ALL ACROSS LANCASTER COUNTY THE SNOW blew in from the northeast, tiny particles that made a swishing sound as it was driven across metal roofs, hard-packed frozen earth, and ponds. The wind moaned in the pine trees, whistled around the eaves of the house, and threw particles of frozen snow against window panes like sand. The atmosphere was heavy, gray, with a yellowish cast that seemed ominous.
Annie lifted her face to the sky as she made her way to the barn, the driven snow like pellets against it. This was a real January blizzard, and she was prepared, reveled in it. She loved the snow, the purity of winter scenery, when weeds and mud and unsightly puddles were all hidden under the beauty of white, white snow, with blue shadows in hollows and beneath trees that made the whole world seem magical somehow.
And now she was so happy. Her future had changed from the gray of care and responsibility to a wonderful life with a man she loved beyond reason. He was everything she had ever imagined any man could be—kind, caring, soft-spoken, and so pleasant to look at. She loved his eyes, the straight, fine nose, the mouth that curved into a beautiful smile when he arrived in the evenings.
She lifted her arms and gave herself up to the joy that coursed through her veins, skipped a few steps, then reined herself in to a sedate walk. Oh, but it felt wonderful to experience joy again. To feel loved and desired.
Two more months till her wedding day.
It was sobering, thinking of these six children she had never met, but she would love them to the best of her ability. As he would love her own.
The breakfast table held the hum of anticipation as the children looked forward to the snow and all the sledding and sleigh rides. The boiled cornmeal was served with molasses and milk, the bread toasted in the huge cast iron pan on top of the stove. The coffee was steaming hot and so good laced with plenty of cream.
There was firewood in the woodshed, staples in the pantry, enough to keep the hunger away. Annie felt blessed beyond measure, filled with an appreciation for God’s kindness, the love he bestowed on them, the richness of life.
On Saturday evening Daniel handed her twenty dollars and told her to buy fabric or shoes, whatever they needed for the wedding.
Annie told him she couldn’t take it. “No, no. It’s too much. I have a good Sunday dress. It’s blue.”
She didn’t tell him it was eight or nine years old, had been sponged and pressed numerous times, worn thin at the underarms.
“No, Annie. Take it. I want you to have a wedding dress.”
She blushed, a gentle rose color that spread like a rose across her cheeks. This time she accepted, not wanting to disappoint him.
They made the decision to move to his farm, as the house was larger and would better accommodate fourteen children. They would add her eight cows to his herd. They would butcher the pigs, add her chickens to the flock.
Annie had never seen the farm, had only a vague idea of where it was located. She would be moving out of her home and the church district she had always known, but that was all right. She would be Mrs. Dan Beiler, mother of fourteen children, able to hold up her head as a woman and mother in the community.
Annie smiled at Daniel, and he smiled back.
They did not touch, only communicated what they felt with their eyes.
They had both been married before. The kisses would wait.
She was taken to his farm to meet the children only a week before the wedding, after the public announcement had been made in church. Now that their secret had been revealed, they would be able to travel together in broad daylight, to be seen in stores or to visit family. Her parents had been told, and though her mother had raised her eyebrows with a mixture of surprise and disapproval, she had kept her tongue quiet as she cleaned the house and made sure she had cabbage and potatoes down cellar for the wedding meal. Annie would butcher her old hens to make the roasht.
Daniel’s children were shy, peering at her with curious eyes. Amos was a small version of his father with straight dark hair, the wide mouth. Annie took his politely proffered hand, said, “Hello, Amos.” Lavina, Hannah, and Emma were like three peas in a pod, all born only a year apart. Dark-haired, dark eyes, curious, their faces were open and honest. Annie gripped their hands and felt a surge of tender love for the motherless trio.
“Hello, hello,” she said, smiling warmly.
The three girls responded to Annie’s warmth with hungry eyes, wide and lonely and searching. For too long their lives had contained no mother, no solid, unchanging figure they could depend on, no one to cuddle and cherish them, to listen to their little girl woes and joys. There were maids who came and went, washed clothes and dishes and floors, ironed and cooked and baked. Most of them were pleasant, but distant. It was their job to meet the children’s tangible needs, but not to love them with the tenderness of a mother.
So when the genuine interest shone from Annie’s eyes, they absorbed the warmth of her love and felt rescued. They stood side by side, their eyes never leaving her face. Annie felt reassured that their families would meld easily, that they’d become one just as she and Dan were becoming one.
Joel and John were old enough to know there was tremendous importance in this woman. This was not another maud; she was to be their mother. They weren’t too sure about someone actually marrying their father and living there, but they remained seated on kitchen chairs, shook hands when it was expected of them, and observed.
