Winchester

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After Roanoke, we moved to Market Street Church in Winchester. Market Street Church had been through the Civil War. Church ownership changed from North to South dozens of times - often even several times a day. There were bloodstains on the wooden steps up to the balcony, because the balcony was used as a hospital. The walls of one of basement Sunday School rooms wouldn't hold paint. Freshly applied paint immediately peeled off, because, during the war, blocks of salt were stored in the room.

The house was old. We had two stories containing 4 bedrooms and an unfinished basement.

The basement had two rooms. One was a big room with a tile floor. It was fairly dark and dingy. The other room had a dirt floor, and, according to my parents, had once been a root cellar. Considering the civil war history of the church, however, we children preferred to believe that it was a secret confederate cemetery. We dug for bones on many occasions, but never found any.

The house was fair sized. It had both a full formal dining room and an eat-in kitchen. There was room in the living room for my piano, which we bought with Dad's wedding money.

It was a nice old house. You could tell it was nice because it had cut glass doorknobs. It had 4 bedrooms, so we each had our own room. (Granny didn't live with us then.) Methodist parsonages are furnished. My room had a great big, antique double bed with a huge headboard and a huge old chest of drawers and a large bureau with an attached mirror. Having been totally self-absorbed at that age, I have no idea what kind of furniture my siblings or parents had.