This week's challenge focuses on longevity. The longest-lived of my direct ancestors was my maternal great-grandmother, Theresa Evalina Wallis Sasscer. She was born in Kent County MD on 28 December 1874 and died 25 March 1964 in Owings Mills, Baltimore County MD at the age of 90. (I should note, however, that my own mother is still going strong at 93, so I think she will eventually hold the longevity record!)
Eva Wallis was born the same year as poet Robert Frost, industrialist John D. Rockefeller, and magician Harry Houdini. She grew up in the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, close to where Harriett Tubman helped the Underground Railroad move slaves to freedom. Ulysses S. Grant was president, following the death of Millard Fillmore. James Black Groom from Cecil County was the Governor of Maryland. The Wallises came from Quaker roots and were not slave holders.
Eva Wallis was the 8th of the 13 children of Francis Adolphus Wallis and Mary Georgianna Willson. She was a school teacher and met her husband, Thomas Reverdy Sasscer, when she was teaching at a small one-room school in Prince George's County and boarded with Mr. Sasscer, a farmer whose home was across the road from the school. (Not to worry about any impropriety there because Reverdy's unmarried sister, Mary Loretto Sasscer, was living with her brother as his housekeeper.) Reverdy Sasscer, the son of John William Sasscer and Julia Ann Gibbons of Prince George's County MD, was some 20 years older than his bride when they married in December 1894 at Sacred Heart Church in Chestertown, Kent County MD. This picture shows Eva in her wedding outfit. According to the newspaper account of the wedding, it was a gown of tan henrietta cloth with gloves and hat to match.By the time of her marriage in 1894, Maryland was moving away from its rural roots and becoming more industrialized, although Prince George's County, where Eva raised her family was still mostly farmland, supplying wheat, corn, potatoes, fruits and vegetables for the nation's capital. Tobacco fields still covered significant areas of the county.
Reverdy and Eva had four children: Francis Wallis (1895), Eunice Loretto (1897), Theresa Evalina, my grandmother, (1898), and Clarence DeSales (1900). The Sasscers grew up on a tobacco farm at Breezy Hill and attended the one-room school across the road, where, incidentally, Clarence later met his wife, Madge, who was the teacher there.
Thomas Reverdy Sasscer died in 1920 at the age of 68, so Eva spent the last 44 years of her life as a widow, running the farm with her sons and happily enjoying her brood of 16 grandchildren. It was my mother, Anne, who gave Eva the name by which she was known in the family--Dama--Anne's attempt to say "Grandma." In her later years, Dama often spent the winters in Florida and my mother, who was her oldest grandchild, remembers trips to Florida with her grandmother as a teenager. Dama was very proud of her family heritage and was a member of the DAR and other patriotic societies.
My memories of my great-grandmother center around the annual family Christmas parties that were always held at Dama's home, Breezy Hill. It was there that I would see my numerous aunts and uncles, great-aunts and great uncles and dozens of cousins. I remember her as a very elegant woman. The picture below shows her in 1951 with two of her great-grandchildren at a Christmas party.
At the time of Eva's death in 1964, J. Millard Tawes, an Eastern Shore native, was governor of Maryland and Lyndon Johnson was initiating the Great Society, amid increasing calls for more minority rights. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge had opened up Eva's native Eastern Shore to greater tourism and Ocean City became a boom town. The Beatles made their famous appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and Martin Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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