The Arrasmith Family

                             

                                        Arrasmith family members, Anna Ware, Alta, Robert and his sister Ina D.

 

       The log cabin in Bethel, built by William around 1790, was home sweet home to four generations of Arrasmiths

                                                    Ewell Arrasmith pitching hay on the family farm.

                                                            Mrs. Evelyn, Anna Ware and Ewell Arrasmith

                                                                             Miss Anna Ware Arrasmith
                                              Photos are from the private collection of Mrs. Irene Thornsburg.

                                 Ewell and his dad housing tobacco on their farm in Bethel

                              Mrs. Evelyn driving the tractor during housing season, and in HIGH HEELS!!

From Virginia to Bethel-the story of the Arrasmith family

The family of Ewell Arrasmith has a long and rich history as residents in the town of Bethel.

Many of our readers will remember Ewell’s wife, Evelyn, as a music teacher at the Bethel and Sharpsburg schools and his sister Anna Ware who taught at Bethel for nearly 50 years.

A little more than a dozen years ago, Evelyn penned a series of articles that appeared in The Community Voice, a newspaper that is no longer in print, in which she told how the Arrasmith family came to live at Bethel 229 years ago.
In her story Evelyn revealed that William Arrasmith built a log cabin around 1790 on property he acquired through a land grant from Benedict Swope,  a time when Kentucky was still a part of Virginia.

She described the structure as “instead of being built as one log dwelling, it was built as two, one larger than the other with a passage called a “dog-walk between them. There was an attic above the larger one with a little stairway in the middle of the room. A large fire place was on the west wall with a door on the south side. The windows were glass. One pane even had a butterfly imprint in it. The cabin had a shingle roof, the fireplace chimneys were made of rock from bottom to top and the dwelling faced south, and the ground had a gentle slope downward where there was a good spring with another spring close by”.

William, born in 1762, who was the son of Thomas Arrasmith, married Susannah McBee in Fauquier, Virginia.

Susannah and William’s son John was born in the winter of 1802 in Bath County and is described in Evelyn’s article as being a large man that weighed about 300 pounds, a hard worker, kind and was very sociable.

The story revealed that John was a bachelor and according to family history, one day he saw a young lady hoeing corn in a nearby field, he watched her for a bit and decided she was a good worker and would make an excellent wife. Her name was Sarah Jones and was called “Sally”.

Sally and John married and started a life together in the cabin and were the parents of 12 children, but as was common in those days, many of them died at an early age.

Their daughter Roberta died the same day their youngest child, Daniel Day was born.

The oldest child was Miranda, born 1833, she married Dawson Williams, Nancy, 1834, married Coleman Crouch, William was born next in 1837 and died in 1850, Susanna born in 1838, married Harvey Satterfield, Thomas, died the same year he was born in 1841, next came John Wes, 1842, he died when he was 30, Richard, 1844, died in 1906 and Mary Emily,1846 died in 1866, Edmond Valentine, 1848-1897, Elizabeth 1851-1885, Roberta was born in 1852 and died when she was two years old, and Daniel Duty-1854-1916.

In the 1870 census John is listed with the following household members, his wife Sarah, their children John W. Richard, Edward, Elizabeth, and Daniel, along with their domestic help, Charity Williams age 29, and possibly her children, Larkin, Jenny, Eliza and Susan.

Charity, was affectionately referred to as “Aunt Charity” and one of her children was born beneath the little cabins kitchen window.

Evelyn’s articles went on to reveal more of the Arrasmith family history in the following manner.

“While John was busy with his farming, Sarah was busy with her household chores which included spinning and weaving.

Her spinning wheel has the date 1845 carved on it. She had a cherry cupboard which stood in the south-west corner of the big room where she kept her jams and jellies.

John wasn’t a hunter as such, but he did own a rifle which one of his descendants has today.

Beneath the stairs there was a small cupboard where molasses, flour, mill, sugar and whiskey were kept.

Sometime in the early 1800s the cabins logs were covered with weather boarding.

In 1881 Daniel Duty married Sudie Wilson, the daughter of George Wilson.

John had passed away in 1885 and Dan and Sudie continued to live with Sarah until her death in 1890.

Sudie was more accustomed to living in a more modern home, so after Sarah’s death she began to make some changes.

First, she had workmen take out the log wall of the big room that ran along the dog-walk, then she had a door cut out of the kitchen wall.

She had each end of the dog-walk boxed in and portioned in half at the stairway to make two rooms, and the porch roof was lowered from beneath the attic windows. 

Sudie could now go from the front of the house to the kitchen without having to go outside.

Sudie and Daniels first child, Ina D, was born in 1887, Robert Ware came along two years later and George Bruce in 1895 and sometime after his birth the family moved to a home on Bethel Avenue.

From 1898 to 1907 there were other families that had lived in the little cabin which included Bill Dwelly, Bill Day, Major Clark, Tom Lloyd, Pat and Jim Hickey and Willy Peters.

After Robert married Alta Robinson Vice in the spring of 1913 they started their married life in the cabin, but before they married he and his sister Ina D. painted the front room a soft green and the middle room a French grey. Ina D hung a little pony shoe she had tied with a pink ribbon over the door in the middle room.

Over the years the couple made additional improvements to the home.

With the help of Bill Clark, an African American friend and neighbor, whom the family referred to as Uncle Bill, the fireplace in the front room was closed just enough to add a grate, a process known as “setting the grate” so coal could be used to burn for heat instead of logs.

A flu was built in the kitchen with an opening not only on the kitchen side but also through the middle room, so a parlor furnace could be used in the middle room.

Rob closed in the little room off the kitchen to make a dining room with a pantry. He also had a cistern built at the back door.

Robert and Alta were the parents of two children, Anna Ware born in 1914 and Ewell Roberts in 1918.

Anna Ware was a great favorite of Dan’s and he could be found carrying her across the hill to his home on the avenue, where she enjoyed the attention of her grandmother Sudie, aunt Ina D. and uncle Bruce.

Dan died in 1916 so he never knew his grandson Ewell.

Both children attended college, Anna Ware became a teacher and taught school at Bethel for nearly 50 years and never married.

Ewell also taught school for a short time before entering the military in 1941. He was in the Air Force and stationed in Alaska during WWII.

In August of 1945 he married a girl he met in college and when he was discharged from service the last of October, Rob brought his bride to live at Bethel.

Evelyn grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and the Arrasmith family wondered how she would take to country life.

When Ewell discovered she loved antiques and old things, he offered her Sarah’s spinning wheel, reel and clock for a wedding gift.

Since the clock and spinning wheel had been stored in the attic of the cabin, Evelyn wanted to clean them up which was fine with Rob, but he did ask that one detail on the clock remain.

He told her that George Pringles mother had purchased the clock at Sarah’s estate sale and years later George had brought the clock back saying it belonged in the family.

Someone had pasted an image of their race on the glass door and he asked Evelyn to leave the image in place.

After Rob and Alta moved into their home on land that adjoined the Arrasmith property in 1948, Ewell and Evelyn became the 4^th generation to live in the family cabin.

Ewell enjoyed woodworking and built their eating table and chairs and new kitchen cabinets that were fashioned after the ones in Evelyn’s grandmother’s kitchen.

In 1959 the couple began to make more repairs to the home, the porch got new floorboards and a railing was added.

They painted the house grey with white trim, Rob gave them some shudders that had been painted white and the roof was painted a barn red”.

The little cabin is no longer standing, Ewell, Evelyn and Anna Ware have each passed away, but their history still remains in the hearts of many of the Bethel citizens.