Martha Stwert

Martha Smith was a loving wife to Ben Smith and mother to 8 children. She was seventy-eight years old when she passed away. Her husband died a few years before when she was about seventy-five years old and was left to support 8 children on her own as well as tend her farm. She was paralyzed from the waist down when she had gotten in accident. She was paralyzed while working and her husband was dead from this car crash. Martha Smith was a hard working woman who deserved to get the death benefit.
      At the age of 26, Martha Smith she had her first baby and began farming. Mr. and Mrs. Smith would rent farms where they would work on. Martha learned how to raise chicken, feed pigs, milk cows, plant and harvest a garden and can fruit. Being that she was raised in an urban area, she learned and adapted into living on a farm. Bonnie Smith states, “My town-bred mother learned to... shuck grain, feed threshers, shuck and husk corn, feed corn pickers” (122). Martha Smith learned how to do things the rural way.
    When the couple had their fourth child, they had enough money to buy their own farm and raise their own livestock as well as harvest crops. With the help of her two older children, they chopped down Canadian thistles with a hoe. Martha Smith raised new flock on this farm as well as harvest plants. Bonnie Smith said,“My mother walked the fields day after day” (122). WIth four kids, she still worked on the farm and harvest crops.
    When she had her fifth child, she started sewing things up for herself and her kids. She ended up having nine children in total, one of them dieing six months into her pregnancy. She would sew clothing like dresses and jackets for her children and and aprons for herself. She would also patch up jeans. overalls, and denim shirts. While doing all of this she would also tend the farms. She got paralyzed from the waist down and her husband also died because of a car accident. Bonnie Smith explains, “From her wheelchair she canned...