You are observant and analytical and somewhat critical. While reasonable in argument, you are nonetheless capable of doing as you see fit. Persuasive and peace loving, you keep the peace through your reasonable method of debating things. You get things off your chest and don't hold grudges. You develop tact to a high degree once you accept that everything isn't as cut and dried to everyone as it is to you.

Your intense nature will have much to overcome in this world for your energetic vigor is not accompanied by an equal physical vitality, and you tire easily. Responsibilities settle on you early in life, discouraging you, causing you to withdraw into yourself somewhat. You dislike competitiveness, preferring to be left alone, but find yourself drawn into early domestic duties. If you rebel against this and seek a career of your own, you find obstacles to overcome. You are independent without being aggressive. Something of a lone wolf, you can find yourself pretty lonely.

Your emotional and intellectual sides are nicely blended and give you a good deal of quiet charm and magnetism. Your intuitions are strong and your critical faculties are aided by innate good taste. You have an appreciation for beauty, music and poetry." (Heaven Knows What by Grant Lewi)

Not at all the personality profile of the true Libran, bouncing back and forth seeking the true balance. Perhaps because of the cool calming influence of a Virgoan moon.

Attractive, intelligent, charming and hard working. A woman of integrity in her private labors. Her personality, while strong and stable, did not intrude itself on others, yet people felt her presence. People valued her reserve, made her their confidante. With an acute sense of her own worth, Rose valued other, lesser people for their own worth.

Rose's sense impressions followed a strict moral and aesthetic code, experiencing sensations with a gentility. Red is not just red; it is a warm red or a cold red, beautiful or an ugly red. Sensitive to odors and physical surroundings, her house was spic and span so as not to offend the senses; noises, cleanliness, food odors and seasonings.

* * *

Daughter Jo liked to claim her mother Rose knew eight different gentlemen named Dan [in her courting years]. In school, at church, and at ball games...Paula was born in Joetown. Rose and John and the three girls lived in Ripley, West Virginia. Jo didn't remember Belington, where Geri was born. Jo was four years old. Her mother was divorced from her dad some time back...

The depression...Jo was 14 years old and Paula was 16; Geri was 10 years old. They lived in Huntington, West Virginia, their mother was working as a saleslady for $15.00 per week, sewing at night to make more money. It had been rough. They had enough food. Beans, cabbage, potatoes, bacon. And on Sunday, chicken and [homemade] noodles and biscuits, and Rose would bake pies over the weekends.

Paula graduated from Huntington High School at 16 or 17..."she was real smart." She was passed ahead twice...Paula left and came to Columbus and she got a job with the Standard Oil Company. She was sent to night school by the company.

They moved to Charleston, West Virginia, later. Jo was 17 when she left school, and got a job in the five and ten cent store at Newberry's. $9.00 per week, six days a week. And later, $10.00.

They lived in furnished rooms for a while. $7.00 per week. That's when Rose met Hubert Woods. She rented from his mother...

Rose was a Methodist. "Mother knew her bible." She did church work in Columbus, Ohio, when she was married to Buck Wood... They both went to church. He was working over at the Army Depot, where Paul was working now for the government...

Rose was a smart woman. "She was very strict, and clean with the house." She liked church music. She used to play in church. "I don't know if she danced or not. I never saw her..."

"In 1931, I met John Meadows in the five and ten cent store."

(1988, interviews with Jo Meadows)

* * *

Rosa Jean Ramsey was the seventh and last child of Philip and Sarah Melissa Ramsey. She was born in Elkins, West Virginia on 6 October, 1893.

Sixteen years later in May 1909, she married the Reverend John Perry Slaughter, son of Jonah Slaughter and Melissa Stone of Putnam County.

4F#6 John was born 9 December, 1866 on a small farm near Ripley in Jackson County. John's father, Jonah, was also an evangelical minister, as was his grandfather, and two of John's brothers.

John, on left, with brothers and father.

Jonah died in the spring of 1920 after a ministry extending over 42 years. Three years after John's birth the family moved to New Haven in Mason County, where they remained for three years, moving on to Parkersburg where Jonah then ministered for three years. Jonah purchased a portion of the Thomas farm on Eighteen Mile Creek in Putnam County which was the Slaughter home for the next ten years. Here John attended a little school during the winter months, working on the farm mostly during the summers. Up at 4:00 in the morning, quitting after sundown, as was the local custom.

John on the right.

At age nineteen John aligned with the church, heeding the call to preach the gospel. He attended church school at Buckhannon, then on to Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, where he graduated in Religious Studies.

John ministered for the next ten years while continuing with church-prescribed studies, and after five years was ordained as an Elder. John was considered a talented evangelist, having presided over the building of three churches and three parsonages during his ministry. John's siblings included:

Stella M. Slaughter- b 1878; Frederick Slaughter- b August 1881; Charles Slaughter- b September 1883; John; Margaret Slaughter- b 9 December 1886 in Ripley, Jackson County;

Zella E. Slaughter- b November 1891 in New Haven, in Mason County.

