| Notes |
Letter written by Charles Wesley Fisher to his son, Charles Eugene Fisher, on October 8, 1941
Dear Son,
Enclosed you will find a little sketch which I didn't think about writing until near ten o'clock, then I wrote it in quite a hurry, so there are many mistakes which you will please overlook, if you have the patience to read it. I so often hit the wrong letter as my eyes are not as true as they once were.
I still have to keep answering questions about you all and especially Jane Belle and Mike, and of course about my visits to the important points. But I do not get tired or impatient in answering all of them I can. It was certainly a wonderful visit for your old grouchy dad and I do not have the command of words to tell you how much I enjoyed every minute of the time.
I am feeling fine and my nerves are in better condition than they have been for years. I now write with the same steady hand I did when young. I am going to use every means I know to keep them that way. If I do not have the means to prove it, just keep it in mind that no old father was ever prouder or thought more of his children than I do of you both. No children were ever sweeter and be better to an old father than you are to me. I rejoice in this and far more in seeing you both so contented and happy with each other.
This is all with sincerity and love for you both and the sweet babies. Write me when you have the time.
A LIFE SKETCH
By Charles Wesley Fisher
Yes I am seventy nine years old today. Seventy nine years have passed since in a little hewed log cabin near the edge of a dense forest of large oak trees grown so close together that a squirrel could run as far as it wished without coming down to the ground. The house was surrounded by the tall deadened oak timber or trees with their long white limbs reaching out on every side like bare arms, it was said, "it's a boy." The location of this, to me, a very precious spot of ground was in what was then known as the "Windy Flats," in Jackson County West Virginia. I was told the date of my birth was on a Tuesday October the 8th, at 7:30 p.m. At the same hour of the day a little over 21 years later I was married. I was also told that the next baby was a girl with brown eyes and golden hair, very fine and long for her age. She died after a little over two years of age. I do not remember her.
When the third baby came, I was five years old, this was the real beginning of my recollections. At this time I well remember the old fashion high bedstead, and next to the oldest of my father's sisters, a large fleshy lady, holding me up and throwing back the covers and I saw the first baby I can remember of seeing, I said, "why don't it open its eyes?" She had a lot of coal black hair. My Auntie then took me with her down to Grandfather's and because my father's youngest brother had just brought in a new wife. I didn't want to go in the house, too bashful and while Auntie was in the house I went back home the two miles and only a path through the woods. Before this date I have a faint remembrance of a few incidents, my father carrying me on his back, and riding on behind and holding to the straps that father had fixed to the saddle for that purpose. How tight I would hold on to those straps. But at the age of five my recollection really began. And when I think back almost the whole of my life comes vividly before my minds eye.
My Grandfather Fisher owned two plantations, one that was called eighteen mile creek of two thousand acres, which he sold when I was seven years old, the other one had twenty one hundred and ninety seven acres which he divided among his children. This plantation lay on a little creek called Duttons Fork and extended out through the Windy Flats. His children all settling on this land, I was reared in a nest of relatives, and my playmates were all my cousins. A few of them I liked but most of them I disliked very much. They were not a clannish set of folk, they lived to themselves. The boy to whom I was most intimately attached was eight months older than myself and is living in the city of Charleston West Virginia, a retired Methodist minister.
My Grandfather on my father's side was of German decent. After I grew up -as I was his pet- he would talk about his ancestry in Germany. He claimed he was a descendant of the "Hapsburg House" - as it was called - and he was very proud of it. My father's mother's name was Greene, and she was just as proud of her ancestry as he was; and as also my Grandfather on my mother's side was English and as Grandmother's ancestry were English and Grandfather's too, when he would come over to visit us they would always get to talking about their ancestry and enjoyed it to the fullest extent. The boy that sat and listened so quietly was interested far more than they ever knew. My Grandmother on my mother's side was of Welsh decent. She always said, "I have nothing to say. The rest of them do enough bragging for all of us" I thought she was the prettiest woman I had ever seen, so fair skin, golden hair with bright blue eyes that had a peculiar twinkle, how well I remember that twinkle. She never scolded children; but when they would do a thing for which their parents would punish them, she would talk to them with that enticing look and many times would have them laughing when she was through talking,. Her manner and talk would so impress them that they never wanted to do that again. All her own children adored and worshipped her and all the neighbors children loved "Mam Dawson."
When I was six years old I attended my first school. I stayed at my Grandfather Dawson's and went six weeks of the three months. I went with the two youngest boys and their sister. They were my uncles and aunt. I received as a treat six sticks of blue striped candy, which my grandfather brought over to our home two weeks after school closed. Grandfather lived in a large two story house, built of hewed logs, with a wide porch in front, long pins in the wall on which was hung everything from a whipsaw, ox yokes, harness down to a fishing tackle. We had to cross the river in a long canoe which Grandfather had hewn out of a large Poplar tree. Many, many were the pleasure rides the young people would take in that canoe. A dozen people or more could ride in it, and many times my two uncles would take me with them fishing in the canoe. Soft shell turtle was a great dish as well as fish, and many times we would find a nest full of turtle eggs, which also made a famous dish.
I grew up very fast and when I was seven years old I went to the field with father and very patiently he taught me how to do neat work on the farm. At the age of ten he went to an old blacksmith and got for me what they call an "upset" ax. He taught me how to keep it ground thin and sharp and I soon was chopping timber with the men. A month before I was sixteen I weighed 162 pounds; and was never fleshy, but was as hard as muscles ever get. I was the champ in most everything. In wrestling, fighting, hop-step-and-a-jump, I would go forty-five and six feet. Perry D. Fisher, the boy with whom I grew up was nearest my equal of any, but a cousin Web Boggess, could give me the hardest pull at the end of a handspike of anyone around. I was always very timid and bashful in the presence of ladies - that was our word then. But with men, I was neither timid or cowardly, yet I never caused a racket, I was always for peace, but sometimes I was provocative in my actions. They had many picnics - they called them - and sometimes I would go just in my work clothes with my collar open and my shirt sleeves rolled above my elbows and just walk around like a big overgrown rooster, and would hardly speak to anyone, especially if I knew there would be some present I didn't like. I would say nothing, but it was tantalizing to others.
