I was born in Henley, on Thames, Oxfordshire, England, March 23, 1824. I was the only child of Thomas and Martha Snell.
Henley at that time was a pretty little town about thirty-five miles west of the City of London. The house in which I was born was on New street, one block from the beautiful River Thames.
I had a good father and mother who were very kind to me, and who provided everything needful to make my childhood days pleasant and happy.
When about three years old I was sent to school. The teacher was a lady about forty years of age. Her name was Mrs. Hiveabee. She wore a white cap, as all married ladies did, and was kind but very firm. We all had to obey her when spoken to and were not allowed to whisper. I was taught to say my letters, and then to spell. We paid every week on Monday morning, each child taking the money in her hand and laying it on the table, making a courtesy to the governess as we entered the room. This school was for small children. The schools were all private, held at the home of the teacher. They usually numbered about twenty-five pupils. We were taught our letters, and then to spell and read; also, were given our first lessons in sewing. If we were naughty, our punishment was to stand in a corner or to sit up on a table by the window with a dunce cap on our heads. I well remember having to sit there very often. Sometimes we had to sit in a high chair and look at the clock, not daring to take our eyes off of it until the time was up and we were told to go to our seats. I think I went to that school until I was about six years old, then went to one or a higher grade where we were taught to write and cipher, also to read correctly and to sew. I began to make my father’s shirts when only eight years old; I also worked a fine sampler at that age; could stitch without missing a thread, and make button-holes much better than most women do nowadays—was taught to hem neatly. We were taught to write by first making straight marks and then, pot hooks and hangers, then to make letters. We used slates and pencils; the teacher would set us a copy, giving us five or six letters at a time, until we were through the alphabet, then she would givens a word or two of one syllable, then some words of more than one syllable. We were taught figures in the same way I remember how proud I was when I had learned to write well enough to have paper and pen and ink; then we had copybooks, and often when we made mistakes the schoolmaster would rap our hands with a rule. We always had a man to teach in writing and arithmetic.
Most schools opened with reading a chapter in the Bible, all standing in a line and reading verse about as our turn came, then turning our faces to the wall while prayer was offered, all joining in the Lord’s prayer at the close.
I attended one school while just a small girl where we were taught to sing’ little songs. I remember some of them which I will give farther on—one was the “Bread Song,” another “The Little Clock that Stood in the Corner,” and another “The Cricket Song.”
The last school I attended I was just about thirteen and remained until I was sixteen. There we studied grammar, geography and history, besides arithmetic, for which we paid one shilling per week. There was only one public school in our town. It was called the national school. Only children whose parents attended the Church of England, as they called it there (the Episcopal Church it is called here), could go to that school. It was intended for the poorer people who could not pay to send their children to the private schools. They had to wear the clothes furnished by the authorities of the school. The girls wore short dresses, coarse merino, it would be called here, short sleeves, long cotton gloves or half-handers, reaching up to the elbows, white tippets and white aprons, which had to be spotlessly clean white straw bonnets and green ribbon across, tied under the chin, something like our Salvation Army people wear. The boys were in a separate room from the girls, and were always dismissed after the girls. They wore blue jackets and knee breeches, blue stockings, yellow garters, blue caps with a yellow tassel in the center of the top. All these attended the Church of England every Sabbath, starting from the school house two and two—girls first, boys after, teachers walking with them until they reached the church, then marching up the stairs to the gallery above the choir-girls sitting on one side, boys on the other. The parson with his robe on was seated in a high pulpit reached by a long flight of stairs; and in a pulpit a little lower down the clerk was seated. All he had to do was to say “Amen,” read Collect or a Prayer, then the Beadle went quietly around up and down the isles with a long pole in his hand to see that no one misbehaved. The children and young people were all afraid to stir lest the Beadle should see them and punch them with his pole. They had no carpets on the floors in churches, and but few people had them in their homes they scrubbed their floors on their hands and knees and wiped them up good, then sprinkled white sand over them to keep them clean. This they could sweep off when quite dry.
The town clock was up in the belfry of the church which faced on Arch street. When there was a wedding the bells rang their merriest peals. How I used to enjoy hearing them ring. If there was a funeral they tolled in slow, solemn sound. I often think if I could go to England and ride in the old stage coach from London to Henley, and be taken to the bridge that goes across the River Thames I could then go all over that town; it would make no difference what changes have been made, I could not get lost. I can see the inn at the foot of the bridge kept by a family whose name was Dixson, then go up the steps on to the terrace and around the old Church of England, at the back of which is the graveyard.