“So now you have met your future Mam,” Dan said eagerly.
Amos nodded. The three girls responded with hearty smiles and a vibrant yes. Joel and John merely stared, wide-eyed.
“You know she has eight children of her own. You will meet them before the wedding. We will all live together here, so we’ll have to make arrangements where everyone will sleep.”
Amos shifted from one foot to the other, flicked the straight dark bangs on his forehead.
“Is there someone my age?” he asked timidly.
“Enos is thirteen,” Annie said.
Amos smiled. “I’ll be his friend.”
Annie smiled back, but winced, thinking of Ephraim and Ida’s inseparable bond. Would they open up to include Amos? Well, she’d tell them that’s what was expected of them, and they would obey. They were good children.
She sewed a new blue wedding dress. Her old black cape and apron would do. The children were equipped with new dresses or trousers as needed, but they did not all have something new to wear.
The farm was sold to Henry Blank for his son Josiah, who would be bringing his new bride in the fall. Annie spent a few hours in tearful nostalgia, then she straightened herself up, realizing a door in her life had been closed and a new one was opening. God had mercy on her existence and was ushering in the beginning of a new life, and she was thankful. She would take this in stride, be a mother to his six children, and never look back.
Her mother was a hard worker, a strict overseer of all the wedding preparations, which was a relief to Annie. She spent a few days helping with the housecleaning, but had a huge amount of work herself, preparing for the move to Dan’s farm.
The wedding would be held in her parents’ large farmhouse, which meant every piece of furniture would be moved into the adjacent woodshed to make room for the setting of wooden benches. And woe to the hausfrau who was caught with rolls of dust or spiderwebs beneath bureaus or cabinets, resulting in unmerciful teasing from the men in the family. No, Annie’s meticulous mother would never be caught with a job half done. The furniture was cleaned and polished, upended and swept underneath, and the living room rugs were hung over the clothesline and beaten until no dust puffed off of them. The kettles were scoured and polished, for no worthy woman would be caught at wedding time with less than a mirror-like gleam on all the cookware.
The celery was banked with manure-rich soil, the cabbage round and full, but that had been in the fall of the year. By March, what had been harvested in the fall had been consumed out of necessity, celery and cabbage being quick to rot. So her mother made a trip to the greengrocer in Intercourse and handed Dan Beiler the bill with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. Vegetables in March were dear, she told him, standing by while he wrote her a check in his careful hand.
Annie’s children, all eight of them, were properly introduced to Dan and his six sons and daughters, a quiet, awkward meeting that all of them were relieved to be done with. It was just so strange, looking at a group of children who would be living in the same house for the rest of their youth.
None of Annie’s kids were too sure about Dan. He was large and different, his voice too soft and pillowy for a father. Their real father, the one that died, had been smaller and quicker, his voice loud. If he said something, anything at all, they knew he meant business.
So when this new father was soft-spoken and kind, smiled a lot, and addressed each one individually with gentle words, they weren’t quite sure what to make of it.
They were married on a cold, windy day in March, when the sun shone weakly behind scudding clouds and wind bent the trees into perfect C’s, whipped bare branches in a frenzy, sent men and women scurrying between house and barn, shawls flapping, men’s hands plopped on hat tops.
But inside there was light from gas lights, warmth from the woodstoves, voices, laughter, and an aura of celebration. The house was filled to capacity with voices rising in plainsong, the slow rise and fall of old German hymns from the heavy black Ausbund. They were pronounced man and wife by his uncle, Stephen Beiler, from over toward Leola, a bishop who was well known for his fiery sermons.
The fourteen children sat on benches with varying degrees of attentiveness, but all had the same bewildered expression, a vacant wondering of the future created by the joining of the two people who sat side by side in the minster’s row, looking as if this was the most serious moment of their lives.
But later they all enjoyed the festivities, the plates of good, hot chicken filling, mashed potatoes, and gravy. There was plenty of cake, pie, doughnuts, and cookies, with cornstarch pudding and grape mush. The children sat in a respectful row, ate with gusto, and tried not to think too much about how different their lives were about to be.
And so life began for Dan and Annie Beiler in 1932, on the farm he inherited from his parents on Hollander Road. He had inherited money from them as well, and had managed it well so that it had grown, despite the Depression. The house was substantial. Built of gray limestone, the mortar was as thick as seaworthy rope and the walls were so thick the windowsills easily held a variety of potted plants. There were six bedrooms upstairs, with a staircase along the front of the house and one in the back. The wealthy landowners who designed and built the house at the turn of the century, in 1798, had built the narrow curved staircase in the back for the servants’ use.
