A Singing School Romance

During the winter of 1934 at the Buncombe Baptist Church an itinerant instructor held a “shaped note singing school” and two handsome young men who were new to the community, Johnie and Marvin Baxter, attended the school. All the eligible local girls vied to get their attention. During breaks in the school sessions everyone would go outside to skate on the ice in the yard. Whenever a girl fell down – which seemed quite often - Johnie or Marvin quickly helped them back to their feet. One girl there took Johnie’s fancy and since the Baxter brothers had attended similar schools before and she seemed to need his help on the tests, he provided lots of individual help to Marie Attebery.

Even though he was only 16 years old and she was 19, on Christmas eve of 1936 Johnie and Marie were married by her uncle Loren Hocking at his farm house about halfway between Buncombe and Corning. Young Johnie had to get his father to sign for their marriage license, but Marie did not tell her parents until it was bedtime for her younger siblings and sitting there in the living room of the Attebery home on the arm of the chair in which her new husband sat she asked, "Do you want to know my last name?"

Her father, Oscar Attebery’s only response was, "Well, I thought you had been sitting awfully close all night!"

2014-04-19 11:39:01 RBaxter

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