Winchester, VA

@Viper did you get the talk about the small exercise chair the old lady in Winchester developed and had made? For those that don’t know, in the Jackson House is a small chair with a rounded back and arms. There is a lever on each side that you can use kind of like a genteel rowing machine.

An older lady in town invented it for herself, because she had severe lower back trouble and needed to develop her muscles in her back. She used it for 45 minutes a day, three times a day. The key to this story though was she was a tobacco chewer.

She looked like a sweet, little old lady and would be on the porch rowing, smiling and chewing. She certainly was a curiosity. Remember, Winchester changed hands around 72 times during the war. If you chew, you have to spit. She would smile at the Union soldiers and they would come closer and closer and suddenly! She would nail them with her spitting! Now, I don’t approve in the least of spitting OR chamber pots being emptied on anyone’s heads and as a lady she knew better.

BUT…. what a hoot and I have to give her A+++ for ingenuity!

Edited: I asked what happened and she was eventually removed out of town - tobacco and all!
"A" for accuracy. If only every Confederate had such good aim.
 
@Viper did you get the talk about the small exercise chair the old lady in Winchester developed and had made? For those that don’t know, in the Jackson House is a small chair with a rounded back and arms. There is a lever on each side that you can use kind of like a genteel rowing machine.

An older lady in town invented it for herself, because she had severe lower back trouble and needed to develop her muscles in her back. She used it for 45 minutes a day, three times a day. The key to this story though was she was a tobacco chewer.

She looked like a sweet, little old lady and would be on the porch rowing, smiling and chewing. She certainly was a curiosity. Remember, Winchester changed hands around 72 times during the war. If you chew, you have to spit. She would smile at the Union soldiers and they would come closer and closer and suddenly! She would nail them with her spitting! Now, I don’t approve in the least of spitting OR chamber pots being emptied on anyone’s heads and as a lady she knew better.

BUT…. what a hoot and I have to give her A+++ for ingenuity!

Edited: I asked what happened and she was eventually removed out of town - tobacco and all!
Yes. While a cool story for sure, I was more interested in the table in the parlor. The one that, kids from the area would come to sing hymns around, for Jackson.
 
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