I think that with all the current chaos and need for courage these times require, that it is an appropriate time to share a family story. My mother wrote this and I’m passing it on, just as she wrote it. The story shows how one person, long ago, made a difference. I can’t vouch for it’s truth.

Hezekiah’s parents (Hezekiah Malone being my great grandfather), as I have mentioned previously, were devout Quaker farmers in Ohio, raising eight children. My great-grandmother had been a Pennington. But on with the story.

“During the Civil War great-grandmother Malone is supposed to have had a tangle with the Southern guerrilla, Morgan and his Raiders. She and her daughter were along on the farm but when Morgan and his men swarmed thorough the place and beat on the door she faced them coolly enough. Morgan demanded food and stamped into the house, unshaven, travel-stained, his hat still on. Great-grandmother Malone said severely, “Wouldn’t thee take off thy hat in thy mother’s house?” and abashed, he did. –a look from him and so did the rest. “If thee’s hungry, I’ll give thee a meal,” she said, “but thee must wash first,” and she sent them outside to wash at the back door. Like good little boys they went, meekly, and she fed them. They might, as they did to so many others, have looted the farm of all the animals and produce, but they didn’t. They thanked her and rode away. “