Biography of Mabel Barns

Puritan on the Prairie: The Life of Anson Moxley, 1849-1941

Click here for Word document of the biography which includes footnotes.

Moxley Origins

Born on July 20, 1849 in Schoharie County, New York, Anson Moxley was the oldest child of Ezekiel Moxley and Ruth Elizabeth Dart. He had three brothers--Albert (b. 1851), Emory (b. 1853), and David (b. 1859)--and a sister, Emilia (b. 1853). The family lived on a farm near present-day Jefferson as did Ezekiel's brothers, Horace and Amos. The road connecting these properties eventually came to be known as Moxley Road. Very little is known of Anson's early life. His obituary states that he attended country school, then public schools, and after that a seminary in New York State.

On October 12, 1871, at the age of 21, he married Lydia Dart, a second cousin, whose family farmed land adjacent to the Moxley's in rural Jefferson. After their honeymoon, which according to newspaper accounts they spent in "a distant city," the couple embarked for Iowa by train on Wednesday, November 22, 1871. His brother Emory noted in his diary that, "Anson and his wife started for Iowa to day. Father took them to Richmonville, got back about dark." Family traditions observe that Anson, dissatisfied with the rocky soils of upstate New York, wanted more and better land which the Midwest afforded. However, Lydia's pregnancy which appears to have forced the marriage, and which the couple hoped to keep hidden from the family, was also a motivating factor for their emigration.

Arriving in Grinnell, Iowa on November 28th, Anson spent the winter teaching in a standard school. A newspaper article relates that Anson and Lydia resided with a relative, suggesting that they moved to Grinnell because of family connections. In this they exemplified a pattern manifested in both families. The Moxleys and Darts were well established in Connecticut before Anson's grandfather Joseph Moxley, whose own father fought in the 1781 battle of Groton Heights at Fort Griswold during the Revolutionary War, migrated from Groton, Connecticut to Jefferson, New York in 1816. Joseph Moxley's sister Hannah Moxley had been living near Jefferson, New York with her husband William Dart from about 1808. Joseph Moxley probably migrated from Groton, Connecticut to Jefferson, New York because his sister was already living there. Although the specific reasons for their move West may have differed from those of their ancestors, the practice of migration to areas in which friends and family from 'home' had already settled, i.e., chain migration, remained the same.

'Oh, Pioneers...'

Land records show that on February 21, 1872 Anson purchased 80 acres in Hickory Grove Township, Jasper County, Iowa. Anson paid $800.00 for this land, money borrowed from his uncles Horace and Amos. The land had been awarded in 1855 to a Private George Fierce of the Alabama Militia for his service in the Florida War.

For 45 years, from 1872 until he and Lydia retired and moved to a house at 1509 Elm Street in Grinnell in 1917, Anson and Lydia lived on this acreage. Very little documentation survives from the years that comprise the prime of their lives. What is known derives largely from what their daughter Mabel remembers her parents having told her about their early days and from several of Lydia's surviving diaries.

Breaking the sod on what was still virgin prairie required sustained effort. Lydia observed in a diary entry for April 30, 1877, that their neighbor was breaking prairie right by their fence. Some of the methods used to accomplish this could be hazardous. Lydia wrote in her diary on March 27, 1880 that, "Earl [a farm worker employed by the Moxleys] set the prarie a fire and it killed our trees." Yet the prairie was also a resource. Lydia recorded on June 2, 1880 that she, "Went down in the prarie and got 2 or 3 quarts strawberries." Each year, their daughter Mabel explained, her father would break a little more of the prairie until larger and larger areas could be cultivated. He planted small grains at first such as oats, wheat and barley then corn, but left a large pasture for cattle. Mabel recalled that, "At first he just had a few head and then, of course, they'd have little calves, and he'd raise the little calves and that would increase the herd. ... He'd have at least twenty calves, little calves that he would raise every spring. Well, he kept them until they were about 3 years old before he tried to sell them to Chicago. ... And father made a lot of money off of his hogs and off of his cattle."

