in 1764, fifteen years before Vermont entered the Union. Among these people was the first Lay Reader of the church, Captain Jehiel Hawley, Viola’s great grandfather. After these predecessors had settled in their new homes and began to conduct Episcopal services, the Revolution served to isolate them further as Tories - those loyal to the King of England. During the Revolution Captain Hawley left Arlington and served on the staff of General John Burgoyne until Burgoyne’s defeat at the Battle of Saratoga, then, he started for Canada. Great Grandfather Hawley died en route in Shelburne in 1777 and was buried at sea. Captain Hawley had built the first framed house in Arlington. There the services of the Church were first held and became the birthplace of the Episcopal Church in Vermont. It was where Viola’s Hawley grandparents continued to live and where many important Hawley family celebrations took place.

In 1803, two wooden churches were established in Arlington. One, a Free Church where attendees did not have to buy their pews and where Viola was christened in 1812. The other was where today’s church stood. Just this year, 1829, the cornerstone of this new stone church was laid on the foundation of the old wooden church and called St. James where the children attended school and the family now gathered.

The Churchman Magazine published in Connecticut in 1805 stated,

“Although much encumbered with many things, Captain Hawley did not forget ‘the one thing needful,’ but with unrelenting zeal for his Master’s glory and the salvation of his fellowmen, he commenced the worship of the Church at Arlington upon settling there, and with the blessing of God upon his unrelenting and pious labors he so spread the doctrines of the Church that until the time of the Revolutionary war almost the whole town consisted of Episcopalians."

Viola, lost in historical thought, was distracted for an instant by the busy hum and clang of the nearby saw and grist mills. Florina tugged at her hand. Viola bent and whispered a rhyme into her ear to help her stay still. Then, her reflections drifted back to Mother.

Mother had cherished words, the flow of lyrics, the placement of adjectives and adverbs in sentences, the rise and rhythmic falls of verses, the poems of Reverend Edward Young, the characters in Shakespeare’s plays, the sermons of the Rectors of the church, and the hymns of their faith.

Her favorite memories were of Mother telling how she chose a special name for each of her children! It was this rhyme she murmured to Florina but stopped short at a line for the new baby.

Elvira, Spanish Queen. Viola, purple figurine. Uretta, spiritual glow. Salina, like the moon on snow. Florina, Mama’s little flower. Orpheus, boy of word power, and now Juelma…

“I wonder what Mother might have said about her newest infant?” she pondered as she glanced at Florina and her other...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	14.2.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-3835-7 / 9798350938357

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