Edith Annie Hawks – by Lynne Thomas Cannon

Edith Annie Hawks was born and raised in Halling, Kent, England.  From her childhood she remembers one night her sisters coaxed her to climb out the window and jump across to the lean-to roof and pick some sweet white grapes for them.  After picking the grapes she found that she could not get back.  She had to slide down the lean-to room into the water-filled rain barrel in her nightgown.

Edith’s family and all her neighbors kept a neat garden plot behind their house.  Edith’s family also kept some young pigs in a brick house in the back yard.  One day one of the pigs got out.  All the neighbors tried to help them catch the pig, but it ran into the outhouse and jumped into the hole, hanging by its front legs.  Edith ran to get her father.  With the help of the neighbors, they got the pig out and into a tub of water and then into a gunnysack.  When the pigs were butchered, one of Edith’s sisters played the mandolin and her brother Freddy played the violin to drown out the squealing of the pig.

In the backyard there was also a “voluntary” apple tree which never had fruit.  Edith’s father got a slip from another tree, a white Jonathon slip, and grafted it by cutting a slit in the bark and cementing the slip in and closing it with adhesive.  The graft grew and had on apple on it.

Edith’s family had a two wheeled cart on one axle which was called a dog cart.  Edith was hanging onto the back of the wagon one day as it was going up a steep hill leading up to the neighborhood bakery.  The wagon tipped back and Edith was caught between the axle and the wagon.  She had to stick her head further under the cart to keep form getting smashed.

One day when Edith was about nine years old she found a rabbit that had been caught in a snare by a poacher.  She got the rabbit out of the snare which was like a slipknot of string and wrapped it in her pinafore.  She took it home for dinner.  When telling the story, Edith said, “ I can still feel it scratching.”  Edith was called Nancy Patient Day by her friends.

Edith Annie Hawks was confirmed into the Episcopal Church at age fourteen by the Archbishop of Canterbury.  At age fifteen she was apprenticed in dry goods and general merchandising at Durrant and Harrison in Snodland.  She was apprenticed for three years after which she was offered a job with the same firm and worked for them for one year.  As a part of her apprenticeship she received room and board and at the end of her apprenticeship she received twenty-five pounds.

At age nineteen Edith left for Camberwell, London with only two and six pence (75 cents).  She obtained a position with Mackie Bros. as a buyer of baby linen.  Her first pay for this position would not be until three moths after beginning work.  Edith worked for Mackie Bros. For four years and then went to Canham’s Dry Goods at Mortlake on the Thames.  For Canham’s she was a window-trimmer and made and sold millinery.  She worked for Canham for four years.  This was where she was working when Ernest returned and made her his bride.