Ruth and Roscoe Davis

 

 

Ruth Steppe and Roscoe Davis began their marriage as farm workers, milking cows on the Bain Daniels farm, behind our Grandfather Waller’s place, the Coleman place now. Latter they moved to Lynchburg and she did factory work and he worked for the Greenstone mining company until it folded. Then he worked in maintenance for the city of Lynchburg.

 

One night when Roscoe was near death with cancer and she couldn’t get him back into bed, Ruth ended his life with an ice pick. Ruth said she had heard the Lord tell her to answer his prayer to end his suffering. I can still remember aunt Alice Mae saying to me; “… but you know Bailey, that was the Devil speaking to her!” The court released her into the custody of her son Clay Davis, and she lived the rest of her life in the home she and Roscoe had shared.

 

Their only child was my cousin Clay Davis. Before Clay was born an infant girl died at three days old.

 

 

Ruth appears to be standing in front of a small garden. And I think it is in the small backyard of the house they lived in when they first moved to Lynchburg. It was on 15th St., only a block or two away from where we lived on Buchanan St.

 

 

Ruth and sister Mary enjoy being together. Ruth wore her farm worker clothes all her life; a plain cotton dress and a hair net.

 

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