West Branch Times, West Branch, Iowa, Thursday, June 27, 1929
Transcribed by Sharon Elijah, January 5, 2019

AUNT MERCY SAILOR JUST WON’T GROW OLD

     Last week we took a pleasant drive to Cedar Valley, Buchanan and Cedar Bluff, and it is just as pretty country as one could wish to see. There we met a lot of friendly folk and enjoyed making new friendships as well as renewing some of long standing. At Cedar Bluff we met Mrs. Mercy Sailor, “Aunt Mercy”, or Aunt Myrt,” as everybody calls her, and this was one of the outstanding events of the day; for Aunt Mercy will be ninety years old next March, and until last year she never had a doctor’s services in her life.

     Of course, she told us, she had the customary ailments of children, but home remedies sufficed in the early days, and she never “enjoyed poor health.” To see her, one believes this, for she is erect, and walks as spry as many women half her age. Her hair is more black than gray, and she doesn’t wear glasses, although she admitted that she wished she could get some glasses to suit her as she doesn’t see as well as she once did.

     Aunt Mercy’s husband, Hiram Sailor, died twelve years ago and the home was broken up. She went to live with a daughter, and in a few years this daughter also died. Four years ago the mother returned to Cedar Bluff to live. Her little cottage is cozy and neat, on the banks of the Cedar river. The bed is covered with a snowy counterpane, the stoves shine, and the floors are scrubbed to a glistening cleanness and Aunt Mercy does it herself. Even the wood for the stove she occasionally splits herself. And last year this independent old lady earned five dollars a week, taking care of an old lady.

     Cedar Bluff is one of those picturesque towns, along the Cedar river which intended to some day become a city “when the railroad came.” But the steel highway passed it by on both sides; and of the thirty-eight families now residing in Cedar Bluff, Aunt Mercy is the oldest resident.

     She was born in Prairie county, Ohio, and came to Iowa in a covered wagon when she was eleven years old. She says there was not room for all to ride in the wagon; so they took turns walking and had a lot of fun. That seems to be her philosophy, to get some fun out of life as she journeys along.

     Her family settled at Rochester for three years and then at Cedar Bluff where her father, George Moore, had the hotel. Her recollections antedate the bridge across the river by many years. She remembers the ferry “Gower’s Ferry”, it was called, and this was preceded by Washington’s Ford. An ancient legend assured the children of her day that the Father of his Country once crossed the Cedar at that point.

     Whether George Washington crossed the Cedar or the Delaware really matters little to those youngsters, but it was a matter of serious import and breathless interest when the old ferry boat broke loose from its moorings and floated down stream, requiring the work of all the men of the settlement to bring it back and fasten it again.

     Not that it mattered to the young Mercy Moore whether there was a ferry or not, for she and her girl chum traveled the river at will in a little round-bottom canoe.

     Times have changed for the town of Cedar Bluff as well as for its people. Once it had many residents, several stores, saloons; two churches, a blacksmith shop, and was a busy center. Now the saloons are gone, one church, a fusion of all denominations, supplants the two of former days, a big up-to-date store supplies the community’s needs instead of the several small emporiums of long ago, a dance hall and a garage exists and half the little houses of the village are empty. Campers and fisherman revel in the place.

     Aunt Mercy has seen all these changes, yet at ninety she is alert and interested as in any age in which she has lived. She has seen many hardships and deprivations, yet those who know her best will tell you that she never quarreled with anyone, was always a neighbor to those who needed her, and never turned anyone hungry away from her door. What better creed does one need if it brings one sanely, serenely and happily to the sunset of life?