Minnie by Jo Leath        Some wimmin are born rural, some wimmin choose to live rural, and others have rural thrust upon them.         When Minnie was born in 1868, her parents, Martha and Samuel, were living and working in Lancaster, in the industrial North of England.  The local economy was driven by the needs of the extensive textile mills, and the mill owners, and the young family members were happy enough with the urban life they were living. Minnie was provided as good an education as any city girl might expect during the reign of Queen Victoria; she learnt to read, and to embroider, to play the piano, and understand the meaning of the Gospels, in accordance with the teachings of the Church of England.

       When she married, it was to Ishmael, a skilled glass-cutter, whose life and work were also based within the city of Lancaster. Minnie and Ishmael's marriage produced 3 sons and a daughter.  One son died in infancy, the daughter, Doris, was my grandmother. When the youngest of the children was only three years old, in 1901, Ishmael died of a chill.  The widowed Minnie set about attempting to raise her three surviving children by taking in laundry and sewing, but found herself overwhelmed by the task. At the age of 35, Minnie met Joseph, found him to be a kind man, willing to care for her fatherless children, and she married him in 1903. Minnie produced two sons with Joseph, and Doris, not yet ten years old, was kept home to help care for them. 

       In 1912, Joseph's health began to fail.   Medical advice suggested that he needed Country Air, and that life in the city, and work in the factory, would sicken, and eventually kill him. Thus Joseph purchased land near the Solway Firth, and moved Minnie, and the five children to a rural life such a Minnie had never seen in all her years. 

       Instead of a hand pump in the backyard, Minnie now had to cope with hauling water from a remote well.   Instead of living cheek by jowl with her neighbors and friends, she was now isolated, among strangers. Her Sunday morning walk to Church was her only outing. 

       Doris's brothers were of an age to work the land with their step-father. Doris and her mother ran the farmhouse and kitchen. They learnt, slowly, to care for the laying hens and the milking cows, and to prepare enough food to feed the hired hands as well as the family.

No great spread, Joseph's small-holding barely produced a living for the family. Away from the health hazards of the industrial city, he worked hard, and thrived, until the influenza epidemic of 1919 took him and one of his sons, and left Minnie widowed again. 

       Minnie did not give up the rural life.   She hired another hand, and continued with the small farm for several years, her sons gradually taking over the management of it.  Young Joseph married and built a cottage on the land, and Minnie remained "at home" all the rest of her life, never returning to the urban areas of England except as a visitor. 

       She lived until 1954, ultimately choosing the country life that had been thrust upon her.