For both Anson and Lydia pioneering proved to be a life of unrelenting toil and often loneliness. They led a rigorous life of manual labor as Lydia's diaries make clear. What is remarkable about the diaries is the matter-of-fact style in which Lydia records what amounted to a withering daily regimen of work. "I'm about sick," or "Anson went off and left me to do the chores," are about the only complaints that emerge. Camp meetings, grove meetings, quilting parties, "Sociables," and frequent visits from neighbors represented the main opportunities for a break from the unending demands of the farm. Their families in New York felt so sorry for them, Mabel remembered that every year they sent barrels of dried apples and boxes of maple sugar. Mabel recalled her mother saying that she was often so homesick that if she saw just a cat that looked like it was from home, she would cry. Anson spent long days in the field leaving Lydia alone in the house where occasionally Indians passed by. "Anson went up north to plough," Lydia wrote in her diary on October 2, 1878, "I had all the chores to do." But Lydia also shared in the field work: "I herded cows in the stalks," she wrote on November 10, 1880. And in the summer as crops ripened, she worked with the men in the field: "I did up work and baked bread and dressed chicken. Went out and drove reaper all day--have pretty near all I can do," she wrote on July 25, 1880. In July and August when oats and flax were harvested, Lydia spent long days driving the reaper, a machine which in those days was pulled by a team of horses, after she completed the day's housework: "I did up work and went up north to help harvest, drove all day," she recorded on July 16, 1880.

According to Mabel when her parents moved onto the land, there was nothing there except an old house and an old barn. The house remained until 1884 when Anson had a new one built, but conditions remained spartan. During her childhood and youth, Mabel remembered, they had no electricity and no running water. The house was heated by coal stoves and lit by oil lamps and water came from wells dug on the property. Nor was there any refrigeration. Meats and other produce that needed to be kept cool were stored in a cellar dug into the ground and Lydia routinely had to kill rattlesnakes that nested there.

In time the farm developed into a diversified operation. Corn, oats and hay were key field crops, but cattle and hogs were the major sources of revenue. Producing chickens, eggs, and butter largely fell to Lydia and these commodities provided 'cash flow' as they could be sold on regular trips to local markets in Gilman, Newburg, and Grinnell. Small by present-day standards, the Moxley farm proved profitable and remarkably self-sufficient. "We seldom bought food," Mabel remembered, "Mother and Father raised everything themselves; we never knew hunger."

Family Trends and Dynamics

Five children were born to the Moxleys: Lucie Elizabeth, Orville Claude, Mabel Elizabeth, Joseph, Blanche, and DeWitt Talmadge. Lucie, the eldest, born on March 25, 1872, married Thomas S. Mason, a neighbor, on December 12, 1895. She died on January 9, 1901 at the age of only 28, the victim of a lifelong mental disorder. Her sisters recalled that she was very religious and that she was something of Anson's favorite as a result, since he was very religious himself. Her obituary strives to portray her "derangement" in a positive light. "She had a wonderful desire to win souls to Jesus," it states. "This she considered the most important of all things. She was most wonderfully burdened for her church and her neighbors. It seemed as though it would crush the life from her. She had plead with her friends and neighbors year after year to give themselves to Jesus. During this last revival meeting the burden seemed greater than she could bear." It might be assumed that her religious devotion was in part a means to please her father, but the intensity of religious feelings, especially in the context of the revival meetings which she attended where emotions could be raised to a fevered pitch, appears to have aggravated her longstanding disorder and precipitated a breakdown. She had gone on a fast and been institutionalized in Colfax, Iowa which is listed on her death certificate as the place of death. "Colfax was noted as a health spa at the turn of the century," a distant relative noted. "There were 4 or 5 sanitariums in town. They gave baths and people drank the water (mineral water) for all kinds of ailments. The newspapers picked up on a few suicides when a person with mental problems thought the treatment would be a 'cure-all'." Lucie's demise appears to have haunted Anson for the rest of his life, even though he seems not to have understood its real causes, nor the role that his own religious intensity may have played in it. He attributed her illness instead to the devil. He wrote in his diary on February 15, 1941 just 11 days before he died that, "The devil is trying to run me overboard, like Lucy, Lord hold me steady."

