MEMIORS OF MAGGIE WAGNER AS TOLD TO HER GRANDSON GILBERT BALLINGER

My father (Glen Andrew Ballinger) and my mother divorced when I was 11, and I lived with Grandma Maggie the last 7 years of her life, I consider Maggie my true mother. She talked of her Mama Marrs, and Her grandma Marrs often. and told of things that happened in VA.

One, quite gruesome, was a baby was left in a basket in the front yard while the mother took cloths off the clothsline in back. A snake crawle down the throat of the baby and killed it. The snake died too.

Another was that her Grandpa Marrs(David w. Marrs) went to a relatives house a few miles away, across a ridge and a river, to borrow a big boiling pot to boil down pig skins in during butchering. Indians attacked him at the river on the way home, so he covered his head with the pot and got into water over his head. The upside down pot trapped enough air that he could stay under water for many minutes at a time. He heard arrows twanging off the pot for a long time before it stopped. The Indians were still there when he raised up to get air and he ducked down again. The barrage started again and lasted until night, when the Indians departed. After that, Indians would visit their log cabin on the darkest of nights and leave freshly killed turkeys, deer, and other game on the doorstep. Neighboring homes were burned to the ground all around them, but they were never bothered. Grandma Maggie thought the Indians were impressed with the powerful medicine that allowed him to breath underwater and would not let arrows touch him.