'Courtship in a Shoebox'
WORTH TWP — Nancy McClintock of Florida, formerly of Blawnox, visited her grandparents' graves Tuesday in Zion Baptist Cemetery.
McClintock hopes Frank V. and Martha L. Patterson soon will be remembered by many more than just the Pattersons' scattered descendants.
McClintock has written a book about her grandparents' courtship in the early 20th century using 155 of their preserved love letters. It's titled “Courtship in a Shoebox.”
“My mother kept these letters. When she died, I was cleaning out her closet when I found these letters,” said McClintock. “I was amazed when I read them.”
McClintock said she resolved to type the letters into a computer to preserve them digitally, but she didn't begin the work until May 2018.
“My husband had died, and I needed a project. As I was transcribing them, I could see a story,” she said.
The letters between Frank Patterson, a young farmer, and Martha Covert, a young woman who lived in New Castle, were sent between 1901 and 1905.She caught his eye somewhere and he wrote to further the acquaintance, requesting “the pleasure of your company some evening in the near future.”She wrote back, “I will accept the pleasure of your company next Wednesday evening, the 28th, if it suits you.”However, the letters soon became a necessity, rather than a means to break the ice, when Martha moved to West Virginia in 1901 to help take care of her sister's children.“It was going to be for six months, but it turned into four years,” said McClintock.Martha loved the city life in Weston and New Martinsville, W.Va., where she lived with her sister and brother-in-law.She worked as a piano teacher and enjoyed traveling.Frank lived and worked on the family farm, dug coal and referred to himself in his letters as a “hayseed farmer.”At one point, he toyed with the idea of becoming a secretary and practiced his shorthand in letters to Martha.But mostly, he described his friends, his work, parties and his faith in his letters to the woman he hoped would become his wife.“He lists the prices of things he takes to market, which is a good historical fact,” she said.“He wrote poetry. Just the fact that he liked to go to parties was interesting,” she said.
McClintock remembers visiting them on their farm when she was a girl.“I remember Grandmother's cooking, for sure. It was a wonderful thing to come for a meal. Everything came from the farm. It was real fresh,” she said.She remembers walking with her grandfather to gather eggs or pump water into a bucket.“When he was older, he was a tax collector and a justice of the peace,” she said. “He had this big roll-top desk. I remember getting all his stuff out and playing with it.”
Reading their letters, McClintock said, “I would have to say they were both very spiritual.”“He wrote, 'Let's read the same Scripture every night, so we are connected through that,'” she said. “And he would check to make sure she had.”“I thought of Grandma as the more spiritual person, but he loved God and taught Scripture verses to her. It made me think about him in a different light.”But mostly, with his letters he was trying to get Martha to marry him.He sent her two pictures in one of his letters. One cartoon depicted a salt-of-the-earth farm wife and the other a polished, hard looking “business woman.”Martha came back to visit from time to time as evidenced by gaps in the letters, but to Frank's disappointment she always went back to West Virginia.“My grandmother was strong-willed. She was determined to get what she wanted,” McClintock said. “That was amazing for that day and time when women were supposed to want to get married.”“Grandma really liked what she was doing. Grandfather was anxious for her to be his wife,” she said.The letters must have gotten to her. He proposed to her by letter and she accepted.They were married on April 26, 1905, and she became a farmer's wife, played piano at Zion Baptist Church, gave piano lessons and gave birth to five children.Retired minister Victor Shields remembers taking piano lessons from Martha Patterson in 1957 or thereabouts.Shields said, “She was a very patient lady, a very happy person. I remember that about her. She was serious about music.”McClintock said being a nurse for more than 30 years did not prepare her to write a book, but she got help and encouragement from the writing club at her retirement community in Florida.“I would bring in a chapter and read it, and they would encourage me and tell me there was a book here,” she said.In writing the book, she was taken by the graciousness and relative innocence of the era and how different life was at the turn of the 20th century.“My son, Greg Lyons, and I were riding to New Castle and I asked him, 'Could you imagine doing this in a horse buggy?'” she said.The self-published “Courtship in a Shoebox” is available for purchase through Amazon.com, she said.When she gets back to Florida and her writing group, she has two more books lined up — a book of memoirs called “God on a Shelf” and “Reflections on an Ordinary Day,” a collection of one-page reflections.
