R. H. Espy and Aunt Kate, 1918

Note: The following account of Aunt Kate has been excerpted from my book Oysterville, The First Generations. In recent weeks, (perhaps because Nyel and I have been dealing with some of the inevitable issues of aging)  I’ve been thinking a lot about her and other elderly characters of Oysterville’s past. 

  As in most small villages in rural areas, Oysterville has had its share of “characters.”  One of the most beloved was Aunt Kate.  Everyone in town called her that, though she wasn’t actually related to a single person here.           
     My mother and her brothers and sisters remembered Aunt Kate well, for she was the third wife of their grandfather, R.H. Espy.  She was 70 (he, 81) in 1907 when she married “Mr. Espy,” as she always called him, and she lived in Oysterville until her death in 1924.
     She wore long skirts, high buttoned shoes, and was proud that she could scrape the meat from an apple with her one remaining tooth.  Although all agreed that she did a fine job taking care of the house and looking after R.H., even he conceded that she “cooked the long way of the flour.” My mother always remembered tossing Aunt Kate’s caraway cookies into the blackberry bushes on her way homeward after a visit.  She considered those cookies a treatment, not a treat.
     In his book, Oysterville, Roads to Grandpa’s Village, my Uncle Willard remembered:  “At all times of the year, Aunt Kate kept her house stifling hot, and wore a dark dress which reached to the floor.  Perpetually tied about her waist was a spotless white apron, scored with deep net lace.  Outdoors, her face was always shadowed by a sunbonnet.”
     She felt that walking or riding in a wagon, buggy, or even a boat were proper methods of transportation.  If absolutely necessary, she would take the train, but she drew the line at riding in a car.  She said that the only way she would ever travel in “a machine” would be if she were laid out for her funeral.  However, a few years before she died she reluctantly accepted a ride in Mr. Lehman’s truck when a high tide covered the road and kept her stranded at a neighboring house.
     Aunt Kate had first come to Oysterville in 1878 as the mail order bride of the Baptist minister.  She was 40 years old – long since considered an old maid by the standards of the day.  She had traveled west from Wisconsin to marry Reverend J. Wichser who, like most of the Baptist preachers in Oysterville during those years, lived in the R.H. Espy home.  The bride and groom continued there for the better part of a year, during which time Kate and R.H.’s wife, Julia, became good friends.  The Espy children respectfully called her “Aunt Kate,” as would the entire community in later years.
     For the next ten years the Reverend and Mrs. Wichser worked establishing preaching stations, prayer meetings, and Sunday-schools in the Puyallup area and later in Oregon.  When Mr. Wichser died in the 1880s, Kate married another Baptist preacher, a Reverend Miller of Oregon.
     As the years passed, she continued writing to her friend Julia Espy and, on occasion came to Oysterville “for a good and proper visit.”  Six years after Julia’s death in 1901, Kate Hulbert Wichser Miller moved back to Oysterville and married R.H. Espy, widower of her good friend.  Aunt Kate had outlived two husbands and was to outlive the third by a good many years.  Once, when my Great Uncle Cecil was in his nineties, my mother and he were reminiscing about Aunt Kate and her quaint ways.
     “I think Aunt Kate must be one of the few women who was married three times and died a virgin,” my mother remarked.
      “Not if you knew Father,” was Uncle Cecil’s wry reply.