My father was always proud of me and not very many times did I ever provoke him enough to get a scolding. Father was in the Union Army three years and six months, was a scout most of that time; he came home broke down, and when I was twelve years old I found myself head and manager of a three hundred acre farm. Father would pay men twenty five cents more or extra on the days work if they kept up with me. He was a boot and shoemaker and also had quite a set of carpentry tools, I had free access to all the tools and learned to use them.
There was no work on a farm, from building a house or barn down to pulling weeds that I couldn't lead the crowd. In the spring after I was eighteen years old I went with father to help a man raise a log house. He had taken lease on one end of one of my uncles' farm. The hands were scarce and I took up two corners of that building, running back and forth across one end; that evening one of my cousins who had been away on a trip came to our house for the night; we went - walked - three miles to church and back, and that night took a pneumonia fever. I got down so thin and come so near to passing out, that when I did recover I never got back more than half what I was before, physically. I could do the work, but I lost the championship in all the sports. I never wrestled or had a fight after that. I made three or four dangerous bluffs, but they went over without a fight. I drank some before I had the spell of fever and mostly when I would run down the river on a fleet of timber. My nerves were such that liquor did not affect me as most young fellows; I could drink a pint and no one would know it; but I never drank enough for it to get a hold of me.
I never learned to play a game of any sort in my life. I was an intense reader. I have worked all day and then ride ten miles that night to borrow a book. I read the Bible through the winter I was fourteen years old. I studied Fowler and Wells Phrenology and Physiognomy, and analyzed animal brains and studied the human brain. Then I got hold of a copy of Sully's Psychology, and that has been the main hobby of my life if I ever had one. I read Tom Panes " Age of Reason", C. S. Moore's "Blank Universe", Ingersoll's works." Back of All These " ,Celsus, Straus and every book and kind I could get a hold of. I became very skeptical in a way. But, my mind was always in a state of wonder. When a boy of ten, there was a storm coming up and as was my custom I was out watching it, and father called mother to come to the door and see the cloud gazer. I would go out at night and point my finger at a star, and say, "It doesn't matter how far you are away, there can be no end to the space beyond you." Then I would invite preachers to come to our home and ask them, "Is it possible for there to be an end to space? Is it possible to think of an end to space?" "No, it is not possible for there to be an end to space." " How then are you going to harmonize an impossibility with a possibility? Do you believe that God fills the immensity of space?" "Yes." "Well tell me, if it is impossible for space to have an end, how can God overcome this impossibility and fill it?" I called it having fun with the preachers, and father and mother would shame for it. I have always thought it had quite an effect on father for he never made any profession or joined a church until he was past forty five years old. While I had joined church with mother and was baptized with her, I never found complete relief from these same questions until ten years after I entered the ministry; not until it was revealed to me, that "Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Power, and Infinite Will," must constitute the God Head, for each of these are as boundless as the Universe. I never fully settled the question of living a Christian until I was thirty six years old; for when I would think about being a Christian, the thought would come to me, if you settle the question you will live a Christian, you must preach, and I said no, until I was thirty six, and decided I would preach. I went to Conference and was assigned a work before I had ever preached my first sermon. I came home from Conference at Parkersburg and preached my first sermon in the old Free Will Baptist Church. My second sermon was on my first charge and was sixteen minutes long, and my second was at Green Wood and was fifteen minutes long, and I would have quit at that and went home if it had not been for old Uncle George Weekly, an old retired minister.
I must go back to my earlier life. To get the new and much needed schoolhouse my father had to employ a lawyer, and the matter was carried to the courts but father won out, and built the new log schoolhouse. Then I went two terms of three months each. That was the amount of my schooling, but by constant reading I kept up with all events, and was on the stump in politics at eighteen. I was very high tempered, but always controlled it in the presence of father or mother. Neither of them ever heard me swear an oath in all the time they lived, neither did they ever see me drunk --- which I never was but two or three times.
From among the many girls I kept company with I selected MOTHER to be my wife. We had kept company for about three years, me seeing her once a month and once in a while every two weeks, then we decided to be married. During the greater part of our lives we were happy together. I never remember of looking at mother without seeing a smile on her face, though I was nervous and out of humor. During all the years of my ministry she was my stay and true standby.
With all of the joy and happiness of life I can truthfully say like Old Jacob said to Pharaoh: "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not by any means attained to my desires and aspirations." Mother often scolded me for studying so hard and preaching such deep sermons, as she called them. "They don't understand what you are saying." It did often make me wonder.
YES: Few and evil have been the days of my life,
Yet, I have lived above the world's sniveling strife,
The class I have always sought, tested, and found,
Were spiritually good, mentally pure, and physically sound.
A great man once said to me,
Keep company with yonder towering tree,
It will lift you up, where the atmosphere is free,
It will open your eyes, to things sublime,
It will breathe into you, that life divine.
On this my seventy ninth birthday I have written this and dedicated it to my three children:
Mrs. C.R. Rankin ----- 803 Porter Ave., Wichita, Kansas
Miss Sherla Lee Fisher ----- 1119 River Blvd., Wichita, Kansas
Mr. C. Eugene Fisher ----- 12 lake Forest Park Larchmont, New York
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West Virginia Pioneers
1862 - Yes, date unknown
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