In her own words

A few weeks ago I went to Community Day, an annual tradition at Illyria Community Church. A older woman came up to me with a cassette tape. In 1979 she had worked on gathering local stories about the church for a history book. She recorded her interviews, stashing them away in boxes in her basement until recently.

"This is an interview with Bessie Shaffer," she said. I let out an audible gasp. Bessie Shaffer was my great-great grandmother, who was born in 1883 and died in 1980. Bessie sat down for this interview when she was 96 years old, just a year before she died.

I gladly took the tape, eager to hear the voice of someone born in 1883 - and not just someone, but my ancestor! The trouble was, I didn't have a tape player. It's 2015! I don't even have a VCR!

Thank you, Internet, for providing me the answer. A quick Amazon purchase later and I had a cassette converter express mailed (I couldn't wait!). The interview was only about 10 minutes long and Bessie's voice was faint, as the recorder sat next to the interviewer. I had to remind myself not to be frustrated, as I wasn't alive when this tape was made, so I couldn't have changed things if I had wanted to anyway.

Hearing her voice was a thrill. Hearing her stories about childhood in the 1880s and 1890s was incredible. I have spent so much time researching Bessie and her family, that hearing her own words and her own perspective on her live was downright moving.

Oh yes. I remember winters where we didn’t get to school nearly all winter because the snow was so deep. [You] couldn’t get there. Father would take us with a sled when he could, but some winters – yes, we had some winters we didn’t get to school. Sometimes we had to go another way, you know, we couldn’t go our road because it was kind of a road through there where the snow filled in, it was always deep at this house. And the men, they had no way of shoveling it out and they’d wait until spring, you see…

She also talked about her love of family, something everyone in my family still remembers today:

My happiest was after the children all left, when they could all come home again and bring the grandchildren. They were all close enough to all come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas or something like that. I think I enjoyed that a lot.

I transcribed, digitized, and shared the interview with the family. Of course, there were so many more questions I would have asked Bessie if I had been able to do the interview. So many burning questions that I fear will never be answered.

But then again, I never thought I'd hear Bessie's voice for myself - so stranger things have happened.