1867-1932

by Florence Clymer Swartley Adams, 1981

I have very few early recollections of my mother, Mary Ella Clymer Swartley, but one was very baffling to me as a youngster. Whenever a thunderstorm threatened, the back shutters of our farmhouse* were closed and we were gathered into the sitting room. Mother always lay down on the lounge, her face to the wall. Finally, when I grew older, I realized that she was dreadfully afraid of storms. But these fears were not instilled in her children, not one of them!

My mother was a very even tempered person, rarely getting angry. She always had time to listen and help us with our problems. And she always had time to help us pack our lunches in the summer so we could eat them out in the orchard, sitting in our favorite tree, an early apple tree. I am sure we had apple pies made with those apples. Uncle Grant made us a little wooden ladder so we could easily get up to our favorite branches.

How mother could accomplish so much, especially during the spring, summer, and fall months, I will never know! Besides taking care of the house and six children, there was always the gardening. Mother took complete care of our fenced-in early garden in the back of the house. The boys helped with the digging and I helped by whitewashing the picket fence. Oh, how I hated that job!

This garden was a picture, especially during its early growth! There was a path down the middle and through the middle, with all raised beds. She planted "cut and come again" lettuce and radishes on the sloped sides. I don't remember ever helping her in this garden but I do remember helping to take care of the flower beds in our yard.

What good things came from those gardens! Many a time I saw my mother come around the corner of the house with nearly a dishpan full of strawberries. Because we had our cooked meal (dinner) at noon, our supper, on occasions when berries were ripe, consisted of strawberry shortcake soaked with milk. That was manna from heaven as far as I was concerned, but Aunt Laura didn't think so. She never liked anything soaked with milk. But she ate it or went hungry. My mother had her hard and fast rules! Uncle Art was a picky eater and many times he made himself milk toast because he did not like what the rest of us were having for supper. Besides strawberries, we had raspberries, currants, and gooseberries in this garden. All had to be picked in their turn and prepared for preserving or canning.

Then there was the truck patch. My father or the boys prepared this garden and my mother planted it. She picked the vegetables and carried them up the road in buckets. Even after school had started, Aunt Laura and I came home many a time to a canning or preserving mess in the kitchen which we had to clean up for our mother. We always had enough food to last all winter, a major concern of every housewife before the advent of electricity or grocery stores. Cabbage and root vegetables, such as beets, carrots, and turnips, were kept in our root cellar, a cold and damp earthen cellar under the washhouse.

Oh, what a hassle was washday! The water was heated in a farmer's boiler on an old coal stove out in the wood shed which was connected with our summer kitchen (going out to the outhouse). The washer was on a raised platform in the back corner of the shed and at least there was a back door leading to the backyard where we hung the clothes. Of course the line had to be put up and taken down each time. Aunt Laura and I pushed the washer back and forth manually, taking turns. We each pushed for ten minutes and kept an alarm clock handy to make sure we never pushed too long.

Baking was another big chore for my mother. She baked bread three times a week. But, if given the opportunity to go somewhere (to visit her mother or sisters) on a bread baking day, she was known to put the covered dough in the back of our falling top buggy, punching down the bread a few extra times during the ride, and baking it when she got home. I must say right now that our mother was the best bread baker in the county! Coming home from our nearby two room schoolhouse in Newville to the aroma of freshly baked bread is an indescribable experience. We were always allowed a buttered slice or two of warm bread, food for the gods! We loved mother's bread as much as her iced cakes, even though our father always cut off the icing before he ate his cake.

Pie making day was always towards the end of the week. Mother baked all kinds and shoo-fly pies, of course, were always among them. The pies were carefully carried to the basement and put on a hanging shelf, out of harm's way.

In addition to gardening, baking, and many other duties, Mother made ALL our clothes. Before she married my father in January of 1886, she made most of her four sisters' clothes, and in THOSE days that was a task! Only once did she get an outside seamstress. Aunt Laura and I were very small and she could not find time to get shirts made for Uncle Arthur and Uncle Grant. She was a beautiful seamstress and taught me all I know about sewing, except the making of bound buttonholes. Every spring and fall Mother took us on the train from Chalfont to Philadelphia to buy sewing materials for our clothes and bed linens. Traveling to Philadelphia by train was a great treat for us; exciting trips outside of Bucks County were few.