John's father, Jonah, was born in July 1843, married on 13 May 1875 to Melissa Stone- b May 1847. Jonah was the son of Andrew Slaughter- b in 1805. About 1830 Andrew married Miss Tabitha Rucker (identity contributed by Ms. Grace Broyles, a gg granddaughter of Andrew and Tabitha Slaughter)- b about 1808. Jonah's siblings included:

Nathan Slaughter- b 1831, m 17 August 1854 to Nancy Lett; Lydia Slaughter- b 1839, m 25 March 1858 to William Croll; William R. Slaughter- b 1842, m 20 April 1864 to Malinda Davis; Jonah; David S. Slaughter- b 1846; Virginia Gretchen Slaughter- b 1849 in Jackson, Co. VA m 19 October 1871 to Thomas William Wilson Flowers b February 1848 in Mason Co. VA d 2 July 1910 in Mason Co. WV., son of Thomas Posie Flowers (son of Benjamin Flowers and Katherine Hughs) and Victoria Anderson. Thomas William and Virginia Gretchen's children were: William Wilson Flowers; James Robert Flowers; Matthew Martin Flowers; Duelin David Flowers; Hattie Evaline Flowers; Leola Viola Flowers; Alelia Ann Flowers b 1886 m George Harmon Spears. Daughter Grace Spears Terry (mother of Grace Broyles); Jane Flowers. (Contributed by Cousin Grace Broyles)

John was to perform the wedding ceremony for Rose's older sister, Florida Gay and her groom, Dallie A. Davis, while Rose was her sister's witness, in Joetown, some eleven months after their own wedding.

* * *

Rose and John lived for a while in Joetown, a small community nestled in the Marion County foothills where their first child, Paula, was born in 1910. They moved on to Elkins where Rose gave birth to their second daughter, Jo, in 1912. From Elkins on to Belington where Geri was born in 1916. Rose's mother, Sarah Ramsey, died in 1915. Jo would relate in later years the story Rose told her of how Sarah would rock Jo to sleep; that Jo "was such a shy little girl".

The family moved to Ripley. Rose was four and a half months pregnant with her fourth child, and it was in Ripley that she lost a son in a miscarriage. In 1925 Rose and John separated, and Rose found an apartment in Huntington. Jo was thirteen years old. Rose found work in a dress shop, taking work home to her apartment to sew at night to earn extra money.

Rose and John found themselves back together again, trying to resolve their differences, but they would ultimately break up again. The two of them tried to work out their problems two or three times before they finally gave it up. During this time they lived in Parkersburg, Dunbar, and finally in Charleston when they divorced in 1928. John migrated to Warren, Ohio, where he met and married Pauline C. Moody. They moved on to New Brumley, Indiana. John was 88 years old when he died around 1968.

* * *

Rose was single for several years, raising her girls, becoming active in her church, giving of her time and energy helping less fortunate folks, keeping a warm and comfortable home.

She married again to a man named Hubert S. Wood, affectionately known as "Buck". Buck had a son named William, who had been born in Charleston, West Virginia.

Rose and Buck were a good marriage and were happy together.

Rose passed away on July 16, 1963 at the age of 63. Her sister, Gay, attended the funeral, and was the center of a family flap that caused hard feelings between cousins Paula and Ron Bosley, which lasted to Paula's death in 1973.

Buck eventually remarried, this time to a lady named Audrey, who was well liked by Buck's stepdaughters. Buck had been an assistant fire chief. his father was William Wood of Charleston, and he had a brother named Aaron, and sisters Marie Bowden and Georgia Cassell, all of Beckley, West Virginia. He also had a step-son named Richard Davis.

Buck lived on Patzer Avenue in Grove City, was a member of St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, Grove City Lodge #689 F&AM, Grove City Chapter #502 O.E.S., Scottish Rite, Aladdin Shrine, and Grove City Senior Citizens. He died in May, 1970, at 70 years of age, and was interred at Concord Cemetery.

Rose's resting place is in Forest Lawn in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, a suburb or Columbus. She reposes next to her daughter Paula.

* * *

Rose gave birth to three daughters. She lost a son in Ripley when she miscarried while four and a half months pregnant.

She had lived in the hidden mountainside community of Joetown outside Mannington in Marion County. She then moved to Elkins in Randolph County, then on to Belington in Barbour County, to Ripley in Jackson County, on to Huntington. She lived in Parkersburg, Dunbar, Charleston, and finally moved on to Columbus in Ohio. Like her older sister Gay, her course through life led her all through the beautiful West Virginia mountains and back roads and on into the northern industrial promise of Ohio. Her seed went with her to found families and dynasties in the Ohio heartland -- the Meadows, Vasos, and Baxters of Columbus. Her niece and sister were both in Akron begetting their own families.

The times for these Ramseys were the toughest, especially to be on their own. World War I, the Great Depression, World War II. Doing without because your country was fighting a war, or just because there was little money to buy the food that was available.

The times made such undistinguished people heroic; the times, the sacrifices, the 'steel' inherited from their ancestors, and their own faith in their perception of and relationship to their creator.