Audrey Mae SpencerSpencer Historical CemeteryHenry Straight / William Spencer Family Cemetery
Vaughn Historical CemeterySpencers of East Greenwich, RI
Married Life with Seven Children
3 April 2004

Heather: Do you like to tend flowers also?

Dad (Milton) was great with flowers. He was great with rose bushes. He would study about them and knew most of them (different species) and planted most of them. It takes a lot of work to get roses to come back each year.

10 April 2004

Heather: What are you looking at now?

Audrey Mae in Colonial Dress (DAR) with her beloved dog, Honey

Audrey: A picture of Honey (the poodle). Honey was so intelligent. She felt the world of me and she would sit next to me and she was a part of me. If you love your animals, they are a part of you.

(Honey was Pat and Vaughn’s dog until they left her with Mother to dog-sit and Mother fell in love with Honey. Pat and Vaughn didn’t have the heart to take her back away from Mother, so they “lost” their dog to a new owner.  The family is especially grateful to Pat for letting her dog go and giving Mother and Dad many happy years with Honey, a wonderful dog.)

10 April 2004

Heather: Yes, Mother, I know. When I put my dog Taps to sleep, a part of me died with him.

17 April 2004

Heather: Remember the doll house (a converted chicken coop) in our back yard where you would take us when it rained and read to us.

Audrey: You were afraid of thunder and lightening, so I would read to the children during the storms.

17 April 2004

Heather: Remember the pony shed with Spencer’s horse, Playboy? Remember the pig pen? Did Dad (Milton) raise those pigs so we would eat them?

Audrey: Yes.

17 April 2004

Heather: Who killed the pigs?

Audrey: There was an old man who lived in the country. His livelihood was killing pigs.*

*Crystal, Audrey’s second daughter, emailed me to say the following: “the man who killed the pigs was old man Irons.  His daughter Isabelle Irons went to Shepherd of the Valley Church.  She was about 85 years old in 1970.  She never married. I remember when he came to the house and shot the pig, Pinky.  Pinky was a big fat pink pig. So cute. Vaughn was a baby in the crib in the back room.  We were supposed to stay in the room, so we wouldn’t see what was going on. But you know me, I had to peek.  I looked out the window and saw the pig fall down.  I remember crying.  You and Deardra were there too (but you two didn’t peek!),  I never knew that we ate the pig.  Thank God!  I can remember it like it was yesterday.
1 May 2004

Heather: I do not know but I will look it up on the internet. Mother, why did you always want your children to call you Mother and not Ma or Mom?

Audrey: I made sure you kids all called me Mother because Ma Perkins was on the radio and everyone called her “Ma”. She was a wonderful old lady that was good to everybody. Everybody loved her, and Ma was all right for Ma Perkins. I wasn’t going to be called Ma because I didn’t want to be (dowdy) like her. She was as dowdy as she could be. Also on the radio call ins, it was Ma did this and Ma did that, and the serials on TV all called mothers “Ma”. Mother was (and is) such a beautiful word.

15 May 2004

Heather: Where is Aunt Jeanie (Jeanie Campbell) buried?

Aunt Jeanie and Aunt Di

Audrey: She is buried in Knotty Oak Cemetery, Coventry. Her family lived in that area. Her first husband, or was it her son Franklin, was killed in a train accident. He was going to the World’s Fair in New York when the train got in an accident. There was a big (popular) song written about it (the incident of the train accident on the way to the world’s Fair). The train fell off the tracks.

Aunt Di married twice. *Her first husband fell off  a load of hay and it killed him.  Aunt Di lived in a big mansion until her husband died. Then she came to live with Aunt Jeanie.

*Julia Rogers, a local member of the community, only knows Aunt Di being married once – to Ed Wicks. When Ed Wicks died, the property went to his family of origin and Aunt Di came to live with her sister, Aunt Jeanie.

5 June 2004

Heather: I remember Aunt Jeannie’s corn crib next door to our house on East Greenwich Avenue.

Audrey: They would pull corn up by roots and stack the corn in the corn crib. A person goes in the corn crib and pulls the corn off the stalk. They shell the corn outside the crib and cook the corn inside.

Oh there are two squirrels jumping back and forth. They are either playing or fighting. I do not know which. Now they are just looking at each other! (Laughter)

They weigh me here at Alpine in my chair! I always weighed 110 or 115 lbs. I like to be 110. I made sure I never got over 112 lbs. Now I am 129 lbs! That walker. I never use it! The caretakers are all very nice. I can’t find any fault with any of them.

6 June 2004

Heather: What were your thoughts during the war?

Audrey: I didn’t have any fear of them coming over here. I never had a newspaper. I hated to read about it. I was so busy with kids.

Crystal was born the day before Pearl Harbor and I was in the hospital. They closed all the curtains at night. We never got bombed. It was funny hearing the planes go over the hospital. Seems so I counted sixteen planes the first day. So I said to myself, I wonder if sixteen planes will go over tomorrow. However, after that day only a few planes went over. I was glad to be home because a hospital is where they want to bomb.

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