Orville and Joseph both died in infancy. Scarcely any record of Joseph apart from his tombstone survives, but Orville's death is poignantly described by Lydia in her 1878 diary.

"Sunday July 14. Very Hot. Orville died this morning about 10 o'clock. About 30 or more were in to day.

Monday July 15. Hot. Mrs. Rowe & Mrs. McCulloch dressed little Orville. The funeral was at 3 o'clock. Rev. C. Ringvelts preached. The neighbors and friends were very kind and the girls made a wreath of white flowers and put it on the coffin.

Tuesday July 16. 78

Very Hot. Oh! how lonesome with out my Baby. I washed his little clothes to day and straitened up the house.

Thursday July 18.

... A man came here to sell gravestones. We ordered one for Orville. Price $35 (With this verse)

This lovely bud so young & fair
him brought to early doom
just came to show how sweet a flower
in paradise might bloom

Friday July 19

... The gravestone man staid all night."

In the context of a late-nineteenth-century farming family, the death of his first two male children no doubt disturbed Anson because it meant that there would be no sons to help with the unending demands of manual labor typical of farm life, and that there would be no one to carry on the family name. Perhaps, too, the trauma of losing both boys in infancy predisposed his parents to favor DeWitt Talmadge, the last born of their children.

Mabel Elizabeth Moxley was born on June 26, 1881. She attended Iowa College Academy, graduating on June 8, 1900, and undertook a course of sub-collegiate study at Iowa State Normal School thereafter. She followed in the footsteps of her forebears by teaching in a country school near Newburg. On March 17, 1909 she married Frank Barns, a rural mail carrier. She continued to teach for a time after their marriage and was certified by the State of Iowa to teach second grade in 1911. The couple had two children, Rachel and Lucille, and resided in Grinnell all their lives. Mabel died on September 25, 1974 at the age of 93. Close to her father, Anson, throughout her life she passed along much of the family history orally to her children and grandchildren.

Blanche was born on August 1, 1887. Unlike her sister, she was not close to her father of whom she confided in later years that she was always a little afraid. "When he said 'jump'," she remembered, "you jumped. " And if you did something wrong he would switch you, sometimes until it bled." Like Mabel, she taught in a rural school, but found it unappealing. She married Arlie Bentley on November 20, 1912. They lived in neighboring Newton. The couple had one son, Donald. Eventually they separated and Blanche moved in with Anson and Lydia, supporting herself, her son, and her parents by working in the business office at Grinnell College. Arlie Bentley suffered from what was then referred to as 'melancholia', or depression. Unable to shake the illness, he died on February 11, 1920, a victim of suicide. Blanche rarely spoke of his death.

DeWitt Talmadge was born October 20, 1891. As a young man he attended school in Oskaloosa. According to his sisters, Mabel and Blanche, Anson thought he would be a minister and sent him to school to prepare for becoming a minister, but he contracted typhoid in an epidemic and returned home never to continue his studies. He married Jessie Edna Badger on December 28, 1916. Within a year he and Jessie had moved onto the family farm and his parents moved to their retirement home in Grinnell. They stayed on the farm until they lost it during the Great Depression. His obituary notes that the couple lived at several residences until his death in 1948 in Gilman.

His sister Mabel remembered that, "Father let him have some of the cattle and some of the machinery; Oh, he gave him so many, many things that way, just gave them to him. And then he was suppose to pay so much to father every year for the rent of the home, rent of the land, you know, and I don't think he ever paid father a cent. Isn't that awful. Then he'd come to father and want father to sign notes. And father was so kind hearted he'd go and sign notes, and he signed so many notes... I used to feel sorry for father because he didn't have anything from the farm at all. He wanted to help Talmadge. He was kind of a spoilt boy. He financed everything for him."

