July 15 Friday morning 2nd Colony Bus Tour
Tour the beautiful Robinson River Valley and foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Madison County. The ever popular tour of original land grants, a special tour of the newly renovated Court House led by Historian Ann Miller, and visits to Hebron Lutheran Church (with history by John Blankenbaker) and to the private Deale Mountain Farm with a final stop at Prince Michel Winery are all scheduled.
The Deale Mountain Farm, a Nineteenth Century farm founded by Fountain Deal and his wife Alpha Hoffman Deal, is the subject of Maxine Weaver Crane’s book Ask for Nothing. (The author will be speaking at the July 16 conference at 11:00 a.m. on “How to Write YOUR Story.”) To get the most out of your experience, you should read this moving book before you visit the site!
The storyline of the book is about Frances Henderson. Her mother was traveling on foot from Virginia to Missouri in 1846. She stopped at the home of Alpha and Fountain Deal and asked them to take her young child.
She told Frances Henderson, "Don't ask for nothing." She told the Deals, "Always keep' er in dis house in case I comes back." She never came back. Frances lived with the Germanna families of Deal, the Yowell, and Weaver in this house. When she died in 1925 at the age of 84, she was still waiting for the return of her mother.
As you enter Deale Mountain Farm on the tour, you will travel the same road that Frances did in 1846. You will ford the same stream and see the house as it appeared to her. Little has changed with the exterior or interior of the home. Frances' bedroom still has the bed that she slept on and the view out of the wavy glass window is the same that she saw.
Fountain and Alpha had one child, Sarah Ann Deal. Sarah married Rowland Godfrey Yowell and they had eight children. The youngest daughter, Viola Hender Yowell, married Charles Lovell Weaver. They had three children: Otho Roberts Weaver, Charles Elton Weaver, and Elza Mae Weaver.
After the deaths of Charles and Viola Weaver, their son Elton bought the property in 1967 and made minor repairs. After his death in 1976, Maxine and her husband Danny Crane kept up the property.
The book has 226 pages with illustrations drawn by their daughter Cheryl Crane; photographs of the Deals, the Yowells, and the Weavers; and true accounts of the way of life from 1846-1925. The book is available from the Germanna Foundation for $18.