On her trips to Philadelphia Mother also purchased some of her homeopathic tinctures and pills. She had a homeopathic medicine chest which held small bottles of tiny white pills and large bottles of colorless liquids. She poured the correct liquid into a small bottle of pills and dispensed them to us as needed. We loved these medicines and they worked for all our minor illnesses. Mother also sent Aunt Laura and me down the road to collect the tiny leaves of the mouse ear plant. From the leaves she made a tea that was used for diarrhea. Elizabeth Swartley Stover remembers thinking how strange her great grandmother (Magdalena Clymer) looked on the summer day that she babysat Elizabeth. Magdalena was fighting a cold and sipped hot bergamot (bee balm or Oswego) tea on a very warm day dressed in a high collar, long sleeves, and a lace cap.

In the winter we had two favorite "patio" jobs; eating oysters and churning ice cream. I shall never forget the sight of my mother sitting on a stool on the summer kitchen patio opening oysters with her knife. Aunt Laura and I stayed close by to get the tiny bits that fastened the oyster to the shell. The MINUTE pieces were not enough to make us sick, I can assure you! And every winter our father and brothers helped fill an icehouse some distance from the farm, down by the creek. Blocks of ice were stacked on beds of straw. We had ice available for quite a while whenever the urge came to make ice cream.

At the end of December we cut down a cedar tree for our Christmas tree. It was decorated with popcorn chains and cardboard picture ornaments. Each child set out a plate and on Christmas morning we found our plate filled with one gift (such as mittens, a cap, or a doll) and good things to eat (such as oranges, chocolate candy, and hard candy in the shape of toys). Then we traveled by sleigh to our grandparents' farm (where my mother grew up) for Christmas dinner (on Lower State Road in Tradesville where the stone quarry is located today). Every sleigh carried a large basket with toys wrapped in bags for the cousins.

Spring reminds me of my mother's early fenced-in garden and the picket fence I painted each year. But May of 1909 reminds me of a surprise I will never forget. Uncle John was an unexpected arrival, at least to us! I was nine and Aunt Laura was six. He was premature and so tiny at birth that he didn't much change the appearance of my stout mother. We used to say that he was so small that he could fit into a quart jar! He had no fingernails or toenails. Aunt Laura had whooping cough and was only allowed to look at her new brother from the bedroom door. We never dreamed he would one day earn a Ph.D., author books, and become Chairman of the Horticulture Department at Temple University! (THE CULTIVATED HEMLOCKS 1984)

And it wasn't long before Laura had seen enough of him! To our dismay, Mother sat him in the middle of the kitchen table while we did our homework. One day John had his first tantrum. My mother hurriedly pulled everything out of the bottom of our kitchen cabinet, stuffed him in, and closed the door. No more tantrums! Most of all we hated lying down with him on the bed in his room every time he was put to bed or put down for a nap, especially when we had company. There were many times when we were ready to send our brother back where he came from.

Every summer we enjoyed an outing to Willow Grove Park for Children's Day. Mother took us in the horse and buggy to Warrington to get the trolley to Willow Grove Park. The park was a trolley park serviced by a few trolley lines from Philadelphia and Doylestown The trolley terminal was across Easton Rd. from the park entrance. We departed the trolley and descended the stairs into two tunnels dug under Easton Road. Emerging from the tunnels we suddenly heard all the thrilling sounds of the park. In those days there was a strict dress code. Men, young or old had to wear a tie and jacket! We always packed a lunch and Mother went on all the rides with us, including the "Mountain Scenic Railway" and "Captive Flying Machine." Those sure were fun days! I remember a thunderstorm on the the way home one time. We were in an open trolley and got a bit damp and crumpled. But all this excitement just added to our big day. Considering how our mother hated thunderstorms, I realize now that she probably had different thoughts!

Summer brought other pleasures for Mother. On the way home from visiting her sister Addie who lived in Atlantic City, New Jersey, mother always bought a basketful of cantaloupes and ate every one herself. Not one of the rest of the family cared for them anyway. We always said mother liked them "good, bad, or indifferent." And after playing tennis on summer evenings and going to the ice cream parlor, we always brought ice cream home for her.

In the summer of 1910 my mother's family organized the first formal Clymer Reunion and each summer after that my mother looked forward to the day she could spend with her extended family. My grandfather's brothers and sisters (the children of Henry Kulp Clymer 1812-1865 and Mary Haldeman Benner 1818-1899) were getting older and wanted the families to gather together at least once a year. On Sunday after church we took our buggy to my grandfather's farm which Uncle Elmer had taken over. It had been in the family since my grandfather (Eli Clymer) purchased it in 1868 from John Grove. Eli and his brothers and sisters grew up on Henry and Mary Benner Clymer's farm in New Britain Township.**

The host of the reunion set up tables under large shade trees and provided a ham and homemade ice cream for the guests. Everyone else brought favorite dishes to share for Sunday dinner and supper. Games were organized for the children and adults and there was a time for us to recite poems or Bible passages or sing a song. A president and secretary were elected and a business meeting was conducted. We always sang the hymn, "Bless Be the Tie that Binds" to conclude the business meeting.

