Person:Barbara Wilson (7)

Barbara Wilson was three years old when the Roaring Twenties came crashing down into the Great Depression. But her family was not affected by the ravages of that cataclysmic period until about seven years later. At that time, economic pressures finally mandated the move from their Dayton home to the house near Trotwood that her father had renovated. While some in the family were not enamored of living on a farm miles away from their Dayton friends, it was the beginning of one of the happiest periods in Barbara's life. A comely and feminine girl with a tomboy heart, she could frolic with the animals they kept, wander the fields, and hang from trees. And she made close, like-minded friends with whom she stayed in contact. A source of special joy were her pets, Jiggs and Eddie, a dog and sheep. Surprisingly, the two animals were great pals, and Jiggs often assisted his friend by pulling burrs from his wool. Jiggs was a mixed breed white dog with black around one eye, much like Petey in the "Our Gang" comedies. Unfortunately he was possessed of some bad habits, one being the raiding of the henhouse to suck eggs. To correct the problem, Barbara's father loaded an egg with red pepper and put it in the nest. The resulting canine trauma ended the thievery. Worse still, Jiggs fell in with some bad company and joined them in attacking a neighbors turkeys, an escapade that caused the angry neighbor to do him in. A much more distressing time was in store for Barbara than losing her dog, when she lost her mother a few months before her 14th birthday, an age when she especially needed a mother. She was enrolled in boarding school at Stuart Hall in Staunton, Virginia and the change from free-spirited tomboy to a regimented girls school was a difficult transition. In the meantime, her father had moved back to Dayton and she returned after a year to join him. By now her two sisters were not living at home, and as the only woman in the house, she had to take on the unfamiliar tasks of cooking, doing the wash, and other assorted household duties. Through it all her father Floyd, was not recovering well from the loss of his wife. It was not a good time, but the mentoring of her sister Janet, was of infinite help and led to the closeness they shared. After graduating from Fairmont high school, Barbara entered Beloit college, a small liberal arts school in Wisconsin. Her father undertook the cost of the first two years, but in order to continue on to graduation, she had to pay her own way. This was accomplished by taking on three part time jobs during the school year, working two jobs on the summer break, and getting a loan from the Delta Delta Delta sorority, of which she was a member. She was a waitress in the dormitory dining room, served as a telephone switchboard operator, and tutored other students in Spanish. The summer jobs were in an electric motor factory during the day and at a drugstore at night. After graduation, Barbara worked for almost a year as a clerk at the manufacturing company that had employed her during the summers, until she got a secretarial job in 1949 at a television station just being started in Dayton. It was there that she met her husband to be, Don Faust, a man seven years her senior who was the station's program manager. Two years later, several months before they were to be married, he took an executive position at a television station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were wed on August 4, 1951 in the living room of her father's house and headed back to Pittsburgh. She cried all the way, the reasons for which were never ascertained by her baffled new husband who hoped that, at least in part, the tears were of happiness. The couple honeymooned at Niagara Falls, Montreal, Quebec and New England, generally in accomodations befitting their financial status...spartan. At first they lived in an apartment in the suburb of Mount Lebanon, then bought their first home in Wexford, another suburb. The small brick house was on a hillside so steep that the basement ceiling was 14 feet high, and two short flights of steps from the basement door were required to get to the back yard. Its balky well was challenged to produce adequate water if overnight guests were entertained. Due to her interest in genealogy, Barbara was invited to join the Colonial Dames of America, and her extensive research to establish a qualifying ancestral line leading back to Revolutionary War officer Colonel Christian Lauer, provided a substantial amount of the material for this history. A primary passion for Barbara during her adult life was the collection of early American antiques. The first two, a flax spinning wheel and a cranberry tumbler, were acquired on their honeymoon. It grew from there: furniture, lighting devices, silver, glassware & china, items made of horn, Indian artifacts, clothing, tools, firearms, Shaker items, treenware, kitchen utensils, yokes, paintings & prints, scrimshaw, books, spinning wheels, hetchels, bedwarmers, niddy noddys, quilts, jugs, documents and who knows what else...hundreds of articles. Over the years Barbara accumulated a large library on early Americana, becoming a recognized expert on the subject. Numerous organizations invited her to lecture on such topics as: Spinning & Weaving, Natural Dyes, The Shakers, John James Audubon, The Hudson River Valley, Early Lighting, Beatrix Potter. Over the years that knowledge was also utilized as a Docent in several museums & historic homes: The Denver Art Museum, Schenectady Museum and The Travellers Rest Historic Home of Nashville where she toured as many as 9,000 students a year. She also loaned antique artifacts for special presentations at The Belle Meade Mansion and the Oscar Farris Agricultural Museum, both in Nashville, Tennessee. After 50 years of age, Barbara's health began to deteriorate. Rheumatic fever she suffered as a child, left a damaged mitral valve in her heart which led to four operations...three to replace the valve, and another to repair one of the replacements. Other afflictions also took their toll, limiting her ability to participate in the endeavors she loved.

1. ↑ A. Donovan Faust (Foust). A Family History: The Ancestors of Thomas Wilson Faust. (1997)
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