Nearly a century of memories...Ella Pry

By NOREEN HYSLOP

Managing Editor

Ella Abernathy Pry was born just days after Woodrow Wilson won the presidential election, beating out Theodore Roosevelt and Howard Taft. Eight-hundred dollars would buy a brand new Studebaker, bacon was 16 cents a pound, and a thirst could be quenched with a seven-cent Sarsaparilla.

Ella will celebrate 99 years of life in November. Her eyesight and her sense of hearing may not be as keen as they once were, but her memories of growing up in rural Stoddard County are as sharp as ever.

"I was born back in the hills just on the edge of Crowley's Ridge," Ella says. "The town was called Ardeola."

The land lies northeast of Bloomfield, just southwest of Bell City. Generations of the Abernathy family had farmed in Stoddard County. Ella was the youngest of four children and the only girl, yet she says she played alone a lot in her youth.

"I never could shoot marbles very well and I skinned up the boys' bicycles, so I never got to play with my brothers much," she declares. "I was a loner."

Some of her earliest memories are of her grandparents.

"My mother was the oldest in her family, and my grandparents would bring the other children over for my mother to watch. They would drive a team of mules down Old Cape Road all the way to Cape Girardeau to sell their produce off the farm."

The produce was often exchanged for shoes and necessities for the children and supplies for the coming winter months, she says. It was no easy trip in the 1920s, requiring an overnight stay in the "big city".

Ella attended the rural schools of Stoddard County including Ardeola School and Crossroads through the 11th grade, walking the dirt roads and through cemeteries alone, until as a student at Bell City, she earned the privilege of riding her brother's white race horse to classes.

"I'd put him in a stable not too far from school, give him four ears of corn and lock the door," she recalls. "Then I'd walk the rest of the way to school and pick him up later for the ride home."

Ella had an older boyfriend at the time. His name was Prentice E. Pry and he was "citified," having left the farm and gone off to upper Michigan for a time. The hills of Stoddard County called him home, though, to his girl and to life on the farm once again. He was almost 26 and Ella was 18. On a cold day in January 1931, Prentice Pry took his girlfriend for her first boat ride. They were drifting on the Castor River and maneuvering through some thin ice when he asked her to be his wife.

"He'd been to the big city," she smiles, "and he was ready to settle down."

Ella later recorded her thoughts of that day in a poem. On March 3, 1931, she wrote, "As I now take up my pencil and paper, I feel within me an instinct to write, of that beautiful day in January; the day that I took my first boat ride."

Ella often put her thoughts to rhyme over the years, especially in the form of love notes to her beloved Prentice. One authored in their early years contains the verse: "In my mind I may think of the future; my mind may dwell on the past, There shall always linger the thought of you, the one I hope to forget last."

The two were wed on May 16, 1931. They first rented a small farm in a community called Zadock and later bought acreage of their own. There was a country store in the town and at one time Zadock housed a county voting precinct

"We didn't have much to go on," she remembers. "But we did with what we had."

Ella tells of the post-Depression time in the early days of her marriage when the young couple was struggling to make ends meet.

"A man came to the door selling Watkins products," she says. "He was trying to sell me food flavorings like vanilla and cinnamon. He opened up his little case with all the flavors and I finally stopped him and told him there wasn't any use in trying to sell me flavorings when I didn't have anything to flavor!"

That night, she recalls, her in-laws came by with the team of mules and the wagon. They rode to town and she came back with a sack of flour so that she could bake once again - with or without Watkins flavorings!

The Prys raised corn and some cotton and six children - four sons and two daughters. The family's only means of transportation in the "early days" was a team of mules and a buggy.

"That's how we went visiting and to get groceries and to church."

The church served as the family's social outlet. There were Sunday dinners on the grounds, brush arbor meetings with traveling preachers to listen to until way after sundown on hot summer nights, and there were ice cream socials.

Prentice Pry was, by Ella's own account, "full of mischief" much of the time and she recalls that the road to Gravel Hill Church provided ample opportunities for his playfulness.

"He used to like to get those mules going full blast just before getting to the church house and throw dust and dirt every which way."

The Prys built a house outside of Bell City in 1946 where they finished raising their six children.

In her early 40s, Ella went to work at Elders Manufacturing in Bloomfield. Although an independent woman in many ways, she never tested for a driver's license and depended upon her husband and a friend to transport her to and from work until she retired more than 20 years later in 1962.

Ella prided herself over the years in canning and freezing produce the family raised themselves. She was known for her expertise in the kitchen and for her green thumb.

"I loved growing flowers," she reflects. "Wherever there was a bare place, I'd stick a flower!"

It seems that even at almost 99, Ella Pry's mind is always busy. In recent years, she developed a keen interest, with the help of some family members, in genealogy. Both the Pry and the Abernathy sides of the family have been researched, with an abundance of interesting historical tidbits being uncovered.

"My husband's grandfather was John Thomas Pry," she explains, "and he was a Civil War veteran."

Family members have letters that are verified as having been carried by The Pony Express during the period of 1860-61, written in the hand of John Thomas Pry.

Stacks of paperwork and bound books tell of the battles in which Pry fought and of the journey that brought the Abernathys to Stoddard County.

"The Abernathys," Ella explains, "came from South Carolina and when they got off the river in Perryville, they just scattered out."

Ella, accompanied by her daughter, a niece and cousins, spent time a few years ago pouring over historical documents in Perryville and beyond. They discovered records that went back to the Abernathys in the 16th century. Through research, she found that her grandfather, Zion Abernathy, was buried near Old Appleton. In the same cemetery are buried slaves that once worked for the Abernathys.

"I've got a book about that deep on the Abernathys," Ella says, forming a few inches between an aged thumb and index finger.

She relates the story of how the Prys settled in Stoddard County, telling that some of the early settlers were traveling through the county when they set up camp and allowed their three-year-old daughter, Hattie, to run around after a day of riding in the wagon.

"The little girl fell on a stob and there were no doctors around then. She died of her injuries."

The family buried the little girl just south of Advance, history says, and they were never able to part themselves from where she was put to rest. They homesteaded the land and generations that followed them have remained in the area.

Ella Pry is proud of her heritage and her history. As proud of her are her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, and now four great-great-grandchildren.

Volumes of information have been documented and are cherished by the Pry and Abernathy families.

Ella is hindered by macular degeneration these days, and while her hearing is not quite what it used to be, her mind is sharp and clear, recalling events from 80 years ago as if they happened yesterday. She recently suffered a heart attack and now is a resident at Golden Living Center in Bloomfield.

Ella lost her husband of 64 years in 1995. They shared many "firsts," including their first vehicle, a 1932 Model A Ford and their first sight of an airplane puttering overhead as everything on the farm stopped and they watched in wonder. They shared the delight of getting electricity in the 1940s and taking trips on the Cotton Railroad to Bell City for a dime each way. They shared living off the land and raising a family of six children.

Ella Pry attributes her longevity to an active life, coupled with a lot of hard work, an abundance of faith, and a lot of taking time to smell the roses she grew annually on her rural Stoddard County farm.