Today I'll direct your attention to one of the stories contained in
The Magnolia Chronicles. Much of the story revolves around something called Heritage Day - a celebration held at the end of July to celebrate the heritage of the fictional Magnolia, Ohio. It revolves around an event - an event which demonstrates mercy, love and forgiveness for a stray soldier tired of the war he had been convinced to fight:
The Blue and The Gray
Elizabeth Bell saw him
dragging up the lane from the direction of the river on the next-to-last day of
July, 1863. He was wearing what passed for a uniform. It wasn’t blue, it was
butternut. He was a Rebel.
She ran inside the house
built by her father to inform her mother of the invader. Martha Bell grabbed
the rifle which she had used less than a fortnight ago when Morgan’s Raiders
came storming through the county, intent on raising havoc on Union territory…
avenging recent rebel losses in Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
By the time Martha Bell
had armed herself to confront the invader, the Rebel soldier had nearly made it
to the house.
Elizabeth came up behind
her mother to witness the confrontation.
“What are you doing in
these parts, Reb?” Martha barked at him.
“I was hopin’ to have a
drink of water from your well before I moved on.”
He looked to be no more
than a boy. He wore no shoes; his butternut uniform was tattered and torn. He
was thin as a rail – his face pleading for relief from his situation.
The rebel had already slipped
his rifle from over his shoulder. He had cast it on the ground and then took three
steps back.
“Lizzie, take his gun
while I decide what to do with him,” Martha snarled.
Elizabeth was scared. She
stepped past her mother while keeping an eye on the boy, expecting him to grab
her and make her his hostage… a last desperate move of a desperate man.
He sat on the ground when
she approached. She saw in his eyes that he was as scared as she was.
“I have half a notion to
kill you, boy. One of your kind killed
my husband in Gettysburg,” There was anger in Martha’s eyes while she barked at
the soul at the receiving end of her rifle.
The young man closed his
eyes. A tear trickled down his cheek. “Do what you will, ma’am, if’n it would
please you.”
Elizabeth expected to hear
a shot, with the body of the young man lying lifeless before her. He would pay for the sin of killing her daddy
with his own blood in the middle of the lane leading to her daddy’s house.
Justice would be served and the Bells would be able to go on with their lives,
poor but proud.
Martha’s angry eyes
started to tear up. She laid down her rifle and went over to comfort the
invader.
“Makes no sense to pay a
killin’ for a killin’,” she told the soldier.
Elizabeth put down the
boy’s rifle. All three of them clutched each other to cry a river of tears
until well after sunset.
-----
The boy’s name was Noah
Elston. He was part of the raiders who had come through less than a week ago.
He had been part of the War of the Rebellion for just over two years, joining
the cause so that he could avenge the honor of his family and of the South. It
was going to be a Grand Adventure. Instead, it became the most miserable part
of his life so far. He wanted out, even at the cost of his life.
The Bell women took him
in.
“I was a straggler,” he
told Elizabeth, “I followed the raiding party out of Cincinnati losing two,
three miles a day till I come here. They forgot me, I guess, or maybe they
didn’t much care. I’m findin’ out that war’s pretty much like that.”
-----
After a few days of rest
and restoration for the reluctant rebel, Martha Bell decided that it was time
that the authorities were contacted and the boy sent to a camp to sit out the
rest of the war. Elizabeth pleaded with her mother not to do it. In the little
bit of time she had spent with him, she had gotten to know him. Besides, she
pointed out to her mother, he would be handy to help bring in the crops and
prepare the farm for the coming winter.
Martha relented due to their family’s situation. There
was work to be done and hired hands were few and far between. Noah Elston
agreed to remain at the Bell farm as a substitute for her missing husband,
sharing room and board and a portion of any profits from the farm. His origins
would remain a secret until after the war was over.
It wasn’t long before Noah
Elston’s former status as a rebel soldier became one of the worst kept secrets
in Magnolia. He worked hard to repay his debt to the Widow Bell, a trait which
endeared him to the other farmers in the area who hired him when they occasionally
needed an extra hand. The County Sheriff and the Village Constable discovered
the secret, but looked the other way. They saw Noah’s dedication. They also saw
that Elizabeth was growing quite fond of the man she first saw on that hot
summer afternoon dragging up the lane.
-----
“The war is over, Mr.
Elston.”
Martha Bell made the
pronouncement at Easter Dinner, 1865.
“You are free to go
wherever you may wish to go. Elizabeth and I thank you for your dedication and
for being the perfect gentleman.”
Elizabeth had a sinking
feeling in her heart. The boy who had arrived a little less than two years ago
had become a handsome young man. She had fallen in love with him. She had other
suitors, but the man she desired the most was the newly freed man sitting with
them at the dinner table.
“Ma’am, I thank you for my
freedom and for my treatment while I have been in your care. While part of me
wants to head back south to Kentucky, part of me wants to stay here, at least
until the summer crops are harvested.”
“You do not need to be loyal
to me or to this household,” Martha Bell declared. “There are other men in the
village now available to do the chores you have done so faithfully. Would there perhaps be another reason you
would want to stay?”
“Yes, ma’am. I would like
to say quite plainly that I desire to stay here to spend more time with Miss
Elizabeth. I have fallen in love and I desire to marry her.”
Elizabeth’s heart jumped
for joy. “Mother, please say yes.”
Martha Bell needed no further
convincing. She had seen her Elizabeth with the young man and had become
convinced that the two of them could take over the farm and relieve her of the
burden imposed on her when her husband died at Gettysburg.
-----
Two years to the day when
Noah Elston came dragging up the lane to the Bell house, Elizabeth Bell married
the young former soldier to become Elizabeth Elston. From that day forward, the
“Bell House” became the “Elston House”.
Noah and Elizabeth Elston
prospered. Martha stayed to help raise the five Elston Children. The eldest,
born on March 16, 1868 was named Joshua in honor of the grandfather he would
never know. In 1874, Noah established a dry-goods store so people wouldn’t have
to travel all the way to the county seat in Prentiss for the supplies they
needed to keep their farms and homes running.
Eventually, Noah Elston
became Constable, then Mayor (from 1884-1904), relinquishing control of the
family farm to Joshua on the occasion of Joshua’s 20th Birthday.
At the dawn of the
twentieth century, Noah donated a portion of his farm to the town of Magnolia
for use as a school.
The Elston family
multiplied. As the family grew, the house grew. Noah’s son Joshua had a son,
Charles, who in turn married and was father to Elizabeth. The birth of the
great-granddaughter was an auspicious occasion in July of 1936. It had been
seventy-three years to the day since Noah Elston came up the lane to the house
where the first Elizabeth would live the rest of her life.
They called the great
grandchild Lizzie. She was properly raised and, at the end of it all, was the
last of the line living in the large, rambling house on South Street. All other
possible heirs had moved away through the years, leaving her alone, until her
eldest nephew, Richard, came to live with her with the idea of turning the house
into a bed and breakfast. Plans were made and the conversion went along through
the spring into early summer. The official announcement of the opening of the
new bed and breakfast, “The Blue and The Gray”, would occur on the thirtieth of
July at the Heritage Days Luncheon which would be held in a tent erected in the
parking lot of the Community Baptist Church. It would also mark Lizzie Elston’s
seventy-fifth birthday.
