Born a Smucker, she became Barbara Anne Liggett when she married her college sweetheart, Bob Liggett. "I'm fourth cousin once removed from the Smucker Jelly president; no beneficiary, but I do make our own jams and jellies," Barbara said.
She was born March, 1938 on a farm in Northwest Ohio, the same place her dad was born. Her mother died when she was a year and a half old, "So my father and I went to live with his parents in a rural town a mile away," she related.
January 1, 1942, Alma came from Minnesota to work at a small airfield nearby Needing a place to stay, she rented a room from Barbara's grandmother for $8.00 a week, including meals. "That year, for my birthday, she gave me my first book and read stories to me. I don't know if that was to amuse me or to snag my father," Barb recalled. Red Smucker and Alma married August, 1945 and continued to live there until five years and four babies later. Barbara's family then moved to the farm.
Barbara attended Capital University in a two-year teacher program. By the end of this course, Bob was a senior and ready for graduate school where he earned a M.S. in Bacteriology at the University of Cincinnati.i. They married that fall. Barb taught 2nd and 3rd grades in Cincinnati public schools for four years. "This was a learning experience for me as much as for the students, who were either African American or Appalachian," Liggett said.
At that time, the Liggetts lived in a suburb of Hebron, Kentucky; however, their dream was to live on a farm some day. Their son, Robin, was born in 1962 and the family moved to a 117 acre hill farm that same year.. The county seat, Warsaw, was five miles away and on the Ohio River "Although our house had many drawbacks, we ignored them; instead enjoying the beauty of the area and the isolation. Only four cars passed by during the day, and we knew who they were," Barbara recalled.
"We had a large garden and I canned and froze all our vegetables. There was a tobacco base on our farm and we grew it on shares. Mr.Reed farmed with mules and it was a thrill to hear the harness jingle early in the morning when he walked his mules up to cultivate the tobacco. When it was time to cut and hang the tobacco in our barn, we all helped," Liggett explained
Three years after moving to the farm, Heather Anne was born. When Heather started school, Barbara became a substitute teacher. This gave her an opportunity to learn about the people and the politics of the county. "I'd always been involved in Extension Programs since I was a kid in 4-H. Now, I joined the extension Homemaker Club and learned all kinds of skills, from reupholstering to decorating and needlecrafts," she said. (Barbara is now helping with a needlepoint project for St Philip's Church.) Throughout her years she's been a 4-H leader and held club, county and state offices in Homemakers.
"One of my passions is books and there was no library in our county. So, once a week I drove the children thirty-five miles to the nearest library, It was our day out for shopping and errands and books. I wrote a letter to the district director of libraries and about fifteen years later I was on the library board and a new library was built in our area," Barbara said.
When a job opened up through extension for an EFNEP (Expanded Food and Nutrition Program) , Barbara applied and got the job. She received nutrition lessons through the University of Kentucky and taught low-income women how to cook from scratch, and can and freeze vegetables from their gardens. In the summer, she held day camps for program family kids and recruited her own children to help out. With her connections in the school, it was easy to bring nutrition programs into the classroom, where nearly 50% were on reduced lunch programs. For this she won a state award.
There was no kind of agency such as Sharing House in the county, but the needs were the same as they are here in Transylvania. She proposed a project to start a food pantry with the minister of the Christian Church in town. He met with other ministers who asked their congregations for food donations which were then stored in his church basement; while Barb got volunteers to 'man the store' on Saturdays. This proved to be a big help for many people. At Christmas, she requested homemaker clubs and the Women's Club to give hats and mittens and toys for the program family children. More volunteers were recruited to help deliver the items. Barb worked in EFNEP for five years and then sold ads for the county paper for a few years.
Barb and Bob planned to build a house on the hill in their woods some day. "Finally, in 1978, we got a basement dug. We hired a local carpenter who framed the house with Bob and Robin's help. We finished it, with most of the work being done in the summers when Bob was out of school. Working part time, this took six years. By this time we had finished putting in the electricity and had all the floors and walls finished. That Christmas I stated that the tree would be up in the new house. Christmas is a happy time in our house, so the kids decided we'd be in the house, too," Barb related.
Three days before Christmas, when Rob was home from college, he talked his sister Heather into helping him move the furniture while Barb and Bob were gone to work. What a shock Barb had when she came home to see the pickup truck going up the rutted dirt lane, loaded with furniture. Heather was leaning into a marble topped dresser with all her 100 pounds.
"That night Bob and I slept on the floor next to the Jotul woodstove, our source of heat in our original house. Up the hill with no heat, Heather and Robin spent the first night in our new house. The next day, with the help of neighbors, we moved in, too. Our heat that first winter was from a Kerosun heater that the neighbors lent us," Barb remembered.
One day, soon after Bob retired from teaching, he asked Barb if she'd like to go back to school and get her degree. They had put both of their children through Transylvania University and now Barbara enrolled at Northeren Kentucky University and she graduated with a B.S. in Mental Health and Human Service. "This gave validity to all the things I had done without it," Barb said.
They spent nearly twenty years enjoying their house on the hill. However, gradually their quiet was invaded by increased noise from more traffic to the Cincinnati airport, the roar from a NASCAR track that they could hear although it was five miles away, as well as lights from a casino on the Indiana shore of the Ohio River punctuating the evening lights with its beams. Also, more people who didn't respect the land or other's property were moving in.
"We learned about Connestee Falls through a newspaper ad that listed places to retire. Barb's aunt and uncle lived in Naples North Carolina where she visited frequently over the years, first as a teenager and then with our family; but we had never been to Brevard. We made a trip to look at Connestee and loved Brevard. So, we went back home and put the farm up for sale and subscribed to the Transylvania Times to keep up with the area news. Each week we were thrilled to see all the things happening in Brevard and to read about all the volunteering that was going on," according to Barbara.
Finally, the farm sold in September of 2000 and the Liggetts moved to Connestee. A week later they read in the paper that Vera Stinson was going to demonstrate how to smoke apples at the Cedar Mountain Bird Migratory Festival. Bob was surprised because he had taught school with Stinson in Cincinnati forty years before. So, they went to the festival and Bob was even more surprised that Vera recognized him after all those years. When Barb met Vera Stinson and heard her stories, she offered to type them up for Stinson's book, "Stumbling Blocks Were Stepping Stones in Appalachia". Their friendship flourished and is alive to this day.
After her many years of service to her communities, Barbara Liggett declares that she is a :retired" volunteer and that she will now content herself by enjoying her mountain home with her husband.