Now I want to tell about our Sunday school. This I attended twice every Sabbath—went at nine a.m. until ten. At that time all the seats were turned around to face the audience-room. Every girl remained for preaching service, no one was permitted to leave without giving a lawful excuse. At half past ten the services commenced; about six teachers sat in a row to watch the children to see that they did not move about nor whisper during the service. The boys were not allowed to sit with the girls. Their school was in the gallery just above ours so that we could not see them at all. After preaching we went home, ate our dinner, rested awhile, and at two o’clock we all went back and remained until four. We did not always have the same teacher in the afternoon. We read the Scriptures, repeated verses we had committed to memory—sometimes whole chapters—after which the teacher taught us the Catechism and Ten Commandments, talked to us, asked us questions about the Bible, and then react to us some entertaining story book, generally about some good little girl who was a Christian, and then took sick and died—as all real good children were reported to do when I was young. I guess they do not do that way now! We did not have any, nice singing or music like we have now. A man by the name of Mr. Goodchild came in the morning and opened the school. We sang one hymn and he prayed and then went away, and another man came in the evening and prayed, and so the school was closed. There was a small organ in the Sunday school. There was a large pipe organ up in the gallery which was used for preaching service only. I often think as I attend our Sunday school with music and sweet singing, kind teachers, and everything to make it attractive and pleasant, what a contrast to the Sunday school of sixty and seventy-five years ago, when we had no nice music, and only sang one hymn at the opening of the school, and it was very dry singing even then. I remember one of the hymns we used to sing—I wish I could call to mind the tune, but I cannot. I will give two of the stanzas:
“Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God has made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For ‘tis their nature to;
But, children, you should never let
Your angry passions rise—
Your little hands were never meant
To tear each other’s eyes.”
Such hymns as these were good enough for those days, but we would not like to use them now.
If we misbehaved we were taken up to the Superintendent and reprimanded before all the school, and it was considered a great disgrace, and I am sure it was very humiliating. One other; thing I will mention in connection with our Sunday school. We used to have a treat once a year. We had some lectures from some very wise and experienced men. They told us we should love our kind teachers, and be thankful to them for being so kind as to leave their homes and come to teach us to read the Bible, and all about Jesus who died to save us, and they told us also how much more highly we were favored than the poor heathen across the sea who never heard of Jesus and did not have any Sunday schools and kind teachers such as we had. They told us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do, and a great many other things. After this we walked two and two out into the grave-yard back of the chapel, and as we passed out of the door each one received a large bun with currants in it and sugar on the top. We were then at liberty to go home. Once in fifty years all the Sunday schools had a jubilee in memory of Rev. Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday schools. The fiftieth year happened to come around when I was quite a small girl, and it was duly celebrated. The teachers were all to go around amongst the people and try to raise some money for the benefit of Sunday schools, those who raised a certain sum were to receive a steel engraving of Robert Raikes. I heard them talking about it, so I thought I would try it. I made a little green silk bag, with a draw-string of green silk cord; I fancy I see it now. I started out to beg the money, and when I asked the people for money and told what it was for they nearly all gave me some because I was a little girl. When the day of the Jubilee came we had buns and candy, and all the school was permitted to play in the grave-yard and have a good time; then we had speeches, telling all about Robert Raikes, and then the collection was called for. I walked up with my little green silk bag and it was about full. I had collected more than most of the teachers, so I was presented with a steel engraving of Robert Raikes. I brought it to this country with me, and I remember having it many years after I was married, but do not know what became of it.
I always loved to beg money for the church or for any good cause. I never felt afraid to ask people for it, and was seldom refused. I have attended Sabbath school all my life, and am going still, and expect to be a member until I am unable to go. It had a good influence over me in my younger days, and has been a great blessing to me all along life’s journey, and I love the Sabbath school above everything else. I have received many special blessings while teaching my class, and I do not believe that many are lost eventually who all through their lives attend Sabbath school. My mother was a Christian woman, a member of the Congregational Church. My earliest recollections of her are when she would undress me ready for bed, and have me kneel down and say my prayers, then put me in bed and tuck the covers in all around me and kiss me good night. She taught me that it was my duty to read the Bible, to do right, never to tell stories or be disobedient to my teachers, to love Jesus, to have great reverence for ministers and all good people, to shun all that was sinful and bad, to have great respect for religion and Church, and whenever I met an aged person or a minister or a superior on the street I should always drop them a courtesy, which I never failed to do.