In the fall of the year pottery crocks of apple butter were stored in the summer kitchen loft, but Mother did not have to make the apple butter. A closed spiral stairway rose to the dark cobwebbed loft. A barrel of apples always landed in the summer kitchen. I can still see my father peeling and eating an apple every night before going to bed.

As the fall days turned crisp it was time to butcher. Ordinarily, we were never allowed to miss school, but on the days when our teachers had to go to "Institute" (Teacher's Institute at Doylestown Academy), we got to see the whole gory mess. I can still hear the squeal of the pigs as they were caught and lifted by a pulley above the scalding pots. They were positioned for killing, dropped into the great iron kettle and scalded, then up again for scraping. It was exciting, I can assure you! Dad usually got a neighbor to help, especially when the boys were younger. Then all were taken into the summer kitchen and cut up. The scrapple was made, cooked, and canned. Pork chops and tenderloin were canned also. Ponhaus, a form of scrapple, was also made...a mammoth job! Mother helped with all of this and our older sister, Ethel, took over the running of the household.

In fact, she almost raised Aunt Laura and me. Ethel had rheumatic fever as a young girl and had to stay out of school for a full year. Just as our mother had done, she packed lunches for us so we could climb in our favorite tree and have a picnic lunch. After Ethel got married in 1912 to Wilmer Weir and moved to Willow Grove, Mother could not figure out how to comb our hair, especially Laura's wild mop! Mother soon caught on. Did we ever miss our big sister!

Aunt Laura and I remember the elaborate costumes that Ethel made for herself each Halloween. One year she made a costume with a large paper mache head. While she was wearing the costume it began to rain. The head got wet and she could not get it off! She was sure that she would suffocate.

My mother had eight grades of schooling at Mill Creek School (or County Line) and two years at the Doylestown Academy. At sixteen she started to teach at County Line School and at eighteen she was married. My mother's formal teaching career was short lived. Her father, Eli Benner Clymer (1841-1918), had been the School Director of the County Line School for a number of years and her mother, Magdalena Detweiler Clymer (1844-1934), believed strongly that all women should have an education. She insisted that all her daughters attend the Doylestown Academy or West Chester Normal School. That was progressive thinking for a Mennonite woman in the nineteenth century! Mother's Aunt Kate (Eli Clymer's younger sister) may have set an example for her. Ephraim Kratz asked Aunt Kate to marry him. The elders of the Line Lexington Mennonite Church warned her that she would be excommunicated from the Mennonite Church if she married Ephraim. Ephraim had lost favor with the Mennonite elders because he attended Millersville State Teachers' College. At that time the Mennonites did not approve of secular higher education. Aunt Kate chose to marry him and she was excommunicated. The elders may have regretted losing Kate as a member of their fellowship because they later agreed that if she repented and said she was sorry they would allow her back into the fellowship. She resolutely refused and stated that she was NEVER SORRY that she chose to marry Ephraim Kratz. At the funerals for Eli and Magdelena Clymer,mother's parents, the elders chastised Mary Ella and her brothers and sisters for not attending the Mennonite Church. The tone and occasion of the chastisement further alienated the family from the Mennonites. 

Not only was Mother very good in spelling (she won the Bucks County Spelling Bee nine years in a row), but she was a whiz at mental arithmetic. Mother could always estimate in her head the amount of carpet that was needed for a floor or the store bill before the storekeeper. Uncle Art took after mother but the rest of us had trouble with math. In fact, she even insisted that I take math at West Chester even though I did not need the credit.

Like her mother, she took an active part in our formal education. My parents provided education or special training for each child after high school. When Arthur graduated from high school she enrolled him in a special school in Pittsburgh that helped people with speech difficulties. Arthur had a stuttering problem, although he could sing without stuttering. The school taught him to compensate and cope...by touching his pinkie to his eye and starting his sentence again. He was a great story teller!

Instead of paying for Ethel's college education my parents furnished every room of her home in Willow Grove with Mission Oak furniture as a wedding gift. I remember Wilmer coming with his buggy to call on Ethel. On one occasion my sister Ethel was still upstairs getting ready when Wilmer arrived. I decided to entertain him but before long I felt sick to my stomach and threw up in the most convenient place, the coal shuttle. When Ethel came down and realized what I had done she was horrified and embarrassed.