Mabel's account of her brother's handling of the farm reflects a certain sibling rivalry. As well, she allows little for the difficulty of running a farm in the midst of the Great Depression. Yet her views are essentially accurate. Talmadge, or Uncle Bud as he was known within the family, did not honor his debts to his father and Anson and Lydia's retirement years were lean as a result. They had the safety net provided by their children living nearby. Talmadge did not pay his debt, but he did send produce and Mabel was nearly a daily visitor to her parents home helping with many household chores and ensuring that they had food. But they had very little else. A diary entry for February 11, 1938 reads: "Barn door off the track, washing machine broke, grate in stove broke … and Anson broke too." With a bitter tone he wrote in his diary on March 5, 1938 that, "Anson has just $1.00 a month given him for spending money in his old age: by his daughter Blanche. I've got $5.00 last Xmas from our son Talmadge by begging for it: We still have the $1175.25 Note due us from him and hundred of dollar interest due. A bit hard on Father's old age."

The Moxley family typified trends of the time. Infant mortality, high in a frontier area, claimed 2 of their six children. Mental illness, then little understood, claimed another. The three who survived as adults led conventional lives--the daughters pursuing careers in teaching and as housewife and homemaker; the son, taking over the family farm. All three lived in the area of their birth, a result of limited career opportunities. The mobility that characterized post-World War II America had to wait another generation before it emerged among their children's children. Most noticeable, however, is the absence among their children of the boldness that led Anson and Lydia to leave everything they knew, held dear, and found comfortable to migrate to the Iowa prairie, and the discipline and strength of character to survive there as pioneers in a frontier environment. The intensity of Anson Moxley's personality is most evident in his religious beliefs and practices, but it clearly also played a substantial role in his capacity to take the risk of being a pioneer and to see that risk through to an agreeable end by enduring the hardships of that life with discipline and self-sacrifice until the couple became well established.

An Ordinary Saint

Shortly after his death on February 26, 1941, the local newspaper eulogized Anson Moxley in an article entitled, 'In Fullness of Days', by saying that "if ever a saint rested from his labors, he is the one." "To Anson Moxley," the piece continued, "the Bible was not a book to be read every once in a while. It was his constant companion, his intimate friend and his daily guide and of him it can truly be said that he went through life hand in hand with his Saviour."

Anson Moxley's religious sensibility had deep roots. An obituary notice observes that his father, Ezekiel, was a pillar of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His mother, Ruth Elizabeth Dart Moxley, was similarly noted to have been dedicated to the church. However, her pride in having taught school, (and in having produced five children all of whom at some point in their lives served as school teachers), and her interest in reading contributed an intellectual element to Anson's make up.

Yet while Anson's religious temperament reflected his parents' background and the immediate family environment in which he grew up, he was also very much an heir to the religiosity of the Burned-over district of western New York in which an institutionalized church had not yet taken root. Methodism arrived in the Jefferson area only in the early nineteenth century. Circuit riders presided over meetings in homes and barns. Camp meetings and revivals were also common. The first Methodist Episcopal church was established in the village of Jefferson in 1819. Anson’s Father, Ezekiel, helped establish a new church near Moxley Street in 1850.

