Since this is the time of year when we celebrate women, I would like to take my next few columns to celebrate some women who have lifted themselves up and created the life they wanted to live, in spite of the obstacles they faced.

My Grandmother Nellie is one of those women. Born in 1901, she was the youngest of six children of Frank Stevens and Nellie Hulett Stevens.  Her siblings were, in order of birth, Lloyd, Howard, Clifford, Bessie, and Elsie. She and her sister Elsie, were both born at the Craig Colony in Sonyea, NY. The Craig Colony was a residential community for epileptics, complete with a farm, workshops, cottages, and a school. It was established in 1896.  Nellie’s father Frank, worked as a builder at the Craig Colony, and the family lived there. However, when Nellie was only three years old, her father was killed when he fell from a roof after stepping on an unsecured support. This left her mother a widow with six children to raise.

The boys were older, aged 19, 17, and 15, when their father died, and so were able to help by working. Sadly, Howard died just months after his father in a hunting accident, and Lloyd passed away just three years later.

My Grandma Nellie often talked about the abject poverty that her family experienced after her father died. They left the Craig Colony and moved to Mount Morris. Her mother worked as a midwife and collected herbs for medicinal purposes, but would also do whatever jobs came to hand. During the harvest season, her mother worked sorting apples, and the families would have apples to eat. Some evenings, supper would be a bowl of blueberries in milk. Young Nellie was often barefoot in the warm months but in winter wore whatever shoes were available, leading to a lifetime of foot problems. They were all hardworking, but life was not easy.

But Grandma Nellie loved to read, and she loved to write. As a young woman, her sisters remembered, Nellie would jot down verses as she ironed clothes, keeping her pad and pencil right on the board. Some of her patriotic poems written during World War I were printed in the local newspaper.

Grandma Nellie and her family were staunch Methodists, and she attended church faithfully as a young woman.  A fellow parishioner saw her promise and said he would pay her tuition to attend the Geneseo Normal School so that she could become a teacher.

Nellie finished her teacher’s training and taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Hudson. She then took a job in Callicoon, where she taught elementary grades until she married Fred Stabbert Sr. Throughout her life, she continued to be a leader, active in her church and her community, and a dedicated wife, mother, and grandmother. She also kept writing, penning her beloved column “While the Kettle Boils”  since 1934. Luckily, the “Kettle” continues to boil in reprints, making it arguably one of the longest-running newspaper columns ever as it approaches its 92nd anniversary this year.

From an early life marked by loss and poverty yet elevated by the love and unending toil of her mother, Nellie made the most of the opportunities she was given and created a life marked by abundance, kindness, and generosity.