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History
has local
connections
By Julie Bushong Special to the Rappahannock News
Ann Maria Reeves was bom in Culpeper County on September 30,1832. She was the daughter of Rev. Josiah Reeves and Nancy Kemper who had married in Culpeper on April 23,1828. Her grandparents on her mother’s side were Joseph Kemper and Elizabeth Basye. In 1830 Joseph Kemper deeded to Josiah and Nancy Reeves the house and acre of land on which they were then living. The description in the deed noted that the lot was on the road between Amissville and the Little Fork Church. (Perhaps along current Indian Run Road, the deed did not give enough of a description to be more exact.) Three years later Josiah Reeves deeded the property back to his father-in-law.
By 1844 when Ann Maria was 12, her family had moved to Barbour County, Va., where her father was the pastor of the Methodist Church. In 1850 Ann Marie married Granville E. Jarvis, a merchant, and moved to the town of Webster in Taylor County, Va. (Both Barbour and Taylor counties are now in West Virginia.)
While a young mother, Ann Maria became concerned over the high mortality rate of children in Webster. In fact seven of her 11 children would not live to adulthood. She sought to do something to improve local sanitary conditions and to educate the public on health issues. To that end, she organized women’s groups at local churches. The groups were known as the Mothers Day Work Clubs and Ann Maria recruited her brother James, a local physician, to lecture and guide the ladies. The women wen* soon providing nursing care to sick mothers and babies, and raising money to purchase medicines for poor families.
By the time of the Civil War, Granville and Ann Maria had moved from Webster to the nearby town of Grafton. Because of the importance of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad terminus in Grafton, both the Union and Confederate armies sought to control Taylor County. Ann Maria worried that tensions about the war would divide the women in her clubs. She called for a mass meeting and urged the members to agree to a declaration that the good will and good works of their organization would not be interrupted by the war. Just in time, too. For soon the ladies were needed to nurse
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