Volume 5, Number 7 - Spring 1975
"AUNTIE NELSON"
By Fannie Cox
I was interested in the article about Theopolis Bass, (Fall 1974), whose story I have heard a number of times.
As a child I knew his wife (Mildred Shannon Bass Nelson), "Auntie Nelson" to me. She lived across Crane Creek from the W. B. Cox farm home, store and Post Office named Oto, where I was raised. She was in fact a sister-in-law of W. B. Cox as he had first married her sister Cordelia Orleana Shannon.
My mother, (Mrs. Henry B. Cox,) my sister and I used to wade the creek or cross on the foot-log to visit Auntie Nelson. One time on one of these visits my sister, Mary Edith and I decided to play at "cooking" in her kitchen on the little wood-burning cook stove. My mother didn’t approve, but Auntie Nelson didn’t object. We found some dry beans for our purpose, and afterwards Auntie Nelson told my mother she found beans in everything; pots, pans, even the coffee pot no doubt.
Auntie Nelson, as many women of her time did, liked to smoke her pipe occasionally. I have in my possession the little clay pipe she kept at our house for her visits there. One time when we had "preaching" at the Oto church, she was having her smoke when she saw the preacher in the yard. She hid her little pipe under her apron and hustled into the house. (My mother told us this).
At the time Auntie Nelson died, July 17, 1906 I was very ill myself, so do not recall anything of her illness, death or funeral.
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