Lettie Leonard of
White Level, Franklin County
The old adage, “If you do not succeed at first, keep on
trying until you do succeed” has been proven by Lettie Leonard, one of the most
persevering club members in the county.
She joined in the spring of 1915. Her first planting of seed
refused to come up; the second planting was growing beautifully when an old hen
and her chicks discovered that the tender little plants were delicacies for
them. She planted the third time and succeeded in getting enough from this to
set her plat. One by one the large, vigorous looking plants drooped and died.
Not a hill was left in the one-tenth acre.
She secured enough plants from her neighbors to set two rows
in a different part of the plantation. When these were right size to prune, she
set the remainder of her plat with prunings. Fate seemed against her. Again
more than half the plants died of wilt. The brave girl was not to be
discouraged. She planted string beans, built her canning shed near the spring
and prepared for work.
Many bushels of small peaches had always been thrown to the
hogs. Lettie determined to save them. She canned enough of them to pay her
expenses and succeeded in getting enough surplus from her mother’s garden to
fill several hundred cans.
The following summer a sub-agent was needed for Lettie’s
home community. Naturally she was chosen. Besides looking after the other club
girls in the neighborhood, she again canned several hundred cans, filled her
mother’s pantry shelves and did much of the housework.
She partly paid her expenses at East Carolina Teachers’
Training School with the money realized from the sale of canned products and
work as a sub-agent.
Each summer, she has worked against wilt and has always
succeeded in filling a large pantry for home use and have some cans for sale.
As a successful teacher in her home school, she always lends encouragement to
new members and is still a canning club and poultry club member herself.
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