The documentary record of Anson's personal religious history is fragmentary. It consists of what is now a rather random collection of letters from various periods in his life and a complete diary for the year 1938 when he turned 90. Nonetheless, these sources reveal that the dominant themes in his religious life tended toward spiritual revival and awakening, emotional enthusiasm, the importance of prayer and its role as a pathway to God, and the sense that God's presence was palpable. Anson Moxley exhibited a typically Methodist focus on a personal relationship with God and with feeling the Holy Spirit. These characteristics typified religious activity in western New York in the mid-nineteenth century at a time when established religious institutions were not firmly developed. They also characterized late-nineteenth century and early twentieth-century Iowa, another frontier area lacking institutionalized religion. Yet Anson Moxley's religious character rested on a deeper Puritan past, a past which helps to account for the discipline of his religious observances, the seriousness with which he regarded preaching, and, most notably, the sheer intensity of his religious beliefs and practices. In Darrett B. Rutman's description of John Winthrop (1588-1649), the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay commonwealth, one can see the foundations of Anson Moxley's religious character: "His great peculiarity, however," writes Rutman of Winthrop, "was his intensity, his literal application to society of the Biblical injunction to 'love thy neighbor as thyself'." Rutman makes clear that Winthrop was not 'Puritan' in a theological sense. Drawing on the analysis of earlier writers, Rutman explains that Winthrop's puritanism is instead to be found in his "'unbelievable intensity' of feeling toward God and fellow man, [and his] 'deep emotional longings for personal encounter and direct communion with God'." Anson Moxley's religious sensibility was largely formed in an environment strongly influenced by revivalist fervor of western New York in the early nineteenth century, but spiritual aftershocks of these events seem only to have accentuated a more deeply rooted predisposition toward emotional intensity and personal experience of God that extends back to seventeenth-century New England.

Moreover, as a young man and as an adult Anson Moxley lived the life of a farmer, close to the land where the physical manifestations of the life cycle are constantly apparent. He manifested a keen awareness of the natural world. His diary evidences that his sensitivity to nature is closely interwoven with daily routines. "Nineteen blue morning glory blossoms up in the top of an apple tree: in full bloom: very beautiful sight," he recorded on September 13, 1938. A tendency toward interpreting Biblical themes literally is reinforced by a life on the land where key religious themes such as renewal, rebirth, and awakening as well as death are given physical manifestation. But Anson's spirituality developed in an environment that was not only set in the natural world, but also in one lacking modern electronic conveniences such as radio, television, and telephones. During the prime of his life, from age 21 to his retirement at 68, these benefits of technology were not part of his household. The world in which he lived on the prairie reinforced a dependence on conversation, the art and practice of letter-writing, and social interaction with neighbors. Survival required not just discipline and self-sacrifice, it also placed a premium on cooperation with ones neighbors whose help was needed to bring in the harvest, to keep the farm running at times of sickness, to offer support at times of death, and to break the monotony and loneliness of farming life. Mutual dependence deepened character, community, and spirituality. It is ironic that the Moxley's who asserted their individuality by taking the initiative to become pioneers in the first place owed their success in that venture in no small part to their dependence on the community that formed in Hickory Grove Township. Anson Moxley's character and his spirituality matured as a result of his being an integral part of this community both giving of himself to his neighbors and receiving from them.

Anson Moxley's 1938 diary provides a window to his spirituality at a later stage in his life. It evidences a discipline of worship--what Jonathan Edwards referred to as an "earnest application to the means of salvation--reading, prayer, meditation...." "Anson spent the forenoon in his room on the 'prayer rug'," he wrote on February 17th, and "I awoke at 4--had three hours of prayer before breakfast," on October 11. These entries describe an exercise that for him was routine. On March 27th he observed: "Another beautiful day. Went to S.S. [Sunday School] at the ME [Methodist Episcopal] church. Went to AM preaching, Cong[regational church]. Went to night preaching--Baptist." His hunger for the Word could not be satisfied by just one Sunday service so he filled the day with visits to several services, usually beginning with the Methodists, his own denomination. And his discipline bore fruit. He wrote on October 30th, " Went to church twice. Walked three miles. Admired the beautiful trees, such brilliant foilage. Went to Baptist at night (walked). Had a splendid service. Rev. Long & wife sang duet. I came home very happy." And on November 4th: "Such a forenoon of joy as is mine. The dark and rainy and dismal day over head--on the outside world. But the inside--full of sunshine, peace, joy, and happiness: We have been feeding on the Word and prayer all the forenoon for others and got blessed our selves."

Anson's diary is also the record of his encounters with the Holy Spirit. His personal prayers conducted in private in his room kneeling on his prayer rug resulted in visitations of the Spirit. "Am filled and thrilled with joy in my soul this morning," he wrote on February 9th, "I feel the presence of God very near me. Yes, in me." On another occasion he recorded that, "A sweet heavenly peace fills me now." And, on another that, he "had a great wave of glory come to me."

