Chinkapin Creek is the fictional name of the West Virginia farming community where author Jean Ayer's mother, named Nellie in her stories, grew up at the dawn of the twentieth century.
This is a catalogue of photos of her life in those days.
Views across the meadows.
Cows and hogs in the fields,
Plowing and harvesting operations
Nellie, the eldest of nine children, was the bossy surrogate mother - Mama was busy with the youngest children - to her brothers and sisters.
She knew both pairs of grandparents - her mother's and father's parents.
Her mother's mother had long chestnut hair that kept its natural color
through her 70s. This photo shows Mama, Grandma, and little sister, Bess.
Mama & Papa with Grandma & Grandpa Cody,
Mama with Nellie's little brother & sisters,
Papa with his son, Dayton, and by the milk house
Grandma Cody with a baby buggy & retired working dog, Collie,
Views over the front gate & beyond the parking lot.
Nellie grew up in the age of horse-drawn buggies.
When Papa bought an automobile in 1907, she was 12 years old.
She soon learned to drive the thing, the first in the family to do so.
She became the family driver. Years later, she let her brothers take over.
Buy on Amazon: Tales of Chinkapin Creek (Volume I) and Volume II.
