#52 Ancestors 2022 Week 13 Sisters: Eunice and Evalina Sasscer

 My grandmother Theresa Evalina Sasscer (Summers) and her sister Eunice Loretto Sasscer (Turner) were inseparable.  They were born a year apart in 1898 and 1897 respectively in Prince George's County MD, two of the four children of Thomas Reverdy Sasscer and Theresa Evalina Wallis, along with their brothers Francis Wallis Sasscer and Clarence DeSales Sasscer.  Throughout their lives, they were never far apart. 

I am most fortunate that both my grandmother and my great aunt left wonderful narratives of their growing up on the farm at Breezy Hill, so I would like to share some of that story using their words.  

Eunice and Evalina attended the one-room school across the road from their farm, built on land donated by their father.  The girls were the "janitors," responsible for making the fire every morning and sweeping up the floors.  They used the money they earned for this to pay for music lessons with Mrs. W. Berry Early.  If the weather was especially cold and snowy, their father would go down early and start the old pot belly stove for them. Eunice remembered that they would have geography three days a week and history on the other two days, with English, arithmetic and spelling every day. 

The schoolroom below is not the one they attended, but it gives the idea of what it would have been like. 

During the fall, Evalina said, her brothers would go out early every morning to check the traps for rabbits that might have been caught during the night and all the children would rush to the chestnut trees trying to beat the turkeys at collecting chestnuts that the wind had blown down. 

Evalina described her father as a "kind gentle man who seldom got angry." He worked hard at his farm, but always cleaned up before a meal and put on his black coat before coming to the table. He was strict with the children, especially about their table manners.  "Many was the time," according to Evalina, "that we were sent to the kitchen for giggling at the table."  Rev (as her father was known) made his own cigars from special tobacco leaves that he brought up from the barn and kept in the closet under the staircase. His special love, his daughter said, was his team of spirited horses which he would drive when calling on his friends and to Mass at Marlboro. 

Miss Eunice and Miss Booty

In the mornings, Eunice and Evalina were expected to be at the breakfast table with their chores done: milk, cream, sugar and butter on the table--and no sleeping late.  They also had to make their beds.  One morning, Evalina said, they skipped off to school without doing that chore and their mother sent the cook down to the schoolhouse, where she announced: "Miss Eva (their mother) she say for Miss Eunice and Miss Booty (my grandmother) to come home and make the beds up."  My grandmother said they never tried that trick again. Their mother made all their clothes, and you can see her beautiful work in the photograph above. 

Eunice remembered the pantry at the farm house always had a huge barrel of flour that her father purchased once a year from Baltimore and a keg of sugar.  They raised a lot of corn on the farm which was then ground into corn meal and made into corn bread, which was used to feed the dogs on the farm. (There was no such thing as "dog food."  You had to supply your own.)  She said they always had plenty of milk because they raised cows.  

Evalina

Evalina noted that her Papa had a violin which he played by ear.  Eunice, she said, had inherited that musical talent and would accompany him on the black square piano which her parents had purchased. Eunice and Evalina were each supposed to practice on the piano for an hour after school using a small blue china clock to keep the time. In the winter, the parlor was cold, and they would make a fire to warm the room before practicing.  Evalina said she could remember sitting on her hands to get them warm.  Both the girls loved music; Evalina gravitated more toward the classical, while Eunice tended to play more of the popular music. Eunice remembered that her mother insisted that the girls sit down and play and sing "all the old songs" every Sunday afternoon.  (As a young woman, Evalina worked for the War Department and lived for a time at St. Vincent's orphanage in Washington DC, where Bishop Fulton Sheen was also in residence.  He was her audience in the evenings when she played the piano there.)

For entertainment, Eunice said, there was a lot of visiting among families and friends, driving to each other's houses for skating and sledding parties and attending church suppers.  She also remembered the Tournaments in the summer in various communities where the boys would ride horses with a long spear and use it to capture three balls along the route. Eventually this Jousting became the state sport of Maryland. 

Eunice Sasscer

While their brother Wallis attended Charlotte Hall Military Academy, Eunice and Evalina along with their brother Clarence (as well as my grandfather Paul Summers and you know how that ended up!) attended Baden Agricultural High School, opened in the fall of 1913. They drove a horse and buggy every day to school.  Eunice left Baden after a year and went to Towson Normal School to train as a teacher, taking the train from Brandywine to Baltimore. After graduation, she taught two years in Prince George's County and then in Washington DC for a year before getting married. Evalina finished at Baden in 1916 and then taught for two years before taking a job at the War Department, having decided that teaching was not for her. 

Evalina married her high school classmate Paul Summers in 1924 and lived the rest of her life near Upper Marlboro.  Eunice married Charles Littleton Turner and moved a little further south to Aquasco. 

Sasscer Siblings and their Spouses

As adults, Eunice and Evalina loved to travel everywhere together, especially after Eunice's husband died in 1966 and my grandfather died in 1970. The sisters visited relatives in the States and even travelled to Europe. I never remember attending a family gathering at my grandmother's house where Aunt Eunice was not there.