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Hillsboro woman may get to see third century Editor's note: Each of us will choose to remember the decades of the 20th century in our own way. This is the first of a 10-part series titled "Eyes On a Century." Each day, Telegraph columnist Ed Grisamore will profile local people, who will tell their story and share their thoughts and dreams of a decade they have lived through. By Ed Grisamore HILLSBORO - Margaret Sammons was only 2 years old when one century turned over and another stretched out in front of her. It was not until she was older that she began to understand much about the outside world. News was slow to arrive here, but that was all right. Nothing else around Hillsboro moved particularly fast. While the Wright Brothers were giving us wings and Henry Ford was giving us wheels, she was busy playing hide-and-seek with her cousins on her family's farm. While Halley's Comet was passing overhead, and Teddy Roosevelt was walking around with "big stick" diplomacy, Sammons was drawing water in a cedar bucket in the breezeway between the house and kitchen. There was no running water. Everybody drank from the same bucket, too. She was educated in a two-room schoolhouse and did her homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. There were a clock and a calendar in the house, but no real need to ever look at them. After all, the sun came up every morning and slid behind the tall pines right before bedtime. The seasons kept their rhythm. You could almost set your watch by the train whistles, as they came up the tracks from Macon. "I always knew when we were going to have company," she said. "I'd have to go out and kill a chicken and dress it." Margaret Sammons is 101 years old now, one of an estimated 60,000 Americans who are centenarians. She was born Margaret Greer on Oct. 15, 1898, in a house on the same property where she now lives with her two daughters, Saralyn and Jane. She is practically a cornerstone of Hillsboro Baptist Church, less than a country mile down the road. She joined in 1910 when she was 12 years old and was baptized in a pool near a local cotton gin. Her father raised cotton and ran a general store with her uncle. The store was a large, brick structure in downtown Hillsboro - when there was a downtown to Hillsboro. They had to tear down the building several years ago when it threatened to lean too far and fall on another building. It only exists now in the memories of those old enough to remember it. "Folks used to gather down at the depot when the trains came in," she said. "That was one of the biggest things to do in Hillsboro." The family's store sold everything from shoes to cloth to buggy whips and fertilizer. The drummers (traveling salesmen) would come in on the train, bringing orders for items such as candied oranges and apples. If she closes her eyes, Sammons can almost remember her first taste of salty mackerel imported from far-away places. "My mother was kin to just about everybody over in Monticello," she said. "We would ride in a buggy to visit. About the only paved road around here was over at Indian Springs." Her mother died when Sammons was only 9, leaving her, as the oldest daughter, to assume all the motherly duties.. Yes, news was slow, but she sure had to grow up in a hurry. There were plenty of hardships following the loss of her mother. Still, Sammons remembers her childhood with mostly happy memories, like learning to dance at parties in nearby Round Oak. "Hillsboro was a nice place," she said. "You could do just about anything you wanted to do. About the farthest place we went was to Macon. I remember my first automobile ride was at the Georgia State Fair in Macon. My aunt took us there on the train. We paid money to ride, and we all piled in the back of that car!" She packed peaches one summer and saved enough money to buy a camera. She graduated from high school and attended college at Wesleyan. She studied Caesar and never forgot her Latin. It certainly strengthened her vocabulary and contributed to her fondness for crossword puzzles, something she gave up only recently because her eyes grew too weak to work them. She married Richard Sammons, a local mail carrier. He died in 1973. The roots she put down here in the early part of the century have grown deep and strong. She remains faithful to her family, church and the friends who still come by to visit and brag about how Miss Margaret once cooked the best fried chicken in these parts. Some of them also will ask her why she's always worn a dress. A local seamstress, Miss Susie, who was an old maid, would make Sammons' dresses. She never had a store-bought dress until she went off to college. "I would never wear pants, even to play outside," she said. "My daughters once bought me one of those pant suits, but I never wore it." She takes great pride in her appearance. Every Friday, her daughters take her to Macon to have her hair done. Remarkably, she remembers what it was like in the days before Lincoln was on the head of a penny and the Titanic was still considered unsinkable. "It was a good time to be alive," she said. Ed Grisamore can be reached at 744-4275 or egrisamore@macontel.com.
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