My grandmother, my father’s mother, lived in the same town that we did. She also attended the Congregational Church, and all my relatives as far as I ever knew attended that church. I was baptized, or christened, as they called it, in this church when an infant, and never went to any other that I remember of until I came to America. It was called the Independent Congregational Chapel. The first pastor that I remember was Robert Bolton1—his daughter was my first Sunday school teacher. I had been in her class a number of years when her father had a call to a church in New York, and he and his family came to America. Then we had a new pastor, James Rowland. He was a very handsome man, child as I was, I noticed that. His wife was a very homely woman, and ten years older than he, with a large family of children. However, It was the custom in England for a man to marry a woman older than himself.
My mother’s parents both died before I was born. My mother had a daughter by a former husband. She was seven or eight years older than I. Her father died when she was quite small.
My father was not a Christian, but he was a hard-working industrious man. I have often heard him say he had never had a dollar given him in his life, but that he had worked and earned all he had. The first that I remember of my father was his standing me under a little round table that stood in front of the fire to set the candle and snuffer’s tray on of evenings, and he would teach me to say:
“I am a little girl,
Scarcely as high as the table.
I can eat, drink and sleep,
But to work I am not able.”
I also remember that he kept cows, sold milk, butter, eggs, lard and cheese. The cows were kept in a meadow across the River Thames. They came home every night to be milked, and were taken back in the morning. As our house was only one block from the river we could see the meadow very plainly. My father did not own the house in which we then lived. As I think of it now it was a very queerly constructed building. It was three stories high; was built of brick with a roof of tile. The parlor and the room over it both had large bay windows in front. It had a long passage-way the length of the house with doors opening on one side into the different rooms. The stairway went up in about the center, the door at the end opened into the back yard. While I was quite small we moved into a house of our own. My father quit the dairy business and became a contractor. He bought land in the suburbs of the town. It was called the Blue Mountains. He built four houses there, and we moved into one and lived there quite awhile. They were built upon an elevated piece of ground. We reached them by a flight of stone steps, but when we were up there it was a lovely place. One could see all over town. The houses were all in a row, and were built of brick with slate roofs—in fact, the roof was continuous, covering the whole row. Then there was a garden in front of each with borders of flowers—the sweetest and prettiest I ever saw, then a flower bed next, and then the vegetables as only old England can produce. After awhile father bought a piece of ground not quite so far up the street and nearer to the business part of the town, on a street that was called Gray’s Lane. Here he built two houses, having heard that an illuminating gas works was about to locate in that quarter of the town. As soon as the houses were finished we moved into one and rented the other. The gas company came, and sure enough they built very near to us. They, also built a nice little cottage across the street from our house, and sent a man and his family to live in it–the foreman of the works. His name was George Usher, from Gloucestershire. They were very nice people, and we liked them very much. They had several children, both boys and girls, and we had a nice time playing together. The gas was a wonderful thing then, as it was the first introduction of it there. I remember how we used to go and look it all over, and how we wondered especially at the great tank that set in the water – sometimes it rose to the top and other times it would sink down in the water.
We had a nice garden back of the house, and at the back of that a good sized orchard full of fruit trees. There were among them quite a number of choice cherry trees. I have never seen any in this country like them. They were mostly very large and sweet, although some were fine large sour ones. It soon came to be thickly settled all around us. It was getting built up and houses were in demand, so father sold these two houses for a good price and we moved back into one next to the house we had lived in before. We liked that place because it was so high, and we enjoyed the scenery and the fresh air. Father bought three houses still farther out in the Blue Mountains. These were in a lovely place, with meadows around full of butter-cups and daisies, cowslips and blue bells. It was a beautiful place to take walks and gather flowers. We rented these houses, also the other next to where we lived. The people did not pay rent by the month as they do here, but by the week. Some one of us went around every Monday morning and collected rents. It was nearly always laid away ready for us when we called for it. The Blue Mountains are within the town limits now, and all that part of the town is built up. A nice church has been erected, and the street is called Gray’s avenue. It must be a lovely place now, so much higher than any other part of the town. How I would love to see the improvements that have been made since we left there. I remember when we lived in England we often had sprats for supper. The boys used to go about the street crying, “sprats, O, all but alive O!” We used to go out and buy as many as we wished. They were something like little minnows, and we laid them in rows on a gridiron and broiled them. I can remember just how they looked. They were very nice, and we ate them with slices of bread and butter about seven or eight o’clock at night. I have never seen any of them in this country.
