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This is a tidbit from Beryl Hubbard.  Despite the disclaimer, it's such a neat story that I couldn't withhold it from "A Journey Through Time".

Beryl's disclaimer:

"This is a story I received from another genealogist, by the name of Terri Allred.  In her beginning of the article she stated that she had no proof if it was true or not".

Who cares?  It's a cool story.

"The Little Grandmother"

Grandmother Ann Moon was the young and very tiny wife of Joseph Moon of Guilford County, North Carolina.  She lived quietly at home while her Husband was occasionally pressed into duty as a cattle guard for the Commissary department of the Continental Army.  He always went under protest (that war was contrary to Quaker tenets) whenever he was called to "Military Service" and at the first opportunity, he went home, sometimes so swiftly that he lost his shoes (really, buckled slippers) in his speedy departure.

When Ann was in her early teens, she longed for a pair of shoes bought from a store instead of those made by her father or the neighborhood shoemaker who used to come to the farm and stay until he had outfitted the whole family each fall.  She saved what money she could come by in doing extra chores, spinning, weaving, quilting, and etc. for the family and relatives.  Her Mother added a little and finally, so nearly enough that her father finished the amount (though I'll wager he felt that he was encouraging "worldliness") and off she went on horseback to buy the new shoes.  

They were so soft and smooth compared to the ones she had always worn ("real cordovan leather", the shopkeeper had said) that she could hardly wait to get home and show her Mother.  As she rode along through the woods, about two miles from home she thought she saw something slinking along through the undergrowth at one side of the road and a little way off the trail but she paid no attention and went happily along, occasionally patting her pretty, shiny shoes which were tied together and hung over the horn of the saddle.  Finally, when she could see the lighter portion of the woods at the edge of her Father's clearing, her horse snorted, shied and just as he bolted, she saw an enormous panther leap from an overhanging branch.  

She hung on while the frantic horse through the thick underbrush to the edge of the woods and guided him to the lane that led to the house.  Her Father's dogs, sensing something wrong, met her at the edge of the clearing and went on into the woods on the panther's retreating trail.  When Ann's fright had subsided, she went to get her shoes from the saddle and they were gone.  Somewhere in the horse's wild bolt from the open trail, they had been bounced off or been scraped off by the branches, and though she and her brother searched and searched, they were never found.  She always declared she thought the panther took them and she never had a pair of "boughten" shoes until she married Joseph Moon when she was twenty-nine years old.

They lived in a quaint little cabin with a low fence in the front yard and large stone slab in front of the door.  Behind the house were a log barn and other buildings, and right alongside the yard was a gate to a great rolling woods pasture.  When Joseph and Ann went to meeting, they rode horseback, he on a beautiful bay stallion that was his pride and joy and she on a little brown mare with a soft pacing gait like a rocking chair.

One midweek meeting day when the men were assembled in their end of the meeting house with the shutters closed between them and the women in the other end while both held their business session, Grandmother Ann caught the flash of something red through the window beside her.  She looked again and over on the hill beyond the winding river road, she saw a detachment of red-coated British Cavalry.  The horses of the worshipping Friends were tied to the racks under the trees and she knew the soldiers would take any that suited them.  Also, she knew Grandfather's stallion was the finest of the lot and would surely be chosen.  If she could only get him safely away...

So, she got up from the quietly meditating Quaker women and slipped out the women's door.  She ran to the hitching racks and though she had never touched the stallion before except to give him bits of apple or a bit of loaf sugar (indeed no one had been on him except Grandfather), she untied him, sprung into the saddle from a low stump, and as the first cavalryman rode over the rise at the bridge, she cantered out into the road and turned away from them toward home.  The magnificent horse and the thought of the news of their foraging party might be spread if she got away, made then want to catch her, so they spurred after her, not even bothering to look at the meeting house racks.

Over the road and to the house a couple miles away, Grandmother urged the big horse, clinging to the saddle that was so different from her own, and hoping she'd get there soon enough to turn him loose in the woods pasture where she knew no one except Grandfather could catch him. Round the last turn and into their own lane she flew, pulled him to a stop, opened the gate as she climbed down, unbuckled saddle and bridle which she let fall to the ground, turned him in with as hard a slap as she could muster and a few pebbles to speed him on his way into the wooded hills.

Then she latched the gate, walked demurely into the yard and seated herself on the doorstep just as the cavalrymen pulled in at the yard gate. They had been near enough to see her jerk off the saddle and bridle and start the stallion into the woods but not near enough to prevent it.

She was such a brave little scrap sitting there on the step, and the British Officer, realizing she had beaten him and apparently having a sense of humor that made him see the funny side of the episode, walked politely up to her and asked if she could get a meal for him and his eight men.

She answered, "My Husband has th' key, but if thee will wait until he returns from meeting I will prepare something for thee and thy men", and continued to sit.  The soldiers threw themselves down in the grass under the trees along the lane and talked quietly together.

Back at the little church, Grandfather was surrounded by several friends all trying to tell him at once how "Ann had left meeting" and a few minutes later they had heard her ride out of the yard and one daring soul looking out of the window had seen her speeding for home "on Joseph's horse ahead of the whole British Army".  Grandfather raced for the racks and sure enough, only the little mare was there and never in her life had she gone two miles as fast as she did with Grandfather that day.

At every turn he looked fearfully ahead for a little gray figure that might be lying by the roadside.  Finally, the last turn into his own lane, the redcoated soldiers by the front fence, his saddle and bridle on the ground by the pasture gate and a placid faced little person on the doorstep, he led the sweating little mare to the barn, went round in front and unlocked the door with the big brass key.  It didn't take Grandmother long to tell him what had happened and where the horse was.

A ham from the smokehouse, little new potatoes, fresh baked bread, butter and cheese from the milkhouse and honey from their own hives made a quickly prepared meal and Grandmother at the door called, "Ye may go around to the well house and wash and then come in to dinner."  In the quiet sunny kitchen, the men ate with hearty relish.  When the Captain asked the price of the meal, grandmother refused payment and the soldiers left.  Not one word had been said about the horses.  When grandmother, feeling a little shaky now that it was all over, began clearing the table, she found under each plate a piece of English money.

Too bad we don't know what she did with that money.  She was in great demand in sickness in the middle and later years of her life, as she knew how to use herbs and prepare draughts and plasters.  No wonder her Son Henry became a real doctor.


Ann Moon, wife of Joseph Moon