The kitchen ran along the side of the house that faced the large stone barn, with cabinets built by a German Baptist named Wesley Overland, well known for his distinctive style. There were polished hardwood floors and rugs scattered throughout the house tastefully. The furniture was far better than anything Annie had ever owned, so she appreciated the cherry sleigh beds and the heavy ornate dressers and bureaus. There were plenty of bed linens, patchwork quilts and heavy comforters made with sheep’s wool. They stretched the long kitchen table to add even more leaves to accommodate the eight children and their mother. There was an indoor bathroom with a porcelain commode, but no bathtubs—at that time they were frowned on in Amish homes and pronounced an unnecessary worldly luxury.
Annie could hardly believe this magnificent dwelling was now hers. She had never imagined an indoor facility to use the restroom, and certainly not in an Amish home. She realized Dan was a bit of a progressive, living in such comfort, plus the way he was outspoken about other modern inventions.
She cleaned and scoured, made up freshly washed beds with sheets and pillowcases just off the line. Dan told her to paint rooms wherever she felt a need, but she was appalled at the thought of spending money only to change the appearance of a room if it was perfectly serviceable without. She washed the walls, though, with a bucket of soapy water and a heavy cloth, wiping and scrubbing till her shoulders ached with fatigue.
When she was finished, she took stock of her situation and thought it quite manageable, really. Suvilla slept with Ida in a big double bed in the front room toward the barn. Lavina, Emma, and Hannah slept in the other front room, across the hallway.
Annie allowed Dan’s girls to stay in one room, and her own girls to stay in another. They had enough to merely become acquainted without having to share a bed. She put Amos with Joel and John, who all fit together in one bed nicely enough. She thought twelve-year-old Amos might appreciate being responsible for his smaller brothers.
Sammy was reserved a small room in the back, the former servant’s quarters, with only a single bed and dresser. He was more than pleased with this arrangement, having easy access to his own staircase to sneak in and out of the house whenever a bit of mischief beckoned.
Enos and Ephraim were tremendously happy to be allowed a room of their own without having to host Amos. Amos the Intruder, as they called him when they were alone. They knew it was wrong to think of him in those terms, but that’s what he was. He was always trying to get in on their private jokes or games, and it was a hassle to have to stop and try to explain everything.
The oblong room was left for the other Emma, Lydia, and Rebecca, the three little girls who were delighted to sleep in a sizable room together. There were two beds with a small stand in between, a place to put handkerchiefs and water glasses.
So that left one small room in the back for guests. Every respectable Amish home needed a comfortable guest room for overnight visitors, folks who traveled twenty or thirty miles with a horse-drawn carriage and needed a place to stay before they could make the return trip. To cook a delicious meal, to stable and feed the weary horse, was an honor. Most Amish families looked forward to receiving visitors. The parents would share stories and news over the dinner table as the children eyed one another with shy glances and listened with intrigue. Plus, company was a good excuse to bring out the sack of white sugar and bake a golden pound cake with brown sugar frosting.
Of course they would be getting visitors after their marriage, so Annie whipped everything into order in a few weeks’ time, just in time to drop seeds into the well-worked soil. The garden had been plowed to double its size, with nine more hungry mouths to feed. The flower beds were dug with fresh cow manure, the lawnmower sharpened and oiled, before the lawn was neatly mowed and trimmed.
The bedroom downstairs contained the furniture Annie had brought, with one of her quilts made up neatly on the high, iron bed frame. There was a rather large sampler on the wall, done in cross stitched embroidery, with the words “East or West, Home is Best” done in heavy black lettering with a design of roses in a myriad of brilliant colors. The frame was made of natural wood by Eli’s own hand, so Annie cherished this bit of frivolity more than anything she had brought.
Dan was gentle, caring, all she could ever want or need. To lie in his arms with the shrill cheeping of the spring peepers down at the pond, the breeze from the soft spring night like a balm from paradise, knowing she was loved, cherished, and so very appreciated was the closest thing to Heaven. But in the morning, there were challenges in the form of six children who were expected to accept the eight of her own into their home and lives. They sat in out-of-the-way corners and glowered when she became happy or silly with one of her own. She tried her best to draw Amos into a lively morning discussion, but he retaliated by his sullen look before letting himself quickly out the door. If Enos or Ephraim—at Annie’s prompting—tried to win him over, he thwarted all attempts at companionship with handfuls of thrown dirt and hurled swear words.
As problems arose, they dealt with them, although Annie had days when she wondered why she had ever thought another marriage was God’s will for her life. Especially days when the two Emmas locked horns, fighting and arguing and then pouting, disobeying her orders simply because they felt so miserable inside. “Emma One” and “Emma Two,” they called them. Neither one thought it was amusing. Each Emma wanted her own identity, and certainly did not want to share with the other.