After a while my father thought we would like to go to America, as he had been hearing so much about it. He did not like to sell off everything and take us without knowing more about the country, so he went alone, leaving us six houses to draw rent from besides the one we lived in. It was enough to keep us comfortable. I think he left in 1833. I was then ten years old. My mother, my half-sister and I lived in our little home together. Father bought a farm near Mount Vernon or Gambier, Ohio, where he lived several years and was successful as a farmer. We got along very well in England. I went to school and so the days passed by. I felt badly for awhile at the absence of my father, hut soon became accustomed to it. I was full of life and fun, and kept everything and everybody moving at home or wherever I happened to be, but with my dear mother it was different. She was sad and lonely, and as I look back now I can see she was greatly troubled, but she was so kind and loving, so self-sacrificing, she never murmured or complained, and I was too young and thoughtless to understand her feelings.
My father had a mother and two sister’s living in Henley on the same street on which I was born, close to the River Thames. His oldest sister, Mrs. John Halliway, was my favorite aunt. I used to visit her a great deal. She had lost several children—little girls. Their death almost broke her heart. She had two boys, Henry and Charles. We were strongly attached to each other. My Uncle John was very kind to me. He was a painter and glazier. It was he who framed the sampler I worked which I have since given to my grand daughter and name-sake, Ellen Snell O’Bannon, third daughter of my eldest son, Thomas.
My father had two other sisters, Mrs. John Hone and Mrs. John Shifters. The latter lived out in the country, the former in Henley.
My grandmother was a devoted Christian, and gave me a great deal of good advice. She was very fond of me, and I was her only sons only child. My mother was born in Wallingford, Berkshire. Her maiden name was Martha Miles. Wallingford was eleven miles from Henley. She had four sisters living. She was younger than these. The sisters next older than she lived in London, she afterwards spent six years in France, then went back to London and married a Mr. Baker. He was a tailor by trade and worked at it until his health failed. He then set up a small grocer shop, a store we would call it here. He afterwards died and left her the grocery and a little income besides. She remained in London, so she was a stranger to me. The three other sisters lived in Wallingford all their lives. Aunt Sarah had a son and a daughter. The son I never saw, the daughter died of consumption. Aunt Bettie never married. She was very kind to me. I used to visit them all about once a year, and I always staid with Aunt Bettie part of the time. She used to give me a good many nice things. Once she bought me a very large and pretty wax doll. It was dressed very beautifully, and the sweetest thing about it was that she made all its clothes just as if it were a real baby, so that I could take them off and put them on, and could wash them when they were soiled. It also had a lovely willow cradle with a bed in it just to fit. She made a cute little bolster and pillow, with linen cases buttoned at the ends, also a nice blanket and sheets and quilt. I surely did get much comfort and real enjoyment with that doll and cradle. I was very careful with it and kept it very nicely. I used to play with it by the hour—dressing and undressing it, making its bed and rocking it to sleep. I brought it with me to this country; and I had it several years after I was married. I did not let my first child, little Margaret, have it to play with until was about four years old. One day Tom, her little brother, got hold of the poor dollie and he thought It was cold so he laid it down on the hearth before a hot fire and melted its head. Of course it was ruined. I had a china head put on and kept it a long time, but the children cried for it. After they had once seen it there was no peace and I let them have it, and they enjoyed it as I had done in years gone by.
