A Marriage Made in Two Weeks?

Time, work, and constant worry had worn down the widowed Annie Beers and confined her to a wheel chair. Her children decided they needed a practical nurse to care for her, so they hired 17-year-old Frances Woodley, fresh from the Woodstock, Vermont countryside.

Frances Woodley at 17

I think of this as the Hire from Hell. Two people who never should have met collided, sparked, and married two weeks later were Earl Beers and Frances Woodley.

Up to now, I’ve felt competent in researching and explaining what I could about our ancestors’ lives. They proved to be precisely what I expected: humble working folks from alpine Europe and depressed crannies of the British Isles, dealing with History’s outrageous slings and arrows as best they could.

There was nothing about Frances Edith Woodley to indicate her background was any different. She often spoke of disliking her dowdy, “ugly” name and saw no reason to discuss her prosaic “Pennsylvania Dutch” antecedents. She wasn’t trying to mislead me or anyone else; she simply didn’t know.