Piercey sisters talk about family, community and history; one of them spins some wool as a brother interjects

A great part of the Spirit of 76 Celebration was the package of historical presentations at Mount Union Christian Church by children of the late Rodney and Jean Piercey.

Faye Piercey Dalton and Phyllis Piercey Amonett, both retired teachers, helped plan the program, and Faye acted as a sort of mistress of ceremonies. "It's been such an adventure getting this done," she said July 3. "It's been a privilege to grow up in this place . . . Community makes you who you are, family makes you who you are."

Faye displayed and discussed the black silk "flapper" dress of one of her grandmothers, Zada Thomas Brown, "something very special to me." She said hemlines rose in the 1920s, and "She was independent, oh, so very independent, and I thnk this dress is just a reflection of who she was. She was probably the first woman in the community whose skirt went that far up. . . . She was just such a blessing to me, and I hope I treat my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren in the same way I was treated because it was a very special relationship."

Earlier, Faye stressed the value of history: "You don't know much about yourself unless you know some history. It's tragic for people to get to my age, anyway, and not know who they are. I think it gives you a special feeling of confidence and identity, and learning to get to know people. . . . Share with your children their history. Tell those stories about grandparents, great-grandparents, all you know about your past, and expose them to it. They're not perfect people; they had their strengths and weaknesses, just like all of us, butthose people that have your own genes, you can see yourself in them. Have you ever seen that grandchild or great-grandchild and just a glimpse of someone, your grandparent or your grandfather? It's a wonderful experience."

Faye Dalton and Phyllis Amonett dressed in period costume.

Faye continued, "What is [the] Seventy Six community? It is a community. We still identify with each other. We've been meeting up at Junction Station [about a mile south, to plan the Celebration] . . . getting to know people who we knew when we were children or whatever. So we are a community here; we still have some boundaries, but they aren't really that clear; we go to Fairland, and that's really still Seventy Six. Those lines are blurring, and they will continue to blur," to the pount that "at some time in the future, nobody'll even remember" the place. "We're the only Seventy Six in the United States, but other than thatg we're not that unique. But we live in a special place . . . the land, we're very attached to it, but more important, the people."

Faye and her cousin, poet and retired teacher Rudy Thomas, recalled that after the Mount Union church was destroyed by one of the April 3, 1974, tornadoes, the community saw to it that it was quickly rebuilt.

Phyllis P. Amonett, at 79 the oldest of the siblings, said "I feel like this community has built me and who I am and how I raised my kids." She recalled attending the church with the Thomas, Wells, Orton, Conner and Wray families, and "We always had a relationship. . . . They built your character, they built your community, and sometimes they built your work, because you worked with them all the time. We worked in tobacco, we worked in gardens, we worked in the hay. . . . We worked putting up food, we chopped kraut, we dried apples and tomatoes. I can't remember everything that we did do, but our No. 1 hate . . . was the ironing. My mother sprinkled, and she ironed everything from the underwear on down."

Vickie P. May at the wheel (Photos by Al Cross)

Vickie Piercey May of Lexington, the youngest Piercey sister, demonstrated how to spin wool thread on a wool-only spinning wheel that was given to her grandmother Margarette Piercey by her mother-in-law (around 1840, Phyllis says) and restored by her brother Terry, who rescued it from a chicken house.

In college, she said, "I followed a path that included working in pioneer crafts and then after that I followed a path into industry and I retired from Toyota in Georgetown after 25 years as a mechanic."

She explained that weavers often made "linsey-woolsey," with linen threads (from flax that grew along streams) in one direction, because wool was too heavy to wash and dry and the combined fabric lasted much longer. The wheel to make thread from flax was much smaller, she said.