The sense of God as personally accessible was a belief he shared with other 'believers', most notably the wife of his deceased brother Albert who had lived in Kellogg, Iowa for a couple of years and married Mary Childs, a local seamstress there, before returning to Jefferson, New York. In 1908, four years after Albert's death in 1904, Mary returned to Iowa and kept up a correspondence with Anson, her brother-in-law. In a letter dated March 29, 1937, she confided: "I believd his promise when he said Call unto me & I will answer thee, & show you great & mighty things which thou knowest not. I called & believed He would answer. I was awake He appeared in person. I saw Him just as plain as I ever saw anyone. The long white robe, the dark eyes & hair, the crown of thornes, on His brow. The dark mantle or cloak about His shoulders. The look of love & pity, as He held out His arms, & said come. I shouted for joy & said Yes Lord I come. His presence was with me for several days. Wherever I went he seemed to be at my side. How happy I was. It was not a dream, or vision but a real thing. In answer to prayer & a great longing for His presence."

Yet in addition to the palpability of the Holy Spirit and the emotionalism that characterized Anson's religious sensibility, he manifested a marked intensity in his religious belief and practices. He did not care for "mild" prayers, or prayers of short duration. On March 14th he noted that, "Bishop Oxonam spoke tonight in the M E Church: He exalted G A Steiner and his books more than God and the Bible. His prayer very short, and very mild: I would not want to take his chance of heaven, [even] if he is a Bishop." His granddaughters recall his having to be kicked under the dinner table at holiday gatherings as encouragement to end the blessing before the food cooled. He had a habit of preaching to tradesmen and neighbors who stopped by the house, or lecturing the African-American barber, John Lucas, on the meaning of the Book of Job. His daily regimen of prayer often began before dawn, was augmented at times by the memorization of scripture, and he was known to embarrass visitors by spontaneously speaking in tongues. He forbad his grandchildren to play certain games on Sunday. Playing cards had to be quickly put away if he showed up unannounced for a visit. Others did not always share the intense passion that he felt, even within his own family. Thus like the Puritans of an earlier age, he could alienate those around him by the severity of his behavior, even while in his own mind his actions were necessary to glorify God and achieve salvation. With the exception of his daughter Mabel one senses a distance between him and his other children through most of his life. Some undoubtedly regarded him as eccentric and his own family at times found him hard to take. In his final years as he looked back on his life he experienced doubt. "My life seems such a failure of what I wanted it to be," he wrote on December 2nd. More characteristically, however, he recorded his gratefulness for "God's goodness to us as a family all of these years: We really enjoy our religion and we love to be alone with God in prayer." "Anson is a happy old man," he had confided in an earlier entry.

In January 1941 both Anson and Lydia fell ill. On January 23rd Anson recorded that "Lydia, Blanche & I still have the 'flu'." On January 26th he noted that he had "spent a miserable night." "I am very weak." The effects of his illness became progressively more debilitating. By February 5th he was so weak that, "I can hard stand," he complained. Sleepless nights compounded his discomfort. On February 8th he wrote, "No sleep to speak of... Fought the devil all night with the Word and the Blood. Each time I exalt God, it makes the Devil mad." Again on February 13th he noted, "A bad sleepless night. Read the Bible much. The night seemed to long. Bad dreams--the devil is after me sure. Very weak." He seemed unaware that is inability to sleep and nightmares stemmed from his sickness, attributing them instead to devil who was after his soul. By February 17th he appeared aware that the end was near. "I am failing daily," he wrote, "How long will it last?" By then Lydia had started to improve, but the family recognized that Anson's condition was worsening. "Rev Long [the Baptist minister] here for a nice long visit," he wrote, "Has been here three times." The next day, on February 22nd, his son Talmadge and the Methodist minister visited and they prayed: "I had a great visit with him [Rev. Loose]," he wrote, "Had he ever seen a prayer 'rug'? 'No', Well here is one. He knelt down [on] it and prayed for me...." On February 24th he wrote, "Very very weak to day failing fast." The next day he continuned in handwriting that had become barely legible, "Weaker and weaker. A nice day. No appetite. The girls so good to us." On February 26th a final entry in his diary read, " Nice day. Children all here. Very weak...." Later that day, Anson Moxley died.

