| Bob Weaver 2024
After Scottie McCoys death in 1996, the McCoy Store at Hur closed after a 100 year run, she being the last storekeeper. Her nephew Jim McCoy inherited the store and large farm, and brought it to auction.
Jim kindly allowed me to peruse the premises as he was preparing for the auction, a thousand items. I came upon a beautiful highly decorated hope chest belonging to Scottie, locked. Jim opened it for me.
Inside were items related to having a baby, a baby book, bottle, tiny doll baby and toys, indicating she was pregnant. Remembering that my mother, her cousin, said that Scottie got pregnant in the late 1920s and had an abortion at a time it would rarely be performed.
Carefully going through the hope chest, I melted down and wept. I was determined to purchase the chest at the auction, which brought the largest crowd ever to the village. The box sold to an antique dealer, far above my budget, over $300.
In fact, almost everything was above my budget. When the final gavel went down, I approached the auctioneer about obtaining four cardboard boxes of paper stuff, hoping he would give them to me. He said I could have them for $200.
I paid up and brought them home, much to the chagrin of my wife Dianne.
I started looking through the papers and about a year later found a statement where Scottie got an abortion in Spencer. I broke down the second time.
Scottie, who never married. was the most feisty independent hardworking woman I have ever known, her hair clipped short, wearing her brothers tainted work clothes, farming and digging, being ever so close to the animals in her life, giving them a proper burial and markers in her pet cemetery.
Late at night she would wander around the Hur Cemetery.
She was born the year her father Everett died in 1910, at age 42.
The McCoys were use to rising above suffering, Everett and my grandfather John Ira McCoy losing their father to an accident after the Civil War, their mother Rebecca Burdette McCoy then being moved to Calhoun, a log cabin being built near the George Washington Hardman Jr. manor house. Her sister had married Hardman.
Then in 1880, Rebecca died leaving five McCoy childen orphaned. Everett McCoy bought land in the Village of Hur, having married Ida Scott McCoy, they having five children, all who had a work gene that never quit.
Freddie McCoy, a teacher who rose to be the chief officer of the Calhoun County Bank; Paul, a businessman who built and operated a large convenience store at Smithville before such stores were popular;
Allie, a Harrisville businessman who once operated the historical Berdines Five and dime; Harley, who was the valedictorian among the first graduates of Calhoun County High School and went off to medical school at WVU, dropped out and returned to Hur to operate the McCoy Store for many years; Cleo, who operated the store for several years until he was injured in a drilling accident, to become an invalid for many years, bedridden and cared for by the family until he died in the late 1940s - then "grubber" Scottie who made some of the worlds most magnificent quilts.
Their mother, Ida Scott McCoy, facing losing the property unableto pay the taxes faced a big decision. In order to obtain money, the story goes she cashed in on an insurance policy, sat down in a four-legged wicker chair never to walk again. Denying the use of a wheel chair, she titled and walked the chair for the rest of her life. When son Harley built a modern store in 1950, he built lower kitchen cabinets to allow her access.
It would fair to say - the McCoys spent their lives overcoming to rise up and these years later I miss her with compassion in my heart.
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