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Florence Shelton was born in Patrick County, Va., in 1875. She married Andrew Jackson Ayers and they moved to Summerfield about 1916. Their family grew to include 10 children, six boys and four girls. Some of the children had unusual nicknames: "Goat," "Green" and "Blue."

You'd think that cooking, canning, cleaning, laundry and looking after 10 children would keep a mother too busy to even think about any community activities. But that wasn't true for Florence Ayers.

The Ayerses were charter members of the Summerfield Grange when it was organized in 1930. Florence Ayers was also active in and a frequent hostess to the Tongue and Needle Club and the Home Demonstration Club and was a member of the Woman's Missionary Union at Summerfield Baptist Church.

She must have loved entertaining people in her home. For many years, she prepared an annual dinner for the entire school faculty. This was probably a highlight of the year for the teachers and was thoroughly enjoyed. She was a member of the School Committee during the 1923-24 school year and possibly for other years.

She knew most of the teachers well because many of them boarded at the Ayers home over the years. In 1927, A. C. Metz, Misses Morgan, Green, Linker and Sandlin and Mrs. Martin were all boarders there. That meant a lot of extra cooking and cleaning. One of the last boarders in the Ayers home was Harold Cook, a highway patrolman.

At one time, the telephone central office was in the Ayers home. All the members of the family must have been expected to help with the operation. Dura Mae Ayers remembered that her husband, Guy, told her he hated answering the switchboard and would ring with his toes!

When Florence Ayers operated a cloth store in the Brittain Store Building, she didn't stay in the store all day. Herbert Scarlette remembered that she had a sign on the door telling people to come to the brick house across the road to get her if they wanted to purchase cloth. Vivian Robinson Morris remembered the cloth store being in the Brittain Building when she worked at the central office at Mrs. Lee Taylor's house from 1940 to 1944.

The cloth store was in the Ayers home for many years. It occupied the back room of the house and had lots of tables with bolts of cloth stacked on them. When the ladies in Summerfield wanted cloth for a new dress for themselves or their children, they didn't have to make a trip to Greensboro. Many of them could just walk to Florence Ayers' cloth store and enjoy a visit while they shopped.

I remember someone telling me Florence Ayers kept her scissors tied with elastic to one of the tables in the cloth room. If she carried the scissors over to another table to cut cloth and forgot and turned them loose, they'd go flying back.

Barbara Ayers Trogdon remembers some of the local ladies going to the cloth store to do their quilting. If they didn't have enough scraps for their quilting, they probably bought the cloth from Florence Ayers. In 1940, The Greensboro Patriot reported, "Mrs. A. J. Ayers entertained a few of her friends recently with an old-fashioned quilting party. A bountiful dinner was served at noon."

In later years, she enjoyed an occasional outing to Greensboro. She and Annie Parrish, along with Taylor rode the "Blue Goose" bus to Greensboro for a day of shopping and lunch at the S & W Cafeteria. Linda Southard remembers her grandmother, Florence Ayers, telling her Taylor ordered three kinds of potatoes one day.

I wish I could ask her where she found the time and the energy for all her the activities at home and in the community.

Gladys Scarlette is a historian, a lifelong resident of Summerfield and an author of two books about Summerfield.