Aunt Susie
A letter from Carolyn Robbins Winston

…I was especially pleased with the one you put out recently on the origins of the Robbins family and the Chowanoke nation. I was also happy to get the picture of Uncle Clayton and Aunt Eunice. I had several of him, but the only one I ever saw of her was a portrait in an old fashioned hat on and it was on the wall of his sitting room (in Petersburg) and I think it stayed there all though his marriage to Gwen [Ragland, whom Clayton married after the death of Eunice].

You also mentioned Aunt Susie. You know Aunt Susie and Uncle Bennie were the only ones I knew from the previous two marriages of Jack Robbins. [Carolyn's father, Charlie, was from Jack's third marriage, this one to Susan Victoria Archer.]

If you remember, Aunt Susie married a man named “Mr. Johnson” and she called him “Mr. Johnson” at all times through a marriage that lasted fifty-five years until she died. He was “Mr. Johnson” to everyone who knew him. In fact I don’t believe he had a first name, at least I have never seen or heard one. Aunt Susie and Mr. Johnson never had children.

Aunt Susie lived in South Jersey but they came down to Hertford County (“the country” as they called it) every summer.

Now Aunt Susie always had a garden wherever she lived and she always made wine and when she came to the “country” – as she called it – she would go out to Archertown where there were relatives of her stepmother, Susan Archer Robbins who raised her.

The purpose for going to see these relatives in Archertown was to buy some of the local homemade “hooch” to take back to add a little to each bottle of her home-made wine. No need to tell you her wine was very well “fortified.”

The last place Aunt Susie and Mr. Johnson lived was a small suburban village called “Delair.” She had a vacant lot on either side of her property and she had a large garden on her property behind her house.

In her garden she had a large bing cherry tree and several small plum trees (2 or 3). She ate the cherries and shared with friends, neighbors and family, but she made wine with the plums, and the trees were always loaded [with cherries].

One year just about the time the plums were ripe, we were over to see Aunt Susie, and she was distraught. She said overnight someone had taken all of the plums off the trees and [including] the rotten ones that had fallen on the ground. There was not a plum anywhere, and there was nothing any one could say or do to console her over the loss of all her plums.

The next year Aunt Susie died (it was in May.) We were all there, family, friends, neighbors, church folks, etc. and as people do when there is a death, they bring cakes, pies, casseroles, ham etc.

It was in a very small house and everyone present was sitting around in close proximity when the neighbor from across the lot came to the house and offered the contribution to the repast. Guess what it was: a gallon of plum wine.

Well, I know he couldn’t have stolen any Archertown “hooch” to put in it, so it probably didn’t taste as good. The family all looked at each other with that “Did you see that” look on our faces.

Bennie Robbins with his niece,
Clario Robbins Jones during
one of his visits in the early 1950's

Susan Robbins Johnson with her
husband, Mr. Johnson on a visit to her
brother Charlie Robbins in Ahoskie.
Courtesy of Curtis and Carolyn Winston.

Among Carolyn Winston's photographs
is this one of Susie (left) and her
brother Bennie. The young lady in the
center is possibly their sister Jimmie.
I guess that the photo was made
in 1904 when Susie was eight.

[This is Carolyn Robbins Winston's second letter to her cousin Marvin T.]