Ethel and Wilmer were married at high noon in our home on February 21,1912. Everyone waited for our old grandfather clock to strike 1200 noon but for some reason it never struck 1200 that day! I remember the atmosphere was very pink and beautiful as they drove down the road in their buggy to the new home that Wilmer had built for his bride in Willow Grove. For a wedding gift Mother's sister Flora wrote out all of the family recipes..but not one recipe had a specific measurement, just a pinch of this and a handful of that. During World War 1 Wilbur was a ship builder in Philadelphia. In 1919 he bought a farm in Ivyland with an 18th century farmhouse without electricity or running water.

Mother was an active member in the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). During World War 1 she went regularly to the Firehouse in Chalfont to sew bandages and knit socks for the soldiers. Aunt Laura learned to knit there and Ethel's daughter, Janet, remembers the knitted doll outfits that Aunt Laura gave her for Christmas.

Mother loved to read. Our grandmother said that when she sent our mother upstairs to clean...what would she do? Read, of course! She always found time to read to us when we were sick. I don't remember her reading to us any other time. It was up to us to learn to read and we did, liking it as much as our mother. Our father, on the other hand, only finished the third grade and Aunt Laura does not think he could read. It is possible that he was dyslexic. Mother always saw that we had reading material such as UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, BLACK BEAUTY, ELSIE DINSMORE, HEIDI, and LITTLE WOMEN. We never had a radio in the farmhouse and it wasn't until 1917 that we saw our first motion picture. There was no sound, of course. We took the buggy to Lansdale and saw a movie starring Mary Pickford.

We moved from the farmhouse to a brick house on Main Street in Chalfont in 1916 when I was 16 because Uncle Arthur and his new bride, Grace Weisel, took over the farm. By that time my father had a job with New Britain Township. Of course my mother had a garden in her new home. She worked hard to get the ground in shape; it was pure clay. She dumped ashes from our coal heater on the garden until she finally had good soil. She even had strawberries again!

Every night before we went to bed Mother said prayers with us. I suppose her mother did the same with her when she was growing up. Doris Weir McDonald remembers Grandmother Clymer praying earnestly and loudly one Sunday morning when she was visiting Ethel at the Ivyland farm. Ethel and Wilmer had gone to church at the Dutch Reformed Church in Richboro. Magdalena did not feel well enough to sit through the whole service so remained at home to pray for the family and read the Bible. She left her Bible home and asked Doris to help her find Ethel's Bible. They searched the farmhouse high and low but never found Ethel's Bible. She kept it in her clothing drawer! Doris remembers overhearing her great grandmother pray for everyone in the family that Sunday morning. Later in the day two-year old Janet slid out a second story window onto the porch roof. Magdalena Clymer shouted to Ethel, "Ethel, your daughter just fell out of the bedroom window."

My grandparents, Eli and Magdalena Clymer, were members of the Line Lexington Mennonite Meetinghouse and, weather permitting, made the long carriage ride from their home in Warrington Township to the Line Lexington Mennonite Meetinghouse or the Doylestown Meetnghouse on Lower State Road. They are buried in the cemetery at the Line Lexington Mennonite Church and Grandmother Clymer wore a white lace cap or black bonnet until the day she died.

When my mother was a child a minister visited the Line Lexington Church  once a month. Once a month my mother or one of her younger brothers and sisters - Addie, Hannah, Frank, Elmer, Flora, Oliver, and Emma - took a turn accompanying Eli and Magdelena in the buggy to Line Lexington. The buggy could hold no more than three so the others walked across the back field of the farm to the Pleasantville Reformed Church on the Limekiln Pike. My mothers generation was the first generation of Clymers and Detweilers not be baptized as ADULTS in the Mennonite Faith.

My mother and father brought us to the Pleasantville Church  when no minister was present at Line Lexington and we were all baptized as infants. My mother had the reputation of having the prettiest babies at the Pleasantville Church! Uncle Arthur remembers accompanying our father, William Swartley, to meetings at the Franconia Mennonite Church in Montgomery County. Our Klemmer (Clymer) immigrant ancestors helped establish the church in the mid 1700's and both Klemmer and Swartley immigrant ancestors are buried in the Franconia Mennonite Cemetery. Arthur remembers greeting cousins at the services.

