By Maun Jennings i Special to the Rappahannock Nt»ws

By Maun Jennings i Special to the Rappahannock Nt»ws

They could have had running water when they moved to the two-story green house in Sperryville in 1975. All they needed was plumbing for the porcelain fixtures — the tub, sink and toilet — that sat unconnected in the bathroom. But Miss Ethel Tyner and her sister, Nellie Atkins, had lived seven decades without plumbing and didn't see a need to change. So, ever resourceful and loath to waste, they put the empty sink and tub to a different use: as a storage space for canned goods.

The two sisters lived together in Rappahannock for nearly a century, first on their family’s mountaintop farm in Old Hollow and then in their ■ Sperryville home. Miss Nellie died in 1996 and after her funeral, after friends and family had departed, the lefl-overs were put away and the dishes washed. Miss Ethel walked slowly, haltingly up the stairs to her room. It was the first night in her life she had ever spent alone. She was 99 years old.

When she died last week in Palmyra, Va. at the age of 105, an era of Rappahannock history > ’ passed away w ith Ethel Tyner. • She was among the last remaining subsistence farmers of the ' county, a woman who spent the - better part of her life living off ' - the land, isolated from the world - at large. She remembered her grandfather telling stories ■ about the battles in which he’d fought - in the Civil war. - If the occasional traveler hadn’t brought word of the 1 Great Depression that was . crushing the nation in the j 1930’s, she said they might never have known it occurred.

Ethel was one of seven >“ Atkins children bom in a log • house on the family farm in the shadow of Oven Tbp and she grew up using skills that, while - commonplace in Old Hollow 80 1 years ago, are almost extinct today. They churned butter and poured it into circular wooden molds decorated with flowers or -' pastoral scenes.