Women In My Family History: Part 19

Alice Wilson Rohrer

1886 - 1978

Alice Wilson was born in Kansas in 1886 and in 1891 her mother married Aza Hiner.   In 1907 Alice married Oscar Rohrer who was a widower with a young son age three and a half who was my father's father.

Oscar and Alice Rohrer Wedding 

Alice Wilson Rohrer and her Hiner half siblings became a great treasure for my family.  I was an adult before I realized the Hiner aunts, uncles and cousins were not blood relatives.

Alice Wilson Rohrer and Fanchion Hiner Stair

Fred Edwin Rohrer,  Alice Wilson Rohrer,  and Oscar Rohrer

 The woman I knew as my great grandmother raised my grandfather and then when her husband died in 1938 and my father's parents had divorced,  Alice began the task of raising my father who was six and a half.   When I was a toddler she lived in an apartment behind the house that my parents,  siblings and I lived in.  Although we moved away, she remained in that apartment until her death in 1978 and during my junior year in high school I lived with her there.  My memories of her are varied and many.  Every year she  made home made pecan sweet rolls for Christmas morning breakfast and their aroma  was wonderful as we opened our gifts.  Her cooking was wholesome but the type of foods that fueled a farmer  for the hard work they did in the early 1900s.  And having lived on the farm throughout The Great Depression she wasted not one thing.  I can remember her sitting and cutting her wore out sheets and clothing items into strips,  sewing the strips together into one long strip and rolling it into a ball.  She would then crochet these balls of fabric strips into rugs.  I found a description of how to do this online HERE.  She shared with us many stories about the family and about life on the farm.  She told colorful stories of putting an extra pie to cool in the window sill for the bums to steal because she knew they would be hungry and how they always let hungry travelers eat left overs out on the back porch. She spoke of crossing the Wabash River in the farm wagon in order  to go to town.  But her most enthusiastic stories were about threshing times and how busy it was to cook for the farm workers during that time.  I am awestruck when I think of the way the world changed in her 91 years of life and how much adapting she had to do along with it.  She was very non judgmental and always welcomed us with open arms.  My life was enriched so much to have known her.

Alice Wilson Rohrer

Please take time to enjoy the video that follows about threshing on the midwestern farm.