GRANDMOTHER'S WEDDING RING by BEN BREWER 1933-2012

My precious Ben died on Good Friday at 9:10 am.
                              How I miss him! 
He encouraged me in all my little blog pretend travel stories and actually "starred" in the stories about Poland and Geneva.  Here is a delightful true story he wrote in 2010 about his grandmother's wedding ring: Lost & Found!! It is sweet and charming. 
Love, annie



 (similar)

As grandfather Rankin guided the flatboats down the Ohio and Missippi to New Orleans where he sold his barrel staves along with his homemade flatboat, he looked forward to marrying sweet Ellen Bush Wathen back in Kentucky. 
                                               (facsimile)

At length the day grew near, and due to the lack of jewelry stores around his bluff top farm, Ben went north to Evansville, Indiana, and bought a fine wide gold wedding band for Ellen.     

The couple were married in Caven Rock, Illinois, on March 9, 1881, in the room that was destined to have a unique history, was placed on Ellen’s finger. 
        
                                           


That story began “right after” the wedding, but  exactly just how right after, perhaps varies with the story teller. Certainly the closer the right after, the better story, but the truth seems to be that Ellen’s losing her ring occurred a few days or no more than a couple of weeks after the newly weds’ settling into the Rankin farmhouse. 
                                           (facsimile) 

Anticipating visitors, Ellen was one day busily stuffing pillows and mattresses at the straw pile between the house and the “near barn.” There was a another, somewhat larger barn a bit distant from the house, known as the "far barn."facimiles

 At some point Ellen realized to her horror that her wedding ring was no longer on her finger. A bit large and heavy, perhaps even a bit large for her slender finger, the ring had obviously been taken from her finger, while her act of grasping, twisting, and pushing of the straw into the ticking. 

Frantically she emptied these and searched to no avail and we can be sure that she then searched the entire ten to twelve foot straw pile area. Searches the next day and many days thereafter, all proved frustratingly futile. She had looked, her husband had looked, and surely visitors and relatives had looked, all as unsuccessful as Ellen in finding the mysteriously lost ring. Inevitably a time eventually came when the ring was given up as lost forever. (Whether Grandmother had a replacement, I  have never heard, but and old photo shows her left hand not wearing one.

Years passed and life went on, children were born, and the mystery ring was a sometimes topic of conversation. We may conjecture as to whether the Rankin children ever glanced down in their play in hope as being the one to find the glimmer of the gold ring. The area where the straw pile was by then had become a side yard “trimmed” by grazing livestock whose hooves must have trampled the gold ring down into the soil.

The youngest of Ben and Ellen's children was Joanna and her first born was my sister, Dorothy, born in April 1921.  One day when the weather was nice, Joanna (JODY) sat on the side porch holding her not yet walking, Dorothy.

Grandmother was occupied with some today unknown activity in the side yard, and was chatting with Jody on the porch.  Suddenly Jody heard Grandmother talking to Sammy , the Rankin’s small mixed-breed dog. Her excited voice got Jody’s attention as her mother shouted, 

Sammy has found my wedding ring!!

Whether Sammy dutifully held the ring in his teeth or pitched it playfully in the air or (most likely) happened to uncover it with a scratching in the earth, all this is once again as to the teller of the story, but the important truth is that Sammy had somehow found what had eluded  searchers for forty years of autumn leaves, snow and ice, spring thaws and flowers, trampling by shoe soles, bare feet and animal  hooves.

                                                               

Presumably Grandmother then wore the ring until her death in 1936.  This means that she wore it at the onset  and throughout her tragic Alzheimer’s syndrome years during which among other unfortunate things  she once nearly blinded one eye of Ben with her fingernail he was lovingly trying to trim for her.  Other times her insistent wandering from the farm forced him to go searching for her far and wide across forests and farmland.  (I have always been told that from my birth until Grandmother’s death in 1936 described me as a cute little henhouse,)

When she died, the wedding ring passed on to Jody’s sister, my aunt Mildred Posey, in New Mexico. I do not believe Aunt Mil wore the ring herself but kept it with other keepsakes in a top drawer in her bedroom. She died in the early 1980s and the executor of the will, my sister Dorothy, unknowingly “witnessed” Sammy’s discovery of the ring from the porch in 1921, brought it to Mother Jody in Memphis. She then also kept it in a drawer as Mildred had done. With Jody’s death, my sister Betty (“Beets” to me) followed suit and I (as I write)  do the same.

Occasionally Annie wears Grandmother’s ring along with her own, but always behind lest it slip from her slender finger as it had just so long ago done from newly-wed Ellen up there on the bluff at the straw pile. 

 Finally, it may be of interest to note that when Annie does where the ring for awhile, she wears one band engraved WBB and another engraved WBR. This is because her own band was also lost years ago and we had my own reduced in size for her.  Thus one of her wedding bands is engraved WBB (for me) and the other is engraved WBR (William Benjamin Rankin for whom I was named.)

This was compiled by WB Brewer, 2010

Ben always edited my pretend trips for me. But I am not going to change a thing from this rough copy I found among his papers. Such a lovely story compiled by a marvelous man who was my husband for 55 years..
A Scholar, Professor, Linguist, Artist and there was
No better son, brother, father, grandfather, great grandfather, and friend.
Maybe I'll write another Rocking Chair Annie trip again on the blog, but not likely, not likely.
Best wishes to everyone. annie in memphis
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