2. My Mama

My mama, née Sarah Jane Cassel, eighth child in a compact family of ten, was born a little more than a century ago in the then small village of Mount Eaton, Ohio, where her father, Samuel Cassel, owned and operated a sawmill, a gristmill, and what was vaguely remembered as a “woolen mill.”

As a tot Mama was called Sam, she told us, not only because she was her father’s favorite but because she was always at his heels, though she did not resemble him in any way, as he was reportedly a quiet, well-balanced man of few words and no gaudy enthusiasms. She was the spit and image of her mother who, in her middle years—according to the legend—was known to have a very low boiling point.

To any fair evaluation of my mama’s distinguishing attributes it is necessary to brief her background and the circumstances in which she spent her early years, for she was a peculiar character, resourceful, ambitious, dynamic.

As for these Cassel mills, with which our story begins, my mental picture of these various enterprises, drawn for me by my mama when I was but a lad, is indistinct, for when she was only twelve a fire broke out, one stormy night, and swept the entire establishment away, including their house and most of its contents.

All we ever knew about the catastrophe was reported from the confused memories of a badly frightened little girl who had been gifted with an utterly reckless imagination. Just how big, how flourishing were these mills is anybody’s guess. But it is a solid fact that after the fire had died out, Samuel Cassel—together with his numerous heirs and assigns—was completely washed up; and when one loses everything, an accurate inventory of what one previously had may be considered unimportant.

The Cassels had salvaged a team of horses and a big wagon. Into the wagon they tossed their few remaining articles of household furniture and took off for “the West.” Mama always loved pioneer stories and thought and talked of this migration as a pioneering adventure, which wasn’t far from the truth, though the journey ended in Noble County, Indiana. There, in the deep woods, my grandfather cleared a few acres of sandy soil, hard by a pleasant little stream, built a sawmill, and reportedly made a go of this industry until the quarrels between the Northern and Southern states, which had been simmering and bubbling on the fire for many years, came to full boil; and Sam Cassel was drafted.

He went with great reluctance, not only because he would leave his large family of youngsters facing destitution but because this war, he felt, was none of his business.

Of course everyone knows, now that eighty-five years have passed, that the war was the only way to preserve the Union; but at the time there were a lot of quite honest and patriotic people who saw no good to come of it. They were the “Northern Democrats.” This hapless minority muttered that if New England, which, it believed, had been largely responsible for capturing and marketing the defenseless Africans, had suddenly discovered that slavery was all wrong, it was up to the wealthy shipowners to buy back this stolen merchandise and return it.