The sudden death of my father in 1922 was a sad, sad, experience. Elizabeth Swartley Stover, Arthur's daughter, remembers the Saturday in November that her grandpop and a friend stopped by the farmhouse on their way to a sale. Elizabeth and Arthur were sitting in a galvanized wash tub on the kitchen table taking their Saturday baths. Elizabeth was 5 and Arthur was 3. "Grandpop" tickled them on their chins on the way out the kitchen door. He wanted to visit the sale before returning for the Annual Fire Company Supper at Forest Park that evening. My mother and I drove over early to the supper because we had to wait on tables. On the way to the supper Elizabeth saw her grandpop lying on a shutter (taken from a nearby house to be used as a stretcher) waiting to be taken to Abington Hospital after being hit by an automobile. He was walking along the road because Mother and I had taken the car over earlier. My father never regained consciousness and died in Abington Hospital a few days later. He was the first automobile casualty in Bucks County! The circumstance of his death made me feel especially bad for a long time. Somehow my mother and Uncle John (the only child still living at their brick home on Main Street) carried on, although it was not easy. The farm had to be sold to settle his estate. Uncle Arthur's family moved to Horsham to manage Mr. Frick's farm. (Grace HELSEL Kaiser's family bought the farm and lived there until 1945 when her sister was also killed by a hit and run driver on the same road! In 1927 the Helsels installed electricity and indoor plumbing in the old farmhouse.)

I graduated from West Chester Normal School and taught school in Huntingdon Valley where I rented a room. Mother suggested that I should visit her in Chalfont the next weekend. She had an ulterior motive. A young man from Wales by the name of Thomas Adams was coming to Pleasantville Reformed Church on Sunday and he might be looking for a wife....Mother had a single daughter...I fell into my mother's trap innocently. I was impressed with Tom, liked his accent, and found many reasons to return home to Chalfont on weekends. Tom and I were married on Halloween in 1923. We lived in a house along the railroad in Chalfont and Tom worked as an insurance salesman and collector in Philadelphia.

Another tragedy occurred when Uncle John and Mother had an automobile accident. As a result, Mother had her smashed hand removed down to the bottom of her thumb...a terrible ordeal for all of us. Tom and I and our children Jim and Jane moved in with mother to take over, renting our house. Mother finally learned to write with her left hand. She loved crossword puzzles and could never find enough of them. She even learned to darn socks with her left hand, holding the sock against her chest. She tried and tried to learn to crochet but finally had to give up on that.

My daughter Jane and her grandmother were inseparable during those years that we lived together and I'm so sorry that Jane scarcely remembers her grandmother, although she does remember the walks they used to take. Jane was 4 when mother died in 1932 of a bowel obstruction. She had a bad heart and a history of high blood pressure.

I hate to admit that I did not fully appreciate my mother until she died. She was a wonderful person; good, intelligent, and kind. She was not affectionate and her frankness seemed blunt at times, but we had a fine relationship. Tom loved her as she loved him. They were two peas in a pod. She taught him how to garden and from that time on gardening was his one and only hobby.

After mother's death in July the house was sold and we moved to our home on Edge Hill Road in Abington in November. I missed my mother and spent a miserable winter not knowing what was wrong with me. I felt almost ill. As always, time healed the pain. I thank God I had such a remarkable mother.

Florence Swartley Adams (1900-1998) wrote most of this in a letter to her niece, Doris Weir McDonald, when Doris requested in 1980 that she write down memories of her mother (and Doris' grandmother), Mary Ella Clymer. In 1998 Donna Basinger, great granddaughter of Mary Ella Clymer, edited the letter and added additional information collected from Florence, Elizabeth Swartley Stover, and other sources.

*The farmhouse is located on Rt. 152, just north of Chalfont. It is no longer accessible from Rt. 152. The address is 29 Marian Circle, Chalfont 18914. It sits in the midst of a new development built in the fields of the old Swartley Farm. The house was probably built in the early 1800's by John Swartley (1792-1856), William Swartley's grandfather. William's great grandfather, Philip traveled to America about 1782 from Baden, Germany. The Rev. Henry Rosenberger of Franconia Township, Montgomery County (and Franconia Mennonite Church) paid his passage. Philip's brother had already come to America as a redemptioner, was baptized in the Mennonite Church, and married one of Henry's daughters. Philip, baptized in the Reformed Church in Eppingen, Germany, also joined the Mennonite church and married the Rev. Rosenberger's other daughter, Sarah. In 1790 he bought 177 acres in New Britain Township from William Morris. Philip and John attended Line Lexington Mennonite Church and are buried there. Two small attic windows on each side of the west chimney of the farmhouse look out toward Line Lexington over the land that once was the Detweiler farm just across Rt. 152.