Collect Day #33, BELLE BRINKLEY WILLIAMS
O God, you hold all time in your heart; we remember today your children, Belle Brinkley Williams and her husband, Steve, who migrated to New Hampshire to find a better life. Belle worked to split the wood, pump the water and work the land to feed her family even as she faithfully supported her church family. May the old shade tree in heaven now shelter Belle and Steve with the bottle of her favorite; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
DAY #33, April 12, 2019
PORTSMOUTH, NH
BELLE BRINKLEY WILLIAMS (1878 -1960)
Valerie Cunningham
“I’m 78 years old,” Mrs. Williams told an interviewer in 1950. “I like tending the farm and doing outdoor work. I can’t chop wood or do any plowing anymore, but I thank God I have my health and strength to do so much more…. They may think I’m too old, but if the state will let me, I think I’ll take in some more children.” She never did, but continued, until her death, to be a vital part of Portsmouth.
It was 1918 when Steve and Belle Williams joined the Great Migration, leaving rural North Carolina to finally settle in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He found work at a chemical plant and she was hired as a cook. Ten years later they owned a working farm with a house and barn near the top of Beane’s Hill in Newington. That was before the state’s “Killer Highway” cut their property into two parts leaving the farm animals on one side of the busy road and the house on the other side. The newspaper noted her calm confidence and optimism, “typical of the rugged stock from which she came.” The family continued using a wood stove and hand-pumping water outside, even after running water was installed.
Steve Williams died in 1940 and Aunt Belle continued to live on the farm. By 1952, two years after the newspaper interview, she no longer could cross the highway safely. She sold the farming side of her property.
Long before then, their only child, Stephen Jr., had moved to New Jersey where he worked as a chauffeur. The last of five foster children that Aunt Belle raised also had moved on: “They grow up and don’t need me anymore, but I’m proud of them and I’ll never regret taking any of them.”
Sunday was the time for all of the family to connect with folks from the surrounding area at People’s Baptist Church – choir and Sunday School for all ages in the morning and Baptist Young People’s Union for the teens in the afternoon.
The old shade tree in Aunt Belle’s front yard made the perfect summer picnic spot. That’s where friends and neighbors would gather, often spontaneously, each bringing a brown paper bag to “sneak in” a bottle of Aunt Belle’s favorite ale. She sat and listened, fully engaged while visitors brought her up to date on their lives. Her empathy and love of a good joke made everyone in her presence feel they were somebody special.
