Around 1810, 15 year old Sarah Persinger was attacked by her father’s farm hand as she cleaned the barn. Sarah killed him with a pitchfork hitting him in the face with it so many times that he no longer looked human. The men wanted to bury him but the women of Rich Patch, Va said to burn the body and drop his ashes in an unmarked pit as the Devil did not need a marker to claim what was his.
Mrs. Wolfe was a small woman, but it was said she was able to do the work of any man. When a man who had been drinking hit her, the journals state that the next day he looked like he had been run over by a horse and was missing several teeth.
Ruth Persinger Humphries called aunt Ruthy by most was one of the most beloved yet feared women in her region. She was a textbook of mountain medicine and people respected her for that but every man knew that cross her and you would need her services as a healer. When a husband tried to keep her from treating his wife she told him, "I am a good Christian woman and if you don't git I will send you to Jesus." Needless to say, he got out of her way.
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