Treasures in Heaven

Summing up a life, perhaps most especially an 'ordinary' life, is a presumptuous task. One can never fully know where a person's influence begins or ends, nor how in the nexus of human relationships an individual's thoughts and actions have worked for good or ill in countless, now invisible ways. Shafts of insight have to suffice.

Anson and Lydia Moxley's move westward was part of a national trend in America after the Civil War. They differed from other migrants somewhat in that they came from New York state at a time when many others commenced a second wave from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio after having first come from eastern states. Land was a key consideration, but a known contact, in this case a relative, proved to be an essential element in selecting their destination. Westward movement might be said to have been 'ordinary' since so many embarked on migratory journeys and because the migrants themselves were 'ordinary' people. Yet having had a taste of the West many returned, such as Anson's own brother Albert. Those who stayed to build farms and businesses on the frontier, manifested extraordinary endurance in the face of physical hardships commonplace on the Midwestern prairie. Acts of heroism tended toward the mundane--surviving weather, disease, and isolation in primitive conditions--but were no less remarkable for that. Survival itself proved an exceptional achievement. Looking back on her parents' lives, their daughter Blanche remarked in her own old age, "I don't know how they ever made it."

On a more personal level, the Moxley's lives were anything but ordinary, especially by present-day standards. Their lives were firmly set in a fixed geographical context which provided, in Richard Sennett's terms, "a scene of attachment and depth," as well as seasonal rhythm. Through diary-keeping the Moxleys created their own life narratives--ongoing stories written day by day which mediated success and failure, joy and heartbreak and bestowed order and meaning. Anson Moxley never suffered the spiritual emptiness so many do today because he was so well connected: connected to the land, to his family, to his neighbors. Interdependence was essential to survive and thrive in a frontier environment. It bred character, if by character, as Sennett has written, we mean a focus on one's relationships to others outside oneself. In Anson Moxley character and spirituality intersected. The same discipline of daily attention to the routines of the farm which were necessary to keeping it running and prospering applied to his worship and devotions--a regimen of prayer, church attendance, scripture reading, even memorization, just as exacting as tending livestock and fieldcrops. As his work-a-day life as a farmer was built around the delayed gratification of harvest only after preparation of the soil, planting, cultivation, and waiting for the full maturation of a crop, so, too, was the Christian life in a sense one of delayed gratification for the sake of a future end--Heaven. Even more than that however, living close to the land all of his life strengthened Anson Moxley's faith. Faith itself is made stronger, more confident, by a lifetime in an environment where one's worldly existence depends on the inevitable transformation of winter to spring, spring to summer, summer to fall, and in which one observes this inexorable change occur year after year. The reality of the next world is manifest in the cycles of the life he lived on earth.

In his last years, Anson might have looked back on his life and thought of the lines in Ecclesiastes with which he must have been familiar: "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." Two of his sons died in infancy, his eldest daughter died prematurely from a mental disorder, and the farm which he and Lydia endured hardship and privation to build on the virgin prairie was lost during the Great Depression, ultimately contributing to the early death of his third son. But there is no trace in family traditions or in his surviving diary that Anson felt any "vexation of spirit." His later years were somewhat impoverished materially, but 1509 Elm Street remained a thick carpet of supportive family members. On November 21, 1938 he exulted in his diary that, "The ground bare and weather pleasant. Am out of a job of out door work, I have more time for prayer and the Word." His treasure was the Word, his family, and the natural world in which he labored all his life. His soul resides in these places, places "where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal."

7711 Marshall Heights Court
Falls Church, Virginia
22043-2546
[email protected]