Notes for Essie Amanda McNeill

Notes for Essie Amanda McNeill

!REFLECTIONS ON MY LIFE By : Essie Ridgway: By request of a darling little granddaughter I am writing this:
I was born February 2nd., 1888 in a small community called Taylorville,in Jones Co., Mississippi. I used wisdom in the choosing of my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas B. McNeill. They were poor but honest and the best parents I ever knew. I was the 3rd. child but the 1st and only daughter until in December before I was 15 years old, God gave me a little sister. At the age of 16, God saw best to take my father home to live with Him. Our home was so very empty and blank without him. He had been ill almost a year.
Pressing needs had caused he and mother to mortgage the farm in trying to pay debts. Finally, mother let the farm go,sold our cattle and horses and we moved to Oklahoma on August 6th.1906. Soon after that, my mother re-married. My step-father (Dad Jordan) I called him,was a christian man. I always had love and great respect for him.
To finish with my own life, I must go back a few years. I,with my brothers, some of them, were saved when I was 14 years old. I was baptized in a beautiful little clear water creek on July 13th 1902. We were so happy and life seemed so rich and wonderful at that time. It was about this time my parents subscribed for the Gospel Trumpet (it was called then). Our entire family anxiously waited for this magazine each week. After the loss of my darling father and we had moved to Oklahoma, I decided I wanted to go and help publish that literature. Anyway, that year the publishing plant had moved from West Virginia to Anderson,Indiana. So,I went by train,got there in time for the first Camp Meeting on the new camp grounds at Anderson,Indiana. That was all a wonderful and glorious experience for me. This was June of 1907. I stayed at Anderson until after camp meeting of 1909. I enjoyed my stay and my work there more than I know how to say.
I came back to Mississippi from Anderson to visit my brothers and their families and had in mind to go on to Oklahoma soon, but soon I learned that my mother and step-father were soon moving back to Mississippi so I stayed there and waited for them. It was during this period of waiting that I met and fell in love with the man that soon after their return,became my husband. He was ten and a half years older than I was, the father of three very fine wonderful children who were left motherless by the death of their mother a few years before. His name was Walter R. Ridgway. He was a fine person and a hard working black-smith by trade. God blessed his and my marriage with 9 sweet, beautiful babies, 3 of whom He took home to live with Him while they were yet very young. The other 6 and 2 of my step or older children (as I think of them),are still here and are men and women I feel very proud of. God took my husband and their father from us December 25,1952.