Elizabeth Edwards

BETSEY ROGERS

Was the youngest daughter but one. She was born in the same house I was, on the southern part of the farm, about a mile from the mills. She was born on the 29th day of April, 1806, being the younger of a large family of sisters. She went to school at the common district schools of the country – that was all the education common people could give their children. She learned to spin flax and wool and weave and knit socks when a girl, and do all kinds of housework done by farmer’s wives and daughters, and sometimes when harvest hands were scarce she and her sisters worked in the fields, raking hay etc. She was married to Henry Edwards at her father’s house in Charlton on the 21st day of November, 1825. She went to housekeeping very soon after marriage on the same farm, her father’s family having moved to the mills, or old Rogers homestead. She must have been a very comely looking maiden when married, plump, fresh, fair complexion, since I can remember her some six years later when she was still a fine looking girl. She looked more, then, like a girl than like a wife and mother. I have heard her say that strangers, coming to the house after she was married and housekeeping, used to address her as a girl and ask her where her father was, she looked so young. At 40 she looked no more than 24. She was plump and fresh complexioned, always had good health.

--written by Wakeman Wakeman Edwards, circa 1890