But to go back to my story—my mother’s eldest sister, my Aunt Mary Haverd, had lost her husband a number of years previous to this. She and her youngest daughter lived together, but the girl married soon. This aunt was kind in her way, but she had very little patience with children, especially if they did not behave real nicely, and but few of them did. I remember she used to send us mince pies and hog pudding every Christmas. Once when—I was visiting her in Wallingford she told me if I would be a good girl and keep my best clothes clean, she would take me with her to Oxford, as she was going there in a few days on a visit. I tried to do as she had said, for I had never been to Oxford, the place where the great college was. I succeeded very well for a day or two and was awful good, but my Aunt Sarah who lived at the other end of town came and invited me to spend the afternoon with her on the following day. Now to get to my Aunt Sarah’s I had to go through a sort of park, called the Crinnecraft. It was a beautiful place—was level all over and covered with grass, and wild flowers. Around two sides of it there were high mounds thrown up all along, and every now and then a ravine between them. On the outside or these banks was a brook about as wide as the canal is in Newark, Ohio, and every spring the water was drawn off so as to clean it—just as they clean our canal here. The men who cleaned it had a punt or boat in which they stood to scrape the mud up on each side so it could be carried away. My Aunt Mary dressed me in my best clothes, with white stockings and low shoes. “Now,” she said, “do not go up and walk on top of the banks, but keep straight down on the walk until you get to the gate that leads out into the street, then go right straight to Aunt Sarah’s.” I started out all right. I did not go on top of the mounds at all, but when I came to one of those ravines I saw a lot of children playing in the punt. I stopped a moment to look at them. They called me to come and get in the punt. At first I said, “No,” but they insisted, and at last I went. There was a plank to walk from the bank to the boat. They were all larger girls than I, so one of them led me along, and they were all nice to me, although I had never seen one of them before. I got in the punt all right, but presently some cows came down toward the boat to drink. The girls were all frightened and began to scramble out. I ran with the rest, but someone ran against me and pushed me off into the mud and water. I was in a pretty plight, but they helped me out and I began to cry. They told me not to feel badly, they would clean my clothes, so they stripped me off and each one donated something they had on and wrapped me in it, and I sat down under a tree. They got back in the punt and were just ready to wash my clothes by reaching down over the side to the water when a woman, who lived in one of the houses on the other side of the brook and had been watching the proceedings, thought she recognized me, having often seen me at my Aunt Sarah’s, and accordingly appeared on the scene and stopped the performance. She took me by the hand and led me over the brook to her house, then she dressed me in her little girl’s clothes and took me to my Aunt Sarah’s who had been expecting me for some time. As soon as Aunt Sarah heard the story she bundled up my clothes and took me back to my Aunt Mary and the tale was told to her. To say she was displeased and angry would not be a drop in the bucket. She scolded me for an hour, and said: “You naughty bad girl, now you have done for yourself! Thee shan’t go to Oxford one step, but tomorrow thee shalt go home, and I will send a letter telling the reason!” So in the morning I was sent in Mrs. Gibbon’s bread cart. She took bread once every week to Henley and sold it to her regular customers. Her husband had a bakery in Wallingford, and although it was eleven miles the cart was covered and was very warm and comfortable, and it never failed to make the trip. We always rode back and forth with her whenever we desired to do so. My mother thought from what I told her and from the letter sent that I had been punished enough, and she was not as hard on me as I expected,; but I shall remember until my dying day the reason why I never went to Oxford. Those aunts have all died many years ago, and I have lost track of all their families except one daughter, Cousin Jane Kislingberry. She was a daughter of Aunt Mary, the one who was to have me taken to Oxford.
One thing I ought to speak of with regard to Wallingford. They always had a watchman who walked the streets at night and cried the hour and the kind of weather. Every hour you could hear his heavy tread past the house, saying: “Past ten o’clock, a cloudy night, and all’s well;” or, “Past twelve, a starlight night;” or “A frosty night.” So we always knew the hour and the kind of weather, and whether it was cloudy or moonlight; rainy or otherwise. I have thought this must be what inspired the hymn, “Watchman, tell us of the night.” It was the custom all over England to have these watchmen, and it made one feel very safe at night to know they were walking back and forth. But to go back to Cousin Jane. Her husband’s name was William, and he was a blacksmith. She came to this country with her family in 1842. They moved to Bowling Green, three miles east of Newark, Ohio. They had one son whose name was Thomas, and also two daughters. The daughters afterwards married. The youngest daughter, Louisa, died. Thomas and Anna still live. The father and mother died years ago. I believe I have some cousins on my father’s side still living, but do not know where they are at this time. Two of Aunt Sallie Hone’s sons came to this country a number of years ago, one of them, George Hone, lived in East Newark, but has passed away. The other, a younger son, lives out northeast of there. His name is John, named for his father.
